McCain’s record casts doubt on energy ads, ‘green’ platform

PHOENIX — Wind turbines spin. Solar panels turn toward the sun.

“Renewable energy to transform our economy, create jobs and energy independence, that’s John McCain,” says the narrator of this ad for the Republican presidential candidate.

With oil prices and energy issues and jobs among voters’ biggest concerns this election season, it’s a pitch guaranteed to swing some votes.

But is it true? Not exactly.

When it comes to renewable energy, McCain’s record has been mixed at best. He has missed key votes on renewable energy legislation, and opposed renewable energy standards that would have boosted wind and solar power.

The Arizona senator’s record on wind power is so patchy, and his campaign’s policies on renewable energy so vague, that the non-partisan group FactCheck.org called his ad featuring wind turbines “puffery.”

Still, McCain is far from the worst U.S. Senator on the issue of renewable energy. He has some hard-earned credibility on the issue of global warming, even co-sponsoring an unsuccessful climate change bill with Democratic rival Barack Obama.

The renewable energy issue will surely come up again tonight as the two candidates square off in their last nationally televised presidential debate at Hofstra University.

“We have many advantages in the fight against global warming, but time is not one of them,” McCain said during a campaign speech at a wind turbine factory in Portland, Oregon. “Instead of idly debating the precise extent of global warming, or the precise timeline of global warming, we need to deal with the central facts of rising temperatures, rising waters, and all the endless troubles that global warming will bring.”

A MIXED MESSAGE

McCain has outlined a cap-and-trade plan that would cut carbon emissions to 1990 levels by 2020, and cut 1990 emissions by 60 percent by 2050. By creating a market for the sale and purchase of excess emissions, his plan would create powerful incentives for the development of renewable energy and other carbon-neutral technologies, he said.

“As never before, the market would reward any person or company that seeks to invent, improve, or acquire alternatives to carbon-based energy,” McCain said.

McCain has touted his support for a cap on emissions as a principled break from his own party leadership, and has used images of solar panels and wind turbines in campaign ads seeking to bolster his contention that his presidency will usher in a new era of renewable energy and so-called “green-collar jobs.”

Yet despite McCain’s advocacy on climate change, Arizona, his home state, produces little renewable energy, relying almost solely on coal, natural gas, nuclear and hydropower. According to statistics from the U.S. Department of Energy, Arizona ranks 46th in the nation for renewable energy, with 0.7 percent of its power from non-hydroelectric renewable resources.

Thanks to the Republican-dominated Arizona Corporation Commission, which has launched an aggressive renewable energy standard, the state is on its way towards improving its energy mix.

Yet McCain has voted repeatedly against a federal renewable energy standard that would have accomplished a similar goal on a national level.

“Overall, he’s said good things about it, but he hasn’t done a lot to help Arizona when it comes to renewable energy,” says Sandy Bahr, outreach director for the Sierra Club’s Arizona chapter. “He’s missed the key votes.”

The McCain campaign did not respond to several requests for comment.

McCAIN MISSES KEY VOTES

As a U.S. Senator, McCain’s ability to drive renewable energy development in his home state has been limited. But critics in the state contend that as senator, McCain has failed to lead on the renewable energy issue, even as he touts his climate change credentials.

Others condemn his plans for expanded nuclear energy production, to reduce carbon emissions from coal and natural gas-fired plants, saying the environmental and financial risks outweigh the potential benefit to the climate.

McCain’s failure to vote on a key Senate bill extending tax credits to renewable energy projects like wind farms and thermal solar plants has provided fodder for local critics of his environmental and energy policies.

While the bill finally passed the Senate this Tuesday, McCain again missed the vote, the ninth time he has missed a chance to support the measure.

In the bill’s eight previous incarnations this year, a group of almost exclusively Republican senators joined together to prevent the Democratic leadership from bringing it to the Senate floor for a vote.

Had the measure failed, projects in Arizona such as the Dry Lake Wind Project, the state’s first wind-energy farm, and the Solana Generating Station, a solar-thermal plant near Phoenix, would have suffered major financial setbacks.

“Without the credits, the numbers don’t work,” Fred Morse, a senior advisor for Abengoa Solar, the Spanish firm building the Solana plant, told The New York Times in August.

McCain’s campaign website says the candidate “believes in an even-handed system of tax credits that will remain in place until the market transforms sufficiently to the point where renewable energy no longer merits the taxpayers’ dollars.”

To Bahr, however, that rhetoric is not backed up by action.

“These tax incentives are essential to our state – things like the Solana solar power station will not move forward without them,” she says. “McCain has not stood up for Arizona on this issue.”

Others in the state disagree.

“I think John McCain’s position on renewable energy is solid,” says Kris Mayes, an Arizona Corporation commissioner and a strong advocate for increasing wind and solar power production in the state.

Mayes is a Republican who has endorsed McCain and speaks as a surrogate for him at campaign events. She says she feels confident that were he elected president, McCain would show leadership on both climate change and renewable energy.

“I think McCain has shown real courage on this issue,” she says. “I think it’s another area where he has bucked his own party.”

REMAINS DEFIANTLY PRO-NUKE

On another contentious energy issue – nuclear power – McCain has taken a characteristically bold position. Despite unresolved issues over how to safely dispose of nuclear waste, the senator has advocated the construction of 45 new reactors by 2030, and 100 by 2050.

“Nuclear power is a proven, zero-emission source of energy, and it is time we recommit to advancing our use of nuclear power,” McCain said in a June campaign speech.

Yet McCain’s description of nuclear power as emissions-free is misleading at best. While nuclear power plant operation is largely emission-free, the production of nuclear fuel – from mining to enrichment to disposal – involves large expenditures of energy and generates tens of millions of tons of carbon emissions over the life of a plant.

Other environmental impacts – from uranium mining to waste disposal – are equally troubling, and locating the new plants raises tricky political issues.

In Arizona, where the reactors at the Palo Verde station already provide almost 30 percent of the state’s power, building new reactors could face an uphill struggle.

Corporation commissioner Mayes says she agrees with McCain that the country needs more nuclear power. But she cites the plant’s huge demands on scarce water resources and the delicate financial stability of the state’s utility companies as potential stumbling blocks.

“This is not a simple issue. I agree with Sen. McCain that generally we need to do more nuclear power in the U.S.,” Mayes says. “Do I think we should start building a new nuclear power plant in Arizona? I’m not convinced of that. Can we build more of them on the East Coast? I think so.”

Even if no reactors are built in Arizona, the state could still feel an impact.

With uranium prices up substantially in recent years, mining companies are aggressively pursuing potential deposits in Arizona, some of them near the Grand Canyon. Were the U.S. to build McCain’s proposed 100 new reactors – doubling the number currently in use – the accompanying spike in demand would undoubtedly lead to a renewal of uranium mining in the state.

And while reactor meltdowns such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island have done the worst damage to the nuclear industry’s reputation, a poor fiscal track record hurts nuclear power’s chances even more.

“It’s not just going to be an ecological disaster,” says Russell Lowes, founder of Safe Energy Analysts, a renewable energy advocacy group based in Phoenix. “Putting everything else aside, economically, it’s simply not viable.”

The industry has consistently underestimated the cost of construction, power generation and waste disposal, Lowes says – often by as much as 220 percent.

With an industry estimate of $7 billion to construct each new plant, the ultimate cost for McCain’s 100 new reactors could reach as high as $1.54 trillion.

“It’s an incredibly stupid way to proceed at this point,” Lowes says. “It’s a 20th century failure.”

NO ANSWER FOR NUCLEAR WASTE

Lowes is not alone in his pessimistic view of nuclear power. The last nuclear reactor order for a new reactor that was subsequently completed was in 1973.

A decade later, the conservative and pro-business Forbes magazine pronounced the nuclear industry a “disaster.”

“The failure of the U.S. nuclear power program ranks as the largest managerial disaster in business history, a disaster on a monumental scale. The utility industry has already invested $125 billion in nuclear power,” the magazine declared in a 1985 cover story. “Only the blind, or the biased, can now think that most of the money has been well spent.”

McCain, were he to win the presidency and initiate his nuclear program, would likely also face charges of hypocrisy for his stance on nuclear waste.

During an interview with Nevada journalist Sam Shad, McCain said he supported the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository in Nevada – but opposes the shipment of nuclear waste through Arizona, or his hometown of Phoenix.

“Would you be comfortable with nuclear waste coming through Arizona on its way, you know, going through Phoenix, on its way to Yucca Mountain?” Shad asks in a video of the interview, which is available online.

“No, I would not. No, I would not,” McCain says.

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>>Email the editor at aklaw@zoniereport.com.