The number of small-scale hydropower schemes to generate energy from rivers in England and Wales has surged in the last decade, according to figures from the Environment Agency. The number of new licences issued by the Government agency for hydropower schemes has increased by a factor of six since 2000.

Thirty-one new licences for energy  schemes in rivers were granted in 2009, compared to just five in 2000. The EA has already issued 29 licences this year and is considering a further 166 applications, as businesses and communities attempt to cash in on a new Government incentive which pays people for generating electricity from small-scale renewables.

In total, there are around 400 hydropower schemes in England and Wales and the EA estimates the number could rise to 1,200 by 2020. Small-scale hydropower currently produces enough electricity to power 120,000 homes in the UK, but could produce significantly more.

Earlier this year, the agency identified thousands of hotspots for hydropower schemes which could each provide clean energy for dozens of homes and benefit from ‘feed-in tariffs’, which pay people for generating electricity from small-scale renewable technology. The feed-in tariffs scheme, which came into force in April, could pay around GBP25,000 a year for a medium-sized hydropower project which would cost around GBP100,000 to GBP150,000 to install, the Environment Agency said.

The organisation said many areas were not suitable for installing hydropower because it could damage the environment, harm fish or increase the risk of flooding. The EA identified more than 4,000 places where sensitively designed schemes incorporating fish passes (enabling species such as salmon to navigate around the turbine or other technology) could provide a win-win situation for the environment. Sustainable hydropower schemes are those with a fish-friendly turbine (such as an Archimedes screw) or adequate screening, safe passage for fish where needed, sufficient water flow to maintain the river ecology and a design that does not harm flood management or land drainage.

At a speech to the Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) National Hydropower conference last month, EA chairman Lord Chris Smith described how hydropower presents a unique set of challenges. ‘It is a great example of a natural resource which produces few wastes. It is a reliable and proven technology and is increasingly attractive to local communities. But it can have a big impact on fish, in particular migratory fish. It can increase the risk of flooding. The change in the quantity of water in a river can have impacts on the wider ecology. On top of that, climate change may impact on the future flow of rivers.’

He told delegates: ‘The challenge is to encourage the deployment of renewables, build public confidence, meet obligations on nature conservation and the environment and not increase the risk of flooding. For the Environment Agency there is an extra challenge: to regulate these technologies in a simple and efficient way. We are committed to getting the regulatory balance right – making it as easy as possible for organisations to apply for hydropower permits while still protecting the local environment.’

Governor Jim Doyle has announced that Wisconsin residents, farms and businesses saved more than $319 million in energy costs in 2009 through energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives with assistance from the Wisconsin’s Focus on Energy program.

This is compared to $239 million in 2008 For every dollar invested in the Focus on Energy program last year, residents, farms, and businesses in Wisconsin saved $2.20 in energy costs.

“These energy efficiency and renewable energy initiatives translate into real economic and environmental benefits for people and businesses in Wisconsin,” Governor Doyle said.  “We are working hard to make Wisconsin a national leader in clean energy initiatives and projects that will help create jobs and protect our environment for generations to come.”

Focus on Energy works with Wisconsin residents and businesses to install cost effective energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.  They provide information, resources and financial incentives help to help Wisconsin residents and businesses manage rising energy costs and protect the environment.

The $319 million in annual savings is equivalent to:

• The amount of electricity consumed annually by approximately 220,041 average homes in Wisconsin.
• The amount of natural gas consumed annually by more than 113,000 average Wisconsin homes.
• Almost 5 billion pounds of carbon dioxide
• The amount of electricity produced by burning 10,958 rail car loads of coal.
• The same energy value as 6.2 million barrels of oil.

“Energy efficiency and renewable energy projects in Wisconsin are booming, and if we continue on our path and look forward 15 years we’ll see our benefit-to-cost ratio increase even more,” said Eric Callisto, chairperson of the Public Service Commission of Wisconsin. “Wisconsin’s energy efficiency gain will be more than six times the investment, which is significant considering concerns over increasing energy costs.”

Business Programs Make an Impact

Businesses have experienced growing pressure to become more environmentally friendly.  To date the program has helped businesses from all sectors reduce energy consumption by more than 1.4 billion kWh and more than 85 million therms, resulting in annual energy costs savings of more than $212 million.  Focus Programs has worked with Wisconsin businesses of all sizes and in all industries to install cost effective energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.  The program provides technical expertise, training and financial incentives to help implement innovative energy management projects.

                                 Consumers Benefit from Residential Programs

Focus on Energy helps residents make energy efficiency improvements at home.  Focus makes purchasing energy efficiency products easier by providing Cash-Back Rewards on items like qualified water heaters, heating and cooling systems and lighting.  The program also provides professional advice to residents wanting to build energy efficient homes or improve the efficiency of their existing homes. The residential improvements have amounted to more than $89 million in annual energy cost savings since 2001.

Renewable Energy Use Continues to Grow

Wisconsin residents and businesses continue to reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and lower their utility bills by using renewable energy technologies.  Focus on Energy has helped many residents and businesses harness energy from the sun, wind and organic materials to become more energy independent. 

More than $18 million dollars in annual energy cost savings have resulted from the program’s efforts.

Navigant Consulting Managing Director Lisa Frantzis discussed these research findings during a HydroWorld.com interview at the recent Renewable Energy World Conference and Expo North America 2010 in Austin, Texas.

Currently, hydropower represents about 7 percent of U.S. electricity generation, with about 100,000 megawatts of capacity. However, Navigant Consulting research suggests hydropower’s technical potential is around 400,000 megawatts of capacity, Frantzis said.

“It’s a tremendous opportunity, and I think it is sort of an unknown secret,” she said.

With increased hydro capacity comes increased hydro industry employment, Frantzis said, noting that up to 700,000 jobs could be directly or indirectly related to hydropower by 2025 if potential industry growth is met. Those jobs, she said, would reach all corners of the United States. Currently, the U.S. supports 200,000 to 300,000 hydropower-related jobs.

The job creation projections are based on a 25 percent renewable energy standard by 2025.

Frantzis said: “There is a tremendous opportunity in the hydropower sector, not only with jobs, but in terms of megawatts of installations. And I think the other exciting thing is that the opportunity would create jobs across the U.S., which is also a real benefit.”

Senate Democrats will debate today whether a bill that responds to BP Plc’s oil spill should benefit renewable energy sources and limit greenhouse gases.

The closed-door meeting will gauge Democratic support for these proposals before President Barack Obama brings Republicans into talks on energy legislation next week at the White House.

Obama said this week that the spill, caused by a fatal April 20 explosion on a BP-leased rig in the Gulf of Mexico, should spur new laws to “change how we produce and use energy.” He didn’t insist that the Senate approve legislation passed by the House last year that uses a cap-and-trade system to limit emissions, saying he was open to “other ideas.”

While support for “clean energy” may be growing in the wake of the spill, “we need a different approach than cap-and- trade,” Senator Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from Louisiana, a Gulf state whose beaches and marshes are being fouled by the BP spill, told reporters.

Landrieu, who said the spill shouldn’t be used to “shut down the oil and gas industry,” said she hasn’t decided which clean-energy measures to support.

“Any thinking American, even Americans like myself who are pro-drilling, think that there’s got to be a better way forward,” she said.

Legislation Next Month

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, said June 3 he wants to bring up legislation next month that deals with offshore oil drilling safety, compensation for businesses and workers who have lost income because of the BP spill, and measures to boost “domestic production of clean and renewable alternative fuels.”

Democrats will be briefed today on three energy bills that aim to boost alternatives to fossil fuels such as oil and coal, Jim Manley, Reid’s spokesman, said in an e-mail. He said a final decision on what makes it into next month’s energy bill is “unlikely” before the meeting with Obama, announced yesterday by Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary.

Senator John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, will put forward at today’s meeting the proposal he unveiled last month with Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Connecticut independent. Under their plan, power plants and factories would be regulated by a cap-and-trade program, in which companies buy and sell a declining number of carbon dioxide allowances.

Carbon Allowances

Most allowances would be given away at first to shield homes and businesses from higher energy bills, and some households would be eligible for rebates. Refineries would have to buy allowances directly from the federal government to account for the carbon dioxide produced by cars and trucks that burn oil-based fuels such as gasoline.

The two senators have said Obama’s call this week for new laws to “tackle our addiction to fossil fuels” gives their legislation a better chance of passing Congress this year.

Another plan from Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington Democrat, puts government limits on greenhouse gases. Her “cap- and-dividend” proposal would require fossil-fuel importers and producers, such as coal mines, to buy carbon pollution rights from the federal government at monthly auctions.

Three-quarters of the money raised from the sale of “carbon shares,” similar to cap-and-trade allowances, would be rebated to consumers, with the remaining 25 percent used for “clean energy reinvestment,” such as research and development into pollution-cutting technologies.

Under both the Kerry and Cantwell plans, pollution-free energy sources such as wind turbines and solar panels would benefit as companies that produce or burn coal, oil and natural gas start adding the new cost of pollution rights.

Bingaman Plan

A third plan from Senator Jeff Bingaman, a New Mexico Democrat and chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, would require utilities to buy 15 percent of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal power plants by 2021.

Bingaman’s legislation, which cleared the energy committee last year, also toughens energy-efficiency standards for new buildings, appliances and industrial equipment. While it doesn’t directly regulate greenhouse gases, it would curb pollution through the greater use of renewable electricity and by cutting back on consumption, according to a summary of the proposal.

‘Diverse Energy Standard’

Indiana Senator Richard Lugar, who recently proposed a “diverse energy standard” that would treat new nuclear reactors and coal-fired power plants that capture and store their carbon dioxide emissions the same as it would treat wind farms and solar panels, will be one of the Republicans asked to the White House next week, Gibbs said.

Like the Senate energy committee’s bill, Lugar’s proposal would toughen energy-efficiency standards for new buildings, appliances and industrial equipment. It would also raise fuel- economy standards for new cars and trucks.

Lugar’s plan “explicitly builds on a lot of the provisions we’ve reported out of our committee” on low-carbon electricity sources and energy efficiency, Bingaman said in an interview. Lugar said the legislation from Bingaman’s committee “has a good number of ideas that are compatible with my own.”

The Lugar and Bingaman proposals could be the basis for a “good bill,” said Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski, the leading Republican on the energy committee. Murkowski, who voted for Bingaman’s bill in the committee, said Lugar’s diverse energy standard is “better than” the renewable mandate.

BEIJING—Silicon Valley venture-capital firm VantagePoint Venture Partners sifted through about 2,500 Chinese companies in everything from nuclear power to batteries to create an index of publicly traded Chinese companies in the low-carbon sector to raise the profile of the burgeoning segment.

VantagePoint, which is a major shareholder in electric-vehicle maker Tesla Motors Inc. among other alternative-energy and technology start-ups, launched the 35-company China Low Carbon Index on Saturday. Its partner, China Beijing Environmental Exchange, a city-government-backed financial institution seeking to become a trading platform for environmental stocks, will publish the index on its website, VantagePoint said.

Depending on how much attention the index gets, it could help the companies attract investors, though it isn’t clear what the interest will be.

VantagePoint managing director Melissa Guzy said the index was created to fill a gap because Western investors tend to overlook China’s green companies. Existing green indexes skew heavily in favor of U.S. or European companies, even though last year nearly half of the initial public offerings in alternative energy were Chinese, and they accounted for 75% of IPO proceeds, she said.

That low profile means Chinese alternative-energy companies are missing out on capital from institutional investors, such as pension funds, that often invest in an index of companies as a way to get exposure to a sector, she said.

And despite increasing media attention on Chinese companies like solar-power leaders Suntec Power Holdings Co., or Yingli Green Energy Holding Co., China lags far behind the U.S. in terms of private investment in start-ups. Last year, venture-capital firms invested $3.5 billion in U.S. alternative-energy companies, while they invested only $330 million in Chinese companies, Ms. Guzy said.

“People think that clean tech in China is crowded, but it’s not,” she said. VantagePoint’s criteria for selecting companies for the low-carbon index included a requirement that at least 50% or 3.5 billion yuan ($512 million) of annual revenue come from low-carbon business, that the company has good liquidity, transparency and a three-month average market capitalization of at least $250 million. Of the companies, about one-quarter are in wind, and one-quarter in solar. The remainder is split between nuclear, hydropower, batteries, energy efficiency, smart-grid, clean-coal and water-treatment companies.

From 2007 until May 2010, market capitalization for the companies increased 259% to $110.5 billion.

More than half of the companies are listed on China’s mainland stock exchanges, with the rest roughly evenly split between the U.S. and Hong Kong.

Ms. Guzy said sectors worth watching in China include firms working on building utility-scale batteries that could be used to store electricity generated from weather-dependent sources like wind or solar farms. Electric utilities around the world need a way to store power when conditions are good so they can dispatch it later when demand is high.

“We’re looking for bottlenecks that young companies can solve,” Ms. Guzy said.

Energy-efficient lighting is another potentially attractive sector because widespread adoption of the technology won’t require big changes in consumer behavior, she said.

And waste management has potential because of China’s rising problem with imported electronic waste from outdated computers being recycled in crude, highly polluting backyard workshops.

VantagePoint said the index could be used to gauge the health of Chinese clean-tech companies and that it plans to create investible products based on the index.

A popular parlor game in Washington is trying to figure out whether the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has helped or hurt chances for passage of comprehensive energy and climate change legislation. President Obama tried to bolster its prospects in his news conference on Thursday, saying the crisis highlights the need to find alternatives to the deadly and dirty fossil fuels oil and coal.

“More than anything else,” he said in his opening remarks, “this economic and environmental tragedy — and it is a tragedy — underscores the urgent need for this nation to develop clean, renewable sources of energy.”

Mr. Obama noted that the House had already passed a broad bill putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions and providing large incentives for conservation and new forms of energy. He said the Senate should act on a measure that was introduced earlier this month by Senators John F. Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut.

“If nothing else, this disaster should serve as a wake-up call that it’s time to move forward on this legislation,” the president said. “It’s time to accelerate the competition with countries like China who’ve already realized the future lies in renewable energy. And it’s time to seize that future ourselves.”

  Mr. Kerry and Mr. Lieberman have used the last several weeks, when all eyes were fixed on the catastrophe in the gulf, to quietly begin rounding up support for their measure from corporations that have been supportive of climate legislation and from environmental groups that are financing advertising and grass-roots efforts.

As part of that campaign, 60 corporations sent Mr. Obama and senators a letter urging them to act quickly on legislation.

The letter, signed by executives of big-name companies like Alcoa, Chrysler, DuPont, Exelon, General Electric, Shell and Weyerhaeuser, says: “The time to act is now. The U.S. needs a comprehensive energy and climate policy that will get us back on track by creating American jobs in the new, low-carbon economy.”

In an op-ed article published this week in Roll Call, Senator Kerry urged his colleagues to prove the doubters — and there are many — wrong by passing his legislation this year. He reminded fellow senators that things are not likely to get any easier.

“Ultimately, this is an issue to lead on — now, not at some future date to be decided — because this may be the last and certainly the best chance for the Senate to act,” Mr. Kerry wrote.

“The odds are that the next Senate — given a 2012 presidential campaign added to the dynamic and a slew of new senators replacing many who are retiring and who have contributed to the progress we’ve made — is going to be less likely than this one to find a path to the 60 votes needed for passage. Practically speaking, we’ve got to get it done this year.”

The on-again off-again nature of electricity from wind is a very solvable problem, contrary to the claims of the very misinformed opinion piece titled “Wind power has appeal, but it’s foiled by facts,” (AC-T, May 19).

The U.S. Department of Energy released a report on May 21, 2010 saying that if the western U.S. power grid included 27 percent renewable power, “it would lower carbon emissions by 25 to 45 percent. It would also decrease fuel and emissions costs by 40 percent.” The report said that up to 30 percent wind power would be easy to handle. The link to that report is the first link below.

A National Renewable Energy Lab spokesperson said, “If key changes can be made to standard operating procedures, our research shows that large amounts of wind and solar can be incorporated onto the grid. When you coordinate the operations between utilities across a large geographic area, you decrease the effect of the variability of wind and solar energy sources, mitigating the unpredictability of Mother Nature.” So much for the alleged intermittency problem.

Wind energy is very cost competitive also. The Union of Concerned Scientists, a well-respected organization with a long illustrious history, provides lots of information about wind power on their website, second link, and says “The cost of electricity from the wind has dropped from about 25 cents/kWh in 1981 to averaging near 4 cents/kWh in 2008.” Wind and geothermal are the cheapest of the clean energies.

So if intermittency isn’t a problem and cost isn’t a problem, what about birds? Are bird deaths a problem?

The third given link will take you to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service report on migratory bird deaths. It is only two pages long and really interesting. The agency says that every year 97 million-796 million birds die from flying into buildings, 4 million-5 million (or maybe 40 million – 50 million) from flying into communication towers, possibly 174 million die from electric wires, maybe 60 million are killed by cars, and “wind turbine rotors kill an estimated 33,000 annually.” Incidentally, the service also says that 39 million birds are killed annually by cats in the state of Wisconsin alone.

So, electricity from wind is natural and renewable. Fuel costs are zero. Turbines could be made by unemployed autoworkers. Wind power could revitalize the U.S. industrial base and restore our international industrial competitiveness. Wind power is good for the air and climate. It is inexpensive. Intermittency and bird deaths are not serious problems.

Another good thing about wind power is that it revitalizes local economies and can help free us from dependency on foreign oil. To see how, visit Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens’ website about his “Pickens Plan” and watch his very persuasive videos. He would like wind power to replace natural gas for generating electricity. Natural gas, which we have a lot of in the U.S., would be used for truck fuel, saving the $1 billion a day the US spends on imported oil, money that might trickle down to hostile wallets.

Or, if you want to think local, go to the last link below, from Appalachian State University, titled “Why Wind Power for North Carolina?” In that study, the ASU folks tell us “The Wisconsin Energy Bureau estimates that wind projects create three times as many jobs as the same level of spending on fossil fuels. Conversely, Portland General Electric estimates that a 240 MW natural gas plant drains $28 million-$55 million out of the regional economy annually for fuel imports.” Visit the article. They give many other happy reasons for supporting wind power in North Carolina.

Wind power is clean, natural, sustainable, safe, affordable, good for our health, good for the air, good for jobs, and good for the U.S., preserving our freedom. Those are the facts.

Cisco (News – Alert) has announced its first Connected Grid products – starting with routers and switches – that will help utilities deliver electric power from generation facilities to businesses and homes, resulting in better energy management, as well as improved environmental conditions.

 The specially designed routers and switches provide a secure solution for utility substations to integrate IP-based communications with the power grid for improved monitoring and control, Cisco said.

The technology builds on existing Cisco Smart Grid products which increase grid reliability and industry compliance.

Features of the new products include:

• The Cisco 2010 Connected Grid Router and Cisco 2520 Connected Grid Switch were designed to meet utility substation requirements.  
• The CGR 2010 and CGS 2520 capture and analyze information from electronic devices in the substation.
• The products help utilities to better manage and maintain power transmission and distribution equipment, as well as increase the reliability of power delivery by quickly identifying, isolating, diagnosing and, at times, automatically repairing faults.
• The products also help utilities better integrate renewable energy into the grid.
• The products also extend network-based security and management to substations, supporting remote engineering access and proactive maintenance programs.
• The products are based on Cisco IOS software.

The 2000 Series Connected Grid Routers and 2500 Series Connected Grid Switches give users comprehensive cyber security. The products also meet or exceed standards for utility substation environments, including the ability to withstand a broad range of temperatures, as well as extended protection against electrical surges and electromagnetic interference.

The expansion of a global smart grid will bring substantial environmental benefits, according to Cisco. The Climate Group reported that implementation of smart grid technology could globally reduce CO2e emissions by 2.03 gigatons. A recent report by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory predicts a 12 percent reduction in global energy and CO2 emissions if smart grid technologies are deployed.

The GridWise Alliance, of which Cisco is a member, estimates that smart grid incentives and investments will also create approximately 280,000 jobs. 

“Cisco’s vision is to help utilities transform energy production, distribution and consumption using an end-to-end, IP-based communications infrastructure to more sustainably meet the world’s future energy needs,” said Laura Ipsen (News – Alert), senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Smart Grid. “Our Connected Grid portfolio represents the foundation of this innovative energy platform that will improve the electrical grid’s efficiency and create exciting opportunities for utilities as well as new consumer energy services. With our substation automation solutions at the core, we look forward to helping utilities achieve their business and operational goals.”

“Implementation of Smart Grid solutions such as transmission and distribution automation, combined with the behavioral changes they would enable, has the potential to significantly reduce CO2 emissions on a global scale,” added Molly Webb, director of strategic engagement, The Climate Group.

The U.S. Department of Energy  (DOE) recently announced the selections of projects to receive up to US$62 million over five years for research into Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) systems capable of providing low-cost electrical power.

This funding will support improvements in CSP systems, components, and thermal energy storage to accelerate the market-readiness of this renewable energy technology.

CSP plants can include low-cost energy storage, allowing them to provide electricity even when the sun is not shining. The funded projects will seek to improve component and system designs to extend operation to an average of about 18 hours per day – allowing CSP plants to displace traditional coal-burning power plants.

The selected projects include:

• Abengoa Solar, Inc. (MCE:ABG) will develop a new power tower technology that captures heat in a high-temperature receiver at the top of an elevated tower. The system will focus the sun’s rays to the tower using a 360-degree, surround reflector field on the ground and collect the heat in a salt fluid. Abengoa is currently the only company with a full-scale, operational power tower and is striving to ready it for commercial deployment.

• eSolar, Inc. will design, build, and test a CSP power plant system with multiple modular towers instead of one central tower and receiver.

• Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne (NYSE:UTX) will explore new materials for the central power tower receiver – including a novel thermal storage system.

• General Atomics will study the feasibility of supplying reliable power using a CSP plant integrated with sulfur-based energy storage.

• Infinia Corporation is developing a large-scale thermal energy storage solution that will be essentially maintenance-free and can store large amounts of energy in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

• PPG Industries, Inc. (NYSE:PPG) will develop a larger reflector with increased reflectivity and durability – thus reducing the CSP plant’s biggest expense, cleaning and replacing the mirrors.

• University of South Florida will develop and demonstrate an innovative thermal energy storage system based on materials that absorb heat when changing from a solid to a liquid and release heat when changing from a liquid to a solid.

• Wilson TurboPower, Inc. is utilizing a small transportable turbine power system in a modular CSP solar power tower configuration.

The whirl of opinions on climate change is enough to make anyone dizzy. And with the Senate getting ready to consider energy and climate legislation, it’s easy to get bogged down in the politics of the moment and miss the big picture – especially when it comes to the scientific research that got us to this point in the first place.

As someone who has researched climate questions for 25 years, read thousands of scholarly articles and worked with researchers from around the globe, let me give you the scientific bottom line: Climate change is happening now, and we are primarily causing it.

We in Indiana need to remember that global warming won’t just affect polar bears and island nations. If climate change continues unchecked, science says our own state faces average summer temperatures as much as 13 degrees higher by the end of this century. Extreme weather events, such as flooding and droughts, will become more severe and more frequent. Growing zones for plants will shift, affecting our agricultural sector. Insect-borne diseases will shift northward as well.

How do we know that’s in our future? Here’s how we know the climate is changing:

First, we have multiple, consistent lines of recent evidence, all pointing in the same direction:

Temperatures are rising faster than they have in 400 years. Globally, the past 10 years have been the warmest on record. Polar ice is receding. High mountain glaciers are melting. Ocean temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are rising.

Second, we have historical data about the atmosphere – going back millennia – that we can compare with today’s atmosphere. Using Antarctic ice core samples, scientists have a more than 650,000-year record of Earth’s temperature and of the concentrations of carbon dioxide in the planet’s atmosphere.

The ice cores show us that carbon dioxide levels and global temperatures rise and fall in lockstep. And what is happening now in our atmosphere is unique: Today’s carbon dioxide levels are unprecedented in 650,000 years. And as today’s carbon dioxide levels rise, the Earth’s temperature is rising at the same rate.

Why are carbon dioxide levels rising? Since the Industrial Revolution, we have been burning fossil fuels – oil, coal and natural gas – to power our society. Burning fossil fuels puts heat-trapping gases into the atmosphere that form a kind of atmospheric blanket and warm the planet.

Third, we put all this data into ever-more-sophisticated computer models that simulate Earth’s climate. Scientists test their models for accuracy by running them back in time. If they predict what actually happened in the historical record, we can feel confident about their projections when we run these models forward into the future. And these models – ever-better at tracking the past – are bringing Earth’s future into focus ever more clearly.

Despite the measurable data, the historical record and our computer models, scientists continue to test other theories; that’s what scientists do. But tested against everything we know, by thousands of scientists around the world, only one theory can explain why carbon dioxide levels and temperatures are increasing: It’s climate change, caused by the heat-trapping gases we humans are adding to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels to run our cars and computers.

A few holdouts

There are a few scientists who still claim all of this is wrong, just as there were a few scientists who continued to claim that smoking cigarettes was safe long after the science showed that smoking causes cancer. But manufacturing uncertainty about climate science isn’t just an academic game. It keeps us from acting, and that has serious consequences for all of us.

Although science has revealed this crucially important problem, science has also showed us that there is still time to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

The solutions, however, go beyond science; they require our political leaders to act. What we need are national policies that put a price on carbon dioxide pollution, and that will curb the amount of heat-trapping gases we put in the atmosphere. We also need to give businesses incentives to innovate and move away from fossil fuels.

In short, solving global warming requires us to transition to a clean energy future where we use low-polluting energy and we use it efficiently. Fortunately for us in the Midwest, we’re well positioned to thrive in this clean-energy future. We have the manufacturing experience to produce renewable energy technologies; we have renewable energy resources like wind and biomass to exploit; and we have the agricultural expertise to create clean fuels for our automobiles.

Addressing climate change offers a big opportunity to create jobs and boost profits while ushering in a more sustainable, more energy-independent future. It’s an opportunity we need to seize.