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Circuit dedicates significant resources to tracking global warming policies and assessing how they will shake out for the energy industry and state as a whole. We are, in fact, intrigued by the actions and inactions on global warming near and far. That involves both how California affects the world outside the Golden State, and how Californians are, in turn, affected by actions and policies beyond our borders. Like the now widely accepted idea of “ecology”--where one action causes something to happen in unexpected places (the environmental version of Whack-A-Mole), there are climate change ripple effects from actions by the state legislature, the California Public Utilities Commission, California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission, the grid operator, and by those at the federal and international levels as well. Circuit kept tabs on the international climate change conference in Bali, but through a lens shaped by the initial 1992 United Nations “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro, and California’s climate protection efforts. Editor J.A. Savage was in Rio. It was hot in February at the time, and it took days to learn (Local rum; sounds like “ka-shassa.”) Savage was one of 4,000 journalists at the U.N. site, and not the only one to feel the opportunity to fix a few things like climate change negotiations hijacked by U.S. hegemony. Growing up in the states, one doesn’t get a feel for how much a superpower the U.S. is or was. At the time, Savage was amazed that the only time the buzz in the media room quieted was when the first President Bush videoed-in his speech, sloughing off the whole idea of earth-wide cooperation. Nothing happened then and almost nothing happened last week in Bali with the U.N. climate change meeting--supposedly the sequel to the 1997 Kyoto treaty, which requires industrialized countries that ratified it to reduce their overall emissions by 5 percent from 1990 levels. The caps, which expire in 2012, will not go into effect until next year. The U.S. refused to sign on to that one too. In Bali, however, the U.S. finally got enough global pressure from ever-stronger countries to back off its cocky we’re-not-going-to-scrap-our-Ford Expeditions attitude unless China and India do too. But in the end, no real deal came out of Bali. It was essentially a bunch of diplomats making big talk but taking little steps as Rome, and the atmosphere, burn. Back here at home, California leads the nation in carbon reduction efforts--and for far more than the power sector. But sadly, implementation of many of the state’s reduction strategies for major carbon polluters remains inconclusive. Yet, however plodding and flawed California’s multi-faceted approach remains, we look awfully good alongside King Coal states. In these states, legislators claim that global warming is either not attributable to burning fossil fuel or that any effort to curb it will hurt the economy, working people, manufacturing, and spell an end to the “American Lifestyle.” And, the lack of meaningful action at the federal level is just plain depressing. We also know the story is far from over. Because global warming policies and actions are key to the power sector’s business and the well being of our state, Circuit expanded its news and analysis, launching a climate change publication earlier this year. The online publication: Energy Meets Climate Challenge – E=MC2 zeros in on this critical issue. We have our seasoned journalists covering state, national, and international greenhouse gas reduction issues. There is a lot of information out there, but this is the real deal. We are independent media, we don’t have a corporation or an agency or a university to please. It’s the straight stuff, filtered only by our decades of knowledge covering energy and environmental issues. The multi-billion dollar climate protection efforts underway affect far more than the electricity industry, the second largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in California. What other large polluting sectors do or don’t do--from transportation, the biggest polluter, to land use, the fastest driver of emissions increases--intimately affects the power market’s future and the extent of its carbon reduction burden. All sectors must work together to ensure we have a viable economy, state, and planet for our children and grandchildren. Time is of the essence too in the face of growing climate change chaos that clearly has heightened the importance of lightening our carbon footprint. E=MC2 focuses on that window, distinguishing rhetoric from action, fact from fiction as well as the ramifications of inaction. We discuss the real and possible, the strengths and weaknesses of developing policies, regulations, practices, and emerging technologies. We track novel legal cases, new market entrants, shifting alliances, cutting edge technologies, opportunities, and barriers to needed change. For the green energy gadget industry, it’s a way to keep up on regulation and legislation that should affect their growing businesses. For traditional fossil fuel companies, E=MC2 is a way to figure out how to keep up with a changing landscape. For environmentalists, it offers high-level insights not found in other media. E=MC2 is an online-only publication. Also, energymeetsclimate.com is updated daily. It’s geared to a broad national and international audience. In addition to the power industry, the electronic publication covers alternative fuels for vehicles and stationary sources, which are important to the utility and refining industries. We look at the twist and turns of a nascent carbon cap-and-trade market, a possible carbon tax, regional efforts to work together to minimize harmful land use, port pollution, and current and projected carbon emission levels for different sectors and areas for real change. As a thank you to all of our wonderful subscribers for their continued support, we offer you a free one month trial to E=MC2. Send us your contact information and we’ll set you up with a temporary password to access the site. Your feedback is encouraged and welcome.

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