Bill Nitze personified bipartisan advocacy

The Partnership lost a wonderful friend and committed advocate July 30 with the passing of Bill Nitze, a member of our Advisory Board from its creation. He was 78.

“Bill was a longtime and enthusiastic supporter of carbon pricing and a leader in trying to get Republicans back into the fold in the fight against climate change,” said PRG co-founder and board chairman George T. Frampton Jr. Nitze served in important environmental positions under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton. He was forced to leave the Bush administration by John Sununu, the president's chief of staff, for public comments that were perceived to overstate the administration's commitment to reducing domestic greenhouse gas emissions. 

After leaving his job in the Bush administration, Nitze served for four years as president of the Alliance to Save Energy, where he promoted energy efficiency via changes to residential and commercial building codes, as well as tax incentives. 

“He also had a strong entrepreneurial spirit,” recalled another PRG co-founder, CEO William C. Eacho. Nitze was chairman of Oceana Energy Company, which develops hydrokinetic technology to convert tidal energy into electricity, and Clear Path Technologies, Inc., which designs and builds neutron-based systems for detecting and identifying explosives and other dangerous substances in sealed containers. He also co-founded GridPoint, Inc., which develops and markets intelligent energy management systems for residential, commercial, and industrial applications.

“He was the definition of a Renaissance man,” said Frampton. “He seemed to be interested in almost everything, including philosophy, history, art, literature, drama, Japanese culture, and artificial intelligence, which he taught at George Mason University’s Krasnow Institute. I remember that Bill was a great student of Baruch Spinoza, the 17th-century Dutch philosopher, whom I briefly tried out and found virtually unreadable.”

Nitze was the son of Paul Henry Nitze, an architect of Cold War defense policy, an arms control negotiator, and a presidential advisor to administrations spanning those from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Reagan. After earning an AB and JD from Harvard, Nitze worked at the law firm Sullivan & Cromwell and then for the Mobil Oil Company. He later served on the board of directors of the Aspen Skiing Company and as a trustee of the Aspen Institute. 

“Bill was one of a kind,” said PRG co-founder Walter Minnick, who had known him for half a century, since their days at Harvard Law School. “He was not only exceedingly smart, but equally persuasive and inquisitive. We were lucky to have his help in the effort to promote carbon pricing.”

PRG on Capitol Hill

From left to right, William C. Eacho, Waverly Dooling, Representative Spanberger, and Representative Wild in the chamber leading to the House Floor. June 29th, 2021.

Last week our CEO, former Ambassador William Eacho, and intern Waverly Dooling went to Capitol Hill to discuss the merits of a carbon fee with a few representatives. At the Partnership, we believe pricing carbon is crucial not only to curbing emissions and creating a greener global economy, but also to remaining competitive globally. The border adjustments that a carbon fee allows can both enhance U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and spur our trade partners to decarbonize as well.

During our time on the Hill, we had the opportunity and honor to have one-on-one meetings with and visit the offices of Representatives Susan Wild (D-PA), Deborah Ross (D-NC), Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), and Don Beyer (D-VA). We learned that there is considerable support from Democrats in Congress for pricing carbon--matched with disappointment that the leadership is not enthusiastic about it. Furthermore, all of the representatives we spoke to acknowledge that a Clean Energy Standard (CES) can help decarbonize the electrical sector but are conscious of its limitations. The CES would not decarbonize the rest of the economy, protect U.S. manufacturers from competition from coal-dependent exporters like China, or encourage other countries to decarbonize (which a border adjustment with a carbon fee would). 

How can this underlying receptiveness to a national price on carbon emissions develop enough momentum to become the law of the land? As Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) says, the business community needs to step up its lobbying. Success also depends on gaining support from the Democratic leadership and the White House. We would like to thank Rep. Wild, Rep. Ross, Rep. Spanberger, Rep. Malinowski, and Rep. Beyer for their time, attention, and candid thoughts. The Partnership intends to continue to meet with Congresspeople, leadership, and aides over the summer. 

From left to right, William C. Eacho and Representative Spanberger with the entrance to National Statuary Hall in the background. June 29th, 2021.

From left to right,  Representative Spanberger, Waverly Dooling, and Representative Malinowski in the chamber leading to the House Floor. June 29th, 2021.

Can you measure the carbon dioxide emissions of the things you buy?

When you eat your lunch, do you ever wonder how many grams of greenhouse gases were emitted in the process of putting it on your plate? And how about that tee shirt you put on this morning?

There’s growing interest in trying to measure such emissions and share the information with consumers. So-called carbon emission labels attempt to determine the total emissions created during manufacturing, transporting, and disposing of a product.

“We think of carbon as the new calorie,” said Prakash Arunkundrum, head of global operations and sustainability at Logitech, the technology accessories manufacturer, which recently rolled out carbon labels on several products, including a gaming mouse and keyboard. “We want carbon to be that thing that you look at and you say, ‘Okay, am I going to really need this in my life today?’ ”

Logitech estimates that its wireless gaming mouse, for example, generates 7.84 kilograms (kg) of carbon emissions throughout its estimated two-year use period. That may be modest, but think of all the products you use. Manufacturing a Ford Focus Titanium costs about 8,000 kg CO2e, The Washington Post’s Jessica Wolfrom reported. That estimate came from Mike Berners-Lee, a professor at Lancaster University in the UK and an expert on carbon footprinting.

The world's first carbon label, the Carbon Reduction Label, was introduced in the UK in 2006 by the Carbon Trust. Some of the first products to feature these labels were Kingsmill bread, British Sugar, and Cemex cement. “Consumers are increasingly engaged on this... as a proxy, they’re looking for companies to show that they are aware of climate change and sustainability and they’re taking action on it,” Carbon Trust CEO Tom Delay told The Post.

One such company is Just Salad, which claims it was the first restaurant to produce a carbon-label menu. While there are tools that can calculate emissions for various agricultural and other products, the challenge for Just Salad was dialing in those measurements for each of the dozens of ingredients on its menu and then for each menu item, according to Sandra Noonan, the chief sustainability officer for the New York-based chain. She told Restaurant Business’s Joe Guszkowski that her company enlisted MBA students at New York University’s Stern School of Business to do some of that “heavy lifting.” 

Due, in large part, to the complexity of the number-crunching, some environmentalists are skeptical of the corporate push toward consumer labels, Wolfram discovered. “Reliable data about carbon emissions consumed in the manufacturing process is scarce,” she wrote, “leaving companies to establish their own methodologies. Carbon labels also are not regulated and require consumers to translate relatively complex scientific terms like ‘carbon equivalents’ on the fly.”

Last year, Priscilla Tsai, founder of the beauty brand Cocokind, began working with a third party to calculate the carbon emissions of her products. She told The Post that the process was cumbersome and expensive, but she believes the labels have been well received by customers. The undertaking also prompted her to reconsider where the company obtains some of its ingredients. She does worry that the labels may confuse some people. “Most consumers don’t know how to read a carbon label yet,” she said. “We are putting out the education and we’re asking consumers to learn with us.”

Panera Bread teamed up with World Resources Institute (WRI) to devise an alternative, Wolfram reported. “The chain began tracking its carbon footprint in 2015, but was struggling to make these complex calculations digestible for customers, said Sara Burnett, Panera’s vice president of food values, sustainability and public relations. ‘We just kept asking ourselves a question like, how do I take this really complicated topic of climate change and literally bring it down to the plate level?’”

With WRI’s help, Panera created a label identifying which meals fall below a threshold of 5.38 kg of carbon emissions per lunch or dinner — a number that WRI says is needed to cut food-related emissions 25 percent by 2030, in line with the goals of the Paris climate agreement. If the item falls below that level, it is labeled a “Cool Food Meal,” with a grinning green emoji.

Consumer awareness of his or her carbon footprint is a smart way to drive down carbon dioxide emissions. An even better way is to put an honest price on carbon. Encourage those who represent you on Capitol Hill to enact a carbon tax--this year. 

It's Time for Business Leaders to Deliver Climate Message on Capitol Hill

It’s time for U.S. companies to “show up” on Capitol Hill and start encouraging lawmakers to back climate legislation that the companies profess to support. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a leading voice on climate action, delivered that message a number of weeks ago via The Washington Post. 

With few signs that big business was, in fact, showing up, Whitehouse recently told Politico’s Anthony Adragna, “If anybody in corporate America actually wants to show up and be heard in a positive way on a climate bill, basically, they better get off their rear end right now and let people know because the clock is running out.”

Were any of the senator’s Republican colleagues, Adragna asked, “sincerely interested in working with you on carbon pricing,” a policy that Whitehouse has championed. He replied that some were but that the “political calculus they are looking at has not changed.” That is, that “the fossil fuel sector of corporate America remains aggressively determined to punish anyone who crosses them and the rest of corporate America--despite a lot of good behavior in their corporate precincts and a lot of very sweet public statements to consumers, investors and so forth--have not put climate on their political agenda in Congress. At all.” 

The trade associations, Whitehouse maintained, either are “against good climate policy or don’t have it as a priority. He cited the American Beverage Association and TechNet, which represents Silicon Valley firms. A year ago, he said, TechNet “didn’t even mention climate change in their congressional pitch materials, and this year they gave it a passing mention.

“So the message that my Republican friends are getting from their corporate clientele is resounding: We don’t care, unless we do, in which case we’re against you doing anything. So they’re still captured in the cage of the fossil fuel industry and don’t see a safe exit.”

One policy that is receiving a more positive response, said Whitehouse, is carbon capture and sequestration. And he believes that the best opportunity for climate action this year is probably the infrastructure initiative that the Biden administration and Congress are debating.

While most corporate lobbyists have taken a go-slow approach, there are at least some signs of progress. The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) organized a statement by 42 leading U.S. companies urging the Biden administration and Congress to work together to enact ambitious, durable, and bipartisan climate policies. As C2ES put it, “The companies pointed to the grave risks presented by climate change, but also the economic benefits of tackling it—creating jobs, driving growth, and strengthening U.S. competitiveness.”

Signers included Amazon, Bank of America, DuPont, Edison International, Ford Motor Company, General Motors, Google, LafargeHolcim, Microsoft, Morgan Stanley, Unilever United States, and Walmart. Collectively, the 42 companies have nearly 5 million employees and generate $3 trillion in annual revenues.

“Creating a net-zero economy also requires strong, sustained leadership from Washington,” said C2ES President Bob Perciasepe. “That’s what these companies are calling for. They see this as a critical moment, and they’re pledging to work with the new administration and Congress to enact ambitious climate policy.”

Some American companies are not waiting for Congress to act. They feel they don’t have that luxury as they face pressure on multiple fronts. “Multinationals like Ford, for example, must meet climate standards set by China and Europe,” Politico’s Lorraine Woellert reported May 17.

“Automakers look at the rest of the world and have realized the U.S. has been lagging, and they’ve charged ahead knowing that the U.S. has to catch up,” Cox Automotive executive analyst Michelle Krebs told Woellert. “If you do business around the world, you have to meet the regulations and demands in those markets, too.” Ford made headlines recently with its unveiling of an electric-powered F-150 pickup, the perennial sales leader among U.S.-made vehicles.

The Partnership for Responsible Growth continues to make the rounds on Capitol Hill explaining the benefits of carbon pricing in the belief that the opportunity to make it part of national policy is approaching. Our team includes former Republican Congressman Francis Rooney (FL), who authored carbon tax legislation and is now a member of our Advisory Board. 

“We need to have a strong bill in Congress if we're going to solve the climate crisis,” Whitehouse told The Post. “So, the corporate America world not bothering to show up in Congress on climate is really consequential. And thankfully, that is beginning to change, just beginning.”

One-Two Punch: Heat Waves & Power Outages

Here comes summer--and probably heat waves that could prove deadly to many Americans, just as we’re hoping to emerge from a pandemic. 

Heat is already the most dangerous type of severe-weather event, by one estimate killing some 12,000 Americans each year. And climate change is making heat waves more frequent and severe.

In addition to deaths, extreme heat events cause a wide range of other health problems, such as rashes, cramps, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Extreme heat can also make existing medical conditions worse, the agency says.

As if that weren’t enough of a concern, The New York Times’ Christopher Flavelle recently reported that heat waves and power failures are becoming a one-two punch that “poses a severe threat that major American cities are not prepared for.”

He cited new research, published in the journal Environmental Science & Technology, finding that “power failures have increased by more than 60 percent since 2015, even as climate change has made heat waves worse.”

The researchers used computer models to study Detroit, Atlanta, and Phoenix and, Flavelle wrote, “estimated that a combined blackout and heat wave would expose at least two-thirds of residents in those cities to heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

“And although each of the cities in the study has dedicated public cooling centers for people who need relief from the heat, those centers could accommodate no more than 2 percent of a given city’s population, the authors found, leaving an overwhelming majority of residents in danger.”

The lead author, Brian Stone Jr., told Flavelle, “A widespread blackout during an intense heat wave may be the deadliest climate-related event we can imagine.” Unfortunately, Stone considers such a scenario “increasingly likely.” He is a professor at the School of City & Regional Planning at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His team included eight other researchers — from Georgia Tech, Arizona State, the University of Michigan, and the University of Guelph in Ontario.

The changing climate also seems to be making power failures more common. From 2015 to 2020, the number of blackouts annually in the United States doubled, Stone said. And those blackouts were more likely to occur during the summer, suggesting they were being driven in part by high temperatures, which increase demand on the electrical grid as people turn up their air conditioners.

Because both heat waves and blackouts are becoming more frequent, “the probability of a concurrent heat wave and blackout event is very likely rising as well,” Dr. Stone told The Times.

The numbers developed by Stone’s team were sobering. In Atlanta, more than 350,000 people, or about 70 percent of residents, would be exposed to indoor temperatures of at least 89.6 degrees, the level at which the National Weather Service’s heat classification index says heat exhaustion and heat stroke are possible.

In Detroit, more than 450,000, or about 68 percent, would be exposed to that indoor temperature. In Phoenix, where a vast majority of residents rely on air conditioning, the entire population would be at risk. That’s almost 1.7 million people.

Not surprisingly, the threat is greatest for the lowest-income households, who are 20 percent less likely to have central air conditioning than the highest-income households.

Other U.S. cities face similar health threats. “We find that millions are at risk,” said Stone. “Not years in the future, but this summer.”

Among the places where there is nervousness is California. That state, which has been hit with drought, heat, and wildfires, has become all too familiar with power outages. Politico’s Colby Bermel reported that California “is at risk of not having enough electricity this summer to weather an extreme heat wave, which could lead to rolling blackouts like those experienced last August, energy officials said May 4.”

The proliferation of such problems has driven up the percentage of Americans who want Congress to take action. But too few politicians are responding. Most economists say that the quickest solution--and it’s only a partial solution--is to enact a carbon tax. A new study by Resources for the Future reached the same conclusion. We need to push members of Congress to take that action as soon as possible.