InherencyNo disads – offshore wind exists now – plan is key to expansion

Navigant Consulting, Inc. ’13 (Bruce Hamilton, Principal Investigator, Lindsay Battenberg, Mark Bielecki, Charlie Bloch, Terese Decker, Lisa Frantzis, Jay Paidipati, Andy Wickless, Feng Zhao, October 17, 2013, Offshore Wind Market and Economic Analysis, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/offshore_wind_market_and_economic_analysis_10_2013.pdf)

Since the last edition of this report, several potential U.S. offshore wind projects have achieved notable advancements in their development processes. In addition to two BOEM commercial lease auctions for federal Wind Energy Areas (WEAs), other, later-stage, commercial-scale projects have made incremental progress toward starting construction . On

the demonstration project front, the DOE awarded seven Advanced Technology Demonstration (ATD) project grants in December 2012 that will help address ongoing challenges and cost barriers to offshore wind energy. In addition, in June 2013, the University of Maine (in partnership with the DOE) installed the United States’ first offshore wind turbine, a 1/8-scale pilot turbine on a floating foundation. This section provides an overview of these and other updates to U.S. offshore wind project developments.

Offshore wind is blocked in the status quo because of an incoherent regulatory framework- without federal action local opposition ensures no wind development

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

The drastic growth in electricity produced by wind in the United States indicates that wind power is poised to become a significant component of the United States' energy portfolio.' Installed wind capacity has grown from about 1,000 megawatts (MW) in 1985 to nearly 35,000 MW by the end of 2009, enough to power roughly 9.7 million homes. As of September 2008, the United States led the world in energy produced by wind turbines.3 According to

the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), currently installed wind power capacity in the United States will avoid an estimated sixty-two million tons of carbon dioxide annually, or the equivalent to taking 10.5 million cars off the road.4 The federal government appears to recognize the opportunities and benefits that wind power offers. In February 2009, Congress positioned wind power generation to continue its rapid growth5 by renewing production tax credits for wind power projects through 2012. Congress also gave the wind industry options for investment tax credits or U.S. Treasury Department grants for certain wind power projects placed in service by 2012.7 In addition, in July 2009, DOE announced up to $30 billion in loan guarantees for renewable energy projects, including wind power. President Obama continues to promote renewable energy, including wind energy, as well. For example, in his 2010 State of the Union, the President spoke repeatedly about the need for renewable energy investment.9 DOE predicts that by 2030 the United States could get as much as 20 percent of its electricity from wind, if the nation is able

to overcome certain challenges to wind power progress today.'0 In spite of the impressive growth in the U.S. wind industry, the United States has not kept pace with other countries in developing offshore wind facilities. Though offshore wind has been used in other countries for nearly twenty years,'1 none of the United States' current wind capacity comes from offshore wind.12 An

estimated 900,000 MW of potential wind energy capacity exists off the coasts of the United States -an estimated 98,000 MW of it in shallow waters.14 This shallow-water capacity could power between 22

and 29 million homes, or between 20 and 26 percent of all U.S. homes. The nation has failed to take advantage of this promising resource. This failure can be ascribed in part to the unevenly balanced

distribution of the costs and benefits of offshore wind technology, as well as to the

incoherent regulatory framework in the United States for managing coastal resources. 17 While

the most compelling benefits of offshore wind are frequently regional, national, or even global,

the costs are almost exclusively local. The U.S. regulatory framework is not set up to handle this cost-benefit gap. As a result, local opposition has stalled offshore wind power development, and inadequate attention has been paid to its wide-ranging benefits. The Cape Wind project in Massachusetts is a stark example of how local forces have hindered offshore wind power development. The project is expected to have a maximum production of 450 MW and an average daily production of 170 MW, or 75 percent of the 230-MW average demand of Cape Cod and neighboring islands.'8 In addition to this electricity boon to energy-constrained Massachusetts,19 Cape Wind will reduce regional air pollution and global carbon dioxide emissions.20 Nonetheless, local opponents to Cape Wind protest its effect on the surrounding

environment, including its aesthetic impacts.21 Without an effective way to champion the regional, national,

and global benefits of offshore wind, policymakers have been unable to keep local interests from

controlling the process through protest and litigation . After about ten years of waiting and fighting, Cape Wind

developers have still not begun construction. Although the failure of offshore wind power in the United States is discouraging, the Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) offers a potential solution. With specific revisions, the CZMA could serve as the impetus that offshore wind power needs for success in the United States.

***Economic Competitiveness Advantage

Jobs Down

Despite recent gains in the job market, more are needed to secure the recoveryCNN, 6/6

http://money.cnn.com/2014/06/06/investing/may-jobs-report/

It took two years to wipe out 8.7 million American jobs but more than four years to gain them all back. That's according to the Department of Labor's latest jobs report, which shows the U.S. economy added 217,000 jobs in May. With that job growth, there are now more jobs in the country than ever before. The last time we were near this point was January 2008, just before massive layoffs swept throughout the country, leading the unemployment rate to spike to 10%. The unemployment rate is unchanged at 6.3% for May, and much has improved since the worst of the crisis. Yet, this isn't the moment to break out the champagne. Given population growth over the last four years, the economy still needs more jobs to truly return to a healthy place. How many more? A whopping 7 million, calculates Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute. President Obama's administration was quick to point out that the recovery is still incomplete by their standards. "We're moving in the right direction, but we have a lot more work to do," said Secretary of Labor Tom Perez. "There are way too many people who are still on the sidelines." As of May, about 3.4 million Americans had been unemployed for six months or more, and 7.3 million were stuck in part-time jobs although they wanted to work full-time. Both these numbers are still elevated compared to historic norms, and are of concern to Federal Reserve officials, who will meet in two weeks to re-evaluate their stimulus policies. Overall, this has been the longest jobs recovery since the Department of Labor started tracking jobs data in 1939. Economists surveyed by CNNMoney predict it will take two to three more years to return to "full employment," which they define as an unemployment rate around 5.5%.

Econ down- jobs key

US economic recovery will be halted without significant job growth

Fitch Ratings 2014

(“Fitch: U.S. Jobs Surveys Tell Same Story, Despite Differences” By: Fitch Ratings, Business Wire (English), 01/14/2014, ebsco)

Last week's U.S. employment surveys for December support Fitch's view that the healing of the labor market is not proceeding quickly enough to drive a significant pick-up in U.S. economic growth . Despite a decline in the headline unemployment rate to 6.7% in December, labor productivity and participation rates have stayed weak since the recession . We remain concerned that high levels of unemployment and under-employment will continue to dampen consumer spending and delay the start of a more robust economic recovery. Differences between the monthly employment reports released by ADP and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), evident in the December payrolls data, will likely be smoothed over the next quarter as monthly numbers are adjusted. While significantly different, we believe both surveys have shown ongoing, accelerating improvements in job creation over

recent months. Unfortunately, the reports still indicate that U.S. employment levels are not rising fast enough to offset job losses suffered during the last recession. The U.S. economy needs to generate between 185,000 and 200,000 jobs monthly to significantly reduce unemployment . The higher December payrolls number from ADP reflects stronger jobs growth at the end of 2013, but appears to be a catch up relative to the BLS numbers over the last 24 months. BLS reports reflect an average increase of 187,000 jobs per month over that period, while ADP averaged 170,000. Typically, the net difference between the reports is below 0.06% of total jobs each month. For December, ADP reported net growth of 238,000 jobs while BLS reported only 74,000. Last February 2013, by contrast, BLS reported a significantly higher monthly jobs number than

ADP. Of greater concern is that the December increase is not statistically significant. So if the BLS number is not revised, it is likely that there was little or no discernible employment growth in the fourth quarter . This repeats recent seasonality patterns in the U.S. economy where the greatest growth is experienced in the first part of the year and tails off each year. BLS jobs growth was highest in the first and second quarters of 2013, adding an estimated 637,000 and 569,000 jobs, respectively. ADP's highest quarter is the fourth quarter at 638,000 and the second highest is the first at 529,000. To further cloud the data, GDP growth for the third quarter has been attributed to a large inventory increase, casting doubt on the fundamental strength of the economy in the second half of last year. Fitch projects a modest increase in

U.S. GDP growth in 2014 and 2015. The outlook for U.S. corporate credit is stable. However, little positive momentum is

expected in the near term.

Manufacturing is down now

Manufacturing declining, we are losing economic competitiveness

Smil ’11 (Vaclav Smil, economist for Breakthrough institute, The Manufacturing of Decline, The Breakthrough Institute, http://thebreakthrough.org/index.php/journal/past-issues/issue-1/the-manufacturing-of-decline, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)

But these numbers can be deceptive. America's manufacturing sector has retreated faster and further in relative terms than that of any other large, affluent nation. US manufacturing as a

percentage of GDP declined from 27 percent in 1950 to 23 percent in 1970 to 14 percent in 2000 to 11 percent in 2009. While manufacturing as a share of GDP has also declined in Germany and Japan, both countries have retained relatively larger manufacturing sectors at 17 and 21 percent, respectively. The contribution of manufacturing to per capita GDP

is also higher in Germany ($6,900) and Japan ($8,300) than in the United States. The most shocking, but underemphasized, fact about global manufacturing is that Germany's share of global merchandise exports is actually higher than America's (9 percent vs. 8.5 percent in 2009), despite having an

economy just one-quarter of the size. As a consequence , the United States is lagging as a global economic competitor. In 2009, Germany and Japan had large manufacturing trade surpluses ($290 and $220 billion, respectively) while the United States had a massive manufacturing trade deficit ($322 billion).5 The other key measure -- little known in popular discussions of manufacturing -- is export intensity, the ratio of a nation's exports to its total manufacturing sales. The global average export intensity is twice as high as that of the United States, which ranked 13th out of the 15 largest manufacturing countries in 2009, higher only than Russia and Brazil.6 Meanwhile, the leading EU countries had export intensities 2.5 times to 4 times higher than America's. Comparisons of the value of manufactured exports on a per capita basis are even more dramatic: they are higher

in Spain ($3,700), Japan ($4,000), Canada ($4,600), and Germany ($11,200) than in the United States ($2,400). The US manufacturing sector is also badly trailing China's, though in order to fully appreciate this, one must calculate the real value of China's artificially undervalued currency (the yuan renminbi, or RMB). The 2009 data from the United Nations lists US manufacturing output at $1.79 trillion versus RMB 14 trillion or $2.1 trillion for China when converted at the official exchange rate for 2009 (about RMB 6.8/US dollar).7 But according to the purchasing power parity (PPP) conversion preferred by the International Monetary Fund, one RMB should be worth 29 cents, or RMB 3.4/US dollar. Even if the real RMB value were only 50 percent higher than the official rate, the total added by China's manufacturing in 2009 would be in excess of $3 trillion, or about 67 percent above the US

total. America has historically been an effective mass-maker of low- to medium- quality products for its huge domestic market, but an inferior exporter. As long as America imported few manufactured goods, energy, and food, this weakness did not matter . Today,

however, America has enormous manufactured imports, a huge energy import bill, and a lower surplus on its food trade. For the last 35 years, the US has had a positive and rising balance in service trade and, until 2006, a generally worsening balance in trading of goods (including food, fuels, and raw materials). Recent exports of manufactured products increased (in nominal terms) by nearly half between 2000 and 2008 before dropping by 25 percent in 2009 as a result of the economic downturn and then almost recovering in 2010. But the imports of manufactures also kept on rising -- by about 46 percent between 2000 and 2008.8 The United States has imported more than it has exported for so long that few remember the switch from net exporter to net importer. From 1896 to the early 1970s, the United States had a trade surplus. In 1976, America's trade deficit was just $6 billion, but by 1990, the trade deficit was more than 13 times larger at $80 billion (all in nominal terms). By 2006 it was almost 10 times bigger still: $759 billion. While the economic downturn reduced the annual total to $375 billion in 2009, it rose again in

2010 to nearly $500 billion. Indeed, America's trade deficit is larger than the individual GDPs of all but 19 countries in the world. The United States is failing even where it was once dominant. In 1950, American companies made about 95 percent of cars sold in the United States; 60 years later, the country that invented mass automobile production bought most of its light vehicles from foreigners. The crossover occurred in the summer of 2007 when the Detroit Three began to sell less than half of all passenger cars and light trucks bought in the United States. Three years later, the Detroit share had declined further. In 2010, roughly 45 percent of all light vehicles sold were from American makers while 55 percent came from foreign makers (with Japanese companies accounting for nearly 85 percent of the latter share).9 While Ford did eventually manage to improve its performance, General Motors, previously the world's largest auto manufacturer, lost its primacy and had to be salvaged by

public funds. But the US automobile sector isn't the only one losing ground. While the conventional wisdom is that the United States has a strong comparative advantage in advanced technology, the reality is that in this sector, the US trade deficit grew nearly 50 percent from 2009 to 2010, when it

was $81 billion, and by nearly 65 percent in the first three months of 2011 (compared to the first three months of 2010). The consequences, in terms of jobs, are plain to see. Today, unemployment in the United States is at almost 9

percent compared to around 7 percent in Germany and 5 percent in Japan. The loss of manufacturing jobs explains a hefty part of the difference. By the end of 2010 only 8.2 percent of American workers were employed in manufacturing, while about 19 percent of German workers and 18 percent of Japanese workers are employed in manufacturing.

US Falling Behind- Fed Renewables key

Global clean tech investment high now, but US is in danger of losing its clean tech leadership – PTC key to signal US interest in renewable energy.

Greene 6/14/12, Nathaniel (Director of renewable energy policy at The Energy Collective, Masters in Energy Policy from Berkeley). “Congress’ 2 trillion dollar clean energy challenge.” The energy collective. http://theenergycollective.com/nathanaelgreene/87197/congress-2-trillion-dollar-clean-energy-challenge

But as excited as I am about the incredible advances renewable energy has made, I am equally

concerned that the US will miss out on the paradigm shift in the world energy market. That

concern was highlighted recently by the release of three important reports , one from Third Way , one from the Pew Charitable Trusts , and one published jointly by the Breakthrough Institute, the Brookings Institute and the World Resources Institute . All three highlight that we’ve made incredible progress

in the last several years towards a clean, renewable energy future. But all three also point to the same conclusion: We can let slip this incredible economic opportunity if we allow key federal incentives for clean, renewable energy to expire. The Third Way report likened our current moment to one faced by photography giant Kodak which failed

capitalize on its early—in fact, industry-leading—digital photography technology. Congress, too, seems to be having a Kodak moment, failing to grasp the energy paradigm shift now underway. Perhaps that’s why,

they’ve let several key renewable energy incentives lapse, including the Section 1603 cash grant program for

solar, credited with producing 75,000 jobs. Others, like the Production Tax Credit for wind, and several advanced energy

manufacturing incentives will expire soon, reduce employment in wind by 37,000 jobs. All told, per the

Institute report, federal investment in clean, renewable energy will fall to just a quarter of its 2009 total by the end of 2014. If we fail to continue investing in renewable energy, we’ll lose our recent global leadership in clean energy investment to countries such as China, Germany and South Korea. They’re still pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into this exciting field, just as it’s starting to transform the way the world gets power. World renewable markets are growing exponentially of late. Less than ten years ago, solar power was a cottage industry. Now, it’s what a recent report by

McKinsey & Company calls “a $100 billion business with global reach.” Federally funded advances in both in technology and in the way that technology is deployed have helped drive this growth. Already, the price of wind power has dropped 90 percent in the last 30 years, thanks to innovations developed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and promoted through the soon-to-expire Production Tax Credit. Similarly, the price of solar electricity has plunged over the last eight years, as government incentives and standards have driven both demand and incredible economies of scale. In 2004, one manufacturer of US-made solar panels sold them for $2.94 a watt. Today, their price is 73 cents a watt—75 percent lower. That’s why

it’s troubling, and a bit perplexing, too, to see Congress oppose the extension of programs that have driven so many advances and produced so many jobs in this burgeoning field. Clean,

renewable energy creates jobs, cleans the air our kids breathe, and reduces our dependence on dirty coal and foreign oil. Let’s not miss out on the economic chance of a lifetime by pulling the rug out from under these programs. They spur clean, renewable energy’s success,

both in the US and in the $2 trillion world market.

US losing clean energy leadership now – federal policy key to regain it.

Fox 2010, Maggie L (President and CEO, Climate Reality Project). “America needs to lead.” Energy National Journal. http://energy.nationaljournal.com/2010/08/can-the-us-keep-up-in-clean-en.php

America has a history of leadership in the technological revolutions that change the world. We won the race to put a man on the

moon, and we led the world in creating the Internet. Yet in the clean energy race, our global competitors are winning. And that means we could lose the chance to create millions of American jobs in new clean energy industries. While the Senate has delayed action on climate and clean energy legislation, the rest of the world is moving on aggressively. China just announced it plans to set up a domestic carbon trading program. And it is backing up these efforts with serious investments in clean, renewable energy. Last year, China invested nearly twice as much as the U nited States in clean energy technologies, and has now installed nearly as much renewable energy capacity as the United States has. It's wrong that the open checkbooks of fossil fuel companies and their lobbyists obstructed

progress on legislation, while poll after poll shows a majority of Americans do want to act. The global race to invest in clean energy is on — and the climate crisis is not going away. And the U nited States is falling further and further behind. Our path forward is clear. We must take every opportunity to adopt policies that reduce harmful carbon pollution and encourage investment in clean energy .

We need to support a strong renewable electricity standard — such as a mandate for 25% renewable

electricity by 2025, which could create jobs for American manufacturers. We need to support goals to reduce America's oil use, backed up with stronger fuel economy standards and an improved transportation infrastructure. Federal policy is also needed on other programs. We must back efforts to improve energy efficiency, such as the Home Star, Building Star and Rural Star programs, to provide rebates to

consumers — which would create jobs and save money at the same time. We should extend tax credit provisions that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy. And we should prioritize research and development in renewable energy technologies. The American Energy Innovation Council, which includes members Bill Gates and John Doerr, is focused specifically on reasserting America’s energy technology leadership through robust, public investments in the development of world-changing energy technologies, and is an example of the kind of attention

and commitment needed to further long-term clean energy innovation. While all of these policies and efforts would be helpful, we cannot lose sight of our larger goal: A limit on carbon pollution that would encourage the private sector to transition to clean energy. And our leaders should oppose attempts to weaken the laws we already have that protect the air we

breathe and the water we drink. The clean energy revolution will shape the global economy in the 21st century. And we should seize the opportunity to lead it.

Wind k 2 Manufacture/econ

Offshore wind is key to creating jobs in the United States and abroad in port economyHopkins 12Robert B. Hopkins, Duane Morris LLP. "Offshore Wind Farms in US Waters Would Generate Both US and Foreign Maritime Jobs." Renewable Energy World. N.p., 12 July 2012. Web. 22 Aug. 2012. <http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2012/07/offshore-wind-farms-in-u-s-waters-would-generate-both-u-s-and-foreign-maritime-jobs?cmpid=rss>.With no offshore wind energy farms yet built off U.S. coastlines, various states over the last few years have proposed offshore wind energy legislation as a future investment in renewable energy as well as a vehicle for American job creation. The immediate future of U.S. offshore wind farms may depend on whether Congress renews certain tax credit and federal loan guarantee programs. In the event that offshore wind farms move forward, it is likely that both U.S. maritime and foreign maritime workers will be involved in construction and maintenance. A recent study by The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated the potential generating capacity from offshore wind farms located off U.S. coastlines to be 4 times the present total U.S. electrical generating capacity. The construction and maintenance of offshore wind farms to tap into even a small percentage of this potential will demand a robust and competent maritime workforce. The U.S. understandably wants to avoid the situation that occurred in England with the installation of the Thanet Wind Farm, currently the largest operating offshore wind farm in the world (300 megawatts). The Thanet project received criticism for its lack of significant British job creation. U.S. wind farm developers, green energy advocates and some U.S. politicians have stressed that offshore wind farms will create jobs for both U.S. maritime and U.S. shore-based workers. In addition, some have pointed to a federal statute known as the Jones Act, to assert that foreign-flagged vessels crewed by foreign maritime workers may not even be involved in U.S. offshore wind farm projects. However, such a broad statement is not entirely accurate, and the issue is somewhat complex. The Jones Act, which was enacted in 1920, establishes a system for protecting American maritime jobs and requires that U.S.-flagged vessels be used to transport merchandise between points in U.S. territorial waters (i.e., up to 3 nautical miles off the coastline). Moreover, this requirement is extended 200 miles offshore to the Outer Continental Shelf (OCS) by the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act (OCSLA) in certain scenarios involving man-made objects that are affixed to the seabed. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), the federal agency that enforces the Jones Act, has issued a number of rulings that conclude that the Jones Act in certain situations does not apply to the actual installation of wind turbines by large-scale vessels known as jack-up lift vessels. Moreover, there has been some debate on whether the Jones Act would apply to vessels travelling to an established wind farm located over 3 miles off the coastline in the OCS for such things as maintenance and repair. A bill clarifying that the Jones Act would apply in this maintenance/repair scenario (HR 2360) has recently passed the U.S. House of Representatives and is now awaiting a vote in the U.S. Senate. Thus, at present, from a purely legal standpoint, foreign-flagged vessels would likely be able to participate in the installation of the proposed wind farms, but there is some uncertainty as to whether foreign-flagged vessels would be able to participate in maintenance/repair work. Complicating all of this is the dearth of U.S.-flagged jack-up lift vessels capable of undertaking much of the very heavy work involved in the installation of offshore wind turbines. To further confound matters, with a boom in offshore wind farm

construction in Europe and China, many foreign-flagged jack-up lift vessels capable of such work are now booked for the next several years. Factoring in all of the above, it is likely that large foreign-flagged vessels will play a significant role in the initial installation of wind turbines off U.S. coastlines, with an opportunity for smaller U.S.-flagged vessels to render assistance. However, with the lack of available large scale foreign-flagged vessels, there are obvious long term investment opportunities for the construction of large U.S.-flagged vessels or for the conversion of other large U.S.-flagged vessels to undertake much of the above heavy work. One possible option is to convert U.S.-flagged vessels now working in the oil and gas fields in the Gulf of Mexico for this purpose. Such investment opportunities will obviously become more attractive if a large number of wind farms move forward in the U.S.. As to certain maintenance/repair, which could be done by smaller U.S.-flagged vessels already in existence, if Congress passes HR 2360, U.S.-flagged vessels will be required to maintain and repair the wind turbines. Moreover from a practical standpoint, even if HR 2360 does not become law, it may not make economic sense to employ smaller foreign-flagged vessels for certain maintenance/repair work. Thus if U.S. offshore wind farms become a reality, U.S. maritime workers as well as foreign maritime workers will likely be involved in construction and maintenance

The plan creates a strong domestic wind industry that revitalizes U.S. manufacturing. This creates over $200 billion in revenue and tons of jobs

Walter Musial, Principal Engineer, National Wind Technology Center at NREL and Bonnie Ram,

Ram Power, L.L.C., September 2010, “Large-Scale Offshore Wind Power in the United States, Assessment of Opportunities and Barriers, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NERL), http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/40745.pdf, Accessed 5/10/2014

Developing a domestic wind industry offers a viable way to revitalize our domestic manufacturing sector and create high-paying, stable jobs while increasing the nation’s competitiveness in twenty-first century energy technologies. In the 20% scenario, 54 GW of offshore wind would create more than $200 billion in new economic activity with a high percentage of that revenue remaining in the local economies. This offshore wind power development would create many benefits beyond the $200 billion in revenues because the power generated would have no fuel price variability, no emissions, and no significant use of water resources. Finally, offshore wind development would reduce dependence on foreign energy resources.

Increasing offshore wind revitalizes the manufacturing sector and overall U.S. economy while reducing emissions

Walter Musial, Principal Engineer, National Wind Technology Center at NREL and Bonnie Ram,

Ram Power, L.L.C., September 2010, “Large-Scale Offshore Wind Power in the United States, Assessment of Opportunities and Barriers, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NERL), http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/40745.pdf, Accessed 5/10/2014

Offshore wind has the potential to address all three issues: the energy supply, the environment, and the economy. Offshore wind uses the vast renewable wind resources adjacent to the ocean perimeter of the United States, which are domestic, indigenous,

inexhaustible energy supplies in close proximity to our urban energy load centers. Offshore wind turbines can convert the strong ocean winds into clean, renewable power with no harmful emissions. Offshore wind has the potential to contribute significantly to the revitalization of the U.S. manufacturing sector, which will help strengthen both the economies of coastal states and the U.S. economy as a whole.

Increasing offshore wind require revitalization of ports and manufacturing to reduce costs

Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind & Water

Power Program and Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,

Regulation, and Enforcement, February 2011, A National Offshore Wind Strategy: Creating an Offshore Wind Energy Industry in the United States, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/ national_offshore_wind_strategy.pdf, Accessed 4/13/2014

Offshore wind provides an opportunity for revitalization of U.S. ports and heavy industry facilities. Due to the large scale of offshore wind turbine components, towers and foundation structures, it is generally advantageous to limit or eliminate overland transport from assembly and installation scenarios in order to maximize process efficiency and minimize logistics time and costs. In addition, European experience has clearly indicated that it will be necessary to create a purpose ‐ built installation, operations, and maintenance (IO&M) infrastructure for offshore wind, including specialized vessels and port facilities. To assist industry and regional port facilities in making informed decisions regarding design requirements for IO&M infrastructure, DOE will participate in collaborative studies of infrastructure needs and capabilities for the benefit of all national regions.

Current offshore wind energy program is behind the curve – expanded funding, updated grid infrastructure, and streamlined process for permitting and location to manage the difference – reinvigorates the manufacturing industry

Casey 12

Tina, Triple Pundit Online, April 24,US and UK to collaborate on Offshore Wind Power, http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/04/us-and-uk-partner-on-floating-wind-turbines/,

The U.S. has to play a bit of catch-up, but the Obama Administration had the foresight to get itself into a good position just ahead of the conference with the March 1 announcement of a six-year, $180 million round of funding for four innovative offshore wind energy installations that will demonstrate the potential for lowering the cost of wind power through utility-scale planning. The Department of Energy will also provide support for reducing associated expenses including grid connection, permitting and approval processes – though unfortunately it seems that at least one state legislature (okay, so Wisconsin) will not be of much assistance. Also coming into play is a five-year, $41 million round of funding for offshore wind projects announced by the Department of Energy last fall, aimed at getting new technologies out of the lab and into the water more quickly, partly by

helping to spur domestic manufacturing and other aspects of the wind industry supply chain. The two latest funding rounds join a $24 million wind energy research program funded by the Recovery Act near the beginning of the Obama Administration in 2009. That funding went to three consortia headed by the Illinois Institute of Technology, the University of Maine and the University of Minneapolis to develop both onshore and offshore technologies, while establishing a long term academic platform for the development of career innovators in advanced wind power tech.

Long-term extension of PTC key to US economic competitiveness – manufacturing and growth.

Caperton 1/10/12, Richard W (Director of Clean Energy Investment at the Center for American Progress.). “Fair, Effective, and Efficient Tax Policy Is Key for Driving Renewable Energy Growth.” Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/01/renewable_energy_investment.html

Since its creation the PTC has only been extended for two years at a time. When it’s not in effect,

there’s virtually zero investment. When it is in effect, investment is tremendous. There are also

more formal economic studies suggesting the positive outcome of the PTC: Economist Gilbert

Metcalf, for example, finds that “[T]he data suggest that much of the current investment in wind can be explained by the production tax credit for wind.” (For more information on how we know the PTC works,

see the CAP report, “America’s Hidden Power Bill.”) The PTC also has real benefits for American workers. At least 85,000 people work in the wind industry . These workers are spread all across our country and throughout the industry. We have people making turbines, installing them, and operating them, all in good-paying jobs.

Unfortunately, we don’t have as many people working in the wind industry as we could. While the wind-manufacturing sector has grown in recent years, it has historically been crippled by the PTC expiring every two years. Manufacturers know that this on-again, off-again cycle for the industry would leave them with virtually no business every other year, so American wind farms use some imported parts. Indeed, we have more demand for certain turbine parts than we have domestic manufacturing capacity. In particular, U.S. manufacturing capacity is insufficient for

gearboxes, generators, bearings, and castings. The lack of consistent policy is clearly contributing to U.S. underinvestment in domestic production of these strategic technologies. Our economic competitors have simultaneously developed robust manufacturing capacity to serve both their growing domestic demand and meet global demand through technology exports. (see

Figure 2) Over the past three years, however, the U nited States experienced tremendous growth in wind manufacturing, partly because of the relatively stable PTC, which was most recently extended for four years as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act , known as the stimulus. In that time new manufacturers set up shop across the country and the composition of domestic parts that

each turbine made has steadily increased while our wind energy imports declined. This should be a lesson to Congress: A long-term PTC is more valuable than a short-term extension when we look at the overall impact on jobs and growth.

Wind energy is key to US job growth, specifically in manufacturing.

NDRC 2012. “American wind farms: breaking down the benefits from planning to production.” September 2012. http://www.nrdc.org/energy/files/american-wind-farms-IP.pdf

This report shows that workers contributing to wind energy include everyone from engineers to construction employees; from blade manufacturers to gearbox makers; from electricians to operators. And they’re located all across the country. Our research finds that just one typical wind farm of 250MW creates 1,079 direct jobs over the lifetime of the project. 5 Already 25 projects of similar or greater size have been built in the United States and another 100 wind projects sized from 150-MW to 250-MW are in operation. Importantly, these jobs aren’t only created on the actual

wind farm site during the installation of the wind turbines. These jobs are also created throughout the sizable

wind farm economic “ecosystem”—the chain of activities and businesses that, over time, constitute the many steps of building a wind farm. To accurately measure how many direct jobs are created (excluding indirect and induced jobs), our analysis looks across the entirety of this wind farm value chain, from the measurement of wind resources at the early stages, to the project’s permitting and financing, to the manufacture of the components and materials that comprise the wind turbines, to the construction of this wind power project, and finally, its annual operations and maintenance. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s National Wind

Technology Center, there are 14 key value chain activities that contribute to the production of wind power (NREL also identifies education, training, and outreach organizations, which are not included in this analysis). 6 We analyze each of the 14 steps independently to determine the number of workers involved at each step in the building of a

simulated 250-MW wind farm. The research identifies 557 total non-construction workers for a 250-MW wind farm. This includes 80 in preplanning and development, 432 workers in manufacturing, 18 in sales and distribution, and 27 in operations and maintenance.

Construction jobs add 522 jobs to the overall project. These workers are spread among three categories,

with 273 working on on-site civil works, such as roads, and foundations; 202 working on mechanical assembly, such as the installation of the wind turbines; and 47 working on on site electrical work, such as grid connection. Our analysis also confirmed that a large number of manufacturing jobs are created throughout the supply chain for a wind farm , and a growing number of the jobs are being filled by American workers. 7 For example, the domestic content of wind turbines (the fraction of wind farm equipment sourced in America, as measured by cost) has essentially doubled in the last six years, from 35 percent in 2005-2006 to 67 percent in 2011.

8 A recent Accenture report highlighted that companies are more and more focused on manufacturing near demand centers. 9 In the wind industry, this dynamic is potentially even more apparent, given the size and complexity of wind turbines and therefore the advantageousness of local production for transport reasons. This report has specifically chosen to profile either American companies or foreign companies with a strong domestic presence, to highlight that all of the jobs created from U.S. wind farm development can be located in America.

Creation of wind farms coincides with creation of jobs, high number of employees needed to manufacture wind turbines

Goossens in 2012(Average U.S. Wind Farm Creates 1,079 Jobs, Report Finds,By Ehren Goossens, Sep 11, 2012 http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-11/average-wind-farm-creates-1-079-jobs-nrdc-report-finds.html)

Planning, building and operating a typical utility-scale wind farm creates 1,079 jobs over its lifetime, an industry that’s supported in part by a U.S. tax credit, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. A 250-megawatt project generates 522 construction jobs, 432 positions in

manufacturing, 80 for planning and development, 18 sales slots and 27 for operations, the New York-based environmental group said in a report today. If Congress fails to extend the production tax credit, a federal incentive that’s scheduled to expire Dec. 31, that job creation will be threatened, the group said. The wind industry currently employs about 75,000 U.S. workers. Extending the credit will “level the playing field” for wind, making it more competitive with the “heavily subsidized” fossil-fuels industry, Cai Steger, a policy advocate for the group and co-author of the report, said on a conference call today. “Every time a wind farm gets built, American jobs are created,” he said in an e-mailed statement. The research shows “what the PTC has done for the wind industry -- and why it’s essential that it is extended.” ‘Potential Layoffs’ New wind-farm development has slowed in the U.S. ahead of the expiration date, according to Scott Viciana, a vice president at Ventower Industries LLC. “There has been a definite pullback of development in the U.S.,” Viciana said on the call. “With the expiration, we will be faced with some potential layoffs. It keeps us up at night.” The Monroe, Michigan-based manufacturer of towers for wind turbines employs about 55 people. Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), the world’s biggest maker of wind turbines, expects shipments to decline next year and said Aug. 22 it’s cutting 1,400 jobs worldwide. That’s in addition to the 2,335 positions it eliminated in January. The company is considering firing 1,600 U.S. workers, a decision it says hinges largely on whether the PTC is extended. President Barack Obama supports extending the incentive, which gives producers a tax credit of 2.2 cents a kilowatt-hour. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, opposes it.

Wind Technology majorly expands US manufacturing sector according to recent reports

DoE in 2013(Energy Dept. Reports: U.S. Wind Energy Production and Manufacturing Reaches Record Highs, August 6, 2013 http://energy.gov/articles/energy-dept-reports-us-wind-energy-production-and-manufacturing-reaches-record-highs)

Energy Dept. Reports: U.S. Wind Energy Production and Manufacturing Reaches Record Highs August 6, 2013 - 8:00am WASHINGTON – The Energy Department released two new reports today showcasing record growth across the U.S. wind market -- increasing America’s

share of clean, renewable energy and supporting tens of thousands of jobs nationwide. According to these reports, the United States continues to be one of the world’s largest and fastest growing wind markets. In 2012, wind energy became the number one source of new U.S. electricity generation capacity for the first time – representing 43 percent of all new electric additions and accounting for $25 billion in U.S. investment. In the first four years of the Obama Administration, American electricity generation from wind and solar power more than doubled. President Obama’s Climate

Action Plan makes clear that the growth of clean, renewable wind energy remains a critical part of an all-of-the-above energy strategy that reduces harmful greenhouse gas emissions, diversifies our energy economy and brings innovative technologies on line. The Obama Administration has committed to another doubling of the renewable electricity generation from energy resources like wind power by 2020. “The tremendous growth in the U.S. wind industry over the past few years underscores the importance of consistent policy that ensures America remains a leader in clean energy innovation,” said Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. “As the fastest growing source of power in the United States, wind is paving the way to a cleaner, more sustainable future that protects our air and water and provides affordable, clean renewable energy to more and

more Americans.” The tremendous growth in the overall U.S. wind industry has led directly to more American jobs throughout a number of sectors and at factories and power plants across the country. According to industry estimates, the wind sector employs over 80,000 American workers, including workers at manufacturing facilities up and down the supply chain, as well as engineers and construction workers who build wind installations. Wind Technologies Market Report The Energy Department and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory today released the 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report – detailing the latest trends in the U.S. wind power market. Last year, over 13 gigawatts (GW) of new wind power capacity were added to the U.S. grid – nearly double the wind capacity deployed in 2011. This tremendous growth helped America’s total wind power capacity surpass 60 GW at the end of 2012 – representing enough capacity to power more than 15 million homes each year, or as many homes as in California and Washington state combined. The country’s cumulative installed wind energy capacity has increased more than 22-fold since 2000. At the same time, the proportion of wind turbine components such as towers, blades, and gears made in America has increased dramatically. The report estimates seventy-two percent of the wind turbine equipment installed in the U.S. last year was made by domestic manufacturers, nearly tripling from 25 percent in 2006-2007. The report also finds that nine states now rely on wind power for more than 12 percent of their total annual electricity consumption – with wind power in Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas contributing more than 20 percent. Additionally, Texas added over 1,800 megawatts of wind power last year, more than any other state. On a cumulative basis, Texas remains a clear leader with over 12 GW installed at the end of 2012 -- more than twice as much as California, the

next-highest state. Also according to the Energy Department’s 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report, technical and design innovation allowing for larger wind turbines with longer, lighter blades has steadily improved wind turbine performance and has expanded wind energy production to less windy areas. Since 1998, the average capacity of wind turbines in the U.S. has increased by 170 percent. At the same time, wind project capital and maintenance costs continue to decline, lowering the cost of wind energy to near-record lows. The price of wind under long-term power purchase contracts signed in 2011 and 2012 averaged 4 cents per kilowatt hour – making wind competitive with a range of wholesale electricity prices seen in 2012. Distributed Wind Market Report For the first time, the Energy Department and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory today issued the 2012 Market Report on Wind Technologies in Distributed

Applications – highlighting strong growth in the U.S. distributed wind energy market. Compared to traditional, centralized power plants, distributed wind energy installations directly supply power to the local grid near homes, farms, businesses and communities– helping to improve grid reliability and efficiency. Turbines used in these applications can range in size from a few hundred watts to multi-megawatts,

and can help power remote, off-grid homes and farms as well as local schools and manufacturing facilities. Over the past ten years, the U.S. distributed wind market has grown more than five-fold. The report finds that distributed wind in the U.S. reached a 10-year cumulative installed capacity of more than 812 megawatts (MW) at the end of 2012 – representing more than 69,000 units across all 50 states. Between 2011 and 2012, U.S. distributed wind capacity grew by 175 MW, with about 80 percent of this growth coming from utility-scale installations. At the state level, Iowa, Massachusetts, California and Wisconsin led the nation in new distributed wind power capacity in 2012. Still, most distributed wind buyers continue to choose small wind turbines, which have a rated capacity of no greater than 100 kilowatts. Last year, domestic sales from U.S. wind suppliers accounted for nearly 90 percent of new small wind generation capacity. Broadly, nine out of the top ten wind turbine models installed last year in U.S. distributed applications were made in America. The wind sector’s growth underscores the importance of continued policy support and clean energy tax credits to ensure that wind manufacturing and jobs remain in America. The 2012 Wind Technologies Market Report expects 2013 to

be a slow year for new capacity additions, due in part to continued policy uncertainty and project development timelines. While the report notes that 2014 is expected to be more robust, as developers commission projects that will begin construction in 2013, it also notes that projections for 2015 and beyond are much less certain.

Renewables k 2 Comp

Clean energy is key to US economic competitiveness – trade deficit and innovation.

Swezey 2/17/10, Devon (Project Director at Breakthrough Institute and co-author of "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a major report on international clean tech competitiveness). “It’s not all good: why you should worry about the clean energy race.” The breakthrough institute. http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/02/its_not_all_good_why_you_shoul.shtml

Nations that gain "first-mover advantages" are sure to see high rates of return on their investment. If the U nited States

remains sidelined while other nations quickly develop domestic clean tech industries, there will be real consequences for long-term economic competitiveness, as well as forgone jobs, tax revenues, and clean tech export opportunities. Clean Tech Innovation: The Rise of the Rest The second pillar of the "it's all good" argument is that the United States' capacity for innovation will keep it competitive. In Plumer's words, "China will likely continue to dominate in low-cost manufacturing, while the United States focuses more on the

innovation side." This passive resignation to China's clean tech dominance is one reason the United States is behind in clean energy today. According to a recent study by the office of U.S. Senator Ron

Wyden, the U.S. renewable energy trade deficit has increased 1400% in just the last five years. While the U nited States invented the majority of the clean energy technologies in wide use today,

they have largely been commercialized and produced elsewhere. Now, we are buying them back in spades. The idea that there can be a clear innovation/manufacturing dichotomy between the United States and its economic rivals is complicated by another alarming trend: the United States is steadily losing its innovative edge relative to other nations. As Fareed Zakaria describes in a recent Newsweek cover story, America emerged as a world leader in innovation after decades of massive

government investment in basic science and research at our universities beginning in World War II. But since the early 1980s, federal investment in innovation, particularly in energy technology, has remained stagnant. Today, the innovation gap that for decades was a measure of U.S. economic strength is closing as other nations move quickly to develop their innovative capacity. Recently, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) ranked the United States 6th out of 40 countries in innovation capacity and internal competitiveness and dead last in the rate of improvement

over the last decade. America's lead in energy innovation is slipping. The U.S. is only slightly ahead of Japan in clean energy patents and government investment in energy R& D . As a percentage of GDP, nations like Japan and South Korea actually outspend the United States on energy innovation two-to-one. If the greatest future demand for clean energy technologies and the locus of clean energy manufacturing both develop in Asia, it is not clear that the lion's share of energy innovation will remain in the United States. In fact, some companies are already moving their research operations to China. Applied Materials, a U.S. company and the world's largest solar equipment manufacturer, recently built the world's most advanced solar R&D facility in Xian, China. Among the reasons cited by Applied Materials for the relocation to China was that China, not the U.S., "will be the biggest solar market in the world." Applied is not alone. Danish wind giant Vestas just built the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturing facility in China, which will build turbines with the company's state-of-the art

technology. America's underinvestment in energy innovation, and the simultaneous gains made by other nations should be a major wake-up call to U.S. policymakers. At the very least, it should dispel the notion that America's historic reign as a global innovation leader is a substitute for an effective economic competitiveness strategy. The Primacy of Policy The last leg of the "it's all good" stool is the idea that China's dominance in clean energy manufacturing is inevitable, thanks to lower labor costs. "China," writes Christina Larson, "is becoming the wind-turbine factory to the world for much the same reasons it has long been the TV and t-shirt factory to the world: lower wages, lower land prices, fewer regulatory and other requirements." But the production of clean technologies is a high-tech value-added industry; building solar panels, wind turbines or high-speed trains is more akin to producing semiconductors, automobiles, and airplanes than t-shirts and televisions. Manufacturing clean tech goods requires a skilled labor force with technical expertise--the kind of labor force that is supposedly America's comparative advantage. It seems foolish to compare China's dominance in low-cost, low-skill textile manufacturing to high-tech products or complex engineering projects like the construction and localization of new nuclear power plants, which China is pursuing aggressively with assistance from foreign partners. Historic leaders in clean tech manufacturing have all been technologically advanced, high-wage nations like Germany, Denmark, Japan, and the United States. And in spite of China's recent advances, these nations still have large and growing clean energy manufacturing industries. Cheap labor in China certainly contributes to China's cost advantages in clean energy, as do the lower costs of land, and access to low-cost financing. But perhaps the most important element of China's comparative advantage

in clean energy is smart policy. Until clean energy technologies are as cheap as fossil fuels the clean tech industry will continue to be driven by public policy, and the Chinese government has enacted consistent, generous long-term policies that have turned the nation into the world's clean tech leader. Both the central government and provincial governments have made a long-term commitment to invest in clean energy technologies at each stage of the technology value chain. R&D expenditures have grown 20% per year each year for the past two decades, and energy is a priority R&D sector. Generous manufacturing incentives are luring foreign companies to locate in China. Laws requiring the purchase of renewable energy and technology specific deployment policies such as variable feed-in-tariffs for wind power have succeeded in building world leading clean tech markets. And investments in new infrastructure and science, math and engineering education will help lay the long-term foundation for a clean energy economy. China's robust, targeted, and consistent public investment in technology, education and infrastructure, not cheap labor, is the primary reason for its successes in clean energy. Instead of bemoaning the higher labor costs here in the United States, clean energy advocates and policymakers should be searching for ways to strengthen our public policies and increase our investments in clean

energy technologies. There is no reason why the U nited States should not compete vigorously for the high-tech, high-wage clean energy jobs that will result from the tremendous growth of the global clean energy industry. There are few growth opportunities large enough to serve as a new foundation of economic prosperity in the U nited States--clean energy is one such opportunity. But in order to effectively compete with other nations the U.S. must have a national strategy that invests in the critical areas for clean technology competitiveness--research and innovation, manufacturing, domestic markets, infrastructure, and education. Given the United States' current comparative advantages in clean

energy innovation, the U nited States could also gear its manufacturing sector toward demonstrating and commercializing the next generation of clean energy technologies. Leaping ahead of the competition could help American firms capitalize on new clean technologies that can be manufactured here and exported abroad.

The promise of clean energy economy is real. But without a real clean energy strategy to make the U nited States competitive, so is the possibility that the large majority of new jobs and industries will be created outside of the U nited States. No amount of conference organizing jobs will

replace the lost opportunity to build a vibrant U.S. clean tech manufacturing sector. The race is on--it's past time that the United States got in the game.

Clean tech development is key to global economic competitiveness – innovation and jobs.

(Pernick and Wilder 12)

Ron and Clint; cofounder and managing director of Clean Edge and senior editor at Clean Edge; Clean Tech Nation; HarperCollins Publishers, September 2012. Googlebooks.

Every day, new examples highlight the growing mainstreaming of clean tech. But clean tech’s business growth and increasing ubiquity

are only part of the story. As we will outline in this book, clean tech has become the most critical industry of the 21st century—an essential component to global economic success for all developed countries, and increasingly for developing nations as well. To some, that may seem like a bold statement. And let’s be honest: In terms of current annual revenue, even the giants of clean tech pale in comparison with oil behemoths like ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips. But

consider that in the first half of this century, the move to cleaner, more efficient, less carbon-intensive energy will hugely impact, if not completely transform, many of the largest industries on earth, including electric power utilities, suppliers of transportation fuel, residential and commercial construction companies, and automotive

and aerospace manufacturers. This transformation is well under way from Shanghai to Stuttgart, from San Francisco to Seoul. “The low-carbon economy will absolutely survive the recession.” John Fernandez, the U.S. assistant secretary of commerce for economic

development, told a nationwide convention of economic development officials in June 2011. “China, Germany, Brazil, and other countries are making new bets on technology that will be critical to manufacturing amid moving all industries forward. There is only one path forward for the U.S.—to invest in clean technologies and energy efficiency to drive global economies.’ Fernandez has plenty of company.

An increasingly loud chorus of influential voices—among them German chancellor Angela Merkel, GE chairman and CEO Jeffrey

lmmelt, and renowned Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter—have begun pointing to clean tech as the key driver of technology innovation, high-skills job creation, and global economic competitiveness in the years and decades ahead.

PTC extension key to avoid clean tech crash – tanks US economy and clean tech leadership.

Swezey 7/8/11, Devon (project director at Breakthrough Institute). “The coming clean tech crash.” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/devon-swezey/the-coming-clean-tech-cra_b_892582.html

The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity,

the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable. Clean tech crashes are nothing new. The U.S. wind energy industry has collapsed three times before, first in the mid 1990s and most recently in 2002 and 2004, when Congress failed to extend the tax credit that made it profitable . But the impact and magnitude of the coming clean tech crash will far outstrip those of past years. As part of its effort to combat the economic recession, the federal government pumped nearly $80 billion in direct investment and tax credits into the clean energy sector, catalyzing an unprecedented industry expansion. Solar energy, for example, grew 67 percent in the United States in 2010. The U.S. wind energy industry also experienced unprecedented growth as a result of the generous Section 1603 clean energy stimulus program. The

industry grew by 40 percent and added 10 GW of new turbines in 2009. Yet many of the federal subsidies that have driven such rapid growth are set to expire in the next few years, and clean energy remains unable to compete without them. The crash won't be limited to the U nited States. In many European countries, clean energy subsidies have become budget casualties as governments attempt to curb mounting deficits. Spain, Germany, France, Italy and the Czech Republic have all announced cuts to clean energy subsidies. Such cuts are not universal, however. China, flush with cash, is bucking the trend, committing $760 billion over 10 years for clean energy projects. China is continuing to invest in low-carbon energy as a way of meeting its voracious energy demand, diversifying its electricity supply and alleviating some of the negative health consequences of

its reliance on fossil energy. If U.S. and European clean energy markets collapse while investment continues to ramp up in China, the short-term consequences will likely be a migration of much of the industry to Asia. As we wrote in our 2009 report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," this would have significant economic consequences for the United States, as the jobs, revenues and other benefits of clean tech growth accrue overseas.

Wind power results in local jobs- recent study proves

The Daily Yonder ’12 (8/30/12, The Daily Yonder, The Economic Impact of Wind Energy, http://www.dailyyonder.com/economic-impact-wind-energy/2012/08/29/4381)

There are 47,000 megawatts of wind energy capacity installed in the U.S. The authors of a new study say that for each megawatt of wind capacity, a county gains half a job and just over $11,000 in total personal income. This is the wind energy farm in Roscoe, Texas, where 627 wind turbines can churn out as much as 781.5 megawatts of power. A new study finds that for every megawatt of wind capacity installed in a county, half a job is

created. There has been a surge in wind power development in recent years, and wind energy has been promoted both as a clean supply of energy and as a way to build local economies , especially in rural areas. Wind energy has recently become part of the presidential election, as incentives for wind development have been promoted by President Obama and dismissed by Republican nominee Mitt Romney. What impact does wind energy have on local jobs and income? Until now, there has been no systematic analysis of how wind energy development affects rural counties. A new paper

by five researchers* attempts to measure what the wind industry means for rural counties. According to the study, published in the current issue of Energy Economics, the researchers find that wind energy development does increase both total personal income and employment in the county where the development takes place. The economists looked at wind capacity installed from 2000 to 2008 in 12 states: Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, Colorado, Montana, and Wyoming. In all, the study area included 1,009 counties. The researchers found that for every megawatt of wind power capacity installed, total county personal income increased by $11,150 over the 2000 to 2008 period. And, for every megawatt of wind energy installed in a county, one half of a job was created. Jason Brown, et al. The most powerful wind turbine is rated at 7 megawatts. One of the world’s largest wind turbine farms is in Roscoe, Texas, where there are 627 wind turbines and a total installed capacity of 781.5 megawatts. The researchers attempted to weed out all the other factors that determine job growth and income in a county’s economy — such as the distance from the county to a city and the presence of natural

amenities (lakes, mountains or rivers). When those economic drivers were taken into account, the effect of wind energy alone was small in some counties, but relatively large in counties with the most wind development. In the group of counties that experienced the most impact from wind energy development, county-level personal income rose a little less than one percent between 2000 and 2008. “In absolute terms, the average estimated increase in annual personal income from wind power development for the top quartile of counties (in terms of percentage impact, i.e., 0.86% and above) was estimated to be $2,552,679 over the sample period,” the researchers found. In the counties most impacted by wind development (those in the top quarter), employment rose an average of 1.4 percent, or 132 jobs. Brown, et al. This is the amount of wind capacity, in megawatts, installed in the study area. By the end of 2011, roughly 47,000 megawatts of wind turbines had been installed in the U.S., accounting for about 2.5 percent of the nation’s electricity supply. From 2007 to 2010, wind contributed 36 percent of all new electric generation built in the U.S. “Whether the local economic development impacts of wind power are sizable enough to be policy relevant on a local, state, or national level is open to debate,” the researchers conclude.* The five authors of the report, "Ex post analysis of economic inpacts from wind power development in U.S. counties," are Jason P. Brown and John Pender of the USDA’s Economic Research Service; Ryan Wiser and Ben Hoen of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; and Eric Lantz of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. The article appears in Energy Economics 34 (2012), pages 1743-1754.

Wind Energy large part of US Economy- Raised GDP

Trabish ’13 (Herman Trabish, April 13, 2013, The Energy Collective, Wind Energy Industry’s $25 Billion Impact on US Economy, http://theenergycollective.com/hermantrabish/209746/25-billion-impact-wind-industry)

In a record-setting year, the U.S. wind industry’s 28 percent growth boosted its job count back to 80,000 and had a discernible impact on the U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) by putting $25 billion in private investment to work, according to the industry’s newly released Annual Market Report. When the U.S. Department of Commerce revised its estimate of Q4 2012 GDP growth up from 0.1 percent to 0.4 percent, it noted as significant the increase in its estimate for nonresidential structures growth to 16.7 percent, up from 5.8 percent, according to IHS Global Insight (NYSE:IHS) economists and verified by the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

Electricity power sector spending alone, according to BEA statistics, accounted for almost 37 percent of Q4’s increase in nonresidential structure spending. And that sector’s numbers included the 8,385 megawatts of wind added in Q4, which was almost 64 percent of the year’s total of 13,131 megawatts of new installed capacity and which

IHS economists called “massive.” It was, therefore, reasonable for IHS economists to identify the wind industry’s fourth quarter as a major boost to U.S. GDP. The U.S. wind industry’s 45,125 operational utility-scale turbines represent an installed nameplate capacity of 60,007 megawatts, according to the new American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) industry report. That is about equivalent to 60 nuclear power plants. The over 13 gigawatts of new capacity made wind the year’s leading builder of new U.S. generation capacity with a 42 percent share. It took leadership away from natural gas and become the only renewable to ever rank first. The Q4 burst of new development, driven by uncertainty about the fate of the industry’s vital $0.022 per kilowatt-hour production tax credit (PTC), pushed the U.S. past even China and back into first place internationally for new wind construction. A PTC extension was finally approved by Congress on January 1. It included new language that will allow the benefit to apply into 2014. There are 74 U.S. utilities now purchasing wind-generated electricity through PPAs or direct ownership, AWEA Senior Policy Analyst Emily Williams noted in a briefing. More significantly, 43 percent of all electricity providers now have wind-generated electricity in their systems through various agreements. The top twenty investor-owned utilities account for roughly 26,500 megawatts, 44 percent, of wind’s installed capacity, Williams added. GE (NYSE:GE) was once again the U.S. market turbine manufacturing leader, with a 38.2 percent share. Siemens (NYSE:SI) captured a 20.1 percent share to move from its third place standing last year to second, and Vestas, at 13.8 percent, dropped a notch to third. Gamesa jumped up from ninth to fourth place and Acciona made the top ten this year at ninth place. Suzlon fell to tenth but REpower, its subsidiary, moved up from eighth to fifth. Active U.S. manufacturers grew to 28, a 57 percent

increase over 2010. The sector was so busy, Williams noted, that developers were getting turbines wherever they could. The average size of the 6,751 turbines built during 2012 was 1.95 megawatts, down slightly from 2011’s 1.97-megawatt average size. The dip was indicative of a shift in industry preference toward turbines that take advantage of technology breakthroughs in electronics, mechanics

and materials to incorporate taller towers and/or bigger rotors and longer blades, Williams noted. Such turbines can achieve higher capacity factors and harvest winds that are slower and/or higher up, in places where wind projects have not been built before. GE’s 1.6-megawatt machine, considered among the best in the world for low-wind regions, led the 1.5- to 1.6-megawatt platform that constituted almost 40 percent of turbines installed. The new turbine technologies and advances in siting evaluation “have enabled most wind project owners to achieve capacity factors in the range of 30 percent to 40 percent,” the report added. There were 559 U.S. wind-related manufacturing facilities in 44 states producing 67 percent of the 8,000 component content of turbines installed in the U.S. last year. There were thirteen utility-scale blade facilities, twelve tower facilities, and twelve turbine nacelle assembly facilities. Combined, they have a 13-gigawatt capacity

Wind Energy K2 Econ- supports jobs and growing percentage of economy

Natural Resources Defense Council ND (From National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Wind Industry Annual

Market Report 2010 Annual Report AWEA, Wind Energy, http://www.nrdc.org/energy/renewables/wind.asp)

Wind power is an affordable, efficient and abundant source of domestic electricity. It's pollution-free and cost-competitive with energy from new coal- and gas-fired power plants in many regions. The wind industry

has been growing rapidly in recent years. In 2011 alone, 3,464 turbines went up across the United States, and today, American wind generates enough electricity to power more than 11 million homes, creates steady income for investors and landowners, and

provides manufacturing, construction and operation jobs for at least 75,000 Americans. A typical 250 MW wind farm (around 100 turbines) will create 1,073 jobs over the lifetime of the project. And by generating additional local and state tax revenues from lease payments, wind farms also have the potential to support other community priorities, such as education, infrastructure, and economic development.[1] In some months, wind energy provides more than 6 percent of our nation's electricity, and experts estimate that in the future, wind energy could realistically supply five times that amount -- 30 percent or more of our electricity needs.[2] Still, wind turbines and transmission systems need to be sited carefully to minimize their impacts on wildlife and the landscape.

China is beating us

Clean energy development is key to stay competitive with China- they are currently outpacing the US in economic gains from wind manufacturing

(Swezey 10) Devon (Project Director at Breakthrough Institute and co-author of "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a major report on international clean tech competitiveness). “It’s not all good: why you should worry about the clean energy race.” The breakthrough institute. http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/2010/02/its_not_all_good_why_you_shoul.shtml

In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama issued what is now a familiar refrain: "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." If there were still doubts about which

nation has the edge they were put to rest days later by a bluntly titled front-page article in the New York Times, "China is Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy." Though the story is not new, the article is the latest indication of the alacrity with

which China has emerged as a clean energy powerhouse in the span of just a few years. China now manufactures

more solar cells than any nation in the world, and recently surpassed the United States as the largest market for wind turbines in 2009. According to "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a recent study by the Breakthrough Institute, China is also a world leader in advanced transportation technologies and batteries, is increasingly localizing the production of nuclear power

plants, and has developed some of the world’s most advanced CCS technology. Despite the mounting evidence, many have dismissed the idea that the United States is competing in a "clean energy race" with China, or that it matters. Some critics assert that characterizing the intense competition as a "race" obscures the climate benefits of greater clean energy deployment throughout the world and the "win-win" nature of a global clean energy economy. The New Republic’s Brad Plumer embodies this "it’s all good" line of reasoning, writing: If China zooms ahead and figures out how to make really cheap wind turbines, that doesn’t hurt anyone–it just makes the enormous task of cutting global carbon emissions that much easier. Plumer’s casual attitude towards the economic consequences of ceding clean tech manufacturing leadership to China is a slap in the face to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). The pair has been working hard to secure the new clean energy manufacturing jobs that can help revitalize the industrial heartland. At Yale e360, environmental journalist Christina Larson similarly suggests that the United States has little to lose if China dominates emerging clean tech industries: The United States will still gain many new green-collar jobs in installation and maintenance, which can only be locally based, as well as sales teams, conference planners, and other positions already arising to support the growing green-tech field. Forget about the export-oriented, high-value added, high-wage clean energy manufacturing jobs of the future that Democrats have promised will jumpstart the ailing American economy; the clean energy conference organizing industry is now open for business. The New America Foundation’s Reihan Salam mocks the idea of a "clean technology race," arguing erroneously that the barriers to entry in clean energy are low and that any established competitive advantage will be "ephemeral." He compares China’s clean tech policies to Japan’s policies of the 1980s, as if the Japanese government did not succeed in supporting the development of what are still world leading high technology industries in automobiles, electronics, and high value steel manufacturing. While Japan was investing in high-tech industries the United States was simultaneously accelerating the financialization of its economy, creating trillions of dollars of paper wealth that has largely vanished over the last two years. Indeed, Salam admits that federal investment in technology has spawned entire new industries like aerospace and electronics, but takes pains to paint similar investments that can catalyze the development of new clean technologies as "disastrous." Apparently our surging clean tech competitors in Asia and the EU didn’t get the message. It’s Not All Good There seem to be three pillars of the "it’s all good" argument advanced in various forms by Plumer, Larson, and Salam. The first simply asserts, "Isn’t it great that we’ll have cheaper clean energy?" To be sure,

more low-carbon power is a good thing for the climate irrespective of who manufactures it. But the desire to reduce carbon emissions is not a justification for American complacency in the race to develop and deploy clean energy. In fact, real competition for clean tech industries could drive many of the innovations that the reduce the costs of clean technologies, and the United States full participation in the clean energy race will accelerate climate objectives. Ultimately, while climate mitigation is clearly a motivating

factor, the clean energy race is also about the development and location of new industries capable of driving economic growth in the 21st century. The clean tech market will be large enough to

accommodate multiple nations. But the burgeoning sector is hotly contested, and the greatest economic returns will accrue to those nations that move with the greatest zeal and commitment to develop their domestic industries. Nations that gain "first-mover advantages" are sure to see high rates of return on their

investment. If the United States remains sidelined while other nations quickly develop domestic clean tech industries, there will be real consequences for long-term economic competitiveness, as well as forgone jobs, tax revenues, and clean tech export opportunities. Clean Tech Innovation: The Rise of the Rest The second pillar of the "it's all good" argument is that the United States' capacity for innovation will keep it competitive. In Plumer's words, "China will likely continue to dominate in low-cost manufacturing, while the United States focuses more on the

innovation side." This passive resignation to China's clean tech dominance is one reason the United States is behind in clean energy today. According to a recent study by the office of U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, the U.S.

renewable energy trade deficit has increased 1400% in just the last five years. While the United States invented the majority of the clean energy technologies in wide use today, they have largely been commercialized and produced elsewhere. Now, we are buying them back in spades. The idea that there can be a clear

innovation/manufacturing dichotomy between the United States and its economic rivals is complicated by another alarming trend: the United States is steadily losing its innovative edge relative to other nations. As Fareed Zakaria describes in a recent Newsweek cover story, America emerged as a world leader in innovation after decades of massive government investment in basic science and research at our universities beginning in World War II. But since the early 1980s, federal investment in

innovation, particularly in energy technology, has remained stagnant. Today, the innovation gap that for decades was a measure of U.S. economic strength is closing as other nations move quickly to develop their innovative capacity. Recently, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) ranked the United States 6th out of 40 countries in innovation capacity and internal competitiveness and dead last in the rate of improvement over the last decade.

America's lead in energy innovation is slipping. The U.S. is only slightly ahead of Japan in clean energy patents and government investment in energy R&D. As a percentage of GDP, nations like Japan and South Korea actually outspend the United States

on energy innovation two-to-one. If the greatest future demand for clean energy technologies and the locus of clean energy manufacturing both develop in Asia, it is not clear that the lion's share of energy innovation will remain in the United States. In fact, some companies are already moving their research operations to China. Applied Materials, a U.S. company and the world's largest solar equipment manufacturer, recently built the world's most advanced solar R&D facility in Xian, China. Among the reasons cited by Applied Materials for the relocation to China was that China, not the U.S., "will be the biggest solar market in the world." Applied is not alone. Danish wind giant Vestas just built the world's biggest wind turbine manufacturing facility in China, which will build turbines with the

company's state-of-the art technology. America's underinvestment in energy innovation, and the simultaneous gains made by other nations should be a major wake-up call to U.S. policymakers. At the very least, it should dispel the notion that America's historic reign as a global innovation leader is a substitute for an effective economic competitiveness strategy. The Primacy of Policy The last leg of the "it's all good" stool is the idea that China's dominance in clean energy manufacturing is inevitable, thanks to lower labor costs. "China," writes Christina Larson, "is becoming the wind-turbine factory to the world for much the same reasons it has long been the TV and t-shirt factory to the world: lower wages, lower land prices, fewer regulatory and other requirements." But the production of clean technologies is a high-tech value-added industry; building solar panels, wind turbines or high-speed trains is more akin to producing semiconductors, automobiles, and airplanes than t-shirts and televisions. Manufacturing clean tech goods requires a skilled labor force with technical expertise--the kind of labor force that is supposedly America's comparative advantage. It seems foolish to compare China's dominance in low-cost, low-skill textile manufacturing to high-tech products or complex engineering projects like the construction and localization of new nuclear power plants, which China is pursuing aggressively with assistance from foreign partners. Historic leaders in clean tech manufacturing have all been technologically advanced, high-wage nations like Germany, Denmark, Japan, and the United States. And in spite of China's recent advances, these nations still have large and growing clean energy manufacturing industries. Cheap labor in China certainly contributes to China's cost advantages in clean energy, as do the lower costs of land, and access

to low-cost financing. But perhaps the most important element of China's comparative advantage in clean energy is smart policy. Until clean energy technologies are as cheap as fossil fuels the clean tech industry will continue

to be driven by public policy, and the Chinese government has enacted consistent, generous long-term policies that have turned the nation into the world's clean tech leader. Both the central government and provincial governments have made a long-term commitment to invest in clean energy technologies at each stage of the technology value chain. R&D expenditures have grown 20% per year each year for the past two decades, and energy is a priority R&D sector. Generous manufacturing incentives are luring foreign companies to locate in China. Laws requiring the purchase of renewable energy and technology specific deployment policies such as variable feed-in-tariffs for wind power have succeeded in building world leading clean tech markets. And investments in new infrastructure and science, math and engineering education will help lay the long-term foundation for a clean energy economy. China's robust, targeted, and consistent public investment in technology, education and infrastructure, not cheap labor, is the primary reason for its successes in clean energy. Instead of bemoaning the higher labor costs here in the United States,

clean energy advocates and policymakers should be searching for ways to strengthen our public policies and increase our investments in clean energy technologies. There is no reason why the United States should not compete vigorously for the high-tech, high-wage clean energy jobs that will result from the tremendous growth of the global clean energy industry. There are few growth opportunities large enough to serve as a new foundation of economic prosperity in the United States--clean energy is one such opportunity. But in order to effectively compete with other nations the U.S. must have a national strategy that invests in the critical areas for clean technology competitiveness--research and innovation,

manufacturing, domestic markets, infrastructure, and education. Given the United States' current comparative advantages in clean energy innovation, the United States could also gear its manufacturing sector toward demonstrating and commercializing the next generation of clean energy technologies. Leaping ahead of the competition could help American firms capitalize on new clean technologies that can be

manufactured here and exported abroad. The promise of clean energy economy is real. But without a real clean energy strategy to make the United States competitive, so is the possibility that the large majority of new jobs and industries will be created outside of the United States. No amount of conference organizing jobs will replace the lost opportunity to build a vibrant U.S. clean tech manufacturing sector. The race is on--it's past time that the United States got in the game.

Global commitment to renewable energy is high, but China is leading in clean energy manufacturing – policy certainty is key to competitiveness of domestic wind industry.

(Moore 13)

Molly; AmeriCorps Communications Outreach / Managing Editor, The Appalachian Voice; A clean(er) world; The Appalachian Voice - Issue 6 (Dec/Jan 2013); 2012. http://appvoices.org/2012/12/05/a-cleaner-world/

That America and Appalachia’s energy consumption and output are tied to international forces should come as no surprise. Immigrants from the British Isles and Eastern Europe who came to Central Appalachia to work in the coal mines knew that in the 19th and 20th

centuries. Today, as nations develop, technology advances and policies shift, the international energy landscape is changing, as is America’s place in it. Like sea level and human population, the world’s appetite for energy is rising. Without significant changes in policy, such as a worldwide push towards energy savings, global electricity demand will increase over 70 percent from current levels by 2035, the International Energy Agency projects. Renewable sources of power are expected to account for half of new worldwide energy capacity. Coal’s share of overall electrical generation is projected to decline from two-fifths to about one-third, putting it on par with the amount of power expected to come from renewables. The percentage of U.S. electricity coming from coal is already close to that one-third prediction, a record low, but the country will need to make significant gains in renewable energy in order to fall in line with the projected global average by 2035. In 2011, America derived about 9 percent of its energy from renewables, while Germany used renewable sources to produce 20 percent of its energy. Looked at another way, however, America doesn’t seem so

far behind. At the end of 2011, the United States was second after China in total renewable energy capacity, according to a report by public research and advocacy organization The Pew Charitable Trusts. Follow the Clean Money “I don’t think [the United States] gets enough credit for leading in many, many ways in renewable energy,” says Richard

Caperton, director of clean energy investment for think tank Center for American Progress. He notes that the field of renewable energy is diverse and encompasses manufacturing, project development, deployment and financing. Compared to other nations, the U.S. is strong on some of those fronts and falls behind in others. Caperton says America is great at “getting concrete and steel in the ground” by planning and installing wind turbines and solar farms. Compared to China, America also does well at integrating alternative energy sources with utilities. Though it’s difficult to track information on China’s power system, he says, the country continues to build wind farms and solar arrays that aren’t connected to the grid. “Our banks and venture capital investors and private equity investors are, I think, world leaders in their knowledge of the field and in their willingness to finance renewable energy projects both domestically and abroad,” he says. The U.S. invested $48.1 billion in clean energy in 2011, more than any other nation. The Pew Charitable Trusts attribute that dramatic increase in clean energy investment to the fact that entrepreneurs and financiers were making the most of government policies that expired at the end of that year. Following that boom, growth in clean energy investment slowed in both America and around the world. In the third quarter of 2012, those investments were 20 percent lower than

they were a year ago, reports research company Bloomberg New Energy Finance. Bloomberg attributed the global drop to uncertain

clean energy policies in countries such as the U.S. and United Kingdom. Caperton says most countries at the forefront of the clean energy field benefit from policy certainty — dependable tax incentives, loan guarantees and state renewable energy goals. “[Those countries] have a general commitment to low-carbon power sources that feeds into every decision they make in the power sector,” he says. “If they know they want to have a zero-carbon fuel mix by

2050, they’re able to plan today for that future and that really helps their investments.” Making and Trading the Energy Future One of those areas where the U.S. is doing fairly well but could improve is renewable energy manufacturing — making the photovoltaic cells, wind turbine blades and countless other building blocks of clean energy technology. With the International Energy Agency projecting that the amount of power generated

from renewable sources will be three times greater than 2010 levels by 2035, manufacturers see a big opportunity.

China currently leads the world’s solar and wind energy industries. Of the top ten wind manufacturers in 2011, four are Chinese companies and one, GE Wind, is American, reports

international organization Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. “Where China does really well is a strong

national commitment to providing financial incentives for manufacturing,” Caperton says. “Every country, eventually, will be transitioning to low-carbon power and China wants to manufacture that for the rest of the world. So they’re making strong commitments today to set themselves up to be the future manufacturing leader.”

Manufacturing Here

Manufacturing of wind turbines happens in the United States

Bowden 13

[Nicholas, April, Electric Regulation: Renewable Incentives Have Led to Job Creation, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/gas.21681/full, lecturer in the Economics Department and regulatory policy research associate for the Institute for Regulatory Policy Studies at Illinois State University]

In 2009, 5,700 wind turbines were installed in the United States. Each turbine has blades ranging from 34 to 55 meters, hubs weighing 8 to 10 tons, and towers standing 80 to 100 meters and weighing 55 to 70 tons. These 5,700 turbines required over 17,000 blades, 1.7 million cubic yards of concrete, 36,000 miles of rebar, and 3.2 million bolts. The structural elements of the turbine represent about 50 percent of the total cost, while the mechanical and electronic components represent the other 50 percent. The major mechanical components include the gearbox, power converter, generator, transformer, pitch and yaw controls, rotor hub, bearings, braking systems,

and drive shafts. In 2011, approximately 470 facilities were manufacturing or assembling these components of wind turbines in the United States. This number is a dramatic increase from the 30 facilities that existed in 2004. There are a wide range of component manufacturers and assembly facilities. Some facilities assembled turbines and produced gearboxes, rotor blades, and towers used exclusively in the wind industry, while others produced wires, bearings, power

electronics, and other components that are used across a range of industrial applications. An estimated 67 percent of these components installed in the United States were manufactured domestically in 2011, whereas only 35 percent were domestically manufactured in 2006. The remaining components not manufactured in the United States were imported primarily from Europe (Denmark, Germany, Spain, and Italy) in the form of fully assembled turbines. These imports came at a total cost of approximately $1.2 billion. However, the trade imbalance was softened by approximately $250 million in fully assembled turbines that were exported from the United States in 2011.

Offshore Wind Farms will generate jobs domestically

Weia et al 10

[Max Weia, Shana Patadiab, Daniel M. Kammena February 2010Putting renewables and energy efficiency to work: How many jobs can the clean energy industry generate in the US? Energy Policy Volume 38, Issue 2, Pages 919–931]

The clean energy industry has been targeted as a key area for investment for both environmental and economic reasons. Building up a domestically produced clean energy supply can provide greater energy independence and security, has notable environmental benefits due to reduced CO2 emissions, and can act as a driver for

significant, positive economic growth through continual innovation. Job creation is an especially pressing issue as

the world recovers from the most severe recession in decades with double digit unemployment rates in many countries. Clean energy can create many domestic jobs, and additionally, many of these jobs are guaranteed to stay domestic as they involve construction and installation. By investing in energy efficiency measures, money otherwise spent on energy costs can be redirected to stimulate the economy through job creation. A wide portfolio of energy sources including low carbon approaches, such as nuclear and carbon capture, are gaining attention as there are global efforts being made to reduce carbon emission in the next two decades. In the process, through replacing outdated infrastructure and developing better energy conservation and production practices, a foundation

is built for future domestic stability and growth. An increasing number of studies are finding that greater use of renewable energy (RE) systems and energy efficiency provides economic benefits through job creation, while at the same time protecting the economy from political and economic risks associated with over-reliance on a limited suite of energy technologies and fuels. We focus on the power sector in this study as it is the largest primary energy sector and also the fastest growing sector, and most

job creation studies have been done in this area. This report reviews 15 recent studies on the job creation potential of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and low carbon sources such as carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and nuclear power. The paper first clarifies job definitions and then a common metric and normalization methodology is introduced to allow for meaningful comparison of studies. A meta-study of many papers is done to take ranges and averages of normalized job multipliers. Unlike most other renewable energy studies, an attempt is made to take into account job losses in the coal and natural gas industry as a first step to capturing wider economy effects. Using the normalized direct employment multipliers from the meta-study, a simple analytical jobs model is described that generates job projections out to 2030 as a function of user-defined scenarios for EE, RE, and low carbon supply sources. The paper is thus a unique synthesis of many existing studies and the resultant jobs model can assist policy makers in answering three key questions: 1. What are the job creation sensitivities of adopting various clean energy approaches and energy efficiency? 2. How would large-scale growth in the renewable energy sector impact affect overall employment taking into account job losses in the fossil fuel sector? 3. What is the job creation potential for low carbon approaches such as nuclear power or carbon capture and storage? In order to compare the various studies on an equal footing, we adopt two simple normalizations to calculate lifetime average employment per unit of energy. First, “one-time” employment factors such as construction and installation (“job-years per peak MW”) are averaged over plant lifetime to obtain an average employment number (“jobs per peak MW”) that can be directly added to ongoing employment factors such as operations and maintenance. Next, to allow for comparison between technologies with different capacity factors, we calculate employment per unit of energy (“job-years per GWh”) or per unit of average-MW of power output (“job-years per average MW”). Our

modeling approach yields the following key conclusions: (1) The renewable energy and low carbon sectors generate more jobs per unit of energy delivered than the fossil fuel-based sector. (2) Among the

common RPS technologies, solar photo voltaics (PV) creates the most jobs per unit of electricity output. (3) Energy efficiency and renewable energy can contribute to much lower CO2 emissions and significant job creation. Cutting the annual rate of increase in electricity generation in half and targeting a 30% RPS in 2030 each generates about 2 million job-years through 2030. (4) A combination of renewable energy, EE, and low carbon approaches such as nuclear and CCS can yield over 4 million job-years through 2030 with over 50% of the electricity supply from non-fossil supply sources. The spreadsheet-based model is available for download at http://rael.berkeley.edu/node/20. As policy makers struggle with the current global recession and search for sectors in the economy that can provide sustainable long-term growth, these results can serve as useful data points in assessing the employment potential of clean energy and low carbon sources 2. Background There has been a large increase in reports and interest on green jobs in the past 2 years. “Green jobs” typically refer to those jobs that play a direct role in reducing environmental impact of enterprises and economic sectors, ultimately to levels that are sustainable (UNEP, 2008). In the energy efficiency (EE) context where the majority of jobs are induced jobs from energy savings, the jobs created are not strictly “green jobs”, but rather are employment opportunities that presumably would not have been created without the EE programs. In this work, we focus on job creation associated with well-defined industries or technologies including jobs in renewable energy and low carbon sources, as well as jobs resulting from energy efficiency investments. The bulk of these reports are from non-government organizations (NGO), national laboratories, or universities but there have been fewer peer-reviewed journal publications. Multiple recent studies have appeared in the past few years on EE, wind, solar PV, solar thermal, and geothermal, while other areas have received less attention. The studies have a wide range of estimates and report their data in different ways and using different definitions of employment. All of the studies referred to in this report are from developed world. For renewable energy, most reports are analytical-based studies. Wind is representative of this sector, and of the five studies summarized here, one is from industry, two from NGOs, one from a research institute, and one from a consulting firm. All five are essentially “bottom up” estimates based on industry/utility surveys, the outlook of project developers and equipment manufacturers, and/or primary employment data from companies across manufacturing, construction, install, and operations and maintenance (O&M). Four of five studies include direct employment estimates, only one has both direct and indirect employment estimates, while none include induced employment. Only one study includes a detailed cost benefit study. In general, these studies comprehend the employment within a given industry such as biomass or solar. Thus net job impacts to the overall economy are not comprehended since industry to industry interactions are not captured. EE studies, on the other hand, generally utilize more complete input/output (I/O) models (Laitner and McKinney, 2008; Roland-Holst, 2008) which attempt to model full impacts to the US economy. Differences between analytical and I/O models and their relative merits are discussed further in Section 3. As studies about green jobs have proliferated in the past few years from a wide variety of sources with varying estimates of job creation benefits and methodologies, several critiques of green jobs studies and their conclusions have appeared (see for example, Calzada, 2009; Moriss, 2009). Critics of green job studies cite allegedly incomplete accounting for the costs of green job programs, namely the jobs that are lost or shifted by such programs, and whether large capital investments by the government would be better spent elsewhere in the private sector. For example, requiring renewable energy sources that are more expensive than conventional sources and/or directing large government subsidies for their production may drive up costs and cost jobs or may furthermore crowd out other business investment. However, neither green job studies nor their critiques typically include avoided environmental costs or other potential benefits (less imported fossil fuel, reduced health care costs, etc.) that would favor green job programs. Longer-term costs are difficult to quantify with uncertainties in their magnitude, attribution and timing but have the prospect for catastrophic irremediable damages. Furthermore, in some cases, businesses may not be equipped or organized to invest in large-scale beneficial projects such as grid modernization where the government may need to play an active planning and/or investment role. At the macroeconomic level, it has been argued that global warming is one of history's greatest market failures and that to preclude the prospect of severe economic and social consequences in the future a transition to a low carbon economy is urgently needed. Policies and programs to support this transition are one way of viewing the green jobs movement, and thus the key questions do not focus on whether or not to support “green jobs”, but how best to do it—which policies have the greatest benefit to cost ratio, how long-term benefits should be balanced against short-term costs, how economic dislocations should

be minimized, and how best to position government policies in dynamic and competitive global markets. 3. Job definitions and job study methodologies It is important to define employment terms as there is often confusion about types of jobs and job-years. One job-year (or equivalently person-year or “full-time equivalent” FTE job) is full time employment for one person for a duration of 1 year. Often, “jobs” and “job-years” are used interchangeably; however, referring to “jobs” created without a duration can be misleading. The definitions of direct, indirect, and induced jobs vary widely by study. Here we describe our definitions and usage of these categories. Direct employment includes those jobs created in the design, manufacturing, delivery, construction/installation, project management and operation and maintenance of the different components of the technology, or power plant, under consideration. This data can be collected directly from existing facilities and manufacturers in the respective phases of operation. Indirect employment refers to the “supplier effect” of upstream and downstream suppliers. For example, the task of installing wind turbines is a direct job, whereas manufacturing the steel that is used to build the wind turbine is an indirect job. Induced employment accounts for the expenditure-induced effects in the general economy due to the economic activity and spending of direct and indirect employees, e.g. non-industry jobs created such as teachers, grocery store clerks, and postal workers. When discussing energy efficiency, a large portion of the induced jobs are the jobs created by the household savings due to the energy efficiency measures. There are two types of studies encountered while focusing on the employment impacts in the renewable industry: (1) those that use input–output models of the economy (“top-down”); and (2) those that use simpler, largely spreadsheet-based analytical models (“bottom-up”). Both types of models have advantages and disadvantages (Kammen, 2004) and are reviewed briefly here. I/O models are intended to model the entire economy as an interaction of goods and services between various industrial sectors and consumers. I/O models provide the most complete picture of the economy as a whole. They capture employment multiplier effects, as well as the macroeconomic impacts of shifts between sectors; that is to say, they account for losses in one sector (e.g. coal mining) created by the growth of another sector (e.g. the wind energy industry). I/O models are thus designed to encompass both the direct and indirect employment effect of shifts in energy demand as brought upon by various policies as well as the induced economic effects due to economic impacts of spending by workers. In practice, I/O models are very complex and can be opaque to understand. Within a larger I/O model there are also disaggregation problems in modeling the employment generated by specific technology types such as solar PV or wind and in isolating the impact of specific policies versus a suite of policies. Collecting data to build an I/O model is highly data and labor intensive, and I/O models also can suffer from time delays between when industry data has been collected and when the I/O model has been run. Most analytical models calculate direct employment impacts only, but an increasing number include indirect jobs as well. Although analytical models typically do not account for job losses in the fossil fuel sector they are much easier to understand and model. Sensitivity analysis of specific policies or changing key assumptions can be readily modeled, and data can be collected more frequently than with I/O models. We note that quantifying job impacts in developing nations for emerging “green” industries can be a challenge for both I/O and analytical models. Consider the challenge of quantifying job impact in the recycling industry in China or India. An I/O approach would have to synthesize the employment impact by assigning some component of input supplies and labor from existing industrial sectors, while a direct approach would have quantify the job impacts of an often informal work environment. Moreover, both model types generally do not capture industry innovation which may lead to reduced job dividend over time and of course, any model is subject to policy uncertainty e.g. changes in standards, mandates, incentives, tax credits, etc. Various normalization approaches for comparing the job creation potential of different technologies can be utilized. They include jobs produced for a given level of spending (Pollin, 2008), or jobs produced for a given level of output such as jobs produced per unit of energy production. Jobs produced per unit energy provides an indication of job creation potential for aggressive conversion of the existing energy supply to renewable and low carbon sources, and this metric is adopted here. 4. Comparing the studies Table 1 contains a list of the studies reviewed while a detailed summary of the studies’ respective methodologies is provided in Appendix A. A complication is that the studies report their data in different forms using different methods and in different units. We follow the approach described in detail in Kammen (2004) to normalize the data from each study. A brief description of the approach is given here. Table 1. List of studies reviewed. Ref. Year Author—affiliation Study—type of model 1 2009 Isabel Blanco and Christian Kjaer—European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) Wind at Work: Wind energy and job creation in the EU (analytical model) 2 2009 Julio Friedmann—Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Personal communcation, 13 February 2009, on Carbon capture and storage job impacts (analytical model) 3 2009 José Goldemberg—State of São Paulo, Brazil Personal communication, 13 February 2009, on Energy efficiency and jobs data 4 2009 SkyFuels and National Renewable Energy Laboratory Personal communication, 21 March 2009, on Solar Thermal jobs data. (I/O model) 5 2008 John A. “Skip” Laitner and Vanessa McKinney—American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy Positive Returns: State Energy Efficiency Analyses Can Inform US Energy Policy Assessments (I/O model) 6 2006 Winfried Hoffman, Sven Teske—European Photovoltaic Industry Association (EPIA) and Greenpeace Solar Generation: Solar Electricity for Over One Billion People and Two Million Jobs by 2020 (analytical model) 7 2006 McKinsey Consulting Wind, Oil and Gas: the Potential of Wind (analytical model) 8 2006 George Sterzinger—Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) Jobs and Renewable Energy Project (analytical model) 9 2006 L. Stoddard, J. Abiecunas, R. O'Connell—National Renewable Energy Laboratory Economic, Energy, and Environmental Benefits of Concentrating Solar Power in California (I/O model) 10 2005 Doug Arent, John Tschirhart, Dick Watson—Western Governors’ Association Clean and Diversified Energy Initiative (CDEAC) Geothermal Task Force (analytical model) 11 2004 Daniel M. Kammen, Kamal Kapadia, and Matthias Fripp—Energy and Resources Group, Universtiy of California, Berkeley Putting Renewables to Work: How Many Jobs Can the Clean Energy Industry Generate? (analytical model) 12 2004 C.R. Kenley, et al.—Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) and Bechtel BWXT Idaho, LLC US Job Creation Due to Nuclear Power Resurgence in the United States (analytical model) 13 2002 B. Heavner and S. Churchill—CALPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) Charitable Trust Job Growth from Renewable Energy Development in California (I/O model) 14 2001 G. Simons (California Energy Commission) and T. Peterson (EPRI) California Renewable Technology Market and Benefits Assessment (analytical model) 15 2001 Virender Singh of Renewable Energy Policy Project (REPP) and Jeffrey Fehrs of BBC Research and Consulting The Work that Goes into Renewable Energy (analytical model) Table options We consider two job function groupings: (1) construction, installation, and manufacturing (CIM) and (2) operations, maintenance, and fuel processing. Items in the first group are typically reported in “job-years per MW installed” or equivalently, “job-years per peak (or nameplate) MW” while the second group is reported in

jobs per peak MW over the lifetime of the plant. How then to best combine one-time employment (e.g. installation) with ongoing employment? We opt to average over the life of the project. By converting the CIM job-years per peak MW to average jobs per megawatt over the lifetime of the plant, the two can be combined. This assumes that a large number of facilities of a given type are being built (and eventually replaced) throughout the economy, which is a reasonable assumption for many renewable energy sources. Next, the total jobs per peak megawatt (MWp) is normalized to total jobs per average megawatt (MWa) by dividing jobs per peak megawatt by the capacity factor, where the capacity factor is the fraction of a year that the facility is in operation. This follows since lower capacity technologies will have to build more plants than higher capacity technologies to deliver the same power. This averaging technique has the advantage of providing a simple metric for comparing employment for different technologies. Annual employment for a given technology is calculated based on only two parameters: annual output energy (in GWh) and the employment multiplier (in job-years per GWh). This simplicity enables a straightforward implementation of a jobs model without having to track the exact details of combining one-time employment activities with ongoing employment on a year to year basis, and the approach converges to the correct number of cumulative job-years after several years. The disadvantage of this technique, however, is that it underestimates total employment for a technology that is growing rapidly (e.g. renewable energy technologies), while it overestimates employment for a technology that is reducing capacity. We also note that some studies were consulted but not included in this report due to lack of supporting information for their job estimates. Moreover, existing studies may not cover all components of employment considered (manufacturing, construction, installation, operations and maintenance, and fuel processing). The more comprehensive papers, which presented jobs/MW data along with person-years data, were used most extensively. Table 2 presents a detailed job generation summary of the studies that were analyzed. Some technologies were represented by many studies (solar and wind); some technologies were not studied as frequently (geothermal, biomass); and for some, job estimates were not readily available (municipal solid waste). For the latter we adopted placeholder values of 0.15 job-years/GWh as a conservative estimate at the lower range of renewable and low carbon multipliers. Table 2. Comparison of jobs/MWp, jobs/MWa and job-years/GWh across technologies. Work-hours per year 2000 Capacity factor (%) Equipment lifetime (years) Employment components Average employment over life of facility Total jobs/MWp Total jobs/MWa Total job-years/GWh Energy technology Source of numbers CIM (job-years/MWp) O&M (jobs/MWp) Fuel extraction and processing (job-years/GWh) CIM O&M and fuel processing CIM O&M and fuel processing CIM O&M and fuel processing Total Avg Biomass 1 EPRI 2001 85 40 4.29 1.53 0.00 0.11 1.53 0.13 1.80 0.01 0.21 0.22 0.21 Biomass 2 REPP 2001 85 40 8.50 0.24 0.13 0.21 1.21 0.25 1.42 0.03 0.16 0.19 Geothermal 1 WGA 2005 90 40 6.43 1.79 0.00 0.16 1.79 0.18 1.98 0.02 0.23 0.25 0.25 Geothermal 2 CALPIRG 2002 90 40 17.50 1.70 0.00 0.44 1.70 0.49 1.89 0.06 0.22 0.27 Geothermal 3 EPRI 2001 90 40 4.00 1.67 0.00 0.10 1.67 0.11 1.86 0.01 0.21 0.22 Landfill Gas 1 CALPIRG 2002 85 40 21.30 7.80 0.00 0.53 7.80 0.63 9.18 0.07 1.05 1.12 0.72 Landfill Gas 2 EPRI 2001 85 40 3.71 2.28 0.00 0.09 2.28 0.11 2.68 0.01 0.31 0.32 Small Hydro EPRI 2001 55 40 5.71 1.14 0.00 0.14 1.14 0.26 2.07 0.03 0.24 0.27 0.27 Solar PV 1 EPIA/Greenpeace 2006 20 25 37.00 1.00 0.00 1.48 1.00 7.40 5.00 0.84 0.57 1.42 0.87 Solar PV 2 REPP 2006 20 25 32.34 0.37 0.00 1.29 0.37 6.47 1.85 0.74 0.21 0.95 Solar PV 3 EPRI 2001 20 25 7.14 0.12 0.00 0.29 0.12 1.43 0.60 0.16 0.07 0.23 Solar Thermal 1 Skyfuels/NREL 2009 40 25 10.31 1.00 0.00 0.41 1.00 1.03 2.50 0.12 0.29 0.40 0.23 Solar Thermal 2 NREL 2006 40 25 4.50 0.38 0.00 0.18 0.38 0.45 0.95 0.05 0.11 0.16 Solar Thermal 3 EPRI 2001 40 25 5.71 0.22 0.00 0.23 0.22 0.57 0.55 0.07 0.06 0.13 Wind 1 EWEA 2008 35 25 10.10 0.40 0.00 0.40 0.40 1.15 1.14 0.13 0.13 0.26 0.17 Wind 2 REPP 2006 35 25 3.80 0.14 0.00 0.15 0.14 0.43 0.41 0.05 0.05 0.10 Wind 3 McKinsey 2006 35 25 10.96 0.18 0.00 0.44 0.18 1.25 0.50 0.14 0.06 0.20 Wind 4 CALPIRG 2002 35 25 7.40 0.20 0.00 0.30 0.20 0.85 0.57 0.10 0.07 0.16 Wind 5 EPRI 2001 35 25 2.57 0.29 0.00 0.10 0.29 0.29 0.83 0.03 0.09 0.13 Carbon Capture & Storage Friedmann, 2009 80 40 20.48 0.31 0.06 0.51 0.73 0.64 0.91 0.07 0.10 0.18 0.18 Nuclear INEEL 2004 90 40 15.20 0.70 0.00 0.38 0.70 0.42 0.78 0.05 0.09 0.14 0.14 Coal REPP 2001 80 40 8.50 0.18 0.06 0.21 0.59 0.27 0.74 0.03 0.08 0.11 0.11 Natural Gas CALPIRG 2002 85 40 1.02 0.10 0.09 0.03 0.77 0.03 0.91 0.00 0.10 0.11 0.11 Energy Efficiency 1 ACEEE 2008 100 20 0.17 0.38 Energy Efficiency 2 Goldemberg, 2009 100 20 0.59 Table options A typical calculation for direct employment is described for the example of a Vestas wind plant in the US (McKinsey, 2006). From the report, a 228 MW (peak) onshore wind farm generates 500 jobs in development and installation for 5 years and 40 O&M jobs for 20 years. This translates to 2500 job-years for development/installation and 800 job-years for O&M. Dividing these numbers by 25 years for lifetime gives the average number of jobs per peak MW over the life of the plant. Dividing by an estimated 35% capacity factor for wind plants gives the result 1.25 jobs per average MW for CIM and 0.40 jobs per average MW for O&M. The reference report also provides employment estimates for offshore wind farms and both data points are factored into the final data entry in Table 2. Note that this example does not explicitly include manufacturing jobs in wind turbine production and thus the job multiplier for CIM is probably an underestimate for direct jobs as defined above. For CCS, we considered three options for CCS implementation: post-combustion capture retrofit for pulverized coal, post-combustion retrofit for natural gas, and pre-combustion capture design for IGCC (Friedmann, 2009). Employment impact for the first two options were considered to be additive to existing coal and natural gas employment while jobs for IGCC CCS were treated as stand-alone since new plant construction is involved. Resultant job numbers for the three options are 0.17, 0.22, and 0.16 job-years/GWh, respectively, and the average of these results is taken in Table 2. In the energy efficiency sector we used a multiplier of 0.38 job-years/GWh of energy savings that is the average of Goldemberg (2009) and Laitner and McKinney (2008). We assume that the majority of jobs are induced jobs (90%) and only 10% are direct jobs associated with energy efficiency products or installation, an assumption used by the ACEEE in the past (Geller, 1992). The business-as-usual (BAU) case of energy demand already assumes a certain amount of energy savings and energy efficiency-induced jobs due to existing building codes and appliance standards, industry improvement, and implicit programs (EPRI, 2009), so our energy efficiency net job gains are additional jobs above and beyond this implicit baseline level. Fig. 1 shows the average and range of direct employment multipliers per unit energy for ten different energy technologies based on the studies considered in Table 1. A large amount of variation is seen in many technologies, particularly solar PV. This may be due to implicit differences in data collection and analysis methodology between different studies. For technologies with more than one study, our approach of averaging the studies thus reduces the weight of any one study. Solar PV has the highest average job multiplier with a large gap between it and the next highest renewable technologies (geothermal and solar thermal). In part, this is likely due to the many discrete panel installations contributing to solar PV development (as compared to a single location for a wind farm). Full-size image (27 K) Fig. 1. Average and range of direct employment multipliers for ten different

energy technologies based on the studies from Table 1. Figure options Comparing among the technologies, we find a spread among the distribution of jobs between CIM and O&M. Biomass, natural gas, and coal are seen to have the largest fuel processing requirement. We were not able to find a direct estimate for nuclear power fuel processing requirements. Solar and wind are found to have the highest ratio of CIM to O&M jobs and for solar this is likely due to a large installation component of employment. 5. Analytical model description In this section we describe an Excel-based analytical model for the US power sector designed to estimate net employment impacts under various user-defined energy supply scenarios for the 2009–2030 time frame. The model synthesizes data from the 15 job studies summarized above covering renewable energy, energy efficiency, carbon capture and storage and nuclear power in addition to coal and natural gas. We utilize the normalization approach of taking average employment per unit energy produced over plant lifetime, as described in Section 4. In addition to these average employment multipliers provided by the meta-study, the user can specify assumptions for the following three supply sectors in the model: (1) energy efficiency assumption to 2030; (2) RPS percentage and technology portfolio contributions; and (3) low carbon percentage and portfolio contributions. Unlike other job studies, job losses in the coal and natural gas industry are modeled to project net employment impacts. Combinations of factors are readily modeled, e.g. the number of jobs with both increased EE and increased RE. The model thus provides guidance and quantification to the three key questions posed in Section 1. We take as our baseline the December 2008 Energy Information Administration (EIA) roadmap of electricity generation and projected electricity source contributions out to 2030. The baseline or BAU numbers of direct and indirect jobs are calculated with this amount of generation and partitioning of energy sources. Our calculator then computes how the job picture shifts with greater or lower energy efficiency, varying amounts of renewable energy, and differing portfolio mixes of RPS and low carbon technologies. For the renewable and low carbon technology sectors we include only direct and indirect jobs since most studies in these two sectors utilize analytical based job generation models and do not include estimates of induced jobs. For indirect jobs, we took the average multiplier from three reports, a solar study from the United States (Bezdek, 2007), a European wind report (EWEA, 2009), and a renewable energy study from Germany (Staiss, 2006). This gave an indirect multiplier of 0.9 that for simplicity was applied to all technologies. (For example if the direct multiplier for technology B is 0.2 job-years/GWh, the indirect multiplier is 0.2×0.9=0.18 job-years/GWh and the total jobs produced is 0.38 job-years/GWh). Clearly this is a rough approximation for indirect jobs and we expect variation between technologies. Some reports included much higher estimates for indirect jobs (Kenley, 2004 nuclear study and Stoddard, 2006 solar thermal report) but we took a more conservative average approach to avoid double counting direct and indirect jobs. A net job creation number for the renewable and low carbon technology sectors is calculated by factoring in job loss impacts to the coal and natural gas industry due to increases in renewable energy or low carbon technologies. Previous studies have focused on gross renewable energy job creation under various RPS or technology scenarios, e.g. “a 20% national RPS in 2020 produces 160,000 direct jobs.” For this work, we ask what amount of net jobs can be created over and above what is projected from existing policies and accounting for any job losses that may occur from reductions in the supply of electricity from coal and natural gas. For energy efficiency, we include direct, indirect and induced jobs, or equivalently net jobs created per unit energy saved. This may bias the results in favor of energy efficiency. However, we were not comfortable making an analytical estimate for induced employment for renewable energy and low carbon sources since most studies in these two sectors do not include estimates of induced jobs. Energy efficiency studies, on the other hand, tend to utilize I/O models and their authors argue that most of the employment from energy efficiency investment is from energy bill savings and subsequent-induced employment, and their estimates are included here. In addition to the direct and indirect job multipliers described above, our model accepts the following user inputs: the annual rate of increase of electricity demand (BAU is about 0.74%) to 2030, the target RPS and low carbon supply percentages in 2020 and 2030, and the technology components (wind, biomass, etc) for the RPS and low carbon supply in 2020 and 2030. Overall electricity demand is then translated to the various supply sources as specified by user input, and a mapping of these supply sources to overall employment is performed using the multipliers from Table 2. Net employment can then be calculated by taking the difference between the modeled scenario and the BAU scenario based on EIA reference data for electricity demand and supply sources. A screen shot of the model's input deck is shown in Table 3. Table 3. Sample screen shot of jobs model showing input parameters for RPS and low carbon fraction and components in 2020. Time frame 2009–2030 Generation assumptions BAU Electricity increase in 2030 over 2009 (%) BAU 24% RPS assumptions BAU 2020 RPS % of total gen. 20.0% 7.4% 2030 RPS % of total gen. 30.0% 9.1% RPS portfolio—2020 % total generation BAU 2020 Biomass 9.5% 3.5% Hydro (small) 1.5% 0.6% Geothermal 1.1% 0.4% Municipal solid waste 1.3% 0.5% Solar PV 1.0% 0.4% Solar thermal 0.1% 0.0% Wind 5.5% 2.0% RPS % 20.0% 7.4% Low carbon assumptions BAU 2020 low carbon % of total gen. 24.6% 24.6% 2030 low carbon % of total gen. 22.6% 22.6% Low carbon portfolio—2020 BAU Carbon capture and storage (% coal gen.) 0.0% 0.0% Conventional hydropower 5.9% 5.9% Nuclear (% to include in RPS) 18.7% 18.7% Low carbon % 24.6% 24.6% Inputs are in bold italics. Table options We assume electricity demand reductions are provided by energy efficiency and not from reduced energy usage due to other effects such as conservation or behavior changes. The supply of low carbon sources such as nuclear and hydro is also assumed to not decrease over time beyond BAU levels, so that any reduction in energy demand over BAU is assumed to be taken from coal or natural gas. This implies that the absolute percentage of nuclear and hydro power will increase over time as more energy efficiency is achieved even with no new nuclear or hydro construction. Our model assumes that transmission, distribution, and storage capacity are not constraints, especially when projecting high percentages of RE and low carbon sources. This assumption also leads to the simplification that all renewable power generation displaces coal and natural gas, which may not be the case today or in the near future for intermittent sources such as wind power in the absence of large-scale storage. Clearly, significant investment in both infrastructure and research and development (R&D) is needed to enable this and both the electricity grid and storage have been targeted in the US federal government's 2009 stimulus package. This work does not include analysis of leakage and jobs that are exported, i.e. all jobs are assumed to reside within the country of interest, nor is the potential increase in jobs from export of manufactured goods considered (Lehr et al., 2008). The concern for the former is that manufacturing jobs may be predominantly exported to lower labor cost countries such as China or Vietnam. While design and development jobs (“front end”) and maintenance and service jobs (“back end”) remain onshore, a “hollowing out” of the manufacturing sector might occur in the middle. This effect has not been thoroughly studied for clean energy and may vary by technology. Manufacturing wind turbines on-site is often more economical than producing them for export and accordingly, Danish turbine maker

Vestas is expanding aggressively in the United States (Glader, 2009). Nor do we consider local vs. national employment effects. It is possible that some regions of the country would see heavier job losses than others, so policies could be tailored to address these inequalities for example through targeted subsidies or job re-training programs. For example, West Virginia may be hit disproportionately hard by job losses due to its coal mining industry while California may benefit relatively more due to its solar resource. Other references show that a national increase in renewable energy can benefit all regions of the adopting country (Staiss 2006). We do not explore detailed cost benefit analysis. For example, if more renewable energy is built, electricity prices may become more expensive, increasing costs for businesses and reducing employment in those businesses. However, overall costs are calculated to be relatively small fraction of GDP in several studies (see for example McLennan Magasanik, 2009). Moreover, a full cost benefit analysis would include other benefits from cleaner energy which are not typically included (e.g. better health, environmental benefits). Rather than focusing on a single sector such as wind or solar, some studies consider a portfolio of greenhouse gas reduction policies with the assumption that a cap and trade system for greenhouse gases is in place. For example, the California AB32 Global Warming Solutions Act includes a suite of policies including vehicle standards, energy efficiency programs (e.g. building codes, appliance standards, and combined heat and power), and renewable energy mandates (Roland-Holst, 2008). In this way, more cost effective measures such as energy efficiency can compensate for less cost effective but rapidly growing sectors such as solar PV. The net economic impacts then become highly dependent on the rate of technological innovation, but if innovation is assumed to follow historical trends and strong policies are in place for energy use reduction then significant job growth can result. 6. Discussion of model results Annual employment for energy efficiency beyond BAU are plotted in Fig. 2 for two electricity generation scenarios. The “medium-EE” case represents 50% lower annual growth rate than BAU or 0.37% annual growth in electricity generation versus 0.74% for BAU, and the “flat energy” case represents no increase in annual electricity generation (0.74% lower growth than BAU). Both curves show steadily increasing job growth as the total energy saved increases steadily over time with features in the two curves reflecting the BAU reference energy demand data. Full-size image (30 K) Fig. 2. Annual job-years generated over BAU due to energy efficiency improvement. Figure options Cumulative job-years from 2009 through 2030 versus annual improvement in energy efficiency for various energy supply approaches are shown in Fig. 3, Fig. 4 and Fig. 5. Cumulative job-years are computed by adding the job-years above BAU each year for a given scenario. This metric is often implicitly or explicitly quoted in jobs studies for a given time frame and we utilize it here to compare different technologies. We project employment to 2030 since nuclear and CCS have long lead times and we would not expect appreciable gains by 2020. The three marker points on each curve represent BAU, medium-EE, and flat energy cases, respectively. Full-size image (38 K) Fig. 3. Cumulative job-years over BAU due to energy efficiency improvement for 2009–2020 and 2009–2030, respectively. Figure options Full-size image (79 K) Fig. 4. (a) Cumulative job-years for 2009–2030 over BAU due to RPS for various RPS targets in 2030. (b) Cumulative job-years for 2009–2030 over BAU due to nuclear power for various nuclear generation targets in 2030. (c) Cumulative job-years for 2009–2030 over BAU due to CCS for various CCS targets in 2030. Figure options Full-size image (82 K) Fig. 5. (a) Cumulative job-years over BAU for 2009–2030 due to energy efficiency and RPS for various RPS targets in 2030. (b) Cumulative job-years over BAU from 2009–2030 due to energy efficiency, RPS, nuclear power, and CCS, for various RPS targets in 2030 and assuming 25% nuclear generation and 10% CCS in 2030, respectively. Figure options For the medium-EE case, half-a-million total jobs are generated from 2009 to 2020 and 1.9 million total job-years from 2009 to 2030 (Fig. 3), while for the flat energy case, we project 1 million and just under 4 million job-years, respectively This is in the absence of any other changes from BAU supply sources. Employment generation by RPS as function of EE for various RPS target percentages in 2030 is shown in Fig. 4a. For a fixed target RPS percentage in 2030, total RPS job-years decrease with improved EE since as the overall electricity generation “pie” is reduced, the absolute amount of renewable energy is reduced. RPS targets of 10%, 20%, and 30% in 2020 are assumed for RPS targets of 20%, 30%, and 40% in 2030, respectively. Coal and natural gas jobs are lost but at a lower rate than renewable energy job are created. While the model allows for the flexibility of changing the portfolio of RPS constituent technology percentages, RPS calculations in Fig. 4a assume a BAU “portfolio” distribution in 2020, i.e. the makeup of the RPS replicates the BAU constituent percentages in 2020 (approximately 47% biomass, 27% wind, 8% small hydro, 7% municipal solid waste, 6% geothermal, 5% solar PV, and 1% solar thermal). 2030 RPS portfolio components are then scaled by the proportional increase in overall RPS from 2020 to 2030. Note that by changing the constituent technology target percentages in 2020 and 2030, job numbers would shift either higher or lower depending on portfolio distribution and relative job multipliers. In particular, if geothermal, solar, or solar thermal targets are higher than BAU levels, job generation will increase since these three technologies have the highest job multipliers among renewable energy technologies. Similar plots are shown in Fig. 4b and c for nuclear power and CCS, respectively. For example, a 20% (25%) nuclear fraction of overall generation in 2030 with BAU EE is projected to generate 60,000 (140,000) job-years. Nuclear employment scenarios assume that 2020 nuclear generation meets the “high growth” EIA target of 112 GW in the US in 2020 or 19.2% of overall generation (EIA, 2009). Nuclear numbers are relatively low in our model. Nuclear jobs may be underestimated based on the nuclear references not including some job categories (design, site work, licensing, oversight, waste management, decontamination, and decommissioning). The nuclear study (Kenley, 2004) also estimated large indirect and induced job multipliers that were not fully captured in this report. The CCS employment curves assume CCS achieves 1% of overall generation in 2020. For reference, IEA has set goals for 20 large-scale demonstration plants for CCS globally by 2020 and 9% of power generation by 2030 under an “emission stabilization” scenario (IEA, 2009). Currently CCS has a lack of viable demonstration plants and large uncertainties in commercial viability, technology, and regulatory environment. Unless there are major national initiatives and expansion coupled with rapid technological progress, we do not expect a high penetration rate of the technology in the next decade. The cumulative job plots for 2009–2030 are then additive. For example, Fig. 5a shows EE+RPS employment for various RPS targets in 2030. For a 2030 RPS target of 30% and medium-EE improvement, employment is projected at 4 million, or a similar number of jobs could be achieved with BAU RPS and flat energy demand. About a half-million job-years are added with the addition of 25% nuclear generation and 10% CCS in 2030, respectively (Fig. 5b). This scenario would translate to an electricity sector that has 65% of its supply from renewable or low carbon sources. The addition of learning curves to our model could lead to a decreasing of the jobs dividend over time as real capital costs fall. Many studies exclude learning curve information beyond a qualitative discussion. The DOE (2008) wind study excludes learning curves from their economic development model and utilizes a “static model that does not taken into account improvements in industry productivity.” For

solar PV, the European Photo Voltaic Industry Association and Greenpeace (EPIA/Greenpeace 2006) project CIM employment to decrease by about 25% from 2010 to 2020 due to industry learning and cost reduction. Assuming a flat growth rate for O&M jobs, this would lead to a 17% lower employment multiplier in 2020. This may provide an upper bound on the total employment reduction from our projections since solar PV has generally shown a faster learning rate than other RE sources. From a policy perspective, it is interesting to note that although the construction of turbines, solar panels, or other pieces of equipment can be easily done elsewhere, the installation of any technology necessarily creates local jobs. While coal and natural gas plants are typically centralized, large installations and renewable sources can be used for utility scale developments, distributed renewable sources can provide local “distributed” employment with environmental and financial advantages such as shorter lead times and lower initial cost (Lovins, 1976). As a result, renewable energy can provide much-needed opportunities for domestic job growth in developing countries. For example, UNEP's (2009) report on green jobs cites an example of women and youth in Bangladesh getting jobs as solar technicians. These jobs have the doubly positive effect of both giving the local people jobs, as well as improving the eco-friendliness of the local economies. Similar job creation has been observed in Kenya where there is a thriving local economy of solar module sales and installation (Jacobson and Kammen, 2007). This incremental penetration of local economies with renewable sources can often provide a faster path to economic development and electrification than large-scale fossil fuel power plants. Green jobs can also address the specific concern that skilled jobs are often sent abroad. According to the American Solar Energy Society green jobs report (ASES, 2008), job growth in the renewable energy and energy efficiency industries is biased towards technical, scientific, professional, and skilled workers. For example, wind energy is a reliable job creator for both skilled and unskilled labor, as discussed by the European Wind Energy Association report (EWEA, 2009). The wind turbines themselves necessitate construction and installation, as well as longer-term maintenance work. Additionally, the creation of wind farms requires planning, obtaining of permits, and ongoing supervision of the turbines. Thus the wind industry employs a range of skilled and professional workers, from engineers, to meteorologists, to site managers that is not easily outsourced. The solar industry similarly employs a range of workers, and the numerous technical skills involved in the creation of solar PV necessitate skilled labor. To summarize our results, we find that the renewable energy and low carbon sector generates more jobs than the fossil fuel-based sector per unit of energy delivered (i.e. per GWh generated). Many sectors can contribute to both very low CO2 emissions and significant job creation and a combination of technologies may be necessary to meet GhG emissions targets. A national RPS of 30% in 2030 coupled with “medium-EE” scenario (0.37% reduction in annual energy growth rate) can generate over 4 million job-years, and further increasing nuclear generation to 25% and CCS to 10% of total generation in 2030 can generate an additional 500,000 job-years. 7. Conclusion There are three key arguments for building a domestic clean energy industry: improved energy security, environmental protection and benefits, and as a potential engine for economic growth. Indeed, employment benefits of renewable energy could go to countries that start early and build strong export markets. Job creation from clean energy can provide an even larger benefit in developing nations that lack the resources for large centralized power plants. Consistent and long-term policies are a key requirement for growth of a “green economy” and carbon pricing is essential for long-term technology and policy change. This work provides policy makers with a framework for understanding various green jobs reports and presents a normalized methodology for comparing employment impacts for various energy supply sources. We stress that data aggregation of these reports should focus on uniform methodology of job metrics and definitions, and analysts need to be careful when comparing technologies and to be specific about the timing and duration of employment. We also present a simple spreadsheet model that policy makers in the US can use to project job generation over time as a function of varying targets in energy efficiency, renewable energy, and low carbon sources. Such a model can be easily adopted to other countries or markets, although the job multiplier data is probably most applicable to developed countries. We find that all renewable energy and low carbon sources generate more jobs than the fossil fuel sector per unit of energy delivered while the type of employment differs between technologies (e.g. manufacturing vs. resource extraction) and the timing and location of employment may differ within a given country or geography. This information can be useful for policy makers who are designing long range energy policies or short-term government programs to provide economic stimulus or incentives for direct employment. Energy efficiency investment offers a high payoff in induced jobs and is generally the least cost and often the most readily implementable approach. More energy efficiency can diminish the need for both additional fossil fuel plants and new renewable energy sources. Our study thus offers additional support for aggressive energy efficiency policies such as reduction of market barriers, improving public awareness and education, and facilitating EE financing. For areas of future work, a cost benefit analysis of various investments in RE would be useful, taking into account the cost of carbon as well as environmental, health, and security benefits. Economic modeling to include full industry-to-industry interactions would bring this work beyond the simple employment model projections presented here. Our analysis did not disaggregate the location of manufacturing jobs across sectors and this information would be very useful for policy makers. Important issues include the regional and international distribution of jobs, job-needs assessments and job training programs across job-types and sectors, manufacturing policies, and financing issues such as subsidies and public/private project financing. More discussion on the most effective policies to promote green jobs in the context of EE, RE, and low carbon sources should be pursued. An expanded technology analysis and envelope would include more up to date information on coal and natural gas employment estimates, further elaboration on CCS costs and employment benefits, and inclusion of “smart grid”, storage, ocean energy and other emerging technologies. We alluded to the impact of learning rates on employment multipliers but a fuller discussion of time dependencies is clearly appropriate. For example in addition to industry learning rates, are there any inflection points in capital or labor requirements as RE grows as a fraction of overall power supply, or are there any trends in the outsourcing of manufacturing jobs? Expansion of this analysis should include developing nations. We expect similar range of employment numbers in the developed world but there may be material differences or greater changes over time in the developing world. Some areas that may warrant additional treatment in the developing world are “informal economy” sectors such as recycling that may lend themselves to bottom up analysis, issues of biomass sustainability, micro-grids, and distributed power and generation.

Fabrication facilities need to be near the wind farms to reduce costs

Fingersh, 2006

(L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model) 3.4.2.3 Offshore Transportation

There are two elements of transporting an offshore wind turbine. One element is to get the turbine components to the port staging and assembly area. The second is to get the assembled turbine to the installation site. This second of these cost elements is covered in the offshore installation cost (see Section 3.4.2.5). The cost element in the offshore transportation category (somewhat of a misnomer) covers only the cost of bringing the components to the assembly site onshore. The costs for 3 to 5 MW turbines show a significant increase over smaller machines due to the premiums for moving such large structures over the road or by rail to wind farm sites in the

central plains. These costs may be significantly reduced by locating fabrication facilities close to the port and staging areas. For the estimates in this model, the scaling formulas developed in the WindPACT studies were used. These are the same factors as described in Section 3.4.1.19 above. Offshore transportation cost factor $/kW = 1.581E-5 * machine rating 2 - 0.0375 * machine rating + 54.7

Vestas has factories in the Unites States

Natalie 6/30

[Obiko Pearson, 2014, Vestas Wins 450 Megawatts of U.S. Wind-Turbine Orders, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-06-30/vestas-wins-450-megawatts-of-u-s-wind-turbine-orders.html, Natalie Obiko Pearson is a reporter for Bloomberg News in New Delhi]

Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), the world’s biggest wind-turbine maker, won orders totaling 450 megawatts from Electricite de France SA’s renewable unit to supply two U.S. wind farms. Vestas will deliver 225 machines to EDF Renewable Energy’s Roosevelt project in New Mexico and its Slate Creek farm in Kansas, according to a statement on the website of the Aarhus, Denmark-based

manufacturer. Both wind farms are scheduled to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2015, Vestas said. Its factories in Colorado will be involved in manufacturing key components, including the nacelles, blades and towers, it said.

Goldwind increasing investment in US markets

Goossens 12

[Ehren Jan 20, China’s Goldwind Expanding in U.S. as Rivals Cut Back, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-19/goldwind-buys-two-10-megawatt-montana-wind-farms-from-volkswind.html, reporter for Bloomburg News]

Xinjiang Goldwind Science & Technology Co., China’s second-largest wind-turbine maker, indicated it’s picking up market share in the U.S. as falling prices and expiring subsidies force rivals to pare back. Goldwind

bought two 10-megawatt wind farms in Montana to showcase its equipment and has taken orders in seven other U.S. states since it started sales in the region in June 2010, according to a company statement released yesterday. The U.S. government allowed an incentive for the wind industry to expire in December and hasn’t acted to extend a tax credit due to lapse at the end of 2012.

Goldwind’s market share is growing the fastest of the top five companies concentrated on turbines, Bloomberg New Energy Finance data show. “Goldwind has financed a large-scale project to prove its turbine viability, and the other Chinese manufacturers haven’t done that,” Amy Grace, a wind industry analyst for the London- based researcher, said in an interview. “There’s no question that

Goldwind will have more U.S. sales.”

Econ Comp k 2 Hegemony

US economic competitiveness is foundational to US hegemony – security interests and foreign perception.

DeLeon 2011, Rudy (Senior Vice President of National Security and International Policy at American Progress). “Are we ready? An independent look at the readiness posture of US forces.” Center for American Progress. http://www.americanprogressaction.org/issues/2011/03/are_we_ready.html/print.html

Meeting the readiness challenges of the next 20 years and creating the financial wherewithal for these capabilities will not happen if the Department of Defense and Congress maintain the status quo on managing fiscal resources—both within the defense budget and across the entire federal budget. In order to reap savings that may be reinvested within defense, and to justify additional resources for force structure and equipment modernization, the Department of Defense and Congress must work together to reestablish the tools that restore fiscal responsibility to the budget process—tools that were lost when balanced-budget rules were abandoned about ten years ago. The Gramm-Rudman budget agreement in 1987, the 1990 budget agreement between President George H. W. Bush and Congress, and the 1996 budget agreement between President Clinton and Congress that produced a balanced federal budget by the end of the 1990’s protected the fiscal resources needed for our national security. But these

agreements also demanded sound budget management on the national security side. But it is not just sound budget management of our national defense that’s needed. The U nited States must get its entire economic house in order. The notion that the economic decline of the U nited States is inevitable and irreversible hurts American security—even as U.S. military capabilities remain dominant. U.S. national security has long rested on the strength of our economy ,

but creeping doubts about American economic resiliency feed the foreign perception that Washington is a declining power. This gives rising global powers little incentive to heed U.S. calls for greater responsibility, cooperation, and transparency. Instead, it may well give them more license to discuss “anti-access strategies” and “economic and security zones of influence”—developments that could conceivably lead to military miscalculations highly dangerous to our national security. That is why moving forward on the American economic challenge of creating jobs by promoting economic competitiveness and innovation while reducing our long-term budget deficits is extremely important to U.S. security interests. The character of American enterprise and resourcefulness should not be underestimated, but it requires unified actions by the United States and effective leadership by U.S. policymakers. The President and Congress need to make

clear that they are up to the task, and then prove it in the coming months. There is no higher national security priority.

US competitiveness is key to hegemony and independently solves great power war

(Baru 2009)

Sanjaya Baru is a Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School in Singapore Geopolitical Implications of the Current Global Financial Crisis, Strategic Analysis, Volume 33, Issue 2 March 2009 , pages 163 - 168

Hence, economic policies and performance do have strategic consequences.2 In the modern era, the idea

that strong economic performance is the foundation of power was argued most persuasively by historian Paul

Kennedy. 'Victory (in war)', Kennedy claimed, 'has repeatedly gone to the side with more flourishing productive base'.3 Drawing attention to the interrelationships between economic wealth, technological innovation, and the ability of states to efficiently mobilize economic and technological resources for power

projection and national defence, Kennedy argued that nations that were able to better combine military and economic strength scored over others. 'The fact remains', Kennedy argued, 'that all of the major shifts in the world's military-power balance have followed alterations in the productive balances; and further, that the rising and falling of the various empires and states in the international system has been confirmed by the outcomes of the major Great Power wars, where victory has always gone to the side with the greatest material resources'.4 In Kennedy's view, the geopolitical consequences of an economic crisis, or even decline, would be transmitted through a nation's inability to find adequate financial resources to simultaneously sustain economic growth and military power, the classic 'guns versus butter' dilemma.

Hege Solves War

US hegemony deters great power conflicts – history proves.

Zhang and Shi 11

[Yuhan, a researcher at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, D.C. *** AND*** Lin, Columbia University. She also serves as an independent consultant for the Eurasia Group and a consultant for the World Bank in Washington, D.C. “America’s decline: A harbinger of conflict and rivalry” http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2011/01/22/americas-decline-a-harbinger-of-conflict-and-rivalry/]

Over the past two decades, no other state has had the ability to seriously challenge the US military. Under

these circumstances, motivated by both opportunity and fear, many actors have bandwagoned with US hegemony and accepted a subordinate role. Canada, most of Western Europe, India, Japan, South Korea,

Australia, Singapore and the Philippines have all joined the US, creating a status quo that has tended to mute great power conflicts. However, as the hegemony that drew these powers together withers,

so will the pulling power behind the US alliance . The result will be an international order where power is more diffuse, American interests and influence can be more readily challenged, and conflicts or wars may be harder to avoid. As history attests, power decline and redistribution result in military confrontation. For example, in the late 19th century America’s emergence as a regional power saw it launch its first overseas war of conquest towards Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, accompanying the increase in US power and waning of British power, the American Navy had begun to challenge the notion that Britain ‘rules the waves.’ Such a notion would eventually see the US attain the status of sole guardians of the Western Hemisphere’s security to become the order-creating Leviathan shaping the international

system with democracy and rule of law. Defining this US-centred system are three key characteristics:

enforcement of property rights, constraints on the actions of powerful individuals and groups and some degree of equal opportunities for broad segments of society. As a result of such

political stability, free markets, liberal trade and flexible financial mechanisms have appeared. And, with this, many countries have sought opportunities to enter this system, proliferating stable and cooperative

relations. However, what will happen to these advances as America’s influence declines? Given that America’s authority, although sullied at times, has benefited people across much of Latin America,

Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans, as well as parts of Africa and, quite extensively, Asia, the answer to this question could affect global society in a profoundly detrimental way. Public

imagination and academia have anticipated that a post-hegemonic world would return to the problems of the

1930s: regional blocs, trade conflicts and strategic rivalry. Furthermore, multilateral institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank or the WTO might give way to regional organisations. For example, Europe and East Asia would each step forward to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s withering leadership to pursue their

own visions of regional political and economic orders. Free markets would become more politicised — and,

well, less free — and major powers would compete for supremacy. Additionally, such power plays have historically possessed a zero-sum element. In the late 1960s and 1970s, US economic power declined relative to the rise of the Japanese and Western European economies, with the US dollar also becoming less

attractive. And, as American power eroded, so did international regimes (such as the Bretton Woods

System in 1973). A world without American hegemony is one where great power wars re-emerge, the liberal international system is supplanted by an authoritarian one, and trade protectionism devolves into restrictive, anti-globalisation barriers. This, at least, is one possibility

we can forecast in a future that will inevitably be devoid of unrivalled US primacy.

Best data proves that hegemony solves proximate causes of war.

(Owen 11)

John M. (Professor of Politics at University of Virginia, PhD from Harvard University). “Don’t Discount Hegemony.” February 11, 2011. www.cato-unbound.org/2011/02/11/john-owen/dont-discount-hegemony/

Andrew Mack and his colleagues at the Human Security Report Project are to be congratulated. Not only do

they present a study with a striking conclusion, driven by data, free of theoretical or ideological bias, but they also do something quite unfashionable: they bear good news. Social scientists really are not supposed to do that. Our job is, if not to be Malthusians, then at least to point out disturbing trends, looming catastrophes, and the imbecility and mendacity of policy makers. And then it is to say why, if people listen to us, things will get better. We do this as if our careers depended upon it, and perhaps they do; for if all is going to be well, what need then for us? Our colleagues at Simon Fraser

University are brave indeed. That may sound like a setup, but it is not. I shall challenge neither the data nor the general conclusion that violent conflict around the world has been decreasing in fits and starts since the Second World War. When it comes to violent conflict among and within countries, things have been getting better. (The trends have not been linear—Figure 1.1 actually shows that the frequency of interstate wars peaked in the 1980s—but the 65-year movement is clear.) Instead I

shall accept that Mack et al. are correct on the macro-trends, and focus on their explanations they advance for these remarkable trends. With apologies to any readers of this forum who recoil from academic debates,

this might get mildly theoretical and even more mildly methodological. Concerning international wars, one version of the “nuclear-peace” theory is not in fact laid to rest by the data. It is certainly true that nuclear-armed states have been involved in many wars. They have even been attacked (think of Israel), which falsifies the simple claim of “assured destruction”—that any nuclear

country A will deter any kind of attack by any country B because B fears a retaliatory nuclear strike from A. But the most important “nuclear-peace” claim has been about mutually assured destruction, which obtains between two robustly nuclear-armed states. The claim is that (1) rational states having second-strike capabilities—enough deliverable nuclear weaponry to survive a nuclear first strike by an enemy—will have an overwhelming incentive not to attack one another; and (2) we can safely assume that nuclear-armed states are rational. It follows that states with a second-strike capability will not fight one another. Their colossal atomic arsenals neither kept the United States at peace with North Vietnam during the Cold War nor the Soviet Union at peace with Afghanistan. But the

argument remains strong that those arsenals did help keep the U nited States and Soviet Union at peace with each other. Why non-nuclear states are not deterred from fighting nuclear states is an important and open question. But in a time when calls to ban the Bomb are being heard from more and more quarters, we must be clear about precisely what the broad trends toward peace can and cannot tell us. They may tell us nothing about why we have had no World War III, and little about the wisdom of

banning the Bomb now. Regarding the downward trend in international war, Professor Mack is friendlier to more palatable theories such as the “democratic peace” (democracies do not fight one another, and

the proportion of democracies has increased, hence less war); the interdependence or “commercial peace” (states

with extensive economic ties find it irrational to fight one another, and interdependence has increased, hence less war); and the notion

that people around the world are more anti-war than their forebears were. Concerning the

downward trend in civil wars, he favors theories of economic growth (where commerce is enriching enough

people, violence is less appealing—a logic similar to that of the “commercial peace” thesis that applies among nations) and the end of the Cold War (which end reduced superpower support for rival rebel factions in so many Third-World countries). These are all plausible mechanisms for peace. What is more, none of them excludes any other; all could be working toward the same end. That would

be somewhat puzzling, however. Is the world just lucky these days? How is it that an array of peace-inducing factors happens to be working coincidentally in our time, when such a magical array was absent in the past?

The answer may be that one or more of these mechanisms reinforces some of the others, or perhaps some of them are mutually reinforcing. Some scholars, for example, have been focusing on whether economic growth might support democracy and vice versa, and whether both might support international cooperation, including to end civil wars. We would still need to explain how this charmed circle of causes got started, however. And here let me raise another factor, perhaps even less appealing than the

“nuclear peace” thesis, at least outside of the United States. That factor is what international relations scholars call hegemony—

specifically American hegemony. A theory that many regard as discredited, but that refuses to go away, is called

hegemonic stability theory. The theory emerged in the 1970s in the realm of international political economy. It asserts that for the global economy to remain open—for countries to keep barriers to trade and investment low—one powerful country must take the lead. Depending on the theorist we consult, “taking the lead” entails paying for global public goods (keeping the sea lanes open, providing liquidity to the international economy),

coercion (threatening to raise trade barriers or withdraw military protection from countries that

cheat on the rules), or both. The theory is skeptical that international cooperation in economic matters can emerge or endure absent a hegemon. The distastefulness of such claims is self-evident: they imply that it is good for everyone the world over if one country has more wealth and power than others. More precisely, they imply that it has been good for the world that the United States has been so predominant. There is no obvious reason why hegemonic stability theory could not apply to other areas of international cooperation, including in security affairs, human rights, international law, peacekeeping (UN or otherwise),

and so on. What I want to suggest here—suggest, not test—is that American hegemony might just be a deep cause of the steady decline of political deaths in the world. How could that be? After all, the report states that United States is the third most war-prone country since 1945. Many of the deaths depicted in Figure 10.4 were in wars that involved the United States (the Vietnam War being the leading one). Notwithstanding politicians’ claims to the contrary, a candid look at U.S. foreign policy

reveals that the country is as ruthlessly self-interested as any other great power in history. The

answer is that U.S. hegemony might just be a deeper cause of the proximate causes outlined by Professor Mack. Consider economic growth and openness to foreign trade and investment, which (so

say some theories) render violence irrational. American power and policies may be responsible for these in two related ways. First, at least since the 1940s Washington has prodded other countries to embrace the market capitalism that entails economic openness and produces sustainable economic growth. The United States promotes capitalism for selfish reasons, of course: its own domestic system depends upon growth, which in turn depends upon the efficiency gains from economic interaction with foreign countries, and the more the better. During the Cold War most of its allies

accepted some degree of market-driven growth. Second, the U.S.-led western victory in the Cold War damaged the credibility of alternative paths to development—communism and import-substituting industrialization being

the two leading ones—and left market capitalism the best model. The end of the Cold War also involved an end to the billions of rubles in Soviet material support for regimes that tried to make these alternative models work. (It also, as Professor Mack

notes, eliminated the superpowers’ incentives to feed civil violence in the Third World.) What we call globalization is caused in part by the emergence of the United States as the global hegemon. The same case can be made,

with somewhat more difficulty, concerning the spread of democracy. Washington has supported democracy only under certain conditions—the chief one being the absence of a popular anti-American movement in the target state—but those conditions have become much more widespread following the collapse of communism. Thus in the 1980s the Reagan administration—the most anti-communist government America ever had—began to dump America’s old dictator friends, starting in the Philippines. Today Islamists tend to be anti-American, and so the Obama administration is skittish about democracy in Egypt and other authoritarian Muslim

countries. But general U.S. material and moral support for liberal democracy remains strong.

Hegemony is the key to global security and transnational cooperation – powerful actors get things done

Beckley, ’11 [Michael Beckley is a research fellow in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center

for Science and International Affairs. He will become an assistant professor of political science at Tufts University in the fall of 2012. “China’s Century?”. International Security, Winter 2011/12, Vol. 36, No. 3, Pages 41-78. December 28 2011. http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/ISEC_a_00066]

The other potential reaction is retrenchment—the divestment of all foreign policy obligations save those linked to vital interests, defined in a narrow and national manner. Advocates of retrenchment assume, or hope, that the world will sort itself out on its own; that whatever replaces American hegemony, whether it be a return to balance of power politics or a transition to a postpower paradise, will

naturally maintain international order and prosperity. Order and prosperity, however, are unnatural. They can never be presumed. When achieved, they are the result of determined action by powerful actors and, in particular, by the most powerful actor, which is, and will be for some time, the United States. Arms buildups, insecure sea-lanes, and closed markets are only the most obvious

risks of U.S. retrenchment. Less obvious are transnational problems, such as global warming, water scarcity, and disease, which may fester without a leader to rally collective action. Hegemony, of course, carries its own risks and costs. In particular, America’s global military presence might tempt policymakers to use

force when they should choose diplomacy or inaction. If the United States abuses its power, however, it is not because it is too engaged with the world, but because its engagement lacks strategic vision. The solution is better strategy, not retrenchment. The first step toward sound strategy is to recognize that the status quo for the United States is pretty good: it does not face a hegemonic rival, and

the trends favor continued U.S. dominance. The overarching goal of American foreign policy should be to preserve this state of affairs. Declinists claim the United States should “adopt a neomercantilist international economic

policy” and “disengage from current alliance commitments in East Asia and Europe.” 161 But the fact that the United States rose relative to China while propping up the world economy and maintaining a hegemonic presence abroad casts doubt on the wisdom of such calls for radical policy change .

Hegemony solves war – The United states maintains control

Kagan 11 – Robert, Senior Fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution (January 24, 2011, “The Price of Power,” http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/price-power_533696.html?page=3)

Others have. For decades “realist” analysts have called for a strategy of “offshore balancing.” Instead of the United States providing security in East Asia and the Persian Gulf, it would withdraw its forces from Japan, South Korea, and the Middle East and let the nations in those regions balance one another. If the balance broke down and war erupted, the United States would then intervene militarily until balance was restored. In the

Middle East and Persian Gulf, for instance, Christopher Layne has long proposed “passing the mantle of regional stabilizer” to a consortium of “Russia, China, Iran, and India.” In East Asia offshore balancing would mean letting China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and others manage their own problems, without U.S. involvement—again, until the balance broke down and war erupted, at which point the United States would provide assistance to restore the balance and then, if necessary, intervene with its own forces to restore peace and stability. Before examining whether this would be a wise strategy, it is important to understand that this really is the only genuine alternative to the one the United States has pursued for the past 65 years. To their credit, Layne and others who support the concept of offshore balancing have eschewed halfway measures and airy assurances that we can do more with less, which are likely recipes for disaster. They recognize that either the United States is actively involved in providing security and stability in regions beyond the Western Hemisphere, which means maintaining a robust presence in those regions, or it is not. Layne and others are frank in calling for an end to the global security strategy developed in the aftermath of World War II, perpetuated through the Cold War, and continued

by four successive post-Cold War administrations. At the same time, it is not surprising that none of those administrations embraced offshore balancing as a strategy. The idea of relying on Russia, China, and Iran to jointly “stabilize” the Middle East and Persian Gulf will not strike many as an attractive proposition. Nor is U.S. withdrawal from East Asia and the Pacific likely to have a stabilizing effect on that region. The prospects of a war on the Korean Peninsula would increase. Japan and other nations in the region would face the choice of succumbing to Chinese hegemony or taking unilateral steps for self-defense, which in Japan’s case would mean the rapid creation of a formidable nuclear arsenal. Layne and other offshore balancing enthusiasts, like John Mearsheimer, point to two notable occasions when the United States allegedly practiced this strategy. One was the Iran-Iraq war, where the United States supported Iraq for years against Iran in the hope that the two would balance and weaken each other. The other was American policy in the 1920s and 1930s, when the United States allowed the great European powers to balance one another, occasionally providing economic aid, or military aid, as in the Lend-Lease program of assistance to Great Britain once war broke out. Whether this was really American strategy in that era is open for debate—most

would argue the United States in this era was trying to stay out of war not as part of a considered strategic judgment but as an end in itself. Even if the United States had been pursuing offshore balancing in the first decades of the 20th century, however, would we really call that strategy a success? The United States wound up intervening with millions of troops, first in Europe, and then in Asia and Europe simultaneously, in the two most dreadful wars in human history. It was with the memory of those two wars in mind, and in the belief that American strategy in those

interwar years had been mistaken, that American statesmen during and after World War II determined on the new global strategy that the United States has pursued ever since. Under Franklin Roosevelt, and then under the leadership of

Harry Truman and Dean Acheson, American leaders determined that the safest course was to build “situations of strength” (Acheson’s phrase) in strategic locations around the world, to build a “preponderance of power,” and to create an international system with American power at its center. They left substantial numbers of troops in East Asia and in Europe and built a globe-girdling system of naval and air bases to enable the rapid projection of force to strategically important parts of the world.

They did not do this on a lark or out of a yearning for global dominion. They simply rejected the offshore balancing strategy, and they did so because they believed it had led to great, destructive wars in the past and would likely do so again. They believed their new global strategy was more likely to deter major war and therefore be less destructive and less expensive in the long run. Subsequent administrations, from both parties and with often differing perspectives on the proper course in many areas of foreign policy, have all agreed on this core strategic approach. From the beginning this strategy was assailed as too ambitious and too expensive. At the dawn of the Cold War, Walter Lippmann railed against Truman’s containment strategy as suffering from an

unsustainable gap between ends and means that would bankrupt the United States and exhaust its power. Decades later, in the waning years of the Cold War, Paul Kennedy warned of “imperial overstretch,” arguing that American decline was inevitable “if the trends in national indebtedness, low productivity increases, [etc.]” were allowed to continue at the same time as “massive American commitments of men, money and

materials are made in different parts of the globe.” Today, we are once again being told that this global strategy needs to give way to a more restrained and modest approach, even though the indebtedness crisis that we face in coming years is not caused by the present, largely successful global strategy. Of course it is precisely the success of that

strategy that is taken for granted. The enormous benefits that this strategy has provided, including the financial benefits, somehow never appear on the ledger. They should. We might begin by asking about the global security order that the United

States has sustained since Word War II—the prevention of major war, the support of an open trading system, and promotion of the liberal principles of free markets and free government. How much is that order worth? What would be

the cost of its collapse or transformation into another type of order? Whatever the nature of the current economic difficulties, the past six decades have seen a greater increase in global prosperity than any time in human history. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. Once-backward nations have become economic dynamos. And the American economy, though suffering ups and downs throughout this period, has on the whole benefited immensely from this international order. One price of this success has been maintaining a sufficient military capacity to provide the essential security underpinnings of this order. But has the price not been worth it? In the first half of the 20th century, the

United States found itself engaged in two world wars. In the second half, this global American strategy helped produce a peaceful end to the great-power struggle of the Cold War and then 20 more years of great-power peace. Looked at coldly, simply in terms of dollars and cents, the benefits of that strategy far outweigh the costs. The

danger, as always, is that we don’t even realize the benefits our strategic choices have provided. Many assume that the world has simply become more peaceful, that great-power conflict has become impossible, that nations have learned that military force has little utility, that economic power is what counts. This belief in progress and the perfectibility of humankind and the institutions of international order is always alluring to Americans and Europeans and other children of the Enlightenment. It was the prevalent belief in the decade before World War I, in the first years after World War II, and in those heady days after the Cold

War when people spoke of the “end of history.” It is always tempting to believe that the international order the United States built and sustained with its power can exist in the absence of that power, or at least with much less of it. This is the hidden assumption of those who call for a change in American strategy: that the United States can stop playing its role and yet all the benefits that came from that role will keep pouring in. This is a great if recurring illusion, the idea that you can pull a leg out from under a table and the table will not fall over.

Hegemony stops great power wars and creates global stability

Kagan, Senior Fellow at Brookings, 3-14-’12 (Robert, “America has made the world freer, safer and wealthier” CNN, http://us.cnn.com/2012/03/14/opinion/kagan-world-america-made/index.html?hpt=hp_c1)

We take a lot for granted about the way the world looks today -- the widespread freedom, the unprecedented global prosperity (even despite the current economic crisis), and the absence of war among great powers. In 1941 there were only a dozen democracies in

the world. Today there are more than 100. For four centuries prior to 1950, global GDP rose by less than 1 percent a year. Since 1950 it has risen by an average of 4 percent a year, and billions of people have been lifted out of poverty. The first half of the 20th century saw the two most destructive wars in the history of mankind, and in prior centuries war among

great powers was almost constant. But for the past 60 years no great powers have gone to war. This is the world America made when it assumed global leadership after World War II. Would this world order survive if America declined as a great power? Some American intellectuals insist that a "Post-American" world need not look very different from the American world and that all we need

to do is "manage" American decline. But that is wishful thinking. If the balance of power shifts in the direction of other powers, the world order will inevitably change to suit their interests and preferences. Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored democratic governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the great power autocracies .

Both China and Russia already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they gain greater relative influence in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power. What about the free

market, free trade economic order? People assume China and other rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it. They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. But China's form of capitalism is heavily dominated by the state, with the ultimate goal being preservation of the ruling party.

Although the Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could end up undermining it simply because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of wealth and the power it brings. They might kill the goose because they can't figure out how to keep both it and

themselves alive. Finally, what about the long peace that has held among the great powers for the better part of six decades? Many people imagine that American predominance will be replaced by some kind of multipolar harmony. But multipolar systems have historically been neither stable nor peaceful. War among the great powers was a common, if not constant, occurrence in the long periods of multipolarity in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The 19th century was notable for two stretches of great-power peace of roughly four decades each, punctuated, however,

by major wars among great powers and culminating in World War I, the most destructive and deadly war mankind had known up to that point. The era of American predominance has shown that there is no better recipe for great-power peace than certainty about who holds the upper hand. Many people view the present international order as the inevitable result of human progress, a combination of advancing science and technology, an increasingly global economy,

strengthening international institutions, evolving "norms" of international behavior, and the gradual but inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over other forms of government --

forces of change that transcend the actions of men and nations. But there was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others -- in America's case, the domination of liberal free market principles of economics, democratic principles of politics, and a peaceful international system that supports these, over other visions that other nations and peoples may have. The present order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it. If and when American power declines, the institutions and norms American power has supported will decline , too. Or they may collapse altogether as we transition into another kind of world order, or into disorder. We may discover then that the United States was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American power was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophe -- which was what the world looked like right before the American order came into being.

Hegemony is a good thing – It protects democracy

Kagan 12, Robert, senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution [“Why the World Needs America,” February 11th, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203646004577213262856669448.html]

With the outbreak of World War I, the age of settled peace and advancing liberalism—of European civilization approaching its pinnacle—collapsed into an age of hyper-nationalism, despotism and economic calamity. The once-promising spread of democracy and liberalism halted and then reversed course, leaving a handful of outnumbered and besieged democracies living nervously in the shadow of fascist

and totalitarian neighbors. The collapse of the British and European orders in the 20th century did not produce a new dark

age—though if Nazi Germany and imperial Japan had prevailed, it might have—but the horrific conflict that it produced was, in its own way, just as devastating. Would the end of the present American-dominated order have less dire consequences? A surprising number of American intellectuals, politicians and policy makers greet the prospect with equanimity. There is a general sense that the end of the era of American pre-eminence, if and when it comes, need not mean the end of the present international order, with its widespread freedom, unprecedented global prosperity (even amid the current economic crisis) and absence of war among the great powers.

American power may diminish, the political scientist G. John Ikenberry argues, but "the underlying foundations of the liberal

international order will survive and thrive." The commentator Fareed Zakaria believes that even as the balance shifts

against the U.S., rising powers like China "will continue to live within the framework of the current international system." And there are elements across the political spectrum—Republicans who call for retrenchment, Democrats who put their faith in international law and institutions—who don't imagine that a "post-American world" would look very different from the American world.

If all of this sounds too good to be true, it is. The present world order was largely shaped by American power

and reflects American interests and preferences. If the balance of power shifts in the direction of other nations, the world order

will change to suit their interests and preferences. Nor can we assume that all the great powers in a post-American

world would agree on the benefits of preserving the present order, or have the capacity to preserve it, even if they wanted to. Take the issue of democracy. For several decades, the balance of power in the world has favored democratic

governments. In a genuinely post-American world, the balance would shift toward the great-power autocracies. Both

Beijing and Moscow already protect dictators like Syria's Bashar al-Assad. If they gain greater relative influence

in the future, we will see fewer democratic transitions and more autocrats hanging on to power. The balance in a new, multipolar world might be more favorable to democracy if some of the rising democracies—Brazil, India, Turkey, South Africa—picked up the slack from a declining U.S. Yet not all of them have the desire or the capacity to do it. What about the economic order of free markets and free trade? People assume that China and other rising powers that have benefited so much from the present system would have a stake in preserving it. They wouldn't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. Unfortunately, they might not be able to help

themselves. The creation and survival of a liberal economic order has depended, historically, on great powers that are both

willing and able to support open trade and free markets, often with naval power. If a declining America is unable to maintain its long-standing hegemony on the high seas, would other nations take on the burdens and the expense of sustaining navies to fill in the gaps? Even if they did, would this produce an open global commons—or rising tension? China and India are building bigger navies, but the result so far has been greater competition, not greater security. As Mohan Malik has noted in this newspaper, their "maritime rivalry could spill into the open in a decade or two," when India deploys an aircraft carrier in the Pacific Ocean and China deploys one in the Indian Ocean. The move from American-dominated oceans to collective policing by several great powers could be a recipe for competition and conflict rather than for a liberal economic order. And do the Chinese really value an open economic system? The Chinese economy soon may become the largest in the world, but it will be far from the richest. Its size is a product of the country's enormous population, but in per capita terms, China remains relatively poor. The U.S., Germany and Japan have a per capita GDP of over $40,000. China's is a little over $4,000, putting it at the same level as Angola, Algeria and Belize. Even if optimistic forecasts are correct, China's per

capita GDP by 2030 would still only be half that of the U.S., putting it roughly where Slovenia and Greece are today. Although the

Chinese have been beneficiaries of an open international economic order, they could end up undermining it simply

because, as an autocratic society, their priority is to preserve the state's control of wealth and the power that it

brings. They might kill the goose that lays the golden eggs because they can't figure out how to keep both it and themselves alive. Finally, what about the long peace that has held among the great powers for the better part of six decades?

Would it survive in a post-American world? Most commentators who welcome this scenario imagine that American

predominance would be replaced by some kind of multipolar harmony. But multipolar systems have historically

been neither particularly stable nor particularly peaceful. Rough parity among powerful nations is a source of uncertainty that

leads to miscalculation. Conflicts erupt as a result of fluctuations in the delicate power equation. War among the great

powers was a common, if not constant, occurrence in the long periods of multipolarity from the 16th to the 18th centuries, culminating in the series of enormously destructive Europe-wide wars that followed the French Revolution and ended with Napoleon's defeat in 1815. The 19th century was notable for two stretches of great-power peace of roughly four decades each, punctuated by major conflicts. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was a mini-world war involving well over a million Russian, French, British and Turkish troops, as well as forces from nine other nations; it produced almost a half-million dead combatants and many more wounded. In the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), the two nations together fielded close to two million troops, of whom nearly a half-million were killed or wounded. The peace that followed these conflicts was characterized by increasing tension and competition, numerous war scares and massive increases in armaments on both land and sea. Its climax was World War I, the most destructive and deadly conflict that mankind had known up to that point. As the political scientist Robert W. Tucker has observed, "Such stability and moderation as the balance brought rested ultimately on the threat or use of force. War remained the essential means for maintaining the balance of power." There is little reason to believe that a return to multipolarity in the 21st century would bring greater peace and

stability than it has in the past. The era of American predominance has shown that there is no better recipe for great-power

peace than certainty about who holds the upper hand. President Bill Clinton left office believing that the key task for America was to "create the world we would like to live in when we are no longer the world's only superpower," to prepare for "a time when we would have to share the stage." It is an eminently sensible-sounding proposal. But can it be done? For particularly in

matters of security, the rules and institutions of international order rarely survive the decline of the nations that erected them. They are like scaffolding around a building: They don't hold the building up; the building holds them up. Many foreign-policy experts see the present international order as the inevitable result of human progress, a combination of advancing science and technology, an increasingly global economy, strengthening international institutions, evolving "norms" of

international behavior and the gradual but inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over other forms of government—forces of change that transcend the actions of men and nations. Americans certainly like to believe that our preferred order survives because it is right and just—not only for us but for everyone. We assume that the triumph of democracy is the triumph of a better idea, and the victory of market capitalism is the victory of a better system, and that both are irreversible. That is why Francis Fukuyama's thesis about "the end of history" was so attractive at the end of the Cold War and retains its appeal even now, after it has been discredited by events. The idea of inevitable evolution means that there is no requirement to impose a decent order. It will merely happen. But international order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others—in America's case, the domination of free-market and democratic principles, together with an international system that supports them. The present order will last only as long as those who favor it and benefit from it retain the will and capacity to defend it. There was nothing inevitable about the world that was created after World War II. No divine providence or unfolding Hegelian dialectic required the triumph of democracy and capitalism, and there is no

guarantee that their success will outlast the powerful nations that have fought for them. Democratic progress and liberal economics

have been and can be reversed and undone. The ancient democracies of Greece and the republics of Rome and Venice all fell to more powerful forces or through their own failings. The evolving liberal economic order of Europe collapsed in the 1920s and 1930s. The

better idea doesn't have to win just because it is a better idea. It requires great powers to champion it. If and when American power

declines, the institutions and norms that American power has supported will decline, too. Or more likely, if history is a

guide, they may collapse altogether as we make a transition to another kind of world order, or to disorder. We may discover

then that the U.S. was essential to keeping the present world order together and that the alternative to American power

was not peace and harmony but chaos and catastrophe—which is what the world looked like right before the American order came into being.

At: Hege bad- pursuit inevitable

US interventionism is inevitable – elites will cling to hegemony.

Calleo 9 – David P. Calleo (University Professor at The Johns Hopkins University and Dean Acheson Professor at its Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)) 2009 p. 4-5

It is tempting to believe that America’s recent misadventures will discredit and suppress our hegemonic longings and that, following the presidential election of 2008, a new administration will abandon them. But so long as our identity as a nation is intimately bound up with seeing ourselves as the world’s most powerful country, at the heart of a global system, hegemony is likely to remain the recurring obsession of our official imagination, the id´ee fixe of our foreign policy.

America’s hegemonic ambitions have, after all, suffered severe setbacks before. Less than half a

century has passed since the “lesson of Vietnam.” But that lesson faded without forcing us to abandon the old fantasies of omnipotence. The fantasies merely went into remission, until the fall of the Soviet Union provided an irresistible occasion for their return. Arguably, in its collapse, the Soviet Union proved to be

a greater danger to America’s own equilibrium than in its heyday. Dysfunctional imaginations are scarcely a rarity – among individuals or among nations. “Reality” is never a clear picture that imposes itself from without. Imaginations need to collaborate. They synthesize old and new images, concepts, and ideas

and fuse language with emotions – all according to the inner grammar of our minds. These synthetic constructions become our reality, our way of depicting the world in which we live. Inevitably, our imaginations present us with only a partial picture. As Walter Lippmann once put it, our imaginations create a “pseudo-environment between ourselves and the world.”2

No impact turns – pursuit of hegemony is inevitable.

(Edelman 10)

Eric S (PhD in Diplomatic History from Yale, Foreign Ambassador). “Understanding America’s Contested Primacy.” Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.

Most observers, including critics of US primacy, have tended to see continuity in US policy across the George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and

George W. Bush Administrations. Some have noted that the current administration also seems committed to US primacy. With three consecutive presidencies committed to a strategy of continued United States primacy it was not surprising that candidate Barack Obama issued a similar call for “renewing American leadership.” “Today,” he wrote in the summer of 2007, the United States is “again called to provide visionary leadership.” Candidate Obama suggested that “the American moment is not over, but it must be seized anew. To see American power in terminal decline is to ignore America’s great

promise and historic purpose in the world.”38 In office, however, there appears to be more of a debate within the administration

about American decline and its implications for the country’s foreign and national security policies. Some have suggested that accommodation to decline is implicit in the Administration’s flirtation with a policy of “strategic reassurance” to China and broader accommodation to decline. As two observers recently noted, President Obama’s “foreign policy strategy is to reposition America for the post-American world. Understanding that the United States’ brief moment of global dominance has come and gone, he aims to ensure America gets its way by forging tactical alliances. He will work

with China on the global economy, with Russia on nuclear disarmament, and with anyone else who can help serve the US’s interest.” It is too early to make a definitive judgment of how the present administration will address the

issue of US primacy and if the above description is an accurate portrayal of the administration’s aims, but history would suggest that the argument for continued US leadership will prevail. The administration’s avoidance of any

public description of its policies in these terms, the controversy associated with strategic reassurance to China, and the president’s

noticeable avoidance of the term during his November 2009 trip to China are all consistent with that view.39 The debate over primacy is not a partisan issue. Both Republicans and Democrats have been divided over the issue of whether and how to maintain America’s primacy in the international system. As the country contends with a rising China, the increased economic clout of the

other so-called BRIC countries, and the prospect of a multipolar world these debates will undoubtedly continue. One factor that will shape the debate is the willingness of the American people to support the policy and pay the attendant costs of continued predominance. Some believe that the American public, exhausted by eight years of military exertion in Iraq and Afghanistan, and focused by the Great Recession on job creation and health care, may be willing to accommodate US policy to other rising powers and forego a policy of global primacy. There is no doubt that these factors have shaped the recent public perception of America’s role in the world. Poll data has long shown that, when asked for their view, Americans will express

a preference for acting in concert with other nations in the international arena. There has also, however, been consistent public support for US leadership in global affairs and as Samuel Huntington suggested in the late 1980’s there may have been an electoral penalty for the perception that the Carter Administration was accommodating itself to American decline. American society, because of its

heavy emphasis on individual achievement and its relatively free-wheeling market economy, is much more competitive than European social welfare states. Although that may change over time, for the moment it seems likely that when faced with choices about decline Americans are likely to opt for continued leadership. That certainly is the lesson of the post-Cold War period.40

Offshore wind increases economic growth- it creates manufacturing and distribution jobs, and increases exports

N’dolo 10 – associate principal @ Camoin Associates

(Michael and Bruce Bailey, “Offshore development can yield economic benefits,” North American Wind Power, Fall 2010)

Wind power is a job-creation engine . According to the American Wind Energy Association, the wind industry

supported over 85,000 jobs in 2009 alone. Most of these jobs were in manufacturing, an area of the U.S. labor force that has

been declining rapidly for years. The wind energy industry represents a significant

opportunity for turning this decline around .¶ Although wind power industry clusters exist in North America, there

are many specifics to offshore wind that differentiate it from its onshore cousin. Requirements such as installation vessels, unique turbine components, specialized research focus, and professional and technical experience are not yet present in the North American workforce skill set. All of these unique requirements represent an economic opportunity for job creation, ranging from research, design and manufacturing to operations and maintenance.¶ Vessels. Highly specialized installation vessels must be built, operated, repaired and docked during the off-season. The newest generation of such vessels

under development in Europe can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to construct and can require a small army of workers in ports with sufficient ship-building capacity. In addition, other smaller vessels are necessary for ongoing maintenance and repair operations.¶ The Jones Act requires that all goods transported by water between U.S. ports are carried in U.S.-flagged ships that are constructed in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens and crewed by¶ permanent residents of the U.S. Although some developers have been successful in requesting an exception, allowing them to use foreign vessels, the Jones Act creates a significant barrier for off-shore

developers. Investing and developing a domestic vessel industry to serve the offshore market would significantly increase the attractiveness of a region to offshore

developers and investors, in addition to creating jobs to support the new industry .¶

Components. Offshore components tend to he larger and bulkier. Certain components are either unique to (foundations) or modified for (hermetically sealed nacelles, seaworthy substations, nacelle-mounted or substation-mounted helicopter

pads for maintenance, and corrosion-resistant materials) offshore use. One of the largest portions of the installed cost of a typical offshore wind farm is directly attributable to the manufacturing and pro-assembly of turbine and foundation components. In regions where a

high level of wind component manufacturing currently exists, there is significant opportunity tor creating offshore wind component manufacturing clusters.¶ Installation. Turbines and foundations must be assembled in a staging area, loaded onto a vessel and installed. There are limitations

on the ability of any one state or province to service both coasts, but it is reasonable to assume, for example, that an installation cluster in the Mid-Atlantic region of the¶ U.S. could provide installation capacity for a number of projects on the East Coast.

Manufacturing K 2 Econ

US manufacturing critical to economic stability, innovation, security, and the job sector

Kurfess 13 (Tom, an ASME Fellow. is a professor of mechanical engineering at 6eorgia Institute of Technology. Before that he was assistant director for advanced manufacturing at the White House Office of Science and technology policy, “Why Manufacturing Matters”, ASME, EBSCO, Date accessed 6/29/14)

Services make up nearly two-thirds of the U.S. economy. Manufacturing accounts for only 12 percent. For many decades, economists looking at this disparity argued that manufacturing played a minor role in the modern economy, and that $1 billion generated by ware housing, transportation, and retailing produced the same economic benefits as $1

billion in production. They were wrong. Over the past decade, more and more economists have confirmed that manufacturing is indeed different from services. It is essential to innovation, and tightly

linked to our nations economic health and national security. First, while manufacturing might be a

small component of the U.S. economy, its output still came to $1.9 trillion in 2012, and by itself would have made the worlds tenth largest economy. The US manufacturing sector was larger than the total economies of lndia, Canada, Mexico, or South Korea. The United States was the world’s leading producer of manufactured goods from 1895 through 2009. Although some experts estimate that Chinese output surpassed that of the U.S. in 2012. the United States remains the world’s largest advanced technology producer. Manufactured goods constituted 86 percent of all US

exports in 2010. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, every dollar spent in manufacturing generates $1.48 in economic activity more than any other major economic sector. Also, improvements in productivity have leveraged the productive power of the American worker, enabling more manufacturing output per person. It is true

that manufacturing employment has declined significantly since the start of the century, but the sector still employs 12 million workers, just under 9 percent of total U.S. employment. It also supports non-manufacturing jobs up and down the supply chain, from mining to warehousing. as well as engineering, financial,

and legal services. Manufacturing is also necessary to support national and homeland security According to the Department of Defense, for instance, in its 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, “In the mid-to-

long term, it is imperative that we have a robust industrial base with sufficient manufacturing capability and capacity to preserve our technological edge afld provide for the reset and recapitalization of our force7 These arguments about the importance of manufacturing are important and well known. But what has changed the minds of many economists over the past decade is that manufacturing plays an essential role in innovation. While manufacturing is only 12 percent of the U.S. economy, it accounts for two-thirds of all private spending on R&D. While it provides only 9 per cent of ILS. jobs. it

employs one out of three engineers. Fully 60 percent of royalties from licensing intellectual property go to manufacturing firms. Manufacturing is the engine that drives US, innovation. It transforms laboratory research into new products and production processes that generate profits and make the world a better place, It creates new and vital industries, ranging from computers and wireless to biotechnology and solar

power. As engineers and manufacturers develop new technologies, they build the capabilities to extend and innovate in new fields. Those innovations give manufacturers the performance or cost edge they need to compete in a crowded international marketplace.

Continued decline of the manufacturing sector eliminates the chance for robust economic growth

Walter Musial, Principal Engineer, National Wind Technology Center at NREL and Bonnie Ram,

Ram Power, L.L.C., September 2010, “Large-Scale Offshore Wind Power in the United States,

Assessment of Opportunities and Barriers, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NERL), http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy10osti/40745.pdf, Accessed 5/10/2014

The nation is also recovering from the most significant economic downturn since the Great Depression. Economists are raising concerns about a return to economic slowdown (gross domestic product [GDP] growth fell from 3.7% in the first quarter of 2010 to 2.4% in the second quarter of 2010) and the prospect of a jobless recovery (as of this writing, the unemployment rate is at 9.5%, down just 0.6 percentage points from its high of 10.1% in October 2009; see Bureau of Economic Analysis 2010; Bureau of Labor Statistics 2010). In addition, the U.S. manufacturing sector, traditionally a source of economic strength, has been buffeted by the outsourcing of production operations overseas and, more recently, the recession. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the manufacturing industry as a whole lost more than 4.1 million jobs between 1998 and 2008 and suggest that the sector will lose an additional 1.2 million jobs by 2018. A continued decline in manufacturing activity will likely increase our nation’s trade deficit; eliminate stable, high-wage jobs for skilled domestic workers; and generally reduce the potential for robust economic growth.

Tech innovation k 2 econ

Innovation is key to growth and prosperity, lack of innovation puts the nation at risk of decline

Levinson 2/11, Levinson, Marc, economist, historian, author and journalist with a long track record of writing and speaking about economic and business issues. "The Rise and Fall of Western Innovation." Strategy-Buissness. PwC Strategy & Inc., 11 Feb. 2014. http://www.strategy-business.com/article/14102a?pg=all Web. 30 June 2014.

Mass Flourishing is meant to be Edmund Phelps’s chef d’oeuvre, the capstone to a half century of research into the sources of national

wealth. In it, the Nobel Prize–winning Columbia University economist lays out one Big Idea: Innovation is the key to economic growth, prosperity, and human happiness. Openness to innovation explains the Western world’s

sudden shift from stasis to growth starting in the 19th century, Phelps claims, and the United States’ willingness to find new ways of doing things made it wealthier than any other nation. Now, though, a decline in the pace of innovation threatens prosperity, in the U.S. and everywhere else. The main cause of this decline, according to Phelps, is corporatism—the inevitable tendency of businesses, workers, and other interests to band together to protect what they have. In modern economies, he

says, corporations, unions, and other interests turn government into an agency for forestalling change and preserving the status quo. This problem has been worse in Europe than in the U.S., which is why

productivity and per capita incomes in Europe have persistently lagged. But even in the U.S., he contends, “the waning of innovation was largely behind the increased joblessness and downward pressure on wages that have been endemic to the post-1972 period.” Having written a couple of books that highlight corporate efforts to hinder innovation, I’m sympathetic to this argument. Readers of the influential book The Rise and Decline of Nations: Economic Growth, Stagflation, and Social Rigidities (Yale University Press, 1982), by the late U.S. economist Mancur Olson, will find that Phelps is

plowing familiar ground. But Phelps goes well beyond Olson in making specific historical claims about the ways in which declining innovation has crippled modern economies by dragging down productivity, reducing employment, and diminishing wealth. Unfortunately, he doesn’t prove his case. Part of the issue lies in how Phelps measures innovation. He constructed an indicator conceptually similar to Tobin’s q, which compares the market value of a company’s assets with their replacement cost. Arguing that a “country’s stock markets offer a clue to the dynamism of its economy,” Phelps takes the market capitalization of a nation’s public companies, defined as the value of their shares plus outstanding bonds, and divides it by the output of the country’s busi-nesses..

Innovation is positively related to job creation

Hausman and Johnson ’14 (Angela Hausman, economist, Wesley Johnson, business professor, The role of innovation in driving the economy: Lessons from the global financial crisis, Journal of Business Research, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829631300115X, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)

Unfortunately, most of the innovations predicted for the last 10 years failed to materialize (Florida, 2009). Fewer innovations stem from overt efforts to appease increasingly risk averse and short-term oriented stockholders (Florida, 2009). Short-term gains make stock prices skyrocket and increase rewards for financial managers, investors, and firms who ignore investments in long-term innovations (Mandel, 2009). Short-term orientation encourages a firm focus on increasing the market share for existing products and controlling

costs, as these behaviors result in higher stock prices (Blass, 2002). Without innovations to entice consumers, firms increasingly depend on cost containment measures to provide short-term gains when consumer spending declines; a feature prominent in the recent economic decline. Cost containment begins a downward spiral as workers are laid-off, which further decreases consumer spending, which creates a need for greater cost containment, causing more lay-offs. Innovation is so important in coaxing away consumer dollars that innovation helps

buffer the effects of increased competition on prices (Blass, 2002). Thus, producing innovative products is the only

way to avoid pricing wars that reduce profitability, ultimately leading to shrinking markets and death for weaker companies. Not only are pricing pressures increasing, but global competition creates extreme competition. Because the line between leader and also-ran is razor-thin, companies must innovate faster, operate leaner, and think globally just to survive (van Opstal, 2009).

Innovation promotes strong economic recovery by lessening competition temporarily

Hausman and Johnson ’14 (Angela Hausman, economist, Wesley Johnson, business professor, The role of innovation in driving the economy: Lessons from the global financial crisis, Journal of Business Research, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S014829631300115X, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)

Of course, not all firms lost sight of the innovation holy grail during the recession and they reap great rewards from their innovative efforts. For instance, Intel chair, Craig Barrett, states 90% of his yearly revenue comes from products that did not even exist in January of

that year (Committee on Prospering in the Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007). Multiple innovations released by Apple Computer, including their widely successful iPad, contribute to massive profits (and record stock prices). However, too few firms share the experiences of Intel and Apple and

rediscovering the importance of innovation is the key to revitalizing businesses and ensuring a

robust recovery (Rose, 2010). In fact, some believe that innovation is not only a viable strategy for

improving current economic conditions and avoiding economic downturns, but ensures a stronger, healthier, and more stable economy emerges (Rose, 2010). A McKensey study, for instance, indicates that twice as many firms failed in 1995 as in 1975, just 20 years earlier (van Opstal, 2009). Many of these firms might still operate if they focused efforts on innovation, according to Blass (2002), who believes that new products ensure the survival of a firm under conditions of hyper-competition and protect its profit margins. In fact, innovative products contributed significantly to recovery from the last major

economic crisis in the 1970's (Chinadaily, 2009). Companies and countries that adapt by moving innovative strategy to the forefront may emerge stronger when the US and much of the rest of the world emerges from the current financial situation, according to Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric (Economist, 2008). We hear the same tune from industry associations and think tanks. For instance the Conference Board states: “We hear it daily across the global business community: The only way out of this crisis is to innovate our way out… it [innovation] should be front and center in strategic planning at all levels of companies and economies,” (AP, 2009). National Science Board (2009) echoes this statement, highlighting the role of

innovation in creating strategic competitive advantage and improving the lives of consumers and their governments. Since innovation spurs job growth, innovation is especially critical in an economy saddled with stubborn, double-digit unemployment rates that defy efforts to improve them, including a trillion-dollar stimulus plan invested by the US government and similar expenditures by much of the industrialized world.

US Econ k 2 World Econ

US economy is key to global economy – economic collapse provokes nuclear war and terrorism.

Frank in 8

Nicholas Frank; Founder of Holigent, a non-profit organization focused on environmental and economic sustainability; “The Dark Scenario”; http://holigent.org/Holigent.org/Dark_Scenario.html

Over the years, the U.S. government has spent $14 trillion more than it collected in taxes as of January 2011. Accumulating such massive debt is the road to bankruptcy. Numbers aside, the legacy of borrowing from the future amounts to taxing our children and

grandchildren without their consent. That corrupts the system and amounts to moral bankruptcy of democracy. While the U.S. is still the consuming engine of the global economy, it is a hollowed economy losing credibility while running on IOUs and borrowed time. Given the increasing interconnectedness of the world’s economies, the collapse of the U.S. economy would inevitably plunge the world into global economic chaos. A 21st century depression will likely prove worse than the Great Depression of the 20th century given that world population has tripled since 1929 while essential resources and the life support capacity of our planet have diminished. Polarization and War Following the fall and dissolution of the Soviet Union, East-West polarization was replaced by a fragmented polarization of the world among cultures, religions and most significantly between the haves and the have-nots. The threat of Mutually Assured (nuclear) Destruction of the Cold War is replaced by terrorism at the hands of suicide bombers recruited mostly from the inexhaustible ranks of the billion have-nots of the world who live in poverty without hope. An even larger-looming threat is a war between the United States and other powers at the end of the oil age when trade relations, by then broken by depressed economies, will no longer serve as the glue between past trading partners. Instead, competition for diminishing resources will dominate the agenda and may spark an intentional or accidental nuclear war .

Econ Solves War

Economic downturn causes internal conflict, great power wars over territorial disputes, and extinction.

Auslin 2009, scholar at American Enterprise Institute, [Michael, “The global Economy Unravels” American Enterprise Institute, http://www.aei.org/publications/filter.all,pubID.29502/pub_detail.asp]

What do these trends mean in the short and medium term? The Great Depression showed how social and global chaos followed hard on economic collapse. The mere fact that parliaments across the globe, from America to Japan, are unable to make responsible, economically sound recovery plans suggests that they do not know what to do and are simply hoping for the least disruption. Equally worrisome is the adoption of more statist economic programs around the globe, and the concurrent decline of trust in free-market systems. The threat of instability is a pressing concern. China, until last year the world's fastest growing economy, just reported that 20 million migrant laborers lost their

jobs. Even in the flush times of recent years, China faced upward of 70,000 labor uprisings a year. A sustained downturn poses grave and possibly immediate threats to Chinese internal stability. The regime in Beijing may be faced with a choice of repressing its own people or diverting their energies

outward, leading to conflict with China's neighbors. Russia, an oil state completely dependent on energy sales, has had to put down riots in its Far East as well as in downtown Moscow. Vladimir Putin's rule has been predicated on squeezing civil liberties while providing economic largesse. If that devil's bargain falls apart, then wide-scale repression inside Russia, along with a continuing threatening posture toward Russia's neighbors, is likely. Even apparently stable societies face increasing

risk and the threat of internal or possibly external conflict. As Japan's exports have plummeted by nearly 50%, one-third of the country's prefectures have passed emergency economic stabilization plans. Hundreds of thousands of temporary employees hired during the first part of this decade are being laid off. Spain's unemployment rate is expected to climb to nearly 20% by the end of 2010; Spanish unions are already protesting the lack of jobs, and the specter of violence,

as occurred in the 1980s, is haunting the country. Meanwhile, in Greece, workers have already taken to the streets. Europe as a whole will face dangerously increasing tensions between native citizens and immigrants, largely from poorer Muslim nations, who have increased the labor pool in the past several decades. Spain has absorbed five million immigrants since 1999, while nearly 9% of Germany's residents have foreign citizenship, including almost 2 million Turks. The xenophobic labor strikes in the U.K. do not bode well for

the rest of Europe. A prolonged global downturn, let alone a collapse, would dramatically raise tensions inside these countries. Couple that with possible protectionist legislation in the

United States, unresolved ethnic and territorial disputes in all regions of the globe and a loss of confidence that world leaders actually know what they are doing. The result may be a series of small explosions that coalesce into a big bang.

Economic Recessions Cause Wars and Revolutions

Cooke 10

[Shamus Cooke, a social service worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action and Global Research. May 10, 2010 http://www.globalresearch.ca/how-economic-recessions-cause-wars-and-revolutions/19080 7/16/14-CMH]

A quick glance around the globe reveals a ruined international economy, wars and more wars in the works, and revolutionary movements aplenty — all connected phenomena. No, the apocalypse is not coming;

but the international economic system currently used to arrange the social order is crumbling, taking everyone down with it. The global capitalist system is in far worse shape than most people realize: it may only take the tiny economy of Greece to go bankrupt to break this camel’s back — and finally the word “recession” will be antiquated and “depression” will be in vogue. How did this happen? A great economic downturn would have happened years ago were it not for the monstrous debt that many governments created — consumer, corporate, and state — to prop up the economic system, since debt was needed to fuel the consumption that corporations

depended on for the purchase of their products. When this global debt bubble burst, the current crisis was ignited. The debts started going unpaid and the banks stopped lending, creating the “credit crunch.” Giant corporations thus began failing, and the governments that are heavily “influenced” by these corporations went on a bailout frenzy: billions and trillions of taxpayer money poured into these companies, keeping them alive to plunder another day. After the bailouts, stupid politicians everywhere declared the capitalist system “saved,” and the crisis over. But bigger crises were already visible on the horizon. The debt that nations used to bailout private corporations was too massive. If these countries’ currencies are to retain any value, the debt must be trimmed (the Euro for example, is widely believed to be “finished”). The battle over how this trimming takes place can be properly referred to as “class war” — a revolution in Greece is brewing over such an issue, with Portugal, Spain, and Italy not far behind. All over Europe and the U.S. the corporate elite is demanding that the giant government debts — due to bailouts and wars — be reduced by lowering wages, gutting social services, slashing public education, Social Security, Medicare, etc. Labor unions and progressive groups are demanding that the rich and corporations, instead, pay for the crisis that they created through progressive taxation, eliminating tax havens, and if need be,

nationalization. This tug of war over society’s resources is class war. The global crisis has developed to such a degree that no middle ground can be safely bargained. This revolution-creating dynamic also spawns wars. Corporations demand that wages and benefits be reduced during a recession so that “profitability is restored.” This is the only way out of a global recession, since nothing is produced under capitalism if it doesn’t create a profit; and recessions destroy profit. But there are other ways to restore profits. While corporate-controlled governments work to restore domestic profitability by attacking the living standards of workers, they likewise look abroad to fix their problems. A sure-fire way to increase profits is to export more products overseas, something Obama has mentioned in dozens of speeches. One way to ensure that a foreign country will accept/market your exported goods is by threatening them, or attacking them. An occupied country, like Iraq for example, was forced to allow a flood of U.S. corporations inside to pillage as they saw fit — an automatic export boom. When the world market shrinks during a recession — since consumers can afford to buy fewer goods — the urge to dominate markets via war increases dramatically. These same shrinking markets compel international corporations, based in different nations, to insanely compete for markets, raw materials, and cheap labor. War is a very logical outcome in such circumstances. President Obama reminds us: “The world’s fastest-growing markets are outside our borders. We need to compete for those customers because other nations are competing for them.” Having a giant military establishment to back them up enables U.S. corporations to be better “competitors” than other nations.

War also serves as a valuable distraction to an angry public which is demanding jobs, higher wages, health care, well-funded public education, and taxes on the wealthy. Better to channel this anger into hatred toward a “foreign enemy.” The above issues are the ones certain to dominate major events

in the coming years. The class war that is erupting as a result of the global depression will affect the majority of people in many nations, through joblessness, shrinking wages, the destruction of government services, or war. As working people in the U.S. begin a fight against these policies, the corporate elite will stop at nothing to implement them, and the social unrest in Europe will be transferred to the U.S. More working people will come to the realization that an economic system owned by giant corporations — themselves owned by very wealthy individuals — is irrational, and needs to be replaced.

Economic decline increases the likeliness of nuclear conflict

Richard Heinberg, Senior Fellow-in-Residence of Post Carbon Institute, December 12, 2012, “Conflict and Change in the Era of Economic Decline: Part 2: War and peace in a shrinking

economy,” http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-12-12/conflict-and-change-in-the-era-of-economic-decline-part-2-war-and-peace-in-a-shrinking-economy, Accessed 5/18/2014

When empires crumble, as they always do, the result is often a free-for-all among previous subject nations and potential rivals as they sort out power relations. The British Empire was a seeming exception to this rule: in that instance, the locus of military, political, and economic power simply migrated to an ally across the Atlantic. A similar graceful transfer seems unlikely in the case of the U.S., as economic decline during the 21st century will be global in scope. A better analogy to the current case might be the fall of Rome, which led to centuries of incursions by barbarians as well as uprisings in client states. Disaster per se need not lead to violence, as Rebecca Solnit argues in her book A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster. She documents five disasters—the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; earthquakes in San Francisco and Mexico City; a giant ship explosion in Halifax, Canada; and 9/11—and shows that rioting, looting, rape, and murder were not automatic results. Instead, for the most part, people pulled together, shared what resources they had, cared for the victims, and in many instances found new sources of joy in everyday life. However, the kinds of social stresses we are discussing now may differ from the disasters Solnit surveys, in that they comprise a “long emergency,” to borrow James Kunstler’s durable phrase. For every heartwarming anecdote about the convergence of rescuers and caregivers on a disaster site, there is a grim historic tale of resource competition turning normal people into monsters. In the current context, a continuing source of concern must be the large number of nuclear weapons now scattered among nine nations. While these weapons primarily exist as a deterrent to military aggression, and while the end of the Cold War has arguably reduced the likelihood of a massive release of these weapons in an apocalyptic fury, it is still possible to imagine several scenarios in which a nuclear detonation could occur as a result of accident, aggression, pre-emption, or retaliation. We are in a race—but it’s not just an arms race; indeed, it may end up being an arms race in reverse. In many nations around the globe the means to pay for armaments and war are starting to disappear; meanwhile, however, there is increasing incentive to engage in international conflict as a way of re-channeling the energies of jobless young males and of distracting the general populace, which might otherwise be in a revolutionary mood. We can only hope that historical momentum can maintain The Great Peace until industrial nations are sufficiently bankrupt that they cannot afford to mount foreign wars on any substantial scale.

***Warming Advantage

Warming = Real/Anthro

Warming is real and anthropogenic – most unbiased, holistic, and objective studies prove.

Muller 7/28/12, Richard (a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and a former MacArthur Foundation fellow, is the author, most recently, of “Energy for Future Presidents: The Science Behind the Headlines.). “The conversion of a climate-change skeptic.” NYT. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/30/opinion/the-conversion-of-a-climate-change-skeptic.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my

mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the

prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause. My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project , which I founded with my

daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase

results from the human emission of greenhouse gases. These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on

global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent

warming could be natural. Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics:

biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially

troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions. The historic temperature pattern we observed has abrupt

dips that match the emissions of known explosive volcanic eruptions; the particulates from such events reflect sunlight, make for beautiful sunsets and cool the earth’s surface for a few years. There are small, rapid variations attributable to El Niño and other

ocean currents such as the Gulf Stream; because of such oscillations, the “flattening” of the recent temperature rise that some people claim is not, in our view, statistically significant. What has caused the gradual but systematic rise of two and a half degrees? We tried fitting the shape to simple math functions (exponentials, polynomials), to solar activity and even to rising functions like world population. By far the best match was to the record of atmospheric carbon dioxide, measured from atmospheric samples and air trapped in polar ice. Just as important,

our record is long enough that we could search for the fingerprint of solar variability ,

based on the historical record of sunspots. That fingerprint is absent. Although the I.P.C.C. allowed

for the possibility that variations in sunlight could have ended the “Little Ice Age,” a period of cooling from the 14th century to about 1850, our data argues strongly that the temperature rise of the past 250 years cannot be attributed to solar changes. This conclusion is, in retrospect, not too surprising; we’ve learned

from satellite measurements that solar activity changes the brightness of the sun very little. How definite is the

attribution to humans? The carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we’ve tried. Its magnitude is consistent with the calculated greenhouse effect — extra warming from trapped heat radiation. These facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism,

but they raise the bar: to be considered seriously, an alternative explanation must match the data at least as well as carbon dioxide does. Adding methane, a second greenhouse gas, to our analysis doesn’t change the results. Moreover, our analysis does not depend on large, complex global climate models, the huge computer programs that are notorious for their hidden assumptions and adjustable parameters. Our result is based simply on the close agreement between the shape of the observed temperature rise and the known greenhouse gas increase. It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed. Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous. The careful analysis by our team is laid out in five scientific papers now online atBerkeleyEarth.org. That site also shows our chart of temperature from 1753 to the present, with its

clear fingerprint of volcanoes and carbon dioxide, but containing no component that matches solar activity. Four of our papers have undergone extensive scrutiny by the scientific community, and the newest, a paper

with the analysis of the human component, is now posted, along with the data and computer programs used. Such transparency is the heart of the scientific method; if you find our conclusions implausible, tell us of any errors of data or analysis. What about the

future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically

adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years. Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

Global and Regional warming has been confirmed to be human caused – scientific consensus

Christidis et al. in 11 (Nikoloas, “The contribution of anthropogenic forcings to regional changes in temperature during the last decade” Climate Dynamics, Online First™, 16 September 2011)

Climate change detection and attribution studies compare observations with output from

climate models in a rigorous statistical framework to assess possible causes of recent climatic changes (Hegerl and Zwiers 2011). Such studies underpin the key attribution statement in the assessment reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that relates human influences on the climate to the observed global mean warming in the last few decades .

The IPCC attributes most of the observed warming to anthropogenic forcings with a likelihood that has increased from[66 to[90% between the last two assessment reports (Mitchell et al. 2001; Hegerl et al. 2007).

While human influences have been identified as the main driver of the global temperature change, the scientific focus has gradually been moving to the attribution of regional changes (Stott et al. 2010). Although so far more emphasis has been placed on temperature changes, which is also what this paper concentrates on, a widening range of other

aspects of regional climates has also been considered, including changes in the hydrological cycle (Zhang et al. 2007; Min et al. 2008; Barnett et al. 2008) and extremes (Stott et al. 2011; Zwiers et al. 2011; Min et al. 2011). As N. Christidis (&) with the global

temperature change, human influence has been identified as the main contributor to continental warming in recent years and the anthropogenic fingerprint has now been detected in the observed warming in all the continents (Stott 2003; Zwiers and Zhang 2003; Gillett et al. 2008).

Overwhelming scientific evidence concludes that warming exists and is happening at unprecedented Rates

Avi-Yonah and Uhlman ‘8 (Reuven S., Professor of Law at the University of Michigan Law School, and David M., Professor at the University of Michigan Law School, March 18, “Combating Global Climate Change: Why a Carbon Tax is a Better Response to Global Warming than Cap and Trade,” http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1109167)

The scientific evidence that global warming is occurring is overwhelming. In its synthesis report released in November 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (“IPCC”) stated that “[e]leven of the last twelve years (1995- 2006) rank among the twelve warmest years in the instrumental record of global surface temperatures (since 1850).”5 The IPCC reported that temperature increases have occurred throughout the world, but most significantly at higher northern latitudes.6 The melting of Arctic ice has often been called “the canary in the coal mine” of global warming.7 In 2007, Arctic ice melted at record levels, causing the opening of the fabled Northwest Passage to navigation for the first time.8 During the same summer, a record 552 billion tons of ice melted from the Greenland ice sheet.9 It is hard to overstate the significance of melting in Greenland. If global warming continues unabated, climatologists predict that the entire Greenland ice sheet would melt, causing several meters of sea level rise and coastal flooding that could imperil much of the Eastern United States.10 While some skeptics argue that global warming is part of normal climate change,11 few climatologists agree. The earth has experienced periods of cooling and warming over time, but warming has never occurred at the rate that it is happening today. The most recent IPCC report noted that “[m]ost of the observed increase in globally-averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic [greenhouse gas] concentrations.”12 Anthropogenic greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Carbon dioxide is by far the most significant of the greenhouse gases, accounting for approximately seventy-five percent of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions between 1970 and 2004.13 Annual global emissions of carbon dioxide increased “almost fivefold in the past century,” and these emissions “have tripled since 1950.”14 The most significant contributing factor in the carbon dioxide emissions increase is the burning of fossil fuels for electricity, heating, air conditioning, and transportation; land- use changes, particularly deforestation, also have played a significant but smaller role.15

Tipping Point

Tipping point coming now – over next four decades.

Times of India 1/31/12. “Artic changes could spell dire consequences.” http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/global-warming/Arctic-changes-could-spell-dire-consequences/articleshow/11698545.cms

The first signs of dangerous climate change in the Arctic could spell dire consequences for the whole of humankind, scientists warn. The Arctic has been warming at three times the global average and the loss of sea ice, which had melted faster in summer than predicted, was linked tentatively to recent extreme cold winters in Europe . But there's more to come and in a manner that has

not been highlighted before. University of Western Australia researchers say the Arctic region is fast approaching a series of imminent "tipping points" that could trigger an abrupt domino effect of large-scale climate change across the entire planet, the Swedish journal AMBIO and Nature

Climate Change report. "There is evidence that these forces are starting to be set in motion. This has major consequences for the future of humankind as climate change progresses," said Carlos

Duarte, professor and director of the university's Oceans Institute. Researchers suggest that the loss of Arctic summer sea ice, most likely over the next four decades, if not before, was expected to have abrupt knock-on effects on cities including Beijing, Tokyo, London, Moscow, Berlin and New York, according to a varsity statement.

We are approaching tipping point now that will trigger extinction – studies show.

Climate Wire 6/7/12. “Is Earth near an environmental tipping point?” Scientific American. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=is-earth-nearing-environmental-tipping-point

Human activities are pushing Earth toward a "tipping point" that could cause sudden, irreversible changes in relatively stable conditions that have allowed civilization to flourish, a new study warns. There are signs that a toxic brew of climate change, habitat loss and population growth is dramatically reshaping life on Earth, an international team of researchers reported yesterday in the journal Nature. Those pressures are greater than the natural forces that caused the end of the last ice age roughly 11,700 years ago, a time when half the planet's large mammal species went extinct and humans migrated out of Africa. "We are doing enough to cause one of these tipping points," said lead author Anthony Barnosky, a paleobiologist at the

University of California, Berkeley. "The question now is, how close are we? Is it inevitable? What are the

changes that we see coming down the road that we should be aware of in order to make the best of it, essentially." The answer provided by Barnosky and more than 20 other experts in paleontology, ecology, geology, population biology and complex systems isn't comforting. The scientists say it's likely -- though not certain -- that Earth is close to another wholesale transformation, but when that will

happen and whether it will be irreversible isn't clear. "We know that at the landscape scale, if you disturb

between 50 to 90 percent of patches, you see major changes in ones that you haven't disturbed directly," Barnosky said. "We know that we are at a point on the planet where you have more than 43 percent of the land surface wholesale transformed for human needs. If we transform more and more,

we'll be at a point where even places we haven't transformed with our sledgehammers will go through major changes."

Warming = Extinction

Warming could lead to human extinction.

Snow and Hannam 14

[Deborah Snow, Peter Hannam covers broad environmental issues ranging from climate change to renewable energy for Fairfax Media. March 31, 2014 http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/climate-change-could-make-humans-extinct-warns-health-expert-20140330-35rus.html-7/16/14-CMH]

The Earth is warming so rapidly that unless humans can arrest the trend, we risk becoming ''extinct'' as a species, a leading Australian health academic has warned. Helen Berry, associate dean in the faculty of health at the

University of Canberra, said while the Earth has been warmer and colder at different points in the planet's history, the rate of change has never been as fast as it is today. ''What is remarkable, and alarming, is the speed of the change since the 1970s, when we started burning a lot of fossil fuels in a massive way,'' she said. ''We can't possibly evolve to match this rate [of warming] and, unless we get control of it, it will mean our extinction eventually.'' Professor Berry is one of three leading academics who have contributed to the health chapter of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report due on Monday. She and co-authors Tony McMichael, of the Australian National University, and Colin Butler, of the University of Canberra, have outlined the health risks of rapid global warming

in a companion piece for The Conversation, also published on Monday. The three warn that the adverse effects on population health and social stability have been ''missing from the discussion'' on climate change. ''Human-driven climate change poses a great threat, unprecedented in type and scale, to wellbeing, health and perhaps even to human survival,'' they write. They predict that the greatest challenges will come from under nutrition and impaired child development from reduced food yields; hospitalizations and deaths due to intense heat waves, fires and other weather-

related disasters; and the spread of infectious diseases. They warn the ''largest impacts'' will be on poorer and vulnerable populations, winding back recent hard-won gains of social development programs. Projecting to an average global warming of 4 degrees by 2100, they say ''people won't be able to cope, let alone work productively, in the hottest parts of the year''. They say that action on climate change would produce ''extremely large health benefits'', which would greatly outweigh the costs of curbing emission growth. A leaked draft of the IPCC report notes that a warming climate would lead to fewer cold weather-related deaths but the benefits would be ''greatly'' outweighed by the impacts of more frequent heat extremes. Under a high emissions scenario, some land regions will experience temperatures four to seven degrees higher than pre-industrial times, the report said. While some adaptive measures are possible, limits to humans' ability to regulate heat will affect health and potentially cut global productivity in the warmest months by 40 per cent by

2100. Body temperatures rising above 38 degrees impair physical and cognitive functions, while risks of organ damage, loss of consciousness and death increase sharply above 40.6 degrees, the draft

report said. Farm crops and livestock will also struggle with thermal and water stress. Staple crops such as corn, rice, wheat and soybeans are assumed to face a temperature limit of 40-45 degrees, with temperature thresholds for key sowing stages near or below 35 degrees, the report said.

Warming ends the capacity for Earth to support life, ushering in the next great extinction event

Sify 2010 – Sydney newspaper citing Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at University of Queensland and Director of the Global Change Institute, and John Bruno, associate professor of Marine Science at UNC; Sify News, “Could unbridled climate changes lead to human extinction?”, http://www.sify.com/news/could-unbridled-climate-changes-lead-to-human-extinction-news-international-kgtrOhdaahc.html

The findings of the comprehensive report: 'The impact of climate change on the world's marine ecosystems'

emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world's oceans, carried out by two of the world's leading marine scientists. One of the authors of the report is Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, professor at The University of Queensland and the

director of its Global Change Institute (GCI). 'We may see sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans , including the capacity of the planet to support people . This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the next great extinction event,' says Hoegh-Guldberg. 'The findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues. The earth's ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30 per

cent of human-generated carbon dioxide, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. This study shows worrying

signs of ill-health. It's as if the earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!,' he added. 'We are entering a period in which the ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail', he

added. The 'fundamental and comprehensive' changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean

depths. These are driving major changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and

mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer, smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms. Study co-author John F Bruno,

associate professor in marine science at The University of North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet's oceans, in ways 'unprecedented in nearly a million years'. 'This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the way marine ecosystems function,' Bruno warned, according to a GCI release. These findings were published in Science.

Catastrophic warming risks extinction

Mazo 10 – PhD in Paleoclimatology from UCLA

(Jeffrey Mazo, Managing Editor, Survival and Research Fellow for Environmental Security and Science Policy at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, 3-2010, “Climate Conflict: How global warming threatens security and what to do about it,” pg. 122)

The best estimates for global warming to the end of the century range from 2.5-4.~C above pre-industrial levels, depending on the scenario. Even in the best-case scenario, the low end of the likely range is 1.goC, and in the worst 'business as usual' projections, which actual emissions have been matching, the range of likely warming runs from 3.1--7.1°C. Even keeping emissions at constant 2000 levels (which have already been exceeded), global temperature would still be expected to reach 1.2°C (O'9""1.5°C)above pre-industrial levels by the end of

the century." Without early and severe reductions in emissions, the effects of climate change in the second half of the twenty-first century are likely to be catastrophic for the stability and security of countries in the

developing world - not to mention the associated human tragedy. Climate change could even undermine the strength and stability of emerging and advanced economies, beyond the knock-on effects on security of widespread state failure and collapse in developing countries .' And although they have been condemned as melodramatic

and alarmist, many informed observers believe that unmitigated climate change beyond the end of the century could pose an

existential threat to civilisation." What is certain is that there is no precedent in human experience for such rapid change or such climatic conditions, and even in the best case adaptation to these extremes would mean profound social, cultural and political changes .

Warming Causes War

Global Warming Leads to War

Kempe, 2007

[Frederick, Founder and CEO of Atlantic Council, April 24, 2007, Global Warming Equals True Equivalent of War: Frederick Kempe, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&refer=columnist_kempe&sid=aHrRgVR9Hcl]

Global-warming skeptics I have long been among them now must face the fact that some of America's toughest military leaders have

embraced climate change as so real and unavoidable that future national defense and intelligence strategies must be shaped to deal with all the potentially disruptive changes. Those who doubt the climate's possible impact on history need only read the Bible or daily newspapers' accounts of the Darfur conflict, which is in no small part a battle between groups of herders and farmers. It was the failure of the herders' grazing lands that sent them south in search of water, and that

resulted in a conflict with farming tribes on those lands. In short, Darfur shows how climate change can push social and ethnic strains to the breaking point. More Instability The generals and admirals reckon that projected climate change will make marginal living conditions even worse in many Asian African and Middle Eastern nations, causing greater dangers than the political instability of today's failed states. That, in turn, might result in internal conflicts and wars, rising extremism, terrorism, and trends toward authoritarianism and radical ideologies. Even stable regions will face challenges, they argue, as refugees from drought and declining food production in Latin America and Africa seek havens in the U .S. and Europe. What the generals and admirals want is for future

strategic planning to take these new threats into account in force planning, particularly for natural disasters from extreme weather and pandemic diseases. 'We Will Pay' They want the U. S. to become a more constructive partner" on reducing greenhouse- gas

emissions. They urge the Pentagon to assess the impact on U .S. military installations worldwide of rising sea levels and extreme weather, which could compromise critical defense installations on coastlines and on low-lying Pacific islands. We will pay for this one way or another," says General Anthony C. Zinni, the former head of the U .S. Central

Command, who was part of the group. 'We will pay to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives."

the effects of warming could trigger multiple scenarios for conflict

Kolmannskog 8 (Vikram Odedra, April, Norwegian Refugee Council, “Future floods of refugees: A comment on climate change, conflict and forced migration”, http://www.nrc.no/arch/_img/9268480.pdf, Accessed 6/28/08)

According to the German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), the sudden disaster conflicts are likely to occur more frequently in future: Firstly, regions at risk, particularly Central America, generally have weak economic and political capacities, making adaptation and crisis management very difficult. Secondly, storm and flood disasters along the densely populated coasts of the Indian subcontinent and China can cause major damage and trigger or intensify migration processes which in turn could trigger conflict.40 Parallel with the growing risk of sudden disasters, Bangladesh is furthermore plagued by political violence and a growing trend toward Islamist extremism.

climate change leads to violent conflict—south asia proves

Sappenfield 7 (Mark, December 6, Staff writer of the Christian Science Monitor, “Global warming may heat up conflicts, too”, http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1206/p13s02-wogi.htm, Accessed 6/28/08)

The reason he gives is one heard throughout this corner of India, where Himalayan peaks give way to fertile flood plains:

Immigrants from Bangladesh are taking over. It is a visceral fear in India's Northeast, where people say they feel under siege – their culture, politics, and security threatened by a tide of Bangladeshis who are here illegally. "On the surface there is peace," says Mr. Das, who says he was forced out of his village through intimidation and murders by immigrants. "But this migration is a tragedy for us." For now,

there is relative calm. But security analysts worry that unrest could flare up again because of a new threat: global warming. As negotiators gather in Bali, Indonesia, this week to begin work on an agreement to fight climate change worldwide, concern is mounting that altered weather patterns will stoke conflict in various parts of the globe. And this area of South

Asia sits atop most experts' watch lists. Bangladesh is not only one of the countries most vulnerable to climate change, it is also chronically unstable. It is in the midst of a political crisis and showing signs of nascent Islamist fundamentalism. The effects of global warming could amplify the forces of instability, experts say. That remains an extreme view. The clearest threat, most agree, is a mass migration that sparks renewed conflict in the Indian Northeast – an independent -minded area of mountains and jungles fiercely proud of its distinct heritage and already fretted by a dozen insurgencies. "It is the No. 1 conflict zone for climate change," says Peter Schwartz, chairman of the Monitor Group, a research firm in San Francisco that recently released a study on the security risks presented by climate change. That field of study is relatively new, but analysts are beginning to lay the map of

forecasted climate change over the map of political weakness to see where changes in weather could lead to volatility. No one argues that climate change alone will lead to war. But analysts suggest that it could be a pivotal factor that tips vulnerable regions toward conflicts. "Climate change is a threat multiplier," says Geoff Dabelko, director of the Environmental Change and Security Program at the Woodrow Wilson Institute

in Washington. "It's not that it creates a whole new set of problems, it's that it will make things that are already a problem worse." For that reason, few expect climate change to throw Europe or North America into chaos. Both have the political stability and economic resources to cope. Areas that lack these advantages – such as sub-Saharan

Africa, Latin America, and South Asia – are most at risk, experts say. History suggests that climate can help breed political instability. One recent study charted climate changes, wars, and several other variables back to the 1400s. It found that significantly cooler periods were characterized by large-scale crop loss, starvation, and conflict.

Warming = Species Extinction

A hotter world means more extinctions.

Walsh 13

[Brian Walsh, a senior writer for TIME magazine, covering energy and the environment. May 13, 2013. http://science.time.com/2013/05/13/why-a-hotter-world-will-mean-more-extinctions/7/16/14-CMH]

The end of last week saw the carbon concentrations in the atmosphere finally pass the 400-part-per-million threshold. That means carbon levels are higher now than they’ve been for at least 800,000 years, and most likely far longer. There’s nothing special per se about 400 parts per million — other than giving all of us a

change to note it in article like this one — but it’s a reminder that we are headed very fast into a very uncertain future. Parts per million and global temperature change, though, are just numbers. What matters is the effect they will have on life — ours, of course, but also everything else that lives on the planet earth . I’ve written before that while I certainly worry and fear the impact that unchecked climate change will have on humanity, I also feel relatively — relatively — confident that we will, in some ways, muddle through. Human beings have already proved that they are extremely adaptable, living — with various degrees of success — from the hottest desert to the coldest corner of the Arctic. I don’t think a future where temperatures are 4˚F or 5˚F or 6˚F warmer on average will be an optimal one for humanity, to say the least. But I don’t think it will be the end of our species either. (I’ve always favored asteroids for that.) (PHOTOS: Up in the Air:

Celebrate World Migratory Bird Day) But the plants and animals that share this planet with us are a different story. Even before climate change has really kicked in, human expansion had led to the destruction of habitat on land and in the sea, as we crowd out other species. By some estimates we’re already in the midst of the sixth great extinction wave, one that’s largely human caused, with extinction rates that are 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than the background rate of species loss. So what will happen to those plants and animals if and when the climate really starts warming? According to a new study in Nature Climate Change, the answer is pretty simple: they will run out of habitable space, and many of them will die. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that 20% to 30% of species would be at increasingly high risk of extinction if global temperatures rise more than 2˚C to 3˚C above

preindustrial levels. Given that temperatures have already gone up by nearly 1˚C, and carbon continues to pile up in the atmosphere, that amount of warming is almost a certainty. But Rachel Warren and her colleagues at

the University of East Anglia (UEA), in England, wanted to know more precisely how that extinction risk intensifies with warming — and whether we might be able to save some species by mitigating climate change. In the Nature Climate Change paper, they found that

almost two-thirds of common plants and half of animals could lose more than half their climatic range by

2080 if global warming continues unchecked, with temperatures increasing 4˚C above preindustrial levels by the

end of the century. Unsurprisingly, the biggest effects will be felt near the equator, in areas like Central America, Sub-Saharan Africa, the Amazon and Australia, but biodiversity will suffer across the board . In

statement, Warren said: Our research predicts that climate change will greatly reduce the diversity of even very common species found in most parts of the world. This loss of global-scale biodiversity would significantly impoverish the biosphere and the ecosystem services it provides. We looked at the effect of rising global temperatures, but other symptoms of climate change such as extreme weather events, pests, and diseases mean that our estimates are probably conservative. Animals in particular may decline more as our predictions will be compounded by a loss of food from plants.

GHG’s threaten coral reef ecosystems

Guldberg 07

[Ove, Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5857/1737.full]

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is expected to exceed 500 parts per million and

global temperatures to rise by at least 2°C by 2050 to 2100, values that significantly exceed those of

at least the past 420,000 years during which most extant marine organisms evolved. Under

conditions expected in the 21st century, global warming and ocean acidification will compromise

carbonate accretion, with corals becoming increasingly rare on reef systems. The result will be less

diverse reef communities and carbonate reef structures that fail to be maintained . Climate change

also exacerbates local stresses from declining water quality and overexploitation of key species,

driving reefs increasingly toward the tipping point for functional collapse . This review presents

future scenarios for coral reefs that predict increasingly serious consequences for reef-associated

fisheries, tourism, coastal protection, and people. As the International Year of the Reef 2008 begins,

scaled-up management intervention and decisive action on global emissions are required if the loss

of coral-dominated ecosystems is to be avoided.

Increases in [CO2]atm > 500 ppm (11) will push carbonate-ion concentrations well below 200

μmol kg–1 (aragonite saturation < 3.3) and sea temperatures above +2°C relative to today's values

(Scenario CRS-C, Fig. 1). These changes will reduce coral reef ecosystems to crumbling frameworks

with few calcareous corals (Fig. 5C). The continuously changing climate, which may not stabilize for

hundreds of years, is also likely to impede migration and successful proliferation of alleles from

tolerant populations owing to continuously shifting adaptive pressure. Under these conditions,

reefs will become rapidly eroding rubble banks such as those seen in some inshore regions of the

Great Barrier Reef, where dense populations of corals have vanished over the past 50 to 100 years .

Rapid changes in sea level (+23 to 51 cm by 2100, scenario A2) (8), coupled with slow or nonexistent

reef growth, may also lead to “drowned” reefs (36) in which corals and the reefs they build fail to

keep up with rising sea levels.

Coral reef ecosystem close the tipping point

Guldberg 07

[Ove, Coral Reefs Under Rapid Climate Change and Ocean Acidification, http://www.sciencemag.org/content/318/5857/1737.full]

Maintaining ecological resilience is the central plank of any strategy aiming to preserve coral

reef ecosystems . Ecological resilience (4) is a measure of the rate at which an ecosystem returns to

a particular state (e.g., coral-dominated communities ) after a perturbation or disturbance (e.g.,

hurricane impacts). Recent changes to the frequency and scale of disturbances such as mass coral

bleaching, disease outbreaks, and destructive fishing, coupled with a decreased ability of corals to

grow and compete, are pushing reef ecosystems from coral- to algal-dominated states (4, 22 ). If

pushed far enough, the ecosystem may exceed a “tipping point” (22) and change rapidly into an

alternative state with its own inherent resilience and stability, often making the possibility of

returning to a coral-dominated state difficult.

Wind Power Solves Warming

Wind power can offset fossil fuel use- this solves warming

Biello 12 – Associate editor @ Scientific American

(David, “The Sky Is the Limit for Wind Power,” http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=no-limit-for-wind-power)

Wind turbines on land and offshore could readily provide more than four times the power that the world as a whole currently uses. Throw in kites or robot aircraft generating electricity from sky-high winds and the world could physically extract roughly 100 times more power than presently employed—and the climatic consequences remain

minimal.¶ Two new computer-model analyses suggest there are few limits to the wind's potential.

Although "there are physical limits to the amount of power that can be harvested from winds, these limits are

well above total global energy demand ," explains climate-modeler Kate Marvel of Lawrence

Livermore National Laboratory, who led the analysis published September 9 in Nature

Climate Change. (Scientific American is part of Nature Publishing Group.) Current global demand is roughly 18 terawatts. (A

terawatt is one trillion watts.)

Wind energy preferable to coal and natural gas- cost and environmental impacts

Natural Resources Defense Council ND (From National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Wind Industry Annual

Market Report 2010 Annual Report AWEA, Wind Energy, http://www.nrdc.org/energy/renewables/wind.asp)

Wind energy produces no polluting emissions of any kind, including those that cause global warming. Wind turbines use a fuel that's free, inexhaustible and immune from the drastic price swings to which fossil fuels are subject. With careful siting and outreach to the local community, wind farms can be built in a fraction of the time it takes to

construct coal or natural-gas power plants. A 50-megawatt wind farm can be completed in less than a year. In the right location, it takes only three to eight months for a wind energy farm to recoup the energy consumed by its building and installation -- one of the fastest "energy payback times" of any energy technology on the market. Although bird and bat safety are ongoing concerns, wind power does not contribute to the plethora of other environmental and public health costs caused by conventional fossil power production: acid rain in lakes, mercury in

fish, particulate-matter respiratory illnesses, coal mine slag, nuclear waste fuel storage, and so on. The National Academy of Sciences estimates that electricity generation from coal, oil-fueled vehicles and transportation, and electricity production from natural gas caused an estimated $120 billion in damages in 2005, with health-related damages accounting for almost all of these costs. The growing use of wind energy creates manufacturing and technical jobs, and significantly more jobs per dollar invested compared to non-renewables technology, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Wind power consumes no water during operation. This will be an increasingly important attribute as the water-energy nexus grows in importance and as water use becomes an increasingly important facet of defining sustainability

Offshore wind solves for greenhouse gasses Shroeder 10

Erica Shroeder California Law Review, Volume 98 | issue 5, Article 5. “Turning offshore wind on”

10/31/2010- Erica Schroeder, Turning Offshore Wind On, 98 Cal. L. Rev. 1631 (2010). Available at: http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/californialawreview/vol98/iss5/4

Once a wind project is built, it involves only minimal environmental impacts compared to traditional electricity generation. Wind power emits negligible amounts of traditional air pollutants, such as sulfur dioxide and particulate matter, as well as carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. 62 Lower emissions of traditional air pollutants mean fewer air quality-related illnesses locally and regionally. 63 Lower greenhouse gas emissions will help to combat climate change, effects of which will be felt locally and around the world.64 According to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the effects of climate change will include melting snow, ice, and permafrost; significant effects on terrestrial, marine, and freshwater plant and animal species; forced changes to agricultural and forestry management; and adverse human health impacts, including increased heat-related mortality and infectious diseases.65 The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that the United States emits 6 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases annually, and it expects emissions to increase to 7.9 billion metric tons by 2030, with 40 percent of emissions coming from the electric power sector. 66 Thus, if the United States can get more of its electricity from wind power, it will contribute less to climate change, and help to mitigate its negative impacts. Furthermore, wind power does not involve any of the additional environmental costs associated with nuclear power or fuel extraction for traditional electricity generation, such as coal mining and natural gas extraction.67 Wind power generation also does not require the water necessary to cool traditional coal, gas, and nuclear generation units.68

Offshore Wind farms directly trade off with CO2 from fossil fuels- substantially better than onshore turbines DOE 11

Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Wind & Water Power Program

Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation, and Enforcement

February 7, 2011 http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/national_offshore_wind_strategy.pdf

On average, one gigawatt of installed offshore wind power capacity can generate 3.4 million megawatt ‐ hours (MWh) of electricity annually. Generating the same amount of electricity with fossil fuels would consume 1.7 million tons of coal or 27.6 billion cubic feet of natural gas and would emit 2.7 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) annually (S. Dolan 2010). Because offshore winds generally blow more strongly and consistently than onshore winds, offshore wind turbines operate at higher capacity factors2 than wind turbines installed on land. In addition, daily offshore wind speed profiles tend to correspond well to periods of high electricity demand by coastal cities, such that the strongest winds (and thus highest potential energy generation) correspond to the periods of greatest electricity demand(W. Musial 2010).

AT Wind increases C02

Wind power comparatively reduces more co2 than other energy sources – studies show.

Wang and Sun 2012, Yuxuan (Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Earth System Modeling, Center for Earth System Science, Institute for Global ChangeStudies, Tsinghua University) and Tianye (School of Environment, Tsinghua University). “Life cycle assessment of CO2 emissions from wind power plants: Methodology and case studies.” Elsevier – Renewable Energy, Volume 43, July 2012, pgs 30-36. January 14, 2012. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112000043

This study developed a new simple and direct method for calculating CO2 emissions per kWh electricity produced by wind power plants. The results obtained herein confirm that wind energy produces the lowest CO2 emissions per kWh of electricity compared to fossil fuel and other renewable sources. Energy and metallurgy dominate CO2 emissions from material consumption. Among the four phases of the wind power plant’s life cycle, the production phase of wind turbines

contributes most to the total emissions. Recycling during decommission is an important step, which theoretically can decrease the impact from the production phase by nearly half. Optimal management in the transport phase could reduce overall CO2 emissions by as much as 12% of the total emissions of a power plant, even with recycling. For countries with large wind potential and large territories, a large amount of CO2 emission could be saved in the

transport phase. The result of a real case in China shows that with reasonable shorter transport routes, the related emissions could be reduced by 33%. Compared with offshore wind plants, onshore

ones have lower CO2 emissions per kWh electricity produced. The difference in CO2 emissions between wind

turbines and wind power plants is significant and should not be ignored when considering the CO2

emissions related to offshore power plants. If China can reach a total installed capacity of 300 GW in 2030 as predicted, annual savings of CO2emissions could amount to 780 Mtons. In this case, however, wind electricity would supply just 8.5% of China’s total electricity demand in 2030, lower even than present-day condition in Europe where wind electricity accounts for 4.8% of the total energy consumption. There is ample room for

more rapid development of wind energy in China accompanied by larger CO2-saving potential. Compared with other energy sources, wind power has the greatest potential to reduce CO2 emissions, especially through onshore, large rated power turbines that have low emission per functional unit .

Sensitivity tests show that the measures taken to increase the CP would result in significant emissions reductions. Obviously, the use of wind to produce electricity constitutes an environmental improvement, and more research on this technology is needed.

Reduces Coal Use

Wind energy lowers the use of gas and coal

Renewable UK in 2014 [UK’s Energy Trade Association, 3/27/2014, http://www.renewableuk.com/en/news/press-releases.cfm/record-breaking-wind-energy-leads-to-decrease-in-coal-and-gas-production]

RenewableUK says new statistics published today by the Department of Energy and Climate Change prove the case for wind power.

Statistics were released covering both 2013 and the final quarter of 2013,and the figures showed increased amounts of renewable energy, with wind foremost, leading to coal and gas consumption decreasing . Renewable energy increased to a record 15% of power in 2013, leading the amount of coal and gas needed to drop by 3% and 1% respectively. The report states: “Provisional estimates show that carbon dioxide emissions fell between 2012 and 2013; the key factor driving the change was a switch in electricity

generation away from fossil fuels”. In 2013 electricity from wind power grew 40%, meaning it provides over 50% of renewable energy. Wave and tidal also saw an increase of 75% in power generated in 2013 compared to 2012. For the last quarter of 2013 the figures are even better with a record for renewable electricity of 18% compared to 13% in Q4 2012. For that

quarter onshore wind generation was up 64% compared to the same period in 2012 and offshore wind increased 42%. The strong wind energy performance meant that coal’s share of the electricity mix was 7% lower in Q4 2013 compared to a year earlier, with the gas share also falling to the lowest quarterly share of generation for at least fifteen years. However, the UK’s import dependency on fossil fuels continued to grow despite the lower production levels needed, with coal imports increasing from Russia and other countries. RenewableUK’s Director of External

Affairs Jennifer Webber said: “At a time when we needed it most, wind delivered. Onshore wind generation was up 64% compared to the previous year, and wind as a whole delivered over 10% of the UK’s total power needs across the quarter, proving it's a force to be reckoned with. Wind energy's generation was the equivalent of

power for 7.86 million homes for the full quarter. By developing our wind resource we ease our reliance on costly imported foreign fuels and reduce the amount of polluting CO2 in our atmosphere . In addition by using our natural resources we’re creating thousands of jobs, like the ones Siemens announced just this week. The UK has a choice – stay in hock to foreign powers for our energy or invest in secure, clean renewables and build tens of thousands of jobs for British workers”

Wind Energy likely to replace coal- coal-fired power plants old and expensive

Navigant Consulting, Inc. ’13 (Bruce Hamilton, Principal Investigator, Lindsay Battenberg, Mark Bielecki, Charlie Bloch, Terese Decker, Lisa Frantzis, Jay Paidipati, Andy Wickless, Feng Zhao, October 17, 2013, Offshore Wind Market and Economic Analysis, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/offshore_wind_market_and_economic_analysis_10_2013.pdf)

Since 2000, most new power generation capacity in the United States has come from natural gas and wind (see Figure 4-2), partly in

response to the environmental impacts of coal-fired electricity generation. EIA In addition to having a lower carbon intensity than coal, natural gas prices have remained relatively low, in large part to the supply of low-cost gas from the Marcellus Shale. Natural gas prices surpassed $6/MMbtu in January 2010 but since then have largely remained below $5/MMbtu, including a low of less than $2/MMbtu in April 2012 This decline has reduced wholesale electricity prices and has made natural gas-fired generation sources even more attractive than wind, in many cases. Continued low natural gas prices could greatly constrain demand for offshore wind farms in the United States. However, if natural gas prices were to rise significantly—for example, due to increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports—the attractiveness of offshore wind as an electricity generation source in the United States could increase. In recent years, some electric utilities in the United States have announced plans to retire coal-fired power plants or to convert them to natural gas. Navigant analysis reveals executed and planned

retirements through 2017 that exceed 37 GW. There are multiple factors involved in these retirement decisions. Many of the United States’ coal-fired power plants are over 50 years old and expensive to continue to operate and maintain. Complying with environmental requirements, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) mercury and air toxics standards and proposed

carbon dioxide emissions limits, can also be costly. While the reduction in generation capacity created through coal plant retirements will certainly not be filled entirely by a variable-output resource such as wind, Continued coal plant retirements could play a role in increasing the demand for offshore wind plants in the United States.

Wind Energy likely to replace coal- coal-fired power plants old and expensive

Navigant Consulting, Inc. ’13 (Bruce Hamilton, Principal Investigator, Lindsay Battenberg, Mark Bielecki, Charlie Bloch, Terese Decker, Lisa Frantzis, Jay Paidipati, Andy Wickless, Feng Zhao, October 17, 2013, Offshore Wind Market and Economic Analysis, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/offshore_wind_market_and_economic_analysis_10_2013.pdf)

Since 2000, most new power generation capacity in the United States has come from natural gas and wind (see Figure 4-2), partly in

response to the environmental impacts of coal-fired electricity generation. EIA In addition to having a lower carbon intensity than coal, natural gas prices have remained relatively low, in large part to the supply of low-cost gas from the Marcellus Shale. Natural gas prices surpassed $6/MMbtu in January 2010 but since then have largely remained below $5/MMbtu, including a low of less than $2/MMbtu in April 2012 This decline has reduced wholesale electricity prices and has made natural gas-fired generation sources even more attractive than wind, in many cases. Continued low natural gas prices could greatly constrain demand for offshore wind farms in the United States. However, if natural gas prices were to rise significantly—for example, due to increased liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports—the attractiveness of offshore wind as an electricity generation source in the United States could increase. In recent years, some electric utilities in the United States have announced plans to retire coal-fired power plants or to convert them to natural gas. Navigant analysis reveals executed and planned

retirements through 2017 that exceed 37 GW. There are multiple factors involved in these retirement decisions. Many of the United States’ coal-fired power plants are over 50 years old and expensive to continue to operate and maintain. Complying with environmental requirements, such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) mercury and air toxics standards and proposed carbon dioxide emissions limits, can also be costly. While the reduction in generation capacity created through coal plant retirements will certainly not be filled entirely by a variable-output resource such as wind, Continued coal plant retirements could play a role in increasing the demand for offshore wind plants in the United States.

Climate Leadership

United States federal domestic action on climate change key to global climate leadershipTalbott 12Strobe Talbott, President of the Brookings Institution, and John-Michael Arnold, special assistant to the President at Brookings, 5-25-2012, “It’s the Climate, Stupid!” Brookings,http://www.brookings.edu/~/media/research/files/papers/2012/5/25%20americas%20role%20talbott/0525%20americas%20role%20talbott.pdf

And then there’s climate change, the most urgent, most consequential, most dangerous issue of these times. Climate change is also the ultimate example of the nexus between U.S. domestic and foreign policy. As long as the United States is tied up in knots at home, it can’t lead the world. American voters today have an unprecedentedly onerous distinction: they are both the first generation to realize that they live in the era of global warming and also the last generation with a chance to do something about it. The human enterprise must cut its emissions of greenhouse gases by 50 percent in the coming decades, a period when population is projected to grow by 50 percent. That means in the next five years people have got to begin bending the curve of emissions that drives global warming—otherwise it will probably be too late to head off an irreversibly catastrophic tipping point somewhere around midcentury. In meeting this daunting challenge, the United States—which has pumped almost a third of total global carbon emissions into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution— is uniquely able to catalyze international consensus and action. Whether that is called a window of opportunity or a window of obligation, it is closing. During his campaign for the presidency four years ago and in the afterglow of being elected, Obama seemed ideal for the role and responsibility of catalyst. His identity and biography were like a parable of the United States as an artifact of globalization at its best. In his statements on the campaign trail in 2008, in his victory speech in Grant Park, and in his inaugural address, he gave priority to rescuing what he called a “planet in peril,” and he vowed to put new emphasis on cooperative solutions to global threats, particularly climate change. In 2009 he undertook a rescue mission to prevent a debacle at the Copenhagen conference on climate change. Back home, he was still pushing hard for cap-and-trade legislation only to see it eventually collapse in the Senate. Since then, the climate issue has been the most conspicuous symptom of 2013itis. The looming question of the 2012 campaign is whether that disease, as its nickname suggests, can be cured after the election. Will a reelected Obama succeed in his second term where he failed in his first? Or will a President Mitt Romney, if he survives the lingering resistance to his nomination within the GOP and goes on to triumph in November, muster the political will to make up for all these lost years? It won’t be easy. Both men have demonstrated an awareness of the challenge and its urgency in the past. During Romney’s governorship, Massachusetts imposed mandatory carbon emission limits on power plants. But that was six years ago. Now, in a concession to the skeptics who hold sway in his party, Mitt Romney’s position is that “we don’t know what’s causing climate change.” As for how 2012 will end, no one yet knows who will win the election and how the Earth’s fever chart will look, but they can be sure of this: not only will the United States score zero progress on the climate/energy issue, but there will be backsliding in terms of the public debate and education surrounding it. That’s in part because outright deniers of the science and opponents of corrective action have the upper hand in that debate, but also it’s because of the widespread antipathy in the

American electorate to any new taxes, notably including a carbon tax by that or any other name. One must hope that both those factors recede in 2013 and that it’s not too late for the United States to make the transition from being a huge part of the problem to becoming a significant—and leading—part of the solution.

US leadership in clean technology is key to international cooperation on climate change – solves warming.

Grote 6/20/12, Carl (Junior Fellow at the American Security Project). “America’s Role as International Climate Talks Shift Focus.” American Security Project. http://americansecurityproject.org/blog/2012/americas-role-as-international-climate-talks-shift-focus/

Mounting rifts at home make American cooperation with international initiative all the more difficult. In accordance with the Copenhagen Climate Accord the U.S. committed to reducing 17% of its greenhouse gas emissions below 2005 levels by 2020. Brazil and Japan will cut emissions by 39 and 25 percent below 1990 levels, respectively. Clearly, the U.S. commitment is lagging as it has the most lax emission target of the participating developed countries. As noted by Rebecca Burns, the 2011 Durban Climate Conference achieved little except a global climate initiative to be negotiated in 2015. Nonetheless, Durban was a definite step in the right direction-as long as meaningful negotiations actually occur. Burns, however, asserts that the focus of the talks will be on a “green economy.” Conceivably, this refers in large part to government support of sustainable economic growth by enticing investment and providing stimuli to renewable energy projects. The BP Statistical Review of World Energy 2012 reported that power generated from renewable sources rose 17.7 percent in 2011. In the U.S. alone, solar

installations grew by 109 percent. Seemingly, the advent of a “green economy” is well underway.

Considerable gains must be made by the sector, though, to obtain significant climate change reductions. But, as the “world’s largest clean-energy investor,” the U.S. should continue these investments . As in any industry,

production of clean-energy technology can be expected to achieve economies of scale; the capital and costs needed to bring such technologies to market will decline per unit . Such a development would make solar panels, wind turbines, etc. more competitive in the global market, and one could expect to see accelerated displacement of fossil fuels by these cleaner energy sources. Besides the economic benefits of becoming a global industry leader, the U.S. would benefit from a stabilizing climate along with the rest of the world. After all, the larger the share of the global energy portfolio renewable sources account for, the fewer greenhouse gases emitted.

The U nited States, therefore, should embrace a role at the forefront of the clean-energy industry as international climate talks shift their focus away from regulating emissions and towards developing a green economy. In doing so, the U nited States will strengthen its economy, greatly contribute toward climate change mitigation, and in turn create a more secure future for itself and the world.

We control the internal link to cooperation – only the United States facilitates a global bargaining table

(Brooks et al 13)

STEPHEN G. BROOKS is Associate Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. G. JOHN IKENBERRY is Albert G. Milbank Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University and Global Eminence Scholar at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. WILLIAM C. WOHLFORTH is Daniel Webster Professor of Government at Dartmouth College. This article is adapted from their essay "Don't Come Home, America: The Case Against Retrenchment," International Security, Winter 2012-13. “Lean Forward In Defense of American Engagement” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2013, http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138468/stephen-g-brooks-g-john-ikenberry-and-william-c-wohlforth/lean-forward?page=show, accessed January 4, 2013.

CREATING COOPERATION What goes for the global economy goes for other forms of international cooperation. Here, too, American

leadership benefits many countries but disproportionately helps the United States. In order to counter transnational threats, such as terrorism, piracy, organized crime, climate change, and pandemics, states have to work together and take collective action. But cooperation does not come about effortlessly, especially when national interests diverge. The United States' military efforts to promote stability and its broader leadership make it easier for Washington to launch joint initiatives and shape them in ways that reflect U.S. interests. After all, cooperation is hard to come by in regions where chaos reigns, and it flourishes where leaders can anticipate lasting stability. U.S. alliances are about security first, but they

also provide the political framework and channels of communication for cooperation on nonmilitary issues. NATO, for example, has spawned new institutions, such as the Atlantic Council, a think tank, that make it easier for Americans and Europeans to talk to one another and do business. Likewise, consultations with allies in East Asia spill over into other policy issues; for example, when American diplomats travel to Seoul to manage the military alliance, they also end up discussing the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Thanks to conduits such as this, the United States can use bargaining chips in one

issue area to make progress in others. The benefits of these communication channels are especially pronounced when it comes to fighting the kinds of threats that require new forms of cooperation, such as terrorism and pandemics. With its alliance system in place, the United States is in a stronger position than it would otherwise be to advance cooperation and share burdens. For example, the intelligence-sharing network within NATO, which was originally designed to gather information on the Soviet Union, has been adapted to deal with terrorism. Similarly, after a tsunami in the Indian Ocean devastated surrounding countries in 2004, Washington had a much easier time orchestrating a fast humanitarian response with Australia, India, and Japan, since their militaries were already comfortable working with one another. The operation did wonders for the United States' image in the region. The United States' global role also has the more direct effect of

facilitating the bargains among governments that get cooperation going in the first place. As the scholar Joseph Nye has written, "The American military role in deterring threats to allies, or of assuring access to a crucial resource such as oil in the

Persian Gulf, means that the provision of protective force can be used in bargaining situations. Sometimes the linkage may be direct; more often it is a factor not mentioned openly but present in the back of statesmen's minds."

AT Warming Inevitable

Global warming is not inevatble, cutting back emissons now is key to prevent impactsDesjardins, 13, [Cléa Desjardins, senior advisor, media relations at Concordia University, Global warming: irreversible but not inevitable, Concordia University, http://www.concordia.ca/cunews/main/stories/2013/04/02/global-warming-irreversible-but-not-inevitable.html]

There is a persistent misconception among both scientists and the public that there is a delay between emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) and the climate’s response to those emissions. This misconception has led policy makers to argue that CO2 emission cuts implemented now will not affect the climate system for many decades. This erroneous line of argument makes the climate problem seem more intractable than it actually is, say Concordia University’s Damon Matthews and MIT’s Susan Solomon in a recent Science article. The researchers show that immediate decreases in CO2 emissions would in fact result in an immediate decrease in the rate of climate warming. Explains Matthews, professor in the Department of

Geography, Planning and Environment, “If we can successfully decrease CO2 emissions in the near future, this change will be felt by the climate system when the emissions reductions are implemented – not in several decades." “The potential for a quick climate response to prompt cuts in CO2 emissions opens up the possibility that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions themselves.” In their paper, Matthews and Solomon, Ellen Swallow Richards professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate Science,

show that the onus for slowing the rate of global warming falls squarely on current efforts at reducing CO2 emissions, and the resulting future emissions that we produce. This means that there are critical implications for the equity of carbon emission choices currently being discussed internationally. Total emissions from developing countries may soon exceed those from developed nations. But developed countries are expected to maintain a far higher per-capita contribution to present and possible future

warming. “This disparity clarifies the urgency for low-carbon technology investment and diffusion to enable developing countries to continue to develop,” says Matthews. “Emission cuts made now will have an immediate effect on the rate of global warming,” he asserts. “I see more hope for averting difficult-to-avoid negative impacts by accelerating advances in technology development and diffusion, than for averting climate system changes that are already inevitable. Given the enormous scope and complexity of the climate mitigation challenge, clarifying these points of hope is critical to motivate change.”

It’s not too late to solve warming – we can prevent warming greater than .8 degrees Celsius

Hosansky and Drummond in 09 (David Hosansky and Rachael Drummond, UCAR; and John Hules, Berkeley Lab “It's Not Too Late to Change Global Warming's Course Simulations Show That Cuts in Greenhouse Gas Emissions Would Save Arctic Ice, Reduce Sea Level Rise”

The threat of global warming can still be greatly diminished if nations cut emissions of heat-trapping

greenhouse gases by 70 percent this century, according to a study led by scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). While global temperatures would rise, the most dangerous potential aspects of climate change, including massive losses of Arctic sea ice and permafrost and significant sea level rise, could be partially avoided. "This research indicates that we can no longer avoid significant warming during this century," says NCAR scientist Warren Washington, the lead author. "But if the world were to implement

this level of emission cuts, we could stabilize the threat of climate change and avoid an even greater catastrophe." To simulate a century of climate conditions, the researchers used more than 2000 processors of Franklin, the

National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center's (NERSC) Cray XT4 system, as well as computers at the Oak Ridge and Argonne Leadership Computing Facilities and at NCAR. Over the past two years, the NCAR team received a total allocation of 50 million processor

hours on NERSC computers for a variety of climate studies. Average global temperatures have warmed by close to 1 degree Celsius (almost 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) since the pre-industrial era. Much of the warming is due to human-produced emissions of greenhouse gases, predominantly carbon dioxide. This heat-trapping gas has increased from a pre-industrial level of about 284 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere to

more than 380 ppm today. With research showing that additional warming of about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) may be the threshold for dangerous climate change, the European Union has called for dramatic cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The U.S. Congress is also debating the issue. To examine the impact of such cuts on the world's climate, Washington and his colleagues ran a series of global supercomputer studies with the NCAR-based Community Climate System Model (CCSM). They assumed that carbon dioxide levels could be held to 450 ppm at the end of this century. That figure comes from the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, which has cited 450 ppm as an attainable target if the world quickly adopts conservation practices and new green technologies to cut emissions dramatically. In contrast, emissions are now on track to reach

about 750 ppm by 2100 if unchecked. The team's results showed that if carbon dioxide were held to 450 ppm, global temperatures would increase by 0.6 degrees C (about 1 degree F) above current readings by the end of the century. In contrast, the study showed that temperatures would rise by almost four times that amount, to 2.2 degrees C (4 degrees F) globally above current observations, if emissions were allowed to continue on their present course (Figure 1

Climate mitigation works, irreversible doesn’t mean unavoidable

Matthews and Solomon ’13 (H.D. Matthews, ecologist, S. Solomon, environmentalist, both at MIT, Irreversible Does Not Mean Unavoidable, MIT open access papers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/87694, accessed: 6/30/14 GA)

There is a commonly held belief among both scientists and the general public that there is a delay between the CO2 emissions we put into the atmosphere, and the resulting climate change. As a consequence, there is a perception that current and near-future climate warming is pre-determined by past CO2 emissions, and by extension, that CO2 emissions reductions implemented now will not have any effect on the future rate of global warming for at least several decades. In this perspective, we argue that this conclusion is based on an incomplete interpretation of the inertia of the climate system. Considering the opposing effects of both physical climate and

carbon cycle inertia, there is a compelling argument that the climate response to CO2 emissions cuts would not be delayed by lags in the climate system. Consequently, climate mitigation efforts implemented today would be of immediate importance for future global temperatures. This has important implications for climate policy: the potential for a rapid climate response to prompt CO2 emissions cuts opens the possibility

that the climate benefits of emissions reductions would occur on the same timescale as the political decisions themselves. This question of how decreases in CO2 emissions would affect global temperatures has unfortunately been clouded in recent years in part by confusion regarding physical climate issues of ‘unrealized warming’ and irreversibility(1). The notion that there is unrealized warming or ‘warming in the pipeline’(2) if the concentrations of carbon dioxide (and other radiative forcing agents) were to remain fixed at current levels has been misinterpreted to mean that increases in the Earth’s global temperature are inevitable, regardless of how much or how quickly we decrease our emissions(1). Such statements have been widely reported in both popular coverage of climate change* and in scientific

publications† . Further misunderstanding likely stems from recent studies that have shown that the warming that has already occurred due to past anthropogenic carbon dioxide increases is irreversible on a time scale of at least a thousand years(4, 5) – but irreversibility of past changes does not mean that further warming is unavoidable.

It’s not too late- action now can reverse and mitigate warming

Peters 12 - Center for International Climate and Environmental Research

(Peer Reviewed Journal, Glen, “The challenge to keep global warming below 2 [deg]C, Glen P. Peters, Robbie M. Andrew, Tom Boden, Josep G. Canadell, Philippe Ciais, Corinne Le Quéré, Nature Climate Change, http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v3/n1/full/nclimate1783.html)

On-going climate negotiations have recognized a “significant gap” between the current trajectory of global greenhouse-gas emissions and the “likely chance of holding the increase in global average temperature below 2 °C or 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels”1. Here we compare recent trends in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil-fuel combustion, cement production and gas flaring with the primary emission scenarios used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Carbon dioxide emissions are the largest contributor to long-term climate change and thus provide a good baseline to assess progress and examine consequences.

We find that current emission trends continue to track scenarios that lead to the highest temperature increases. Further delay in global mitigation makes it

increasingly difficult to stay below 2 °C. Long-term emissions scenarios are designed to represent a range of plausible emission trajectories as input for climate

change research2, 3. The IPCC process has resulted in four generations of emissions scenarios2: Scientific Assessment 1990 (SA90)4, IPCC Scenarios 1992 (IS92)5, Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES)6, and the evolving Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs)7 to be used in the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report. The RCPs were developed by the research community as a new, parallel process of scenario

development, whereby climate models are run using the RCPs while simultaneously socioeconomic and emission scenarios are developed that span the range of the RCPs and beyond2. It is important to regularly re-

assess the relevance of emissions scenarios in light of changing global circumstances3, 8. In the past, decadal trends in CO2 emissions have responded slowly to changes in the underlying emission drivers because of inertia and path dependence in technical, social and political systems9. Inertia and path

dependence are unlikely to be affected by short-term fluctuations2, 3, 9 — such as financial crises10 — and it is probable that emissions will continue to rise for a period even after global mitigation has started 11 . Thermal inertia and vertical mixing in the ocean, also delay the temperature response to CO2 emissions12.

Because of inertia, path dependence and changing global circumstances, there is value in comparing observed decadal emission trends with emission scenarios to help inform the prospect of different futures being

realized, explore the feasibility of desired changes in the current emission trajectory and help to identify whether new scenarios may be needed. Global CO2 emissions have increased from 6.1±0.3 Pg C in 1990 to 9.5±0.5 Pg C in 2011 (3% over 2010), with average annual growth rates of 1.9% per year in the 1980s, 1.0% per year in the 1990s, and 3.1% per year since 2000. We

estimate that emissions in 2012 will be 9.7±0.5 Pg C or 2.6% above 2011 (range of 1.9–3.5%) and 58% greater than 1990 (Supplementary Information and ref. 13). The observed growth rates are at the top end of all four generations of emissions scenarios (Figs 1 and 2). Of the previous illustrative IPCC scenarios, only IS92-E, IS92-F and SRES A1B exceed the observed emissions (Fig. 1) or their rates of growth (Fig. 2), with RCP8.5 lower

but within uncertainty bounds of observed emissions. Figure 1: Estimated CO2 emissions over the past three decades compared with the IS92, SRES and the RCPs. The SA90 data are not shown, but the most relevant (SA90-A) is similar to IS92-A and IS92-F. The uncertainty in historical emissions is ±5% (one standard deviation). Scenario data is generally reported at decadal intervals and we use linear interpolation for intermediate

years. Full size image (386 KB) Figures index Next Figure 2: Growth rates of historical and scenario CO2 emissions. The average annual growth rates of the historical emission estimates (black crosses) and the emission scenarios for the time periods of overlaps (shown on the horizontal axis). The growth rates are more comparable for the longer time intervals considered (in order: SA90, 27 years; IS92, 22 years; SRES, 12 years; and RCPs, 7 years). The short-term growth rates of the scenarios do not necessarily reflect the long-term emission pathway (for example, A1B has a high initial growth rate compared with its long-term behaviour and RCP3PD has a higher growth rate until 2010 compared with RCP4.5 and RCP6). For the SRES, we represent the illustrative scenario for each family (filled circles) and each of the contributing model scenarios (open

circles). The scenarios generally report emissions at intervals of 10 years or more and we interpolated linearly to 2012; a sensitivity analysis shows a linear interpolation is robust (Supplementary Fig. S14). Full size

image (112 KB) Previous Figures index Observed emission trends are in line with SA90-A, IS92-E and IS92-F, SRES A1FI, A1B and A2, and RCP8.5 (Fig. 2). The SRES scenarios A1FI and A2 and RCP8.5 lead to the highest temperature projections among the scenarios, with a mean temperature increase of 4.2–5.0 °C in 2100 (range of 3.5–6.2 °C)14, whereas the SRES A1B scenario has decreasing emissions after 2050 leading to a lower temperature increase of 3.5 °C (range 2.9–4.4°C)14. Earlier research has noted that observed emissions have tracked the upper SRES scenarios15, 16 and Fig. 1 confirms this for all four scenario generations. This

indicates that the space of possible pathways could be extended above the top-end scenarios to accommodate the possibility of even higher emission rates in the future. The new RCPs are particularly relevant because, in contrast to the earlier scenarios, mitigation efforts consistent with long-term policy objectives are included among the pathways2. RCP3-PD (peak and decline in concentration) leads to a mean temperature increase of 1.5 °C in 2100 (range of 1.3–1.9 °C)14. RCP3–PD requires net negative emissions (for example, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage) from 2070, but some scenarios suggest it is possible to stay below 2 °C without negative emissions17, 18, 19. RCP4.5 and RCP6 — which lie between RCP3–PD and RCP8.5 in the longer term — lead to a mean temperature increase of 2.4 °C (range of 1.0–3.0 °C) and 3.0 °C (range of 2.6–3.7 °C) in 2100,

respectively14. For RCP4.5, RCP6 and RCP8.5, temperatures will continue to increase after 2100 due to on-going emissions14 and inertia in the climate system12. Current emissions are tracking slightly above RCP8.5, and given the growing gap between the other RCPs (Fig. 1), significant emission reductions are needed by 2020 to keep 2 °C as a feasible goal18, 19, 20. To follow an emission trend that can keep the temperature increase below 2 °C (RCP3-PD) requires sustained global CO2 mitigation rates of around 3% per year, if global emissions peak before 202011, 19. A delay in starting mitigation activities will lead to higher mitigation rates11, higher costs21, 22, and the target of remaining below 2 °C may become unfeasible18, 20. If participation is low, then higher rates of mitigation are needed in individual countries, and this may even increase mitigation costs for all countries22. Many of these rates assume that negative emissions will be possible and affordable later this century11, 17, 18, 20. Reliance on negative emissions has high risks because of potential delays or

failure in the development and large-scale deployment of emerging technologies such as carbon capture and storage, particularly those connected to bioenergy17, 18. Although current emissions are tracking the higher

scenarios, it is still possible to transition towards pathways consistent with keeping temperatures below 2 °C (refs 17,19,20). The historical record shows that some countries have reduced CO2 emissions over 10-year periods, through a combination of (non-climate) policy

intervention and economic adjustments to changing resource availability. The oil crisis of 1973 led to new policies on energy supply and energy savings, which produced a decrease in the share of fossil

fuels (oil shifted to nuclear) in the energy supply of Belgium, France and Sweden, with emission reductions of 4–5% per year sustained over 10 or more years (Supplementary Figs S17–19).A continuous shift to natural gas — partially substituting coal and oil — led to sustained mitigation rates of 1–2% per year in the UK in the 1970s and again in the 2000s, 2% per year in Denmark in the 1990–2000s, and 1.4% per year since 2005 in

the USA (Supplementary Figs S10–12). These examples highlight the practical feasibility of emission reductions through

fuel substitution and efficiency improvements, but additional factors such as carbon leakage23 need to be considered. These types of emission reduction can help initiate a transition towards trajectories consistent with keeping temperatures below 2 °C, but further mitigation

measures are needed to complete and sustain the reductions. Similar energy transitions could be encouraged and co-ordinated across countries in the next 10 years using available technologies19, but well-targeted technological innovations 24 are required to sustain the mitigation rates for longer

periods 17 . To move below the RCP8.5 scenario — avoiding the worst climate impacts — requires early action 17 , 18, 21

and sustained mitigation from the largest emitters22 such as China, the U nited S tates, the European Union and India. These four regions together account for over half of global CO2

emissions, and have strong and centralized governing bodies capable of co-ordinating such actions. If similar energy transitions are repeated over many decades in a broader range of developed and emerging economies,

the current emission trend could be pulled down to make RCP3-PD, RCP4.5 and RCP6 all feasible futures. A shift to a pathway with the highest likelihood

to remain below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels (for example, RCP3-PD), requires high levels of technological, social and political innovations, and an increasing need to rely on net negative emissions in the future 11, 17,

18. The timing of mitigation efforts needs to account for delayed responses in both CO2 emissions 9

(because of inertia in technical, social and political systems) and also in global temperature 12 (because of inertia in the climate system). Unless large and

concerted global mitigation efforts are initiated soon, the goal of remaining below 2 °C will very soon become unachievable.

Every Reduction Key

All emission reductions help prevent global warming- one carbon offset leads to more Terrapass ND (Terrapass, How emissions reduction projects work, http://www.terrapass.com/learn/project-standards/)

Emissions reduction projects reduce the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere in one of three ways: By capturing and destroying a greenhouse gas that would otherwise be emitted into the atmosphere. An example of this is a methane gas capture project at

a landfill; By producing energy using a clean, renewable resource that eliminates the need to produce that same energy from fossil fuels, the burning of which releases greenhouse gas into the atmosphere. An example of this is wind power; or By capturing and storing (or “sequestering”) greenhouse gases to prevent their release into the atmosphere. An example of this is a project that promotes the healthy growth and maintenance of forests. Some projects entail more than one of these activities at the same time. For example, gas capture projects at landfills not only prevent the release of methane gas into the atmosphere, but they also use the captured methane to generate electricity

that would otherwise be generated by burning fossil fuels such as coal or natural gas. What is a carbon offset, anyway? A carbon offset is a certificate representing the reduction of one metric ton (2,205 lbs) of carbon dioxide emissions, the principal cause of climate change. Although complex in practice, carbon offsets are

fairly simple in theory. If you develop a project that reduces carbon dioxide emissions, every ton of emissions reduced results in the creation of one carbon offset. Project developers can then sell these offsets to finance their projects. There are hundreds of different types of carbon reduction projects. For example, a dairy farm can install an anaerobic digester to captures and destroys methane that would otherwise be released when animal manure decomposes. However, such anaerobic digester projects are typically expensive to install and maintain. In order to finance the construction and operation of a digester project, a dairy farm can sell the emission reductions in the form of carbon offsets. Carbon offsets are therefore an available tool for individuals and organizations that wish to mitigate the impact of their own carbon footprint.

AT China Alt Cause

China is taking initiatives to reduce carbon emissions – they will reduce up to 45% by 2020

Yingchun 2013

(Gong, November 21, 2013, “China will notably cut CO2 emissions by 2020”, http://www.china.org.cn/environment/warsaw_climate_talks/2013-11/21/content_30663021.htm)

"China will continue to step up its efforts to address climate change in a bid to achieve the target of reducing CO2 emissions per unit of GDP by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from the 2005 levels," reiterated Xie Zhenhua, head of the Chinese delegation and vice chairman of the National Development and Reform

Commission (NDRC) during the high-level segment of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference on Nov. 20.¶ The high-level segment of the Warsaw Climate Change Conference

kicked off on Tuesday. Xie attended the conference on Wednesday and offered four suggestions for the ongoing climate negotiations.¶ Xie urged all countries to join in sincere cooperation to deal with the ongoing climate change that poses great global threats to sustainable development. He pointed out that the United Nations Framework Convention on

Climate Change (UNFCCC) is the common commitment adhered to by all parties. Additionally, the principles of equity, common but differentiated responsibilities and

respective capabilities serve as guidelines for the international community to follow. He called on all parties to turn the outcomes of the documents of past COP/CMP

conferences into real actions and make the Warsaw Conference a meeting of "implementation."¶ Xie noted that funding is key to the success of the conference. "Funding is the

prerequisite for developing countries to take actions in mitigation, adaptation, loss and damages, technology development & transfer, capacity building and transparency,"

he said. Therefore, he urged developed countries to fulfill all their funding commitments and develop a clear roadmap for providing US$100 billion each year by 2020.¶

The emission reduction targets show the ambition of the different parties involved, Xie continued. He

stressed that the Warsaw Conference should urge all, especially those developed countries, to ratify the Amendment to the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol

as soon as possible. "If developed countries follow the requirement of a scientific report [Emission Gap Report 2013 released by United Nations Environment Program] by

increasing their emission reduction targets to 40 percent by 2020, the so-called gap in emission reduction efforts would no longer exist," he said.¶ Xie also pointed out the

achievements that China has made thus far in dealing with air pollution issues and addressing climate change, given that China's energy consumption per unit GDP has decreased by 26.4 percent over the past eight years and over 2.35 billion tons of CO2 have been cut, a 28 percent drop in carbon intensity. The stock volume of forest in

China has increased by 1.723 billion cubic meters, exceeding the target of 1.3 billion cubic meters, he said.¶ Moreover, Xie said China has undertaken a series of new actions

to deal with climate change since 2012, such as the launch of China's first National Low Carbon Day and the carbon exchange pilot project. Furthermore, China has carried

out South-South cooperation and has continuously provided US$10 million each year to support capacity building in other developing countries since 2011.¶ On a final note,

Xie stated that China is carrying out internal consultation and analysis for the development of further actions. He believed China will make contributions and efforts for addressing climate change around the world after 2020.

The US and China are working together to cap emissions – together they will significantly reduce air pollution

Automotive News 2013

(December 5, 2013, “U.S. to help China crack down on vehicle emissions”, http://www.autonews.com/article/20131205/OEM11/131209907/u.s.-to-help-china-crack-down-on-vehicle-emissions)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- The United States will help China implement stricter emission standards for vehicles in a bid to help the world's biggest carbon emitter tackle rampant air pollution, the White House said today.¶ The

announcement was one of several made at the conclusion of Vice President Joe Biden's visit to China, where he met with President Xi Jinping and other senior Chinese

officials to discuss ways to strengthen economic ties between the countries in addition to the escalating geopolitical tensions in the East China Sea.¶ Under the new

agreement, the United States pledged to give China technical assistance to implement a new round of vehicle emissions standards, known as China VI, which

would require cars to have filters that capture particulate matter that contributes to heavy smog.¶ "These standards, when implemented, will have significant air quality and climate benefits and reduce vehicle fuel use," according to a White House fact sheet.¶ Addressing climate change internationally through both multilateral and bilateral

relationships is a pillar of President Barack Obama's Climate Action Plan, a strategy released in June to tackle heat-trapping greenhouse gases.¶ China and the United States are the world's No. 1 and No. 2 emitters of greenhouse gas emissions, respectively. Experts say joint action between the two provides the biggest hope for tackling global climate change.¶ Greening the growing fleet¶ According to China's Ministry of Public Security,

passenger car ownership in China reached 120 million by the end of 2012. At the current growth rate, passenger car ownership will top 200 million by 2020.¶ But as some of

China's major cities try to cope with choking air pollution, they have placed new restrictions on vehicle sales.¶ China is currently in the process of implementing its fourth-

stage emissions standards, or China IV diesel standards, which would cap the allowed sulfur content at 50 parts per million next year, down from current levels of 350 parts

per million.¶ China V standards for diesel and refined gasoline will be rolled out next; they will not take effect until 2017. They will lower the sulfur content limit to 10 parts

per million.¶ China vs. U.S. standards¶ The city of Beijing, which has a population of over 20 million and will have as many as 6 million private cars by 2015, implemented the

China V standard in February to tackle record pollution that surpassed hazardous levels early this year.¶ By contrast, the United States allows a sulfur content of 15 parts per

million while the European Union allows diesel fuel to have a sulfur content of 10 parts per million.¶ One U.S. official said it is a significant development that the United States

is helping China jump-start the sixth stage of vehicle emissions standards while it is still working on its 2017 standards.¶ "The United States is interested in moving to China

to six as soon as possible," the official said. "It is a clear signal that China wants to move forward in an accelerated way that will have far reaching impacts on air quality and public health ."¶ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and Energy

Department officials will help Chinese counterparts with modeling, testing and other technical research required for developing those standards.¶ The two countries also

agreed to continue working together to phase down the consumption of hydrofluorocarbons, a highly potent greenhouse gas used in refrigeration.¶ They also agreed to

jointly study phasing out fossil fuel subsidies in both countries.

AT India Alt Cause

India announced plans to reduce carbon emissions – it seeks energy efficiency that will help world emissions decrease

Ramesh 2009

(Randeep, December 2, 2009, “India to reduce carbon intensity by 24% by 2020”, http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/dec/02/india-carbon-intensity-target)

A worker at the Suzlon wind turbine factory at Khori, Maharashtra. India, the world’s fourth-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been under pressure from developed nations to announce what it will do to control emissions. Photograph:

Gautam Singh/AP¶ India could reduce its carbon intensity by 24% by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, government sources revealed today.¶ ¶ The leaked figures, which emerged ahead of the Copenhagen climate change

summit next Monday, follow Beijing's announcement last week that China would move to cut carbon intensity - the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic growth - by more than 40% by 2020.¶ ¶ The EU has already pledged a 20% cut in carbon

emissions by 2020 - set to rise to 30% if other developed countries match the European target - while the US last month proposed cuts of 17%.¶ ¶ Sources told the Indian

media that the reduction in carbon intensity could go up to 37% by 2030, compared to 2005. India's environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, is expected to make a statement

in parliament tomorrow to announce the targets, Reuters reported.¶ ¶ To reduce emissions, India's national action plan on climate change sees increasing solar power generation, improving energy efficiency and enhancing carbon sinks as a route to "greener growth". In August, India laid out an ambitious plan to generate 20GW of solar

power by 2020, which could equate to 75% of the world's solar energy.¶ The country, which is the world's fourth-highest emitter of greenhouse gases, has been under

pressure from developed nations to announce what it will do to control emissions.¶ With an economy estimated to grow at 6.5% next year, many have pointed out that

Delhi's contribution to global warming will increase substantially.¶ India's "voluntary reductions" were first floated by Ramesh last week during talks with the Chinese prime

minister.¶ He told journalists then that India could not afford to be seen as lagging behind in other nations in offering to act. "We have to look at it. I don't think we can sweep

(aside) the fact that China, Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa and peer group countries have put down voluntary, unilateral, non-legally binding, quantitative targets," the

minister said.¶ Ramesh also said Delhi would shoot down the Danish proposal to set a "peaking year" after which global emissions will fall. A draft proposal suggested that

global emissions peak by 2020.¶ A senior government official who declined to be named told Reuters that India's final targets, likely to be presented at next week's global

climate change talks in Copenhagen, could reflect a broad range rather than a specific figure.¶ Talks for a new global climate treaty to succeed the 1997 Kyoto protocol

beyond 2012 are deadlocked as rich and poor nations trade blows. The issues range from emission targets to the financial aid for developing countries to help them cope

with the effects of climate change.¶ Delhi has been a hardliner in the negotiations saying it won't accept legally binding emission caps and offered only to keep per-capita

output of carbon lower than that of richer nations. The average Indian's carbon footprint is eight times smaller than the average person in Britain.

***Solvency

1ac solvency/plan card

1ac solvency – the usfg should mandate offshore and increase funding

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Despite its ineffectiveness to date, the CZMA has great potential to serve as a framework for offshore wind power development. With some simple but clear revisions that could enhance federal influence, mimicking Denmark's stronger centralized control of energy development, the CZMA could be used to

mandate offshore wind power-friendly CZMPs where applicable . At the same time, the Act will continue

to uphold the federalism values ingrained in the management of coastal resources in the United States. These revisions should be: To include an explicit mandate for offshore wind power development where appropriate and feasible on all U.S. coasts; To require revisions to CZMPs in accordance with this new mandate; And To increase funding and other incentives for offshore wind power development. Revising the CZMA is not a new idea for Congress. For example, during the Cape Wind federal jurisdiction saga, Cong. William D. Delahunt (D-MA) proposed a set of revisions to the CZMA257 in response to the Cape Wind federal jurisdiction confusion.258 Although these did not pass, 259 and focused on agency jurisdiction over offshore wind rather than the promotion of offshore wind, the proposal at least demonstrates some willingness in Congress to take on the idea of revising the CZMA. Indeed, the CZMA has been amended in the 260 past, for example to encourage aquaculture. In a promising sign of state willingness to cooperate in coastal management, Massachusetts and fifteen other states participated in MMS's initial Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement (PEIS) process, which261 was MMS's effort to determine how to address offshore wind permitting. Several commenters in the process, including representatives of state agencies, urged MMS to coordinate with state authorities in finding suitable locations for 262 offshore wind facilities. More recently, Massachusetts's Ocean Management Plan explicitly suggests coordination with MMS for offshore renewable energy 263 siting. Although the United States has evolved a

fundamentally different approach to coastal management from Denmark, revisions to the CZMA should shift our national approach toward increased, centralized influence and coordination that has worked so effectively in that country. Currently the CZMA recognizes the potential importance of offshore energy development and requires the consideration of the development of energy facilities that "are of greater than local significance" in state

plans.264 These vague standards are not sufficient, however, as evidenced by the failure of offshore wind power

development in the United States, and in Cape Wind in particular. The CZMA should be revised to include an explicit

mandate to states to permit, and possibly even to promote, offshore wind energy and other renewable

energy development in appropriate locations . The term "development" should broadly encompass generation facilities as well as transmission lines and other works required to allow facilities to operate effectively. While it is important for states to continue to respond to local concerns and

negative impacts, the federal government needs a stronger voice in favor of the national interest in offshore wind power development. This new mandate would not have a detrimental effect on the federal government's broad goal of environmental protection. It would not give offshore wind

power developers a right to develop anywhere off the coast, but it would push development in locations that are appropriate environmentally. Along with studies relating to optimal coastal development conditions, for example, wind pattern studies, MMS's PEIS could serve as a useful starting point in defining what "appropriate locations" should entail. The PEIS examines "the potential environmental consequences of implementing the [Alternative Energy and Alternate Use Program on the OCS] and will be used ,,265 to establish initial measures to mitigate environmental consequences. Individual projects would almost certainly still require individual EISs under NEPA, which would further ensure environmentally appropriate offshore renewable development. In fact, NEPA would effectively serve as a backstop to the development that a revised CZMA would encourage, as it would discourage or

prohibit environmentally harmful overdevelopment. This revision to the CZMA could change how coastal states treat offshore wind power development in two ways. First, it would require changes to many states' CZMPs to reflect the new national priority for offshore renewable energy sources,

including offshore wind. Second, the new CZMA mandate would affect how states approach the federal consistency review process with respect to renewable permitting and construction in state and federal waters.266 The federal government would likely certify offshore wind projects as consistent with states' revised CZMPs

because development of offshore renewable energy would be an explicit goal in the states' CZMPs under the revised CZMA. Similarly, states would less frequently be able to object to these determinations, because they would have difficulty finding inconsistency with their revised state CZMPs. 267 And even if a coastal state did

object to a federal determination, the Secretary of Commerce could overrule the state's objection as inconsistent with the new objectives of the CZMA.268 Thus, the revised CZMA would more effectively compel states to consider the national benefits of offshore wind in addition to just their consideration of the local costs. Further, it would give offshore wind proponents support in combating local opposition to projects. This revision could come in tandem with revisions to the Energy Policy Act or as part of an entirely new energy agenda. President Barack Obama has repeatedly expressed interest in a new trajectory for energy policy in the United States that focuses on climate change, energy efficiency, renewable energy, and energy independence. 269 Congress could take advantage of this momentum to make these related revisions to the CZMA as well. In fact, reform of an existing, familiar set of regulations, like the CZMA, may be more palatable to Congress, and an easy first step to take with regard to renewable energy.

All three parts of the aff are key- funding won’t work without a regulatory framework that encourages states to develop offshore wind.

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

A revised CZMA would provide a promising solution to the problems that offshore wind energy and other offshore renewable energy sources have faced in the United States. Specifically, offshore wind power development has faced repeated failures due to the mismatch between local costs and national benefits, and the absence of a regulatory framework to reconcile them. While it may come too late to make a difference for Cape Wind, a new CZMA could still ensure success for offshore wind power in other locations around the United States. Still, to be truly effective, revising the CZMA needs to be just one step in a broader offshore wind or renewable energy program. While a new CZMA would address problems related to offshore wind farm siting, this is just one barrier that offshore wind power development needs to overcome. For example, as with all renewable energy sources, the importance of positive federal government policies and incentives, such as the production tax credits mentioned previously, are key to offshore wind power's success.

AT Cost

Offshore Wind has minimal downside and the cost-factors will be quickly resolved on a short learning curve

Schroeder 10

Erica, J.D. from University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010. And Masters in Environmental Management from Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, “Turning Offshore Wind On”, California Law Review, p

Whereas many of the benefits of offshore wind power are national or even global, the costs are almost entirely local. The downsides to offshore wind that drive most of the opposition to offshore wind power are visual and environmental. Opponents to offshore wind projects complain about their negative aesthetic impacts on the landscape and on local property values.79 They also make related complaints about negative impacts on coastal recreational activities and tourism.80 However, studies have failed to show statistically significant negative aesthetic or property-value impacts, despite showing continued expectations of such impacts. In addition, opponents frequently cite offshore wind power’s environmental costs. These costs are site specific and can involve harm to plants and animals, and their habitats.82 This harm includes impacts on birds, which can involve disruption of migratory patterns, destruction of habitat, and bird deaths from collision with the turbine blades.83 However, these adverse impacts are generally less dramatic than those associated with fossil fuel extraction and generation, and in a well-chosen site they can be negligible.84 A recent, exhaustive study of the environmental impact of major offshore wind farms in Denmark concluded that ―offshore wind farms, if placed right, can be engineered and operated without significant damage to the marine environment and vulnerable species. 85A final concern is that offshore wind farms are more ‖expensive to build, and more difficult to install and maintain, than onshore wind farms.86 The cost of an offshore wind project is estimated to be at least 50 percent greater than the onshore equivalent.87 Short- and long-term technical improvements could help to lower offshore wind costs, however, and government assistance may help them occur more quickly.88

Incentives Solve

The PTC incentivizes wind energy development

US Department of Energy, 2013

US Department of Energy. "Federal Incentives for Wind Power." US Department of Energy. US Department of Energy, Oct. 2013. Web. 19 July 2014. <http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/57933_eere_wwpp_federal_incentives.pdf>.

The federal government uses several tax-based policy incentives to stimulate the deployment of renewable energy. The Department of the Treasury's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) administers these incentives. The federal Renewable Electricity Production Tax Credit (PTC), established by the Energy Policy Act of I992, allows owners of qualified, renewable energy facilities to receive tax credits for each kilowatt-hour (kWh) of electricity generated by the facility over a 10-year period. Qualified wind power projects are eligible to receive 2.3 cents per kWh for the production of electricity from utility-scale 1" wind turbines (indexed for inflation).

The federal government should increase financial and tax incentives to substantially increase offshore wind energy

Norman Y. Mineta, Co-Chair, Joint Ocean Commission Initiative and Former U.S. Secretary of

Commerce, Transportation, January 2014, “Review of: Time to Chart a New Course For the Health of Our Oceans,” Sea & Technology, http://www.sea-technology.com/ features/2014/0114/7_Mineta.php, Accessed 4/25/2014

Action two is to promote ocean renewable energy development and reinvest in our oceans. With two successful offshore wind lease sales this past summer and more to come, the U.S. has an opportunity to be a leader in promoting ocean renewable energy development as a safe, environmentally responsible and economical energy source. In order to accelerate the development of offshore wind energy and other renewable energy sources, the Joint Initiative calls on the administration and Congress to provide adequate financial and tax incentives for companies working to develop these technologies. The Joint Initiative also supports the establishment of a dedicated ocean investment fund that would use a portion of the revenues from offshore commercial energy projects—including oil and gas, and wind energy—to support ocean and coastal science, management and ecosystem restoration efforts to help managers and commercial interests make the best possible decisions up and down the coasts. 

But federal loan guarantees don’t exist yet – key to offshore wind expansion – uncertainty precludes investment as banks only partially evaluate potential farms underfunding projects

Caperton et al '12

Richard W. Caperton is the Director of Clean Energy Investment, Michael Conathan is the Director of Ocean Policy, and Jackie Weidman is a Special Assistant for the Energy Opportunity team at

American Progress. , "Encouraging Investment Is Key to U.S. Offshore Wind Development" 1/12/12 www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/01/offshore_wind.html

Loan guarantees Uncertainty around offshore wind turbines’ operational performance also makes it difficult to finance these projects. When a bank evaluates a wind farm, it predicts how much power the turbines will produce each year and will only “count” the power that they’re extremely confident will be produced. With an innovative technology like offshore wind, this could mean that only half of the turbines’ expected output is “bankable.” This affects whether or not a bank thinks the developer will pay back a loan, and ultimately influences whether or not a bank offers a loan. This is a significant problem for offshore wind developers. But the federal government can solve this problem by guaranteeing a loan to a project developer. In this case the government agrees to pay back a loan if the developer is unable to. This puts banks at ease (after all, the U.S. government has a perfect track record of paying back loans) and will allow financing to flow freely. Congress has two simple ways to create a loan guarantee program for offshore wind. They can create a Clean Energy Deployment Administration, or “Green Bank,” which would offer financing tools like loan guarantees for innovative technologies. Or they can allocate funding to cover the cost of new loan guarantees for offshore wind under the existing Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program. Either way forward would help drive investment in the burgeoning offshore wind industry.

A renewables transition is coming now, but uncertainty from the private sector prevents its actualization.

(Mormann 2012)

Felix. "Enhancing the Investor Appeal of Renewable Energy."Environmental Law 42 (2012). LEXIS.

The good news is that a timely transition to a low-carbon, renewables based electricity sector appears within technological reach. In 2008, former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore announced his plan

to “Re-power America” 20 with 100% clean electricity from renewables within a decade. Since then, over half a dozen independent studies have confirmed the technological feasibility of meeting the entire electricity demand of a given country, 21 region, 22 or even the world, 23 with renewable sources of energy. In their timeframes for the shift to renewables, the feasibility studies range from 2050 24 as mandated by the two-degree

scenario, to 2030, 25 to an extremely ambitious Gore-esque transition as early as 2020. 26 The bad news is that we remain far from harnessing the full technological potential of power generation from renewable sources of energy. Current projections forecast that renewables will account for only 15% of American electricity generation by 2035. 27 Compared to a renewables share of 10% in 2010, 28 the projected

growth over the next quarter of a century is relatively modest. Our business-as-usual trajectory, therefore, is too slow to reap the trifecta of environmental, economic, and energy security rewards that await the winner of the Race to Renewables. One U.S. commentator has already warned that, without a strong commitment to renewables, “we may look toward a future of imported clean technology as a substitute for imported dirty fuels.” 29 A whole plethora of obstacles presently stand in the way of a timely scale-up of renewable energy technologies. Economists have long warned of environmental externalities and other market failures and imperfections in the electricity sector that hinder renewables in their competition with fossil fuel incumbents. 30 Recent legal scholarship has investigated regulatory and other non-economic barriers to the large-scale deployment of renewable energy

technologies, offering policy recommendations to cut through the red tape. 31 Even if these barriers are removed, scaling-up renewable energy technologies will still require an enormous infusion of capital. At a macroeconomic level, the overall cost of transitioning to an electricity sector based on renewables has been estimated at around $100 trillion globally— not including the necessary investments in transmission infrastructure. 32 Notwithstanding recent growth in venture capital and other clean-tech investment, the transition to a low-carbon, renewables-based electricity sector will require a massive influx

of trillions of dollars in additional capital. 33 An investment of such magnitude, however, exceeds the financial means of even the wealthiest nations—including the United States, burdened with a national debt exceeding $15 trillion. 34 Budget austerity measures make it unlikely that military spending can provide renewable energy technologies with the type of capital injection that has helped other emerging technologies, such as the Internet or GPS, reach the stage of commercial

application. 35 The private sector, therefore, is called upon to provide the capital necessary for the large-scale deployment of renewables. From the private sector’s microeconomic perspective,

investment in renewable energy technologies is wrought with risks and uncertainties about , for example,

technology innovation, fuel price development, emission regulation and pricing, and the fiercely debated comparative advantage between centralized utility-scale generation and distributed generation. 36 The high-stakes, high-risk nature of energy investment is exacerbated by the notoriously long “valley of death” between the proof of concept and commercial deployment of power generation technologies. 37 In the information technology industry, a simple mouse click may be all it takes to bring a new website or smartphone application online for its large-scale

commercial deployment. In contrast, electricity generation technology often requires up-front investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to prove its suitability for large-scale commercialization . It is in these early stages of commercial deployment , however, that banks and financial markets are the most reluctant to provide the direly needed capital , much less at low cost. This Article starts with the presumption that public policy should serve as a catalyst to leverage the necessary private sector investment to deploy renewable energy technologies at scale. ‘

AT Intermittency

Wind energy is more reliable than all nonrenewable energy

Provenzano, 13

Provenzano, Victor. Has an MBA. "The Intermittency of Wind and Solar: Is It Only Intermittently a Problem?" CleanTechnica. CleanTechnica, 12 Aug. 2013. Web. 18 July 2014. <http://cleantechnica.com/2013/08/12/intermittency-of-wind-and-solar-is-it-only-intermittently-a-problem/>.

The most intermittent renewables, wind and solar PV, are also the most reliable of all renewables. They require almost no maintenance and repair. Solar PV is able to generate power

98% of the time (in the Nordic summer when the sun does not set); onshore wind is able to generate power 98% of the time; and offshore wind, 95% of the time. What is more, in contrast to centralized renewable baseload plants, most often only a single solar panel or a single wind turbine will require repair or maintenance at any one time, not the entire wind farm or solar array; thus, a utility-scale solar array or wind farm is able to stay “up and running” when

planned or unplanned maintenance is being done. To some extent then, the high degree of long-term reliability of wind and solar PV will partly offset the short-term variability that solar panels and wind turbines will experience, locally at least, yet only if, inconceivably, they are forced to remain in isolation from the smart grid with its array of distributed renewables and supple design strategies.

Electricity offers a solution for possible wind intermittency

Rugolo and Aziz, No date

Rugolo, Jason, and Michael J. Aziz. Jason is a scientist at Zero Mass Labs, PhD, applied physics at Harvard University "Electricity Storage for Intermittent Renewable Sources." Electricity Storage for Intermittent Renewable Sources (n.d.): n. pag. Harvard. Harvard. Web. 18 July 2014. <http://aziz.seas.harvard.edu/files/mja212.pdf>.

Electricity storage (ES) represents a large class of technologies with the potential to address the intermittency problem without a significant marginal carbon footprint compared to fossil fuel combustion. Many types of ES exist, all which have the common characteristic that they convert electricity into stored energy in some medium through a conversion device, and then, either through the same device or another, convert that stored energy back into electricity, while losing some in the round trip due to dissipative processes. Among them are pumped hydro, compressed air, flow batteries, solid-electrodRecent studies of wind power installed on United¶ Statesgridshaveatternptedtodeterminelheactual¶ cost of intermittency. They indicate it is currently in¶ Iheareaofaz-S tentlIsofacentperkWh,depend-¶

ingonpenetration.Thehigheroostswerefor20%¶ " ' lfewtemhsofaeentperkwh is not¶ percentage of the¶ ¶ total cost of generating power (whicli for wind power¶ might be in the range of 2-6 ¢IkWh). lntermiltency

Wind energy is very efficient – it produces more energy than it consumes

Shwartz, 2014

Shwartz, Mark. Communications Manager, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University writer at Stanford News Service "Wind Farms Can Provide a Surplus of Reliable Clean

Energy to Society, Stanford Study Finds." Stanford News. Stanford News, 20 Mar. 2014. Web. 18 July 2014. <http://news.stanford.edu/pr/2014/pr-wind-farm-energy-032014.html>.

"Wind technologies generate far more energy than they consume," Dale said. "Our study showed that wind actually produces enough surplus electricity to support up to 72 hours of either battery or geologic storage. This suggests that the industry could deploy enough storage to cope with three-day lulls in wind, common to many weather systems, and still provide net electricity to society." The results were especially good for onshore wind turbines. "We found that onshore wind backed by three days of geologic storage can support annual growth rates of 100 percent – in other words, double in size each year – and still maintain an energy surplus," he said. "These results are very encouraging," said study co-author Sally Benson, a professor of energy resources engineering and

director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) at Stanford. "They show that you could create a sustainable energy system that grows and maintains itself by combining wind and storage together. This depends on the growth rate of the industry, because the faster you grow, the more energy you need to build new turbines and batteries."

Wind fluctuations are accommodated for

Goggin, 13

Goggin, Michael. Michael Goggin is the manager of transmission policy for the American Wind Energy Association.  "Wind Power Is a Reliable Technology That Provides Societal and Consumer Benefits." MinnPost. MinnPost, 31 Jan. 2013. Web. 18 July 2014. <http://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2013/01/wind-power-reliable-technology-provides-societal-and-consumer-benefits>.

Wind energy has already proven a reliable energy source by providing significant amounts of electricity across major parts of the United States . Iowa produces more than 20 percent of its electricity from wind, and when wind energy recently provided more than 25 percent of the electricity being used across 11 Midwest

states, including Minnesota, the regional grid operator MISO commented, "Wind represents one of the fuel

choices that helps us manage congestion on the system and ultimately helps keep prices low for our customers and the end-use consumer." In Minnesota, 12.7% in 2011 In Minnesota, wind power in 2011 contributed 12.7 percent of the state's electricity generation, supported up to 3,000 jobs, and contributed $8 million in land

lease payments. It saves consumers money as well. A 2012 report from Synapse Energy Economics found that wind

energy can save the average Midwestern household up to $200 per year. Data and analysis from utilities, the government and independent utility system operators confirm that adding wind energy displaces large quantities of fossil-fuel use and carbon dioxide pollution . That’s because when the wind is blowing, the electricity generated displaces the output of the most expensive, least efficient power plants. In Minnesota, as wind grew from providing less than 4 percent of the state’s electricity in 2006 to almost 10 percent in

2009, electric sector carbon-dioxide emissions fell by more than 10 percent, or 4 million tons. Fluctuations are

accommodated Utility operators accommodate gradual and predictable changes in wind output with the same tools they use to deal with fluctuations in electricity demand as well as sudden outages of large fossil and nuclear power plants, which are far more costly to deal with.

AT Transportation

Transportation already available for offshore wind production- vessels from oil and gas sector can be used

Navigant Consulting, Inc. ’13 (Bruce Hamilton, Principal Investigator, Lindsay Battenberg, Mark Bielecki, Charlie Bloch, Terese Decker, Lisa Frantzis, Jay Paidipati, Andy Wickless, Feng Zhao, October 17, 2013, Offshore Wind Market and Economic Analysis, http://www1.eere.energy.gov/wind/pdfs/offshore_wind_market_and_economic_analysis_10_2013.pdf)

Many of the initial installation vessels used in the offshore wind sector were retrofitted from the offshore oil and gas sector. While certain shipbuilders are designing and building custom vessels for offshore wind development, it can still be economical in some markets to upgrade vessels from the oil and gas sector. An increase in offshore oil and gas activity could limit the availability and/or increase

the cost of these vessels for use in wind applications, as they may be returned to service in the oil and gas sector. Indeed, Seajacks, a vessel operator, indicates on its website that its “self-propelled vessels are suitable for installation and maintenance of offshore wind turbines, and are also able to perform maintenance work on offshore oil and gas platforms.”48 Another potential issue is that the availability of laydown area and cranes at key maritime ports could be constrained by offshore oil and gas activity. This issue, however, is not expected to be as significant in the North and Mid-Atlantic as it is in the North Sea.

USFG key

Federal regulations are key- local interests will continue to block offshore development despite its overwhelming benefits

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Despite the aforementioned challenges, offshore wind remains important to the United States' energy future. Its many benefits make it an ideal choice to meet some of the country's growing electricity demand, especially as the United States begins to realize the severity of the threats from both climate change and its dependence on foreign fuels.89 In addition to the environmental and economic benefits that offshore and onshore wind power provides, the proximity of offshore wind to U.S. electricity demand and the resulting lower transmission costs arc crucial.90 The many benefits of offshore wind outweigh its primarily local environmental and aesthetic costs, most of which can be minimized with careful planning and community relations. In spite of these compelling drivers, a primary obstacle to offshore

wind power development is the lack of a regulatory framework with which to reconcile the local

costs with the regional and national benefits.9' The current regulatory framework is described in

the next Part. Until the federal government puts a revised framework in place, such as the revised

CZMA proposed in Part V, states and local groups fixated on immediate, local costs will retain

the ability to stall and even block offshore wind power development. Without federal

regulatory revision, offshore wind will not realize its full promise.

USFG key - saves money

Siting and planning can offset any costs to offshore wind power- national control is key

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

The benefits of offshore wind power are significant, frequently outweighing its costs, which tend to be site specific. With careful planning and siting, wind power developers can substantially reduce and nearly eliminate the costs associated with wind power generation. In the United States, however, localities and local interests exert substantial control over offshore wind siting and permitting, and regional and national interests have ineffective recourse for dealing with strong local power, as described in more detail in Part III. Because of this dominant local control and the localized costs of offshore wind power development, the cost-benefit balance tends to tip against the global benefits of offshore projects. As a result, there are currently no offshore wind projects under construction in the United States, despite several proposals.57

USFG key- financial support

Federal financial and regulatory support is key- giving control to state governments ensures that localities will block offshore wind development

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Ultimately, the CZMA, with its focus on decentralized, state control over coastal-zone management, leaves the federal government and offshore wind proponents with minimal

recourse in their struggle to develop offshore wind projects . The CZMA allows states near-

complete control over their coastal zones through their CZMPs, with almost no role for the federal government in promoting offshore wind energy (or any kind of renewable energy). Because electricity transmission lines must necessarily run through slates' coastal zones to reach consumers, states therefore have significant control over offshore wind projects. Through federal consistency review, their direct control can even extend into federal waters; though states have not often employed this process, the Secretary of Commerce has seemed willing to give them some deference when they do. Given a policy of such strong local control, and the absence of a firm federal mandate for offshore wind power development, local interests have been able to stall both federal and state permitting processes, often through litigation. Proponents of offshore wind have little federal support, and no guaranteed source of state support, on which to rely. Cape Wind presents a compelling and frustrating illustration of this problem.

Federal funding ensures development of offshore wind power

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

As previously discussed, a federal agency, MMS, is responsible for siting 272 and permitting offshore wind power generation facilities.

Although the CZMA alludes to the ability of the federal government to play another role by encouraging energy facility development through "financial assistance,' it is once again vague. Congress would need to back up its commitment to offshore wind power development and renewable energy, in general—with funding increases and incentives for such development in particular. Such assistance could include incentives for not only generation facilities, but also

transmission and distribution lines, and any other related works necessary for functioning offshore wind farms. Funding could be dependent on state CZMP revision, as described above, to encourage prompt revision. Congress has already recognized the importance of tax incentives for renewable energy in its renewal of the

Production Tax Credit through 20I2.274 Other studies have shown a correlation between these credits and increases in renewable energy investment, and have postulated more significant increases with a longer-term incentive.275 While this revision would likely be the hardest of the three for Congress to swallow,

particularly during an economic downturn, there is at least one compelling reason for Congress to consider it: offshore wind power development can create jobs, both regionally and nationally.276 Indeed, President Obama has explicitly acknowledged the potential for clean energy to create new jobs, with particular

urgency as the United States continues to sec high rates of unemployment.2'7 In addition, the President has acknowledged the importance of public spending to stimulate the economy.2™ In particular, he has promised to spend significantly on renewable energy, in part because of its job-creation potential.179 Or, as with the other aforementioned revisions to the CZMA, these incentives might be tied into broader revisions to the Energy Policy Act or the creation of new climate change legislation.2™ While this idea might buck historical trends related to federal involvement in Coastal Zone development, it is well within the realm of practical policies already being discussed.

USFG key- oversight

Federal oversight is key- without a mandate for offshore wind and increased federal funding states and localities will block new development.

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

The CZMA has had some measure of success-almost every coastal state participates and it has led states to view their Coastal Zones

as "unified ecological area[s]."230 Still, despite clear undertones of environmental protection, the Act has failed to serve as an effective tool to promote offshore wind power development, even at well-suited sites such as the location of

the Cape Wind project. The CZMA's failure with respect to offshore wind can be attributed to lack of

specificity in the terms of the Act. That is, without more explicit guiding principles and requirements ,

states can fulfill the process required by the CZMA—the development of CZMPs— while not meeting any

particular standards .2" This leaves states with substantial discretion, but without a coherent,

overarching goal driven by a federal plan. In particular, with its decentralized structure and only brief explicit mention of the

national benefits of offshore energy development, the CZMA gives insufficient encouragement to states to recognize the benefits of offshore wind power in their CZMPs.232 For example, the CZMA explicitly mandates that coastal states "anticipate and plan" for climate change and resulting sea level rise and other adverse effects.213 However, it fails to specify the role for offshore wind energy or offshore renewable energy, even in a general manner, in such climate-change planning and in state CZMPs. Once the Secretary of Commerce has determined that a state has given "adequate consideration" to the "national interest" in its CZMP, the federal government no longer has control over energy facility development in state waters.234 Thus coastal states can block proposed turbines in state waters and proposed transmission lines from offshore turbines proposed for federal waters. Or, as in the Cape Wind saga, most of which occurred before the Oceans Act was passed, states can simply not encourage, or even address, renewable energy production, giving proponents no mandate to rely on in litigation and administrative processes. In a more extreme situation, through federal consistency review, a coastal state retains a "reverse-preemption power" for federal projects and permits in state and federal waters, as long as these projects affect the state's coastal zone.235 Therefore, as projects outside of a state's CZMP will frequently impact a state's coastal zone, states can also potentially block permitting and/or construction of turbines not only in their

coastal zones, but also in federal waters outside of their CZMP's jurisdiction. Through these two mechanisms—state CZMPs and

federal consistency review—local interests focused on local costs in coastal states can stall or block offshore wind power development, despite compelling national and global reasons to

promote it. The CZMA offers no support to counteract this local opposition, such as a pro-

offshore wind federal mandate. In addition, the federal government has offered only low levels of

funding for renewable energy activity offshore .2 6 When this factor is combined with the regulatory uncertainty

resulting from so much discretion given to each individual state, it is not surprising that the CZMA has been an ineffective tool for promoting offshore wind power development.

US must require states to amend their policies to support offshore wind

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

To give this new offshore renewable energy mandate effect, Congress or the Secretary of Commerce should instruct states to revise their CZMPs in 270 order to achieve full compliance with the new requirement. Once the plans are revised, the CZMA already provides the Secretary of Commerce with a mechanism to ensure there are no gaps or deficiencies in state plans. As noted previously, before approving a state's CZMP, the Secretary of Commerce must ensure the CZMP is in compliance with the CZMA and all other additional 27 rules and regulations the Secretary has promulgated.271 If the CZMA's "purposes" were to include promotion of offshore wind power generation, the Secretary of Commerce could make sure the CZMPs carry out that purpose. Thus, states could retain some measure of control, but the broader benefits of offshore wind power development would be integrated into both the CZMA and the CZMPs. As noted previously, CZMPs revised in favor of offshore wind would also give proponents of development more statutory support in any state litigation by offshore wind opponents and may even deter such litigation altogether.

USFG key- licensing

National policy key to propel offshore wind through faster licensing

Jackson, 13 (Derrick, 3/2/2013, “Politics imperil offshore wind sweet spots,” http://bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/02/sour-politics-imperil-offshore-wind-sweet-spots/wZHvvjxVMtZKx2Y42iRpII/story.html, JMP)

Kyle Aarons, a fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, said that despite Obama’s high-profile advocacy of renewable energy in his State of the Union address, only 30 states have adopted renewable energy standards, and most states without them are

Republican strongholds that soundly voted against Obama for president. “No two state policies are alike, and we’re not really anticipating much progress on new states,” Aarons said. “I wouldn’t say we’re stuck on renewables overall. We have a lot of potential to still catch up. Onshore wind will still probably do well, but without a national policy, I would imagine that offshore , being newer, will be pretty slow.” Rick Sullivan, Massachusetts secretary for energy and environmental affairs,

agreed, saying in a telephone interview that a national policy would likely speed up offshore wind

development . “I think you’d not only see more permits, but faster permitting should allow developers to take advantage of the most up-to-date wind technology out there rather than it taking years to put up something that may be outdated,” Sullivan said. Being outdated weighed heavily on the minds of participants at the offshore conference. While Cape Wind and Block Island’s Deepwater Wind are finally poised to plunge their first platforms into the water, Europe had a record year in offshore wind development, installing 369 turbines. Denmark announced it

now gets 30 percent of energy from wind. Investors at the conference said billions of dollars are sitting on

the sidelines as America’s wind potential waits for a national policy . Deepwater Wind board manager

Bryan Martin gave credit to Salazar for getting wind energy as far as he has, “but we’re tapped out on the state-by-state

model.” The White House and Congress must tap into a national model , or the U nited S tates will

remain on the sidelines for good.

Offshore > Onshore

Offshore wind power produces more electricity than land-based wind power

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Although the United States only has wind turbines on land, offshore wind turbines have the potential to be larger and to produce more energy than onshore turbines. The Zond Z-750, a typical onshore wind turbine used in projects during the late 1990s, has a 208-foot tower, blades that span 79 feet, and a rotor diameter of 164 feet.39 True to its name, the Z-750 can generate 750 kW al ils peak output,40 This falls in the middle of the range in capacity for onshore, utility-scale turbines, which range from 100 KW to several MW.*1 As of2007, the average size for an onshore wind turbine was 1.65 MW.42 Offshore wind turbines can get significantly larger and more powerful, typically ranging from 2.0 to 3.6 MW, with a 260-foot tower and a rotor diameter of approximately 295 to 350 feet. 4J Turbines with capacities as large as 5 MW have been installed offshore,*4 and in 2008, a wind developer purchased an offshore turbine with an impressive 7.5 MW capacity.45

Offshore wind overcomes the drawbacks to traditional wind power- you can produce more, and it’s closer to transmission centers

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Moreover, offshore wind power has certain attributes that give it added benefits compared to onshore wind. Wind tends to be stronger and more consistent offshore-both benefits when it comes to

wind power generation. 69 70 This is largely due to reduced wind shear and roughness on the open ocean. Wind shear and roughness refer to effects of the landscape surrounding turbines on the quality of wind and thus the amount of electricity produced. While long grass, trees, and buildings will slow wind down significantly, water is generally very smooth and has

much less of an effect on wind speeds.72 In addition, because offshore wind projects face fewer barriers-both natural and manmade-to their expansion, offshore developers can take advantage of economies of scale and build larger wind farms that generate more electricity.73 Importantly, offshore wind also could overcome the problems that onshore wind faces regarding the distance between wind power generation and electricity demand. That is, although the United States has considerable onshore wind resources in certain areas, mostly in the middle of the country, they are frequently distant from areas with high electricity demand,

mostly on 74 the coasts, resulting in transmission problems. By contrast, offshore resources are near coastal electricity demand centers.75 In fact, twenty-eight of the contiguous forty-eight states have coastal boundaries, and these same states use 78 percent of the United States' electricity.76

Thus, offshore wind power generation can effectively serve major U.S. demand centers and avoid many of the transmission costs faced by remote onshore generation. 77 If shallow water

offshore potential (less than about 100 feet in depth) is met on the nation's coasts, twenty-six of the twenty-eight coastal states would have sufficient wind resources to meet at least 20 percent of their electricity needs, and many states would have enough to meet their total electricity demand.

Benefits to investing in offshore wind – technological advances make offshore wind energy more cost effective.

Makridos 2013, Christos (a doctoral student in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford

University). Offshore wind power resource availability and prospects: A global approach, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S146290111300097X.

There are many reasons for increased interest in offshore wind energy . 5 While offshore wind power is

generally 1.5–2 times as expensive as its onshore wind counterpart, new technological advances are making it much more cost-effective since equipment is becoming more capable of leveraging high wind speeds that are only present miles off a coast. Furthermore, offshore resources have remained largely untapped. This implies high marginal benefits for increased offshore wind expansion. According to McCrone et al. (2012), global investment in renewable energy totaled $257 billion in 2011; this was an increase of a factor of six from 2004. Much of this is fueled by (1) the expectation that governments will impose regulation, quantity, or price instruments to limit greenhouse gas (GHG) and pollution criteria emissions, and (2) the considerable technological progress that the renewable sector has made in recent years. Therefore, understanding the relative offshore wind power prospects and contingencies is especially important to facilitate sound investment decisions in the wind sector for the coming years. Since there have yet to be any truly global academic assessments of offshore wind power, this article addresses a pertinent area in the literature in hopes of generating further inquiry.

Offshore wind energy better than onshore wind energy – it is more reliable and can generate more electricity.

Trident Energy 11, (an independent developer of enabling technology for the offshore renewables industry), Offshore Wind, http://www.tridentenergy.co.uk/offshore-renewable-energy/offshore-wind/.

Energy generation from offshore wind has several benefits when compared to its onshore equivalent. Offshore winds are smoother and more powerful than onshore winds so offshore farms can generate more electricity, more reliably than those onshore. Offshore wind farms are less controversial than onshore projects and often easier to locate close to major population centres where most energy is consumed. Offshore wind is expected to play an important role in future renewable energy

generation because of these benefits. The European Wind Energy Association forecasts installation of 150GW offshore wind in Europe by 2030. China connected its first offshore wind farm to the grid in 2010 and aims to install 30GW by 2020. The US Department of Energy estimates that 54GW could feasibly be installed in the USA by 2030.

Offshore wind turbines have multiple advantages over onshore wind – they improve on almost all drawbacks of onshore wind turbines.

Musial, Walt and Sandy Butterfield. (Sandy is the Chief Engineer and Walt is the Principle Engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This is a report to the National Technical Information Service for the U.S. Department of Commerce) Future for Offshore Wind Energy in the United States: Preprint. http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/36313.pdf

Offshore wind turbines have a number of advantages over onshore ones. The size of onshore turbines is constrained by capacity limitations of the available transportation and erection equipment. Transportation and erection problems are mitigated offshore where the size and lifting capacities of marine shipping and handling equipment still exceed the installation requirements for multimegawatt wind turbines. Onshore, particularly in Europe or on the East Coast of the United States, the visual appearance of massive turbines in populated areas

may be undesirable. At a sufficient distance from the coast, visual intrusion is minimized and wind turbines can be larger, thus increasing the overall installed capacity per unit area. Similarly, less attention needs to be devoted to reduce turbine noise emissions offshore, which adds significant costs to onshore wind turbines. Also, the wind tends to blow faster and more uniformly at sea than on land. A higher, steadier wind means less wear on the turbine components and more electricity generated per square meter of swept rotor area. Onshore turbines are often located in remote areas, where the electricity must be transmitted by relatively long power lines to densely populated regions, but offshore turbines can be located close to high-value urban load centers, simplifying transmission issues. On the negative side of offshore development, investment costs are higher and accessibility is more difficult, resulting in higher capital and maintenance costs. Also, environmental conditions at sea are more severe: more corrosion from salt water and additional loads from waves and ice.

And obviously, offshore construction is more complicated. Despite the difficulties of offshore development, it holds great promise for expanding wind generation capacity. In Europe and the eastern United states, the amount of space available for offshore wind turbines is many times larger than for onshore ones. A sizable fraction of the future growth in Europe will likely happen offshore [2]. Indeed, the European wind industry has already begun to shift its focus offshore. At the end of 2003, the total installed capacity of offshore wind energy was 529 MW [3].

Onshore wind uses less land space than offshore wind

Union of Concerned Scientist, No Date (The Union of Concerned Scientists puts rigorous,

independent science to work to solve our planet's most pressing problems, http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/environmental-impacts-wind-power.html)

Offshore wind facilities, which are currently not in operation in the United States but may become

more common , require larger amounts of space because the turbines and blades are bigger than

their land-based counterparts . Depending on their location, such offshore installations may

compete with a variety of other ocean activities, such as fishing, recreational activities, sand and

gravel extraction, oil and gas extraction, navigation, and aquaculture. Employing best practices in

planning and siting can help minimize potential land use impacts of offshore and land-based wind projects [4].

The AWEA staff finds that offshore wind reduces consumer utility bills – a combination of studies show consumers in states with more wind energy are better off than consumers in states with less.

American Wind Energy Association, February 12, 2014.

Washington, D.C., — A new white paper report finds that wind energy is keeping electric bills low for American homes and businesses, thanks to plummeting wind energy costs driven by technological improvements. The report was compiled by staff at the American Wind Energy

Association and uses publicly available data and more than a dozen studies from government, utility, and other independent sources to explore how wind energy affects consumers’ energy bills. A highlight of the report is just-released Department of Energy data showing that consumers in the states that use the most wind energy have fared much better than consumers in states that use less wind energy. Consumers in the top wind energy-producing states have seen their electricity prices actually decrease by 0.37 percent over the last 5 years, while all other states have seen their electricity prices increase by 7.79 percent over that time period. The following chart summarizes how consumers have fared in states that produce more than 7 percent of their electricity from wind (Texas, Wyoming, Oregon, Oklahoma, Idaho, Colorado, Kansas, Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Iowa) relative to other states.

“During last month’s cold snaps, we saw very high wind energy output play a critical role in protecting consumers across the country from skyrocketing energy prices. This study confirms that wind energy is providing that benefit every day,” said Michael Goggin , Senior

Electric Industry Analyst at the American Wind Energy Association. The report highlights a number of ways in which wind energy protects consumers by displacing the use of more expensive and polluting sources of energy. A main driver is that wind energy costs have fallen by 43 percent over the last four years, as documented by DOE data. The study also examines 15 studies by independent grid operators, state governments, academic experts, and others confirming that wind energy reduces energy costs for consumers. Finally, the report documents the dozens of U.S. utilities that are locking in record low wind prices that will protect their consumers from fuel price fluctuations for decades. As Mr. Goggin explains, “With the drastic cost declines over the last few years, wind energy offers consumers a great deal today. That deal will only get better with time because that low price is locked in for the life of the wind project, as the fuel will always be free. No other major source of energy can offer that kind of price stability. Diversifying our energy mix with zero fuel cost, zero emission wind energy is a win-win for consumers and the environment.”

Hurricanes Add-On

Large off shore wind farms could disrupt a hurricane – computer simulations by Jacobson showed hurricanes could reduce wind speeds by up to 92 mph and decrease a storm surge by up to 79 percent.

Carey, Feb 26 2014. Bjorn (is the Science Information Officer at Stanford University. Mark Z. Jacobson is the professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford), Offshore wind farms could tame hurricanes before they reach land, Stanford-led study says.http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/february/hurricane-winds-turbine-022614.html

Computer simulations by Stanford's Mark Jacobson indicate huge offshore wind farms could significantly reduce wind speed and storm surge from major hurricanes. For the past 24 years,

Mark Z. Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, has been developing a complex computer model to study air pollution, energy, weather and climate. A recent application of the model has been to simulate the development of hurricanes. Another has been to determine how much energy wind turbines can extract from global wind currents. In light of these recent model studies and in the aftermath of hurricanes Sandy and Katrina, he said, it was natural to wonder: What would happen if a hurricane encountered a large array of offshore wind turbines? Would the energy extraction due to the storm spinning the turbines'

blades slow the winds and diminish the hurricane, or would the hurricane destroy the turbines? So he went about developing the model further and simulating what might happen if a hurricane encountered an enormous wind farm stretching many miles offshore and along the coast. Amazingly, he found that the wind turbines could disrupt a hurricane enough to reduce peak wind speeds by up to 92 mph and decrease storm surge by up to 79 percent. The study, conducted by Jacobson, and Cristina Archer and Willett Kempton of the University of Delaware, was published online in Nature Climate Change. The researchers simulated three hurricanes: Sandy and Isaac, which

struck New York and New Orleans, respectively, in 2012; and Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in 2005. "We found that

when wind turbines are present, they slow down the outer rotation winds of a hurricane ," Jacobson said. "This feeds back to decrease wave height, which reduces movement of air toward the center of the hurricane, increasing

the central pressure, which in turn slows the winds of the entire hurricane and dissipates it faster." In the case of Katrina, Jacobson's model revealed that an array of 78,000 wind turbines off the coast of New Orleans would have significantly weakened the hurricane well before it made landfall. In the computer model, by the time Hurricane Katrina reached land, its simulated wind speeds had decreased by 36-44 meters per second (between 80 and 98 mph) and the storm surge had decreased by up to 79 percent. For Hurricane Sandy, the model projected a wind speed reduction

by 35-39 meters per second (between 78 and 87 mph) and as much as 34 percent decrease in storm surge. Jacobson acknowledges that, in the United States, there has been political resistance to installing a few hundred offshore wind turbines, let alone tens of thousands. But he thinks there are two financial incentives that could motivate such a change. One is the reduction of hurricane damage cost. Damage from severe hurricanes, caused by high winds and storm surge-related flooding, can run into the billions of

dollars. Hurricane Sandy, for instance, caused roughly $82 billion in damage across three states. Second, Jacobson said, the wind turbines would pay for themselves in the long term by generating normal electricity while at the same time reducing air pollution and global warming, and providing energy stability . "The turbines will also reduce damage if a hurricane comes through," Jacobson said. "These factors, each on their own, reduce the cost to society of offshore turbines and should be sufficient to motivate their development." An alternative plan for protecting coastal cities involves building massive seawalls. Jacobson said that while these might stop a storm surge, they wouldn't impact wind speed substantially. The cost for these, too, is significant, with estimates running between $10 billion and $40 billion per installation.

Current turbines can withstand wind speeds of up to 112 mph, which is in the range of a category 2 to 3 hurricane, Jacobson said. His study suggests that the presence of massive turbine arrays will likely prevent hurricane winds from reaching those speeds.

OWP Solves Price Shocks

Offshore wind is key to diversify US energy needs- this solves foreign dependence and price shocks

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Many of the most compelling benefits of offshore wind are similar to those of onshore wind, though offshore wind has its own unique set of benefits. To start, wind power generation can help meet the growing energy demand in the United States. The U.S. Energy Information Administration predicts that the demand for electricity in the United States will grow to 5.8 billion MWh in 2030, a 39 percent increase from 2005. The more that wind power can help to meet this demand, the more diversified the United States' energy portfolio will be, and the less susceptible

the nation will be to dependency on foreign fuel sources and to price fluctuations in traditional

fuels .59 In addition, wind power benefits the United States by creating a substantial number

of jobs for building and operating the domestic wind energy facilities. 60 In an April 2009 speech at the Trinity Structural Towers Manufacturing Plant in Iowa, President Obama predicted that if the United States "fully pursue[s] our potential for wind energy on land and offshore," wind power could create 250,000 jobs by 2030.61

***AT Disads

AT Birds DA

Wind farms form a lower risk to birds than other energy sources – a synthesis of multiple studies by the Carbon Brief determines wind farms killed 20,000 birds in 2009 while fossil fuel and nuclear power plants killed over 14 million combined.

Webster, Robin and Freya Roberts 13, (Robin Webster is over energy policy and analysis for the Carbon Brief, a website that covers development updates on climate science and energy policy, with a particular focus on the UK. This study is about the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and it examines peer-reviewed research and other scientific evidence to determine the effect of wind turbines on bird death). Bird death and wind turbines: a look at the evidence. http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/04/wind-farms-and-birds/

Despite these concerns, the current body of research suggests wind farms have not significantly reduced bird populations. Several studies suggest birds have the ability to detect wind turbines in time and change their flight path early enough to avoid them. And one small study found

no evidence for sustained decline in two upland bird species on a wind farm site after it had been operating for three years. Another found that wild geese are able to avoid offshore wind turbines. A large peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Ecology monitored data for ten different bird species across 18 wind farm sites in the UK. It found that two of them- curlew and snipe - saw a drop in population during the construction phase, which did not recover afterwards. But the population of the other eight species were restored once the wind farms were built. Wind farms may not affect all birds, but what if they affect birds of prey disproportionately? Some of the reason why this might happen is genetic - certain species like vultures, for example, have blind spots in their visual field which means they cannot see objects directly in front of them (like wind turbines) when flying. Large birds like hen harriers, eagles and vultures are also slower to reproduce than other species and so their populations are more likely to be affected by a small number of deaths. There are specific locations elsewhere in the world where wind farms have caused impressive-sounding numbers of fatalities amongst birds of prey. In the Altamont Pass in California, for example, one study found about 4,000 wind turbines killed 67 golden eagles and 1,127 birds of prey in a year. In southern Spain, 252 wind turbines located in an area used by many birds of prey and on the migratory path of many large birds killed a 124 birds of prey in a year. At another location in southern Spain 256 turbines killed 30 griffin vultures and 12 common kestrels. The RSPB references these studies, concluding "some poorly sited wind farms" in California and Spain have caused major bird casualties - in other words the wind farms were sited in areas where there were a lot of birds and not enough thought given to what the effects will be on bird populations. But it adds that these are atypical and a result of bad planning in sensitive areas -arguing that better-sited wind farms do not cause the same number of deaths.

There are studies to show that siting wind farms more sensitively can make a difference to how bird populations adapt to their new neighbours. In one frequently cited study, one wind farm in Spain created feeding sites away from turbines and shut down turbines at peak flight times. Vulture deaths were reduced by 50 per cent for an electricity production loss of just 0.07 per cent. The RSPB's parent group Birdlife International describes another project in Wyoming. Wind farms located on a flight path used by golden eagles and hawks posed a "serious threat", it says. But the turbines were set back slightly - with the result that ultimately very few birds are killed. According to Birdlife International, with a thorough environmental assessment as part of the planning process, bird deaths can be significantly reduced. In Scotland for example, planners use maps to identify high risk areas for protected birds. Some wind farms, such as the Penescal wind farm in Texas, use radar systems to detect flocks of birds and shut off the wind turbines as they approach. Overall, the RSPB says it scrutinises "hundreds" of wind farm applications every year in order to assess their possible impact on wildlife and bird populations and ultimately objects to six per cent of them. Lots of

human activities kill birds. What's perhaps surprising, given the amount of attention it gets, is how few birds wind turbines kill in relation to other things. Several studies have compared the effect of different energy sources on bird mortality overall. One, published earlier this year, calculates wind farms killed 20,000 birds in 2009 in the US - while nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million. The research concludes that taken together, fossil-fueled facilities are about 17 times more dangerous per gigawatt hour of electricity produced to

birds than wind and nuclear power stations. And that's without getting into other human activities and structures - including buildings, roads and domestic cats. US estimates published last year in a commentary piece in the journal Nature, although

highly uncertain, also suggest the impact of wind turbine is far smaller than many other causes of bird death. The RSPB says it supports wind power - not because wind farms pose a lower risk to birds than other energy sources - but because in its view climate change poses the "single greatest long-term threat" to bird species. Climate change is predicted to harm bird populations by affecting breeding or migration patterns, or altering their habitats. There is evidence to show that in certain, specific locations wind farms have caused significant fatalities amongst birds of prey - but there doesn't seem to be any evidence supporting the conclusion that birds of prey will be 'massacred' on a wider scale. The few studies on wind farm siting are also encouraging, indicating that it can be used as an effective tool to reduce mortality. Compared to other aspects of modern society, careful planning can lead to much-reduced mortality.

Wind farms are not a great danger to birds – compared to conventional electricity sources, wind farms killed the least amount of birds.

Sovacool, Benjamin K. 13. (Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology and Professor of Business and Social Sciences at Aarhus University), The avian benefits of wind energy: A 2009 update, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148112000857.

This study, however, finds that wind energy is actually beneficial to birds when compared to other sources of electricity, particularly nuclear power and fossil fuels. Through a synthesis of hundreds of studies on avian mortality and energy and electricity production, the study finds that wind farms and nuclear power stations are responsible each for between 0.3 and 0.4 fatalities per gigawatt-hour (GWh) of electricity while fossil fueled power stations are responsible for about 5.2 fatalities per GWh. When put into context for the United States, about 20,000 birds died from wind farms in 2009 but nuclear plants killed about 330,000 and fossil fueled power plants more than 14 million, estimates illustrated by Fig. 1. The Figure also shows how the number of absolute birds killed by wind energy pales in comparison to other causes such as windows and cats. The paper concludes that

further study is needed, but also that conventional electricity sources appear to pose a greater danger to birds and avian wildlife than wind farms.

AT Biodiversity DA

Offshore wind farms in soft bed areas provide for artificial habitats and increased biodiversity

Langhamer, 12, [Olivia Langhmaer Department of Biology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 5, 7491 Trondheim, Norway, Scientific World Journal, Artificial Reef Effect in relation to Offshore Renewable Energy Conversion: State of the Art, http://www.hindawi.com/journals/tswj/2012/386713/. ]

The rapid worldwide growth of offshore renewable energy production will provide marine organisms with new hard substrate for colonization, thus acting as artificial reefs . The artificial reef

effect is important when constructing, for example, scour protections since it can generate an enhanced habitat. Specifically, artificial structures can create increased heterogeneity in the area important for species diversity and density. Offshore energy installations also have the positive side effect as they are a sanctuary area for trawled organisms. Higher survival of fish and bigger fish is an expected outcome that can contribute to a spillover to outer areas. One negative side effect is that invasive species can find new habitats in artificial reefs and thus influence the native habitats and their

associated environment negatively. Different scour protections in offshore wind farms can create new habitats compensating for habitat loss by offshore energy installations. These created habitats differ from the lost habitat in species composition substantially. A positive reef effect is dependent on the nature and the location of the reef and the characteristics of the native populations. An increase in surface area of scour protections by using specially designed material can also support the reef effect and its productivity. Artificial offshore constructions will inevitably be colonized by a number of organisms. This should be considered when constructing for example scour protections with their

potential to enhance the reef effect for higher biodiversity or commercial interesting species. Artificial reefs generally hold greater densities and biomass of fish and decapods, and provide higher catch rates, compared to surrounding soft bottom areas, and in several cases also in relation to adjacent natural reefs [17–24]. There are, however, some studies

that show no significant impacts of artificial reefs on fish assemblages [25]. The proposed reasons for higher abundance and diversity of fish on and around artificial reefs differ among organisms. The most important seems to be the provision of shelter from both predation and water movements, and enhanced feeding grounds. Fish also seem to use the structures as reference points for spatial orientation Coming at the base of wind power farms, scouring protections may have a potential in terms of altering the nature of the seabed in the vicinity of wind farms. In that way different shapes and sizes may create different habitats and thus dictate what kind of organisms colonize for

living and feeding. Wind farms are usually constructed on soft bottom substrate for technical reasons, and this contributes to higher complexity in three-dimensional scale. Therefore, scour protections have the potential to turn exposed, biodiversity-poor soft bottoms into species rich ecosystems. When the conditions are ideal, wind park foundations will become heavily colonized by organisms abundant in the water mass or nearby hard-bottom habitats . The colonization is highly dependent on sufficient number of larvae and suitable environmental conditions [27]. On the other hand habitat mitigation can occur depending on the location of the renewable energy installations. Therefore, adequate location decision is important to prevent negative impacts in areas where red-listed or key-species exist.

Wind Farms serve as artificial reefs and serve massive benefits to local marine environments

Casey 12, [Zoë Casey Senior Communications Officer at European Wind Energy Association, European Wind Energy Association, Offshore Wind Farms Benefit Sea Life- Study Says, http://www.ewea.org/blog/2012/12/offshore-wind-farms-benefit-sealife-says-study/ ]

Offshore wind farms can create a host of benefits for the local marine environment, as well as combatting climate change, a new study by the Marine Institute at Plymouth University has found. The Marine Institute found that wind farms provide shelter to fish species since sea bottom trawling is often forbidden inside a wind farm, and it found that turbine support structures can create artificial reefs for some species. A separate study at the Nysted offshore wind farm in Denmark confirmed this finding by saying that artificial reefs provided favourable growth conditions for blue mussels and crab species. A study on the Thanet offshore wind farm in the UK found that some species like cod shelter inside the wind farm. One high-profile issue covered by the Marine Institute study was that of organisms colliding with offshore wind turbines. The study, backed-up by a number of previous

studies, found that many bird species fly low over the water, avoiding collision with wind turbine blades. It also found that some species, such as Eider ducks, do modify their courses slightly to avoid offshore turbines. When it comes to noise, the study found “no significant impact on behaviour or populations.” It noted that a separate study in the Netherlands found more porpoise clicks inside a Dutch wind farm than outside it “perhaps exploiting the higher fish densities found”. The study also said that offshore wind power and other marine renewable energies should be rolled out rapidly in order to combat the threats to marine biodiversity, food production and economies posed by climate change. “It is necessary to rapidly deploy large quantities of marine renewable energy to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning which are leading to ocean acidification, global warming and climatic changes,” the study published said. EWEA forecasts that 40 GW of offshore wind capacity will be online in European seas by 2020 which will offset 102 million tonnes of CO2 every year. By 2030, the expected 150 GW of offshore capacity will offset 315 million tonnes of CO2 annually – that’s a significant contribution to the

effort to cut carbon. “It is clear that the marine environment is already being damaged by the increasingly apparent impacts of climate change; however it is not too late to make a difference to avoid more extreme impacts,” the study said. “If you bring all these studies together they all point to a similar conclusion: offshore wind farms have a positive impact on the marine environment in several ways,” said Angeliki Koulouri, Research Officer at EWEA. “First they contribute to a reduction in CO2 emissions, the major threat to biodiversity, second, they provide regeneration areas for fish and benthic populations,” she added. Koulouri and the studies noted in this blog suggest that further research is needed, in particular because impacts are season and site specific, and they note one proviso: offshore wind farms must be carefully

planned and sited in order not to dramatically disturb sensitive marine environments. “Developers and regulators should work closely with marine ecologists and conservation groups at an early stage to identify suitable locations for marine renewables,” the Marine Institute study recommended.

Offshore wind improves the biodiversity of marine life and have little to no impact on birds- dutch study proves

Lindeboom in 11 [Prof. Dr. H.J. Lindeboom 09/08/11, Expert in maritime and ecology with IMARES Wagenigen UR, Offshore wind farm promotes biodiversity, European Commison- Cordis, http://cordis.europa.eu/news/rcn/33703_en.html]

New European research has shown that a North Sea wind farm has little negative effect on the fauna around it. In fact, researchers found that the presence of the wind farm actually provided a new natural habitat for organisms living on the seabed. Researchers in the Netherlands from

IMARES (Institute for Marine Resources and Ecosystem Studies) at Wageningen UR (University and Research centre), the Bureau Waardenburg and the Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research (NIOZ) analysed the short-term ecological effects of the wind farm that was built near Windpark Egmond aan Zee (OWEZ), the first large-scale offshore wind farm built off the Dutch North Sea coast. The farm has the total capacity to provide energy for up to 100,000 households. Writing in the online journal Environmental Research Letters, the

team summarise the first two years of research from the farm and explain how it contributed significantly to the biodiversity of the area, with their research turning up organisms such as mussels, anemones and crabs. Normally when a wind farm is constructed, researchers expect disruptive effects as a result of the driving of piles into the seabed; this can create new hard substrates in the form of piles and protective rocks. Known effects also include the presence of rotating wind turbine blades, possible underwater noise and the absence of other human activities such as

commercial fishing. However, this North-Sea wind farm seems to have bucked the trend. Specifically, the researchers looked at the effects of the offshore wind farm on benthic organisms, fish, birds and marine mammals. The team found that new species become established, and communities of animals arise on the wind turbine piles and the rocks piled around the columns, leading to a local increase in biodiversity. They also found the fish fauna to be incredibly varied. Another interesting finding was that the wind farm seems to provide shelter to cod. Porpoises were also heard more often inside the wind farm than outside it. Despite these positive findings, it does seem that the wind farm's

appeal is not universal: various bird species, including the gannet, were observed to avoid it. Seagulls, on the other hand, didn't seem too put off by its presence, with no notable decline in their numbers detected. And cormorants were even found to have increased in numbers near the farm! Thankfully, the number of birds that collided with the turbines appeared to be quite low, according to the team's observations and model calculations. But can these results be used to state conclusively that wind farms promote biodiversity? By comparing their findings with previous results, the Dutch researchers warn that the impact of a wind farm depends on its location and on the depth of the surrounding sea. The location of the OWEZ wind farm is favourable due to the relatively low numbers of birds that fly through the area at this distance from the coast. The presence of various habitat types and the intensity with which the area is used by others also plays a big part in how well the wind farm integrates into the surroundings. It seems in this case, that amid the hustle and bustle of the busy Dutch coastline, the wind farm offers fauna a seemingly calm oasis. The team conclude that special areas should be designated for wind farms, so as to best avoid disruption to birds, for example. This way wind farms can both generate cleaner energy and contribute to fostering biodiversity.

Loss of biodiversity is not to be feared- offshore wind farms have proven to improve biodiversity

Garus 13,[Katharina Garus 10/31/2013, Professor at the University of Cambridge, Offshore wind farms increase biodiversity, Sun and Wind Energy, http://www.sunwindenergy.com/news/offshore-wind-farms-increase-biodiversity]

Contrary to what many fear, offshore wind farms do not have a negative effect on plants and wildlife. A study conducted at the alpha ventus wind farm under the auspices of the German Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency (BSH) shows that neither the obliteration of fauna nor mass killings of birds need be feared. "We are pleased that there has been no negative impact on the marine environment here," BSH President Monika Breuch-Moritz said. The opposite is actually the case: The foundations of offshore wind turbines form artificial reefs, on which mussels, sea anemones, sea lilies and starfish settle. The researchers noticed increased biodiversity.

The fish population at the alpha ventus wind farm also shows greater biodiversity . New species found in the area include long-spined scorpionfish, mackerel and dragonet. To detect the fish, the scientists used a special fish sonar for

the first time, which they set up next to the wind turbines on the seabed. Another important result of the research

project is a binding guideline for methods to perform underwater acoustic measurements . It

is the basis for DIN and ISO guidelines, which serve as a template for European countries. During the project, new methods were developed for detecting and evaluating populations of birds, marine mammals, fish and benthos in the vicinity of the offshore wind farms.

Offshore wind turbines good for biodiversity.

Lindeboom 11

[Hans, Short-term ecological effects of an offshore wind farm in the Dutch coastal zone, http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/6/3/035101]

The number of offshore wind farms is increasing rapidly, leading to questions about the

environmental impact of such farms. In the Netherlands, an extensive monitoring programme is

being executed at the first offshore wind farm (Offshore Windfarm Egmond aan Zee, OWEZ). This letter compiles the short-term (two?years) results on a large number of faunal groups obtained so

far. Impacts were expected from the new hard substratum, the moving rotor blades, possible

underwater noise and the exclusion of fisheries. The results indicate no short-term effects on the

benthos in the sandy area between the generators , while the new hard substratum of the

monopiles and the scouring protection led to the establishment of new species and new fauna

communities . Bivalve recruitment was not impacted by the OWEZ wind farm. Species composition

of recruits in OWEZ and the surrounding reference areas is correlated with mud content of the sediment and water depth irrespective the presence of OWEZ. Recruit abundances in OWEZ were correlated with mud content, most likely to be attributed not to the presence of the farm but to the

absence of fisheries . The fish community was highly dynamic both in time and space . So far, only

minor effects upon fish assemblages especially near the monopiles have been observed. Some fish

species, such as cod, seem to find shelter inside the farm. More porpoise clicks were recorded inside

the farm than in the reference areas outside the farm. Several bird species seem to avoid the park

while others are indifferent or are even attracted . The effects of the wind farm on a highly variable

ecosystem are described. Overall, the OWEZ wind farm acts as a new type of habitat with a higher

biodiversity of benthic organisms, a possibly increased use of the area by the benthos, fish, marine

mammals and some bird species and a decreased use by several other bird species.

Offshore wind does not cause loss of wildlife- farms can be sited to avoid harming birds and other species

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On,

http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

In addition, opponents frequently cite offshore wind power's environmental costs. These costs are site specific and can involve harm to plants and animals, and their habitats. 82 This harm includes impacts on birds, which can involve disruption of migratory patterns, destruction of habitat, and bird deaths from collision with the turbine blades.83 However, these adverse impacts are generally less dramatic than those associated with fossil fuel extraction and generation, and in a well-chosen site they can be negligible.84 A recent, exhaustive study of the environmental impact of major offshore wind farms in Denmark concluded that "offshore wind farms, if placed right, can be engineered and operated without significant damage to the marine environment and vulnerable species.,,85

AT Spending

Offshore worth the cost: generate more electricity than onshore

Fingersh, 2006 (L., M. Hand, and A. Laxson, Wind Turbine Design Cost and Scaling Model, National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

In the future, to help lower costs, specialized equipment should be developed for installing turbines on piles or floating platforms. Ocean-going cranes and special barges capable of station keeping in currents and winds will be needed to allow erection of the turbine. An alternative to special ships with cranes will be land-based cranes loaded onto special barges and maneuvered into place for installation. Regardless, it is expected that the installation of very large offshore

turbines will be more cost effective in the long run than similar land-based installations, due to

the greater hauling capacity of barges and lifting capacity of offshore crane equipment. For shallow water installation, this cost element also includes transport of the turbine from shore to the installation site. In the future a separate cost element will need to be developed for transport of turbines to sites further offshore. Costs in this model are once again based on private industry communications converted to a scaling factor according to machine rating.

AT Property Values DA

There is no correlation between offshore wind and decreased property values or tourism

Erica Schroeder in 2010, J.D., University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, 2010, Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, 2004; B.A., Yale University, 2003 California Law Review Vol 98 Issue 5, Turning Offshore Wind On, http://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1069&context=californialawreview

Whereas many of the benefits of offshore wind power are national or even global, the costs are almost entirely local. The downsides to offshore wind that drive most of the opposition to offshore wind power are visual and environmental. Opponents to offshore wind projects complain about their negative aesthetic impacts on the landscape and on local property values.79 They also make related complaints about negative impacts on coastal recreational activities and tourism. However, studies have failed to show statistically significant negative aesthetic or property-value impacts, despite showing continued expectations of such impacts.