Renewable Revolution

Wednesday, July 26, 2017

By Staff, Energy and Policy Institute | Report

SNIPPET:
 

Scientists had begun to warn electric utilities about climate change by 1968, and by 1988 the industry's official research and development organization had acknowledged that, "There is growing consensus in the scientific community that the greenhouse effect is real."

Despite this early knowledge about climate change, electric utilities have continued to invest heavily in fossil fuel power generation over the past half a century, and since 1988 some have engaged in ongoing efforts to sow doubt about climate science and block legal limits on carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.

The Energy and Policy Institute's new report provides a first look into the electric utility industry's nearly 50-year long relationship with climate science, based largely on original research that reviewed scores of industry documents.

Below are just a few of the key findings from the report.

The Electric Utility Industry Was Warned About Climate Change in 1968

Dr. Donald F. Hornig, a science advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson, warned the 1968 Annual Convention of the Edison Electric Institute about the threat that allowing CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels to build up in the atmosphere could one day pose to the climate.

"Such a change in the carbon dioxide level might, therefore, produce major consequences on the climate -- possibly even triggering catastrophic effects such as have occurred from time to time in the past," Hornig said.


While the science on climate change was limited compared to what we know today, by 1971 electric utilities knew enough to include research into the "effects of CO2" in the industry's long-term research and development goals for through the year 2000. More than 50 electric utilities contributed to the development of these goals, as did industry associations like EEI.

Utilities, through the largely customer funded Edison Electric Institute and Electric Power Research Institute, sponsored cutting edge climate research during the 1970s and 1980s. During the 1980s, EPRI funded research by influential scientist Charles Keeling and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography that documented "virtually all that we knew at the time from measurements of atmospheric CO2." Between 1985 and 1988, EEI and EPRI co-sponsored another study which found that "climate changes possible over the next 30 years may significantly affect the electric utility industry."

A 1978 article, "CO2 and Spaceship Earth," in the EPRI Journal included this graph from Dr. Charles Keeling and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, which showed the rise in average atmospheric CO2 levels since 1958. EPRI later sponsored the work of Keeling and Scripps during the 1980s.

Utilities Knew Long Ago That Climate Change Concerns Could Warrant a Shift Away From Fossil Fuels
"If a consensus arose that we had to limit or curtail the use of hydrocarbons because of their impact on climate, the implications would be enormous," Dr. Carroll L. Wilson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, warned at EEI's Annual Convention in 1971.

"If this turns out to be of major concern, then fossil fuel combustion will be essentially unacceptable, an important justification for expanding the nuclear and solar energy options," Dr. Cyril Comar, director of EPRI's environmental assessment department, told Congress in 1977.

"As consensus builds that man is changing the earth's climate, policymakers are turning their attention to the issue and exploring potential responses," the EPRI Journal reported that same year:


By 1988, electric utilities were at a critical juncture. They could either be a part of the solution to climate change, or a part of the problem.


Read more:

http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/41408-utilities-had-early-knowledge-of-climate-change-nearly-50-years-of-ongoing-deception