The Morning Feedstock

Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) will unveil sweeping climate change legislation in the House of Representatives today. The legislation aims to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent between 2012 and 2050, led principally by an aggressive cap-and-trade scheme. Under Markey’s plan business would be eligible to buy emissions permits up their alloted level through a government auction. This differs from early European schemes, other cap-and-trade legislation wending its way through Congress, and the proposal offered by Republican presidential candidate John McCain, all of which are based on free distribution of emissions credits. The credit auctions, according to Markey’s estimates, would raise nearly $8 trillion over the program’s lifetime, to be used principally for funding rebates and tax credits for green technology, helping defray rising energy costs for middle- and low-income home owners, and as an assistance platform for helping developing countries reduce their emissions.

Power company Duke Energy has launched a bid to install 800,000 smart meters in Indiana. The statewide program will be the country’s largest smart grid deployment, if it receives regulatory approval from the Indiana Utility Regulatory Commission, and is part of the company’s plan to expand smart grid services throughout its five state service area in the Carolinas, Ohio, and Kentucky. It is likely the smart grid deployment will involve several different companies providing networking services, device installation, and IP protocol links - enough to make you nostalgiac for 1996, huh? - to make the proposed Indiana smart grid capable of providing real time data flow and energy management tools on both the demand and supply side. Duke, which is member of the smart grid trade group GridWise Alliance, has worked with GridPoint and Echelon in the past for smaller prototype deployments. The Indiana plans follow on the heels of an announcement by Oncor, a Texas utility, to spend $690 million deploying three million smart meters across its service area in North Texas.

A legislative battle is taking shape in Brussels, as European Members of Parliament have recently rejected watered down proposals to regulate emissions from the EU’s rapidly expanding aviation sector. The MEPs have demanded airlines cut emissions 10 percent by 2011, a number set to a 20 percent reduction on 1990 levels by 2020. National government representatives have offered a less ambitious plan allowing airlines to remain at their 2004-2006 levels through 2012. It’s funny, right, because I thought babassu nuts were carbon neutral.

A short programming note - I, along with the rest of the GTM team will be at our PV Annual 2008 today (it’s not too late to sign up), so you expect constantly updated info on the state of the global solar industry. And funny photos of Travis Bradford.