Barack Obama, climate change is change we can believe in.

Speakers at the Democrats’ convention this week, by and large, have taken as dim a view of fossil fuels as the Iraq war. If you were quaffing your brew at each mention of "alternative energy" from the podium, you’d have a lot of recycling to do by now. The green theme climaxes tonight, with environmental hero Al Gore setting the stage for the candidate’s address.
Since he launched his campaign, Obama has offered remarkably detailed proposals and demonstrated fluency in the language of energy and carbon. He promises a broad agenda aimed at growing sustainable industries quickly. That means jobs, profits and a balm for the planet, but it’s a riddle when, or if, that growth would offset the financial costs of change.

If he takes the helm, Obama’s blueprint may be welcomed by an admiring Congress. Then comes the hard part: implementing it.

Like rival John McCain, Obama proposes a market in permits to emit greenhouse gases, commonly termed "cap and trade." His approach is stricter, however, and his final goal -- an 80% reduction from 1990 levels by 2050 -- more ambitious. Even though emissions limits are defined by the government, cap and trade is widely seen as a fair, market-driven way to, in Obama’s words, make "dirty energy expensive."

Coal generates half the country’s electricity, but with carbon costs imposed, new plants won't be built. Under Obama, investors may shun coal producers that only sell domestically while favoring those that feed booming demand overseas, such as Peabody Energy Corp. Meanwhile, firms that crack the engineering challenge of burying coal emissions underground would get more than a few contracts.

Assuming that a Congress renews key tax incentives, utilities would hurry to add renewables to their mix, playing into the hands of wind energy specialists such as Vestas and solar companies like Energy Conversion Devices Inc., Sunpower Corp. and private BrightSource Energy.

Obama is not a friend of nuclear power but urges the industry to solve its chronic waste storage and other problems. With coal in the doghouse, though, the pressure to go nuclear would build. That’s where natural gas comes in. In his energy factsheet, Obama makes special mention of the cleaner-burning fossil fuel, the No. 2 source of U.S. electricity. He promotes drilling in the Barnett shale in Texas, among other places. After all, the Illinois senator doesn’t see renewables contributing more than 10% of our power supply by 2012, and even that may be a reach.

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Obama’s Green Dream: Would His Renewable-Energy Plan Make a Difference?

Barack Obama’s week in the media sunshine ended abruptly with John McCain’s surprise pick of Sarah Palin for his vice-presidential running mate. But after Thursday’s big speech, it’s worth taking a look at one of the centerpieces of Sen. Obama’s energy policy: The call to invest $150 billion in renewable energy like wind power, solar power, and second-generation biofuels over the next decade.

That sounds like a big number, even if it works out on a yearly basis to a more modest $15 billion. But how does it compare to the actual challenge of overhauling the entire U.S. power sector, which is still overwhelmingly dependent on coal, natural gas, and nuclear power?

Earmarking $15 billion a year amounts to less than what the U.S. government spent last year on all energy subsidies, but it would be a lot more than what the government spent on “renewables.” Last year, Washington paid $16.7 billion in federal energy subsidies, with $4.8 billion for renewables, including ethanol.

On paper, Sen. Obama’s plan looks like a way to easily finance continued, long-term support for renewable energy—support that has been tripped up in Congress by budgetary “pay-go” rules and Republican opposition so far. And many in the clean-energy game figure if they can just get long-term price support for things like wind and solar power, the private sector will take care of the rest. After all, even with the specter of subsidies expiring at the end of this year, the U.S. has broken records for new wind and solar power installations.

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Energy groups increase pain with gas price rises

Npower and ScottishPower today became the last of Britain's big six energy suppliers to raise gas and electricity bills, adding at least another £162 a year to millions of customers’ heating costs.

Npower, the UK’s fourth-biggest energy group, will increase gas prices by 26 per cent and electricity bills by 14 per cent.

From today, the company’s 6.6 million customers will pay an average £162 more each year for gas and an extra £60 for electricity.

At the same time, ScottishPower has raised its gas bills by 34 per cent, the second largest rise after British Gas increased its gas prices by 35 per cent last month.

ScottishPower also announced today that it has increased its electricity prices by 9 per cent, which will come into effect on September 1.

The company's 1.2 million customers will pay £221 more a year on gas and an extra £38 for electricity.

Like ScottishPower, npower is blaming today's price rises on “massive” increases in wholesale costs which it claims has made its previous pricing levels unsustainable.

The company said prices had risen by 122 per cent for gas and coal and by 79 per cent for oil over the last 12 months.

The company, which already increased prices in January, claimed that, until today, its domestic gas prices had been the same as they were 18 months ago owing to a decrease in bills in 2007, despite wholesale tariffs more than doubling.

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Is Your Green Electricity Tariff Just a Con?

Ecotricity takes a different approach. It guarantees that it will invest some of its customers' money in building new renewable energy, and thereby increase the total amount of renewable power generated in the UK. Dale Vince, founder of Ecotricity, argues that what is really needed is greater certainty for renewables investors, and that the best way of doing this is through providing dedicated funds for investment. Controversially, Vince does not believe that retiring ROCs is worthwhile, as it does not send a clear signal to the market: 'it's a very poor second-best to actually building something.'7 As these examples show, there are some genuinely green deals around, but cutting through the confusion is difficult to achieve. Even those familiar with energy issues struggle to assess the relative merits of the different tariffs.

The Advertising Standards Agency recently took British Gas to task for claiming that it was selling 'the greenest energy tariff in the market', on the grounds that there was no way of verifying the claim. The National Consumer Council blames the confusion, and lack of independent verification, for the less-than-impressive levels of enthusiasm among would-be -greener householders.8 Many businesses, too, are calling for greater clarity. As companies are increasingly being asked to count their carbon, they need to know what sort of electricity they are buying. BT, for example, is working with energy suppliers, the gas and electricity market regulator Ofgem, the Carbon Trust and others to get some basic information about the carbon content of the power that it buys.

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