The coastal hamlet of Kivalina, Alaska, is already known for literally making a federal case out of rising sea levels.

The village of about 400 residents sits exposed on a barrier island in the Chukchi Sea. In 2008, local officials filed a federal lawsuit against about two dozen corporate entities, including ExxonMobil, BP and San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., claiming that coastal erosion was forcing the town to relocate.

US Army Corps. of Engineers

Kivalina appears in the distance, on the tip of this barrier island in the Chukchi Sea.

The original case was dismissed — but on Monday, the case lands in San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where the town’s lawyers will again argue that major oil and power companies are responsible for the threatening rise in sea level, as the result of their collective greenhouse gas emissions. The appearance is timely, as only a week ago a major Arctic storm reportedly caused some damage to the settlement.

The current body of case law doesn’t offer the Kivalina elders much encouragement. Apart from their own suit’s dismissal, the US Supreme Court recently tossed a similar suit filed by California and other states, seeking carbon emissions caps on power companies’ coal-fired plants. The town’s lawsuit is supported by the Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment, which recently took California air officials to court over implementation of the state’s developing cap & trade program to reduce carbon emissions.

Kivalina has a couple of other claims to fame. It’s the last Native American community that hunts bowhead whales and was also the site of a still-mysterious orange rain that fell briefly last summer.

The federal Bureau of Land Management today issued its first approvals of major solar energy projects in California.

The Tessera project will use "SunCatchers" to concentrate solar power. (Image: Tessera Solar)

Tessera Energy’s 700-megawatt Ocotillo project, located in the Imperial Valley, about 100 miles east of San Diego, and a smaller photovoltaic (PV) project by San Ramon-based Chevron Corp., are both cleared to go forward.

The two projects set a precedent not just for California. On a call with reporters this morning, Department of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar called it a “historic day,” saying the two projects “bear the distinction of being the first large-scale solar energy projects ever approved for construction on our nation’s public lands.”

For projects being developed on federal land, BLM approval is the final hurdle before construction can begin. Big solar-thermal projects, which concentrate the Sun’s energy to make steam, also require approval from the California Energy Commission (photovoltaic projects, like the Chevron array, are under the eyes of the state’s Pubic Utilities Commission and county governments). State energy commissioners have approved seven major solar installations in the California desert since July. Several of these are still pending BLM approval.

BLM director Robert Abbey uses the catch phrase “smart from the start” to describe his agency’s new approach to site permitting, which he calls “streamlined without cutting corners.” Abbey says the Bureau is still sifting through a backlog of 180 pending applications, nationwide.  He said his agency manages about 23 million acres “with solar potential,” across several western states, about half of that in California.

The Tessera project, shown in some CEC filings as SES Solar Two, could deliver more than 700 megawatts of solar-thermal power when completed late next year. It will occupy more than 6,000 acres of BLM land, and a few hundred acres of adjacent private land. Chevron’s Lucerne Valley project is significantly smaller, rated at 45 megawatts, with a footprint of about 400 acres in the Lucerne Valley of San Bernardino County.

Asked about opposition from environmentalists, Salazar said the projects had won support from several major organizations, including Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club, The Wilderness Society and Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).

In a press release, NRDC attorney Johanna Wald wrote that: “the process provided valuable lessons that careful planning, siting and designing up front will lead to renewable projects that are smart from the start.”

Salazar told reporters that transmission lines are already available for all of the Chevron project’s output and a little less than half the expected output from Ocotillo, and that he looks forward to seeing “thousands of megawatts of renewable energy sprouting” over the next few years.

A Shell oil refinery in the aptly named town of Oildale (near Bakersfield) back in 2004. (Photo: David McNew/Getty Images)

The Los Angeles Times today runs down the list of California’s major oil refiners, which are also California’s biggest individual carbon emitters, and finds Tesoro, Valero, and Koch Industries  have not brought along their industry brethren in the fight to stop AB 32 with Proposition 23.

Prop 23 would suspend the 2006 law until the state’s unemployment rate drops to 5.5% or below and stays there for a year, something that’s happened three times in the last four decades, depending on how you count.

But seven weeks before the election, Margot Roosevelt’s tally for the Times reveals that:

- Chevron is officially neutral

- ConocoPhillips has yet to contribute

- Shell Oil opposes Proposition 23

- BP has not taken a position on the initiative

- ExxonMobil has decided not to get involved

Chevron, headquartered in San Ramon, is one of only two California-based big oil companies. The other one, Occidental of Los Angeles, is on board with a $300,000 donation of record to the Prop 23 campaign. Spokesman Richard Kline wrote me in an e-mail:

“The implementation of AB 32 would hit California with over a million lost jobs and substantially higher energy prices. Implementing it in the teeth of the most significant recession in the last 60 years would be foolhardy and negatively impact every one of us who live and work in our state…”

Beyond that, he recommend I speak with Anita Mangels of the Yes-on-23 campaign.  I have, and part of that conversation will air in an upcoming feature on Proposition 23, to air on The California Report.

The Times, by the way, also got hold of an e-mail appeal from the president of the National Petrochemical and Refiners Assn., literally begging for contributions to the “Yes” campaign. According to the Times, it read, in part: “I am pleading with each of you — for our nation’s best interest and for your company’s own self-interest.” The Refiners Association, which has ponied up $100,000 so far, claims that the initiative could “mean the difference between life and death for our industry in this century…. AB32 would have the effect of outlawing petroleum-based fuels in California in the second half of this century.”

Interesting, since a major talking point of the “Yes” campaign lately has been to dwell on the things Prop 23 would not outlaw. In his email to me, Occidental’s Kline took pains to add:

“Under the California Jobs Initiative [proponents' name for Prop 23], California’s environmental laws – which are among the toughest in the nation – will remain intact. Those laws already protect our air and water from smog-forming emissions and other pollutants related to human and environmental health and they will remain in full force and effect.”

A continuing study from the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity (CPI) shows that climate-relating lobbying reached a fever pitch in the third quarter of this year, with 140 new organizations showing up in government-required registrations. That brings the total number of registered climate lobbyists to 1,160, with most activity centered on two climate bills–one passed by the House and another pending in the Senate.

The Center’s latest report is called “The Climate Lobby from Soup to Nuts”–and they mean it literally. CPI reports that registered climate lobbyists now include such diverse interests as the makers of Campbell Soup and Blue Diamond Growers (“a can a week” may not be all they ask, after all).

Not surprisingly, “Big Oil” is a big spender. San Ramon-based Chevron Corp. clocks in at more than $36 million since 2003. And PG&E, one of California’s largest utilities, is shown spending more than $34 million just in the last two years ($19 million in the third quarter of 2008 alone).

Silicon Valley is well represented on the list, including some firms whose stake in climate policy is less obvious; eBay, Google, Hewlett-Packard and Intel are all in the half-million-plus club. Government records show Intel declaring more than $12 million on climate lobbying since 2003.

Marianne Lavelle, a staff writer who helped compile the figures for CPI, says that companies with a stake in green energy technologies are seeking more of a voice in the process, to counter fossil fuel interests, and that technology-oriented venture capital firms are becoming more of a visible presence on the lobbying radar.

The CPI data also includes major environmental lobbies such as the San Francisco-based Sierra Club, which logs $1 million over the past two years. Lavelle says what it doesn’t capture is lobbying at the state level, nor does it reflect spending on “grassroots” organizing or money spent on advertising campaigns designed to steer public opinion on climate issues.

The CPI study site includes a searchable database of all federally registered climate lobbyists.

Chevron CEO Dave O’Reilly and Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope fielded questions from moderator Alan Murray of The Wall Street Journal and a sometimes impassioned audience, about renewable energy opportunities, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and predictions for the future of the United States’ energy economy. Several questions also concerned Chevron’s high profile court battle in Ecuador and the oil company’s presence in Richmond, the Bay Area city where a major Chevron refinery dominates the skyline–and some say, local governance

From left to right: Sierra Club chief Carl Pope; WSJ Online Executive Editor Alan Murray; Dave O'Reilly, CEO of Chevron. Photo: Gretchen Weber

In what was less of a debate than a discussion, Pope and O’Reilly agreed that the United States needs to make major changes towards greater energy efficiency and that the country must begin to rely more on renewable energy sources.

Their views diverged significantly, however, on the timeline for such changes. While Pope supports a 90% reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from today’s levels by 2050 and says he believes this goal possible, O’Reilly projected that by 2050, the United States will have reduced its GHG emissions by no more than 20-25% from today’s levels.

O’Reilly said that even if the U.S. replaced the entire transportation system with a zero-emissions system, the country would reduce GHG emissions by just 34%–and that doing likewise with the nation’s power generation would reduce GHGs by another 40%.

“So we have to ask ourselves, can we replace our entire energy system–transportation and power–in just a few short decades?” said O’Reilly. “I think the transition is going to take some time.”

According to O’Reilly, his company is already the largest provider of geothermal energy in the world and yet only 2% of Chevron’s income currently comes from renewable energy.

“The challenge of scale demands that we acknowledge that conventional energy sources will remain indispensable for decades,” said O’Reilly. “We must be realistic. For the foreseeable future we need to develop it all: conventional as well as non-conventional energy, as well as renewables and alternatives.”

When asked what his prediction was for how much of Chevron’s income would come from renewable energy sources by 2050, O’Reilly said he thought the number would be about 10-15%.

Pope responded, “The world will have room in 2050 for a very small company, 90% of whose energy comes from fossils [fuels]. The world will not have room, or tolerance, in 2050 for a big energy company [that does], so if Chevron wants to be successful, I think Chevron’s going to need to change those numbers.

Pope also called on Chevron to “come to the table” with local communities in which Chevron operates, such as Richmond, CA, and he proposed that all oil companies donate 10% of their profits to a global fund to clean up areas of the world damaged by the petroleum industry.

Not surprisingly, Pope and O’Reilly agreed that the highest priority for reducing GHG emissions is to replace coal with natural gas or another less carbon-intensive energy source, and while on stage, the men shook hands on an agreement to lobby the issue together in Washington.

KQED will broadcast the entire Commonwealth Club event at 8 p.m. on Friday, June 19, with a rebroadcast at 2 a.m. the following morning.