


Sierra Energy is testing a reactor that makes fuel in a warehouse at an old Air Force base near Sacramento, Calif.

Second of a two-part series. Read Part 1





"The way we say it," Kammen explains, "we've squeezed the lemon a little bit. And we're going to need to squeeze efficiency very strongly; we're going to have to really ratchet down. But at the same time, the global stock of low-power electronics and boilers and generators is actually ramping up."


That includes people like Mike Hart.


"This is garbage we're talking about here," he says as he picks up a handful of junk. "Bottle caps, broken glass, copper pieces, mixed plastics. Walnut shells is an example of biomass. Different sorts of shredded metal that can be recovered and melted."


Hart reckons the climate law will drive people to his doorstep — people in search of clean energy and who don't want to buy more permits from the state. "In the future," he says, the law "should have a tremendous impact for us because we offset greenhouse gases, because we offset CO2. It's not quite a gold rush yet, but if the prices turn out to be good, it will become one."

Hart is referring to the price for permits. If they're high enough at today's auction, then businesses might buy his gasifiers, or the fuel from them, to lower their carbon footprint.


The Chamber's Loren Kaye says it's just a hidden tax. "The auction merely transfers wealth from the folks that are producing in the economy to the government," he says, "which is then going to use the proceeds for whatever the politicians and the regulators deem as best."

Even the law's authors, like Kammen, aren't sure how it all will work out.

"What I'm most worried about is: Where are our partners? Because this process needs to expand out so that industry is seeing this as a push to innovation and not just to be a penalty to be based in California," he says. "We've got to get other states, other municipalities partnering in."


"It's an exciting time," he says. "I don't think all the businesses will make it here. But it's nice to see that with them coming in, I sort of see us again as the center of innovation for these low-carbon technologies and opportunities."

With California ranked as the eighth largest economy in the world, it's going to be the largest climate experiment undertaken in the U.S.

Copyright 2012 National Public Radio. To see more, visit

Source: NPR [,1004,1007,1013,1014,1017,1019,1128]

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