October has not been a particularly uplifting month on the climate front of the Green Energy War.  The worldwide financial freeze-up has sent summer soldiers across the globe scurrying for the presumed security of retreat.  Even the nominal master of ceremonies of the UN's Framework Convention on Climate Change puts it flatly:  "If industry is in a difficult pass, most sensible governments will be reluctant to impose new costs on them in the form of carbon-emission caps."

A surprise announcement last week by  Southern California Edison that it plans to adapt its 2009 Renewable Procurement Plan to include feed-in tariff provisions for projects under 20 MW in size could be a game changer.

As Albert Einstein famously observed, "politics is more difficult than physics."  The US congressional energy debate end-game these next two weeks seems destined to prove this out.

At its core is bipartisan recognition of an inchoate, nationwide, don't-just-stand-there-do-something groundswell.  Where this sudden, tidal upheaval leads in the months ahead is anything but certain.  While empiricism and reason may exert some gravitational pull over time, for now the political instinct is to pander.

A surefire indicator of hubris in American business is the misbegotten belief that success in one enterprise is a predictor of likely success in another, unrelated one.  Established companies periodically flirt with this conceit -- whether for executive ego gratification, perceived risk diversification, or earnings growth imperative.

Strategists attempting to gauge the likely scale and scope of Green Energy War initiatives after the clamor of the current election cycle is past may gravitate to the lodestar of gasoline prices. Posted outside every service station in statutorily prescribed type-size, these context-less numerals are the primary navigational aids by which most Americans determine whether energy is a problem or not.

Pragmatists in the Green Energy War tend to consider natural gas a necessary transition fuel for electric generation. They are cognizant of the role quick start, fast ramp gas generation will play in integrating intermittent wind and solar generation until large scale, dispatchable demand response and storage technologies become commercial realities. They embrace the material environmental benefits offered by modern gas-fired plants when compared to coal, even if only a half-way step toward decarbonizing electricity. And they acknowledge the easier financeability of such plants in contrast to faith-based options like nuclear power.

Strategists in the Green Energy War are forced to make do with the analytic tools the early years of the 21st Century have made available to them. How to properly value future costs and future benefits has long been a conundrum for decisionmakers in all walks of life who are called upon to choose between alternatives in the present. The "time value of money" is a truism of economic orthodoxy, but ethicists have always questioned whether it gives proper attention to the interests of future generations.

With thousands of demonstrators expected to converge this weekend on Kingsnorth, a powerplant site in Kent where the German utility E.On hopes to build the first new coal units in Britain since 1974, a much larger battle is emerging in Parliament that may force-feed private sector embrace of carbon capture and sequestration.

The bipolar personality of the electricity chapters in the UK's renewable energy consultation document is more than simply the kind of literary tic often associated with government reports written by multiple authors. It vividly illustrates a deep conflict in the government's policy objectives between meeting commitments made to the European Union concerning 2020 targets for renewables and fostering the vision for competitive electricity markets pioneered by the UK in the 1990s. Lurking in the background is the centrality which the London carbon market is expected to play in preventing catastrophic climate change.

Because the Green Energy War has to date been driven by a proverbial coalition of the willing -- only the growing number of climate jihadis and the somewhat smaller sect of renewables zealouts see the subject as determinative of mankind's fate -- government commitments, with some notable exceptions, have been long on rhetoric and imagery and short on tangible performance. "You say you want a revolution," the esteemed British energy analyst, John Lennon, might say -- "well, you know, we're all doing what we can."

Wading into one of the most self-regarding political cultures on the planet, Dr. Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, last week injected a small bit of perspective into California's celebration of the release of the "Draft Scoping Plan" for implementation of its heralded "Global Climate Solutions Act."

In the ocean liner turning process that characterizes a great nation's change in view of strategic inputs, nimbleness and agility are more applauded in speeches than observed in practice. Media coverage of yesterday's release by the US Energy Information Administration of the "highlights section" of its International Energy Outlook zeroed in on the "high price case" which sees oil climbing to $186 per barrel, unadjusted for inflation, in 2030.

The nature of the Green Energy War varies considerably around the world, but support for feed-in tariffs is an increasingly common litmus employed by renewables advocates globally to evaluate the efficacy of government efforts. Remarkably successful in bringing large amounts of renewable capacity online in Germany and Spain, the feed-in tariff has become the preferred policy mechanism for jurisdictions more intent on tangible results than the creation of abstract trading instruments, intermittent tax goodies or unenforceable portfolio requirements.

This morning's press briefing by the Prime Minister's Spokesman confirms that the long-awaited UK Renewable Energy Strategy will be published in two days. The report, underway for some time, is being rushed forward after a blistering criticism of the Gordon Brown government's performance by a committee of Parliament.

Combatants on the climate front of the Green Energy War have long looked to Germany for inspiration. Despite deepening rifts in Angela Merkel's "grand coalition" government, and some obvious soft spots in the package, the CO2 reduction measures endorsed by her cabinet last week will reinforce the German imprint on any progress which comes out of next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan.

Depending upon the outcome of next month's Hokkaido G8 summit, especially its "major economies" side event, the IEA's recent climate report could establish the framework by which the world struggles to develop the successor agreement to the Kyoto Accord. How useful this will be is likely to turn on the specificity attached to George Bush's acceptance of a binding target for the US and the meaning of China's and India's embrace (through their national science academies) of a 50% reduction target for 2050.

The agenda-setting function of last week's IEA climate report was reinforced by two developments yesterday. First, German Chancellor Angela Merkel endorsed US President George Bush's plans for a "major economies" climate summit held in conjunction with next month's G8 summit in Hokkaido, Japan. And second, a 2050 GHG reduction target of 50% was jointly recommended by the national science academies of thirteen countries, including all of the G8 nations as well as Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa (i.e., all of Bush's "major economies" except Australia, Indonesia and South Korea).

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The climate strategy published last week by the International Energy Agency, an analytic response to the commitment made by G8 leaders in 2007 to "seriously consider" GHG emission reduction targets of 50%, is emphatic about the need to "decarbonise" the generation of electricity. The IEA identifies three principle ways to achieve this:

For many analysts, the Green Energy War is characterized by the same unpredictable chaos associated with all military conflicts. Intelligence is limited. Unanticipated conditions rapidly appear. Developments cascade with unenvisioned quickness. Even the best of battle plans seldom unfolds as expected.

Two dispatches from the carbon capture theater of the Green Energy War's climate front make clear that to describe current efforts as being at a standstill might be wildly optimistic.

Although it contains a remarkable blind spot regarding financial risks stemming from construction schedule slippages, this month's major nuclear assessment from the Congressional Budget Office is appropriately sober about the magnitude of risks attributable to construction cost overruns. If construction costs average as high as they did in the 1970s and 1980s, CBO concludes that CO2 charges will have to exceed $80 per metric ton for new nuclear plants to be cost competitive.

The notable assessment of the future role of nuclear power, published this month by the Congressional Budget Office, derives significance less from its breadth or depth than from the insight it provides into the thinking of Congress' official fiscal scorekeeper. The report, assembled at the direction of revered nuclear champion Senator Pete Domenici, casts a wary (though bleary) eye at construction cost risk.

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As the debate over the future role of nuclear power in the Green Energy War continues to sharpen, the US Congressional Budget Office released a seminal text this month. The report succinctly describes the financial incentives in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct) for third-generation nuclear technology, and projects levelized costs for the small number of plants expected to benefit. The study was commissioned by the patron saint of modern US nuclear promotion, New Mexico Senator Pete Domenici.

In the rear view mirror that seems to guide the US federal government's energy price forecasting, this week's revision to the Energy Information Administration's official "Short-Term Energy Outlook" looks unavoidable. The bigger question, exactly when the view forward through the windshield bug splatter of flawed assumptions will change, is less clear.

Ask any Green Energy Warrior what it will take to win the war, and the answer is likely to be "technological transformation." The feed-in tariffs in Europe and the renewable portfolio standards in the US focus on independent generators to prompt this change, implicitly believing the existing utility industry is too set in its ways to adapt quickly enough.

Simultaneous with the intense food vs. fuel debate presently underway, biofuels advocates on the environmental front of the Green Energy War have faced forceful arguments over the greenhouse gas impact of current policies promoting ethanol and biodiesel. Their response has been to emphasize the benefits expected from "second generation" biofuels like cellulosic ethanol, and to advocate technology-neutral, performance-based policies like a Low Carbon Fuel Standard.

Worldwide, there are three principal motivators -- or fronts -- in the accelerated move away from current methods of consuming fossil fuels that is known as the Green Energy War. As with most large scale endeavors attracting so many participants, communication and understanding across fronts can prove exceptionally difficult. It is by no means always clear that everyone is fighting the same war.

As debate continues to rage over the role which biofuels policies have played in the extraordinary inflation in world food prices, a sobering awareness may spread. Crop-based fuels like ethanol and biodiesel may have already become an indispensable element of global supplies of liquid fuels. Their absence could have a significant impact on the price of oil.

The Green Energy War, like every military campaign since the beginning of history, is fraught with unintended consequences. But strategy, once committed to, often takes on an irreversible momentum of its own. And secondary concerns, in the memorable words of the US Air Force Intelligence Targeting Guide, tend to be dismissed as "collateral damage".

Based on the historic US Supreme Court decision that brought him to the White House, George W. Bush probably ranks first among all US presidents in his acute appreciation of the co-equal role which the American Constitution affords the judicial branch of government.

Parsing last week's Bush climate speech has intelligence value in the Green Energy War irrespective of the esteem in which its deliverer is held. The dimensions of the defensive perimeter thrown up by the Republican Message Command and its business allies are detectable. They suggest an awareness of the blowback risk created by the Administration's infidelity to the principle of technology neutrality.

President Bush's "new national goal" announced yesterday, to stop the growth in economy-wide GHG emissions by 2025 and to make power sector emissions peak "within 10 to 15 years, and decline thereafter" rests heavily on technology. As he put it, "There are a number of ways to achieve these reductions, but all responsible approaches depend on accelerating the development and deployment of new technologies."

Green Energy Warriors habitually identify George W. Bush as the culprit in the "who thwarted progress?" lineup of suspects which has substituted for US action on climate policy these past seven years. His putative mastermind, Dick Cheney, is a consistent runner up.

Honest military historians have never known what significance to attach to battlefield precedent. Their views range from the dour George Santayana ("those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it") to the more celebratory Yogi Berra ("it's deja vu all over again").

Why should the Green Energy War be different?

Like it or not, by the terms of some unwritten protocol governing the Green Energy War, no single piece of intelligence is deemed to hold more value than the expected long-term price of energy. It not only informs strategy, it defines the outer boundaries of what is considered possible given the virtually universal conviction that price signals cannot be defied indefinitely. Even the most willful of policymakers are forced to make their peace with price.

The thankless job of the electric utility supply planner is designed to attract the quantitative, the analytic, and the prudent -- not those with an ideological bent or propensity for heroics. Yes, politics constrains choices. The industry being what it is, there's a predictable tendency of planners to search for the "path of least resistance" -- an underpinning of the laws of physics which often finds adherents among regulated businesses.

The following open letter to Yakout Mansour, CEO of the California transmission grid manager, was written for the April 7, 2008 edition of California Energy Markets.

Hey, Yakout -- As a rule, former public officials should be denied access to the media because of their sworn duty to fade away. But when the editors of California Energy Markets solicited tenth birthday greetings for my second favorite non-profit public benefit corporation (your corporate sibling, the CalPX, dead these seven years, is still first in my heart), how could I refuse?

The extraordinary findings on energy productivity published recently by McKinsey & Company is a wartime anomaly. Not so much for its basic conclusion -- Green Energy Warriors have long recited an energy efficiency catechism. But the magnitude (roughly half the GHG abatement needed to reach 450 - 550 ppm) and sheer profitability (a 17% rate-of-return) of the portfolio of measures should be a shock-and-awe awakening in a political debate still mired in the rhetoric of economic deprivation.

As Americans have been painfully reminded several times over recent decades, the possession of and respect for sound intelligence are prerequisites of successful military campaigns. The Green Energy War is no exception, which makes a clear understanding of the recent McKinsey report on energy productivity all the more important.

The private sector routinely outsources its most perplexing analytic challenges to management consultants. In that extremely competitive profession, the global blue chip standard is widely considered to be McKinsey & Company. Policymakers caught up in the debate over what contribution to expect from energy efficiency in the Green Energy War should give careful consideration to a McKinsey report recently presented to 450 institutional investors, Wall Street leaders, and CEOs from around the world.

The California Air Resources Board, widely regarded as the most aggressive technology-forcing regulatory agency in the world, has made a shambles of its "zero emissions vehicle" program since first mandating in 1990 that 10 percent of all new cars be pollution free by 2003 (roughly 100 - 150 thousand vehicles per annum). This week, in the fifth revision to the requirement, it reduced that target to 7,500 over the three-year period 2012-2014.

The rhetorical fight over nuclear power continues to rage. It will retain a certain shadowboxing feel, at least in the US and EU, until markets or governments begin making the massive financial commitments necessary to construct new units.

The energy security front in the Green Energy War is broad and deep. Countries all over the world profess a desire to move away from oil -- some out of concern for the environment and climate change, many from a desire to sidestep the debilitating economics of petroleum dependence, most with growing apprehension about continued reliance on OPEC exporters.

The past several years have seen considerable, and wishful, attention paid to the role of so-called "enlightened" corporate leaders in pushing the U.S. federal government into a more activist stance on climate issues. Some of this has been calculated political strategy, a dry-eyed search by environmentalists for middle-of-the-road message carriers. More of it has been naive sentimentality, reinforced by massive advertising expenditures designed to boost company image.

The zeal of the renewable energy movement is one of the wild cards in the Green Energy War. Opinion surveys show exceptionally broad "do-it-now" support in many countries. The depth and commitment of such support, and its ability to knock down barriers of institutional inertia, will ultimately determine the pace and scope of any transition away from fossil fuels.

World War I saw an escalating, though not particularly effective, use of poison gas by the combatants. Because of the horrific effect on victims, more often wounded than killed, the Geneva Convention of 1925 banned the use of such weapons. Considerable opprobrium has attached to their deployment ever since.

In the Green Energy War, renewable energy is generally considered to be the ultimate weapon against whatever adversary is identified: energy security, climate change, escalating fossil fuel prices, etc. Significant disagreement exists about time frames, scalability, and costs, but a broad consensus exists among policymakers that promoting greater reliance on renewables is a desirable priority for government.

The second largest operator of nuclear power plants in the US, the New Orleans based company known as Entergy, is trying to secure regulatory approval to spin off five of its 10 nuclear plants into a separate, publicly traded company initially called SpinCo. This would create the first pure play nuclear company in the U.S. stock markets at a time of growing enthusiasm in some quarters over the role for nuclear on the Green Energy War's climate front.