Energy concerns presidential candidates

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama support more aggressive efforts to curb global warming and federal spending to create green jobs.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, supports limiting greenhouse gas emissions but thinks nuclear power should have a larger role. The next administration almost certainly will have a big role in crafting new laws to combat climate change, and in promoting changes in the nation's fuel supply to reduce dependence on overseas oil -- issues in which North Carolina has a big stake.

The state has a long, relatively flat coastline that makes it among the nation's most vulnerable to rising seas predicted as part of climate change. Meanwhile, the vast numbers of swine and poultry in the state and the massive quantities of waste they produce present an opportunity: They could someday be the feedstock for fuels generated from biomass. Already hog producers are looking for financial opportunities in capturing methane, a potent greenhouse gas, that wafts off hog waste ponds.

The candidates' goals are ambitious. But the costs of limiting carbon remains the obstacle.

Scott Segal, director of the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council, which represents electric utilities, said the first job of a new president will be to adopt responsible economic policies.

Segal noted that climate change legislation could cost hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

"If you adopt a policy that substantially increases the cost of energy, it is like a very regressive tax policy," Segal said. "There has to be a lot more discussion about ways to contain the cost of climate change legislation."

Tim Profeta of the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, and a former staffer for Sen. Joseph Lieberman, said a cap on greenhouse gases from coal plants would fundamentally reorient the energy production system in North Carolina as well as other states, driving investment toward cleaner technologies that don't produce carbon dioxide.

"There all of a sudden would be a cost for emitting greenhouse gases," Profeta said. "There would be a greater cost of energy for everybody."

They 'get it'

Marvin Woll, 60, of Raleigh, a semiretired school counselor, said he is looking for leadership on global warming. He thinks there is a window of time in which to start reducing greenhouse emissions. "Having worked with kids all my life, I hate to leave a world where they won't have a chance to have a good, healthy life," Woll said.

He thinks Obama, Clinton and McCain all recognize the seriousness of climate change. He said he is more comfortable with Obama or Clinton but doesn't see much difference in their positions.

The Democratic candidates' stances on environmental issues are similar. Both support reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 -- the level scientists say is necessary to avoid the worst effects of global warming. Both also want a fourth of electricity used to come from renewable sources by 2025. That would go beyond the law North Carolina passed last year requiring utilities to provide 12.5 percent of their retail electricity from renewables and conservation measures by 2021.

"Both candidates get it," Jason Grumet, an environmental adviser to Obama, said during a recent discussion at Duke University on the environment. "The question is who is going to be able to get it done."

McCain has called for gradually lowering greenhouse emissions by about 65 percent by 2050.

"It's a little more of a private sector-oriented approach," Profeta said. "McCain is going to be more a pure capitalist."

McCain also voices support for new nuclear power as a source of carbon-free energy.

Progress Energy and Duke Energy are proposing new reactors in North and South Carolina.

Obama has said the next generation of reactors has a role to play in solving climate change but shouldn't be built until the problems of waste disposal and costs are addressed, Grumet said. Dan Utech, an adviser for Clinton, said energy efficiency and renewable forms present better alternatives.

Alice Loyd, director of N.C. Interfaith Power & Light, a nonpartisan group that works with faith groups on climate change issues, said her group wants the next president to make climate change a top priority. "We want it to be treated like the emergency it is," Loyd said. "In the next five years, we've got to turn the corner and change the way we create energy and the way we use it."