Environment: Al Gore's Ten Point Plan for Global Warming, presented to Congress on 2007-03-21

When Al Gore testified to congressional committees last week, he endorsed decentralizing the distribution of power from renewable energy and alternative sources, and he called for policy changes to make it happen:

"We ought to have a law," Gore said, "that allows homeowners and small-business people to put up photovoltaic generators and small windmills and any other new sources of widely distributed generation that they can come up with and allow them to sell that electricity into the grid without any artificial caps, at a rate that is determined not by a monopsony -- that's the flip side of a monopoly. You can have the tyranny of a single seller; you can also have the tyranny of a single buyer, and if the utility sets the price then it'll never get off the ground. But if it's a tariff regulated according to what the market for electricity is...then, you might never need another central station generating plant. In the same way that the internet took off and stimulated the information revolution, we could see a revolution across this country with small-scale generation of electricity everywhere. Let people sell it! Don't reserve it for the single big seller."

Watch Gore's testimony on YouTube.

And here is Gore's summation of the recommendations he made to Congress:

1. Immediately freeze carbon at the existing level; then implement programs to reduce it 90 percent by 2050.
2. Reduce taxes on employment and production, instead taxing pollution (especially CO2). These pollution taxes would raise the same amount of money, but make us more competitive by encouraging employment while discouraging pollution.
3. A portion of the revenues must be earmarked for low-income and middle-class people who will have a difficult time making this transition.
4. Negotiate a strong global treaty to replace Kyoto, while working toward de facto compliance with Kyoto. Move the start date of this new treaty forward from 2012 to 2010, so the next president can start to act immediately, rather than wasting time trying to pass Kyoto right before it expires. We have to try to get China and India to participate in the treaty. If they don't immediately participate, we have to move forward with the treaty regardless, trusting that they will join sooner rather than later.
5. Impose a moratorium on construction of any new coal-fired power plant not compatible with carbon capture and sequestration.
6. Develop an "electranet" -- a smart grid that allows individual homeowners and small businesses to create green power and sell their excess power to the utility companies at a fair price. Just as widely distributed information processing led to a large new surge of productivity, we need a law that allows widely distributed energy generation to be sold into the grid, at a rate determined not by the utility companies, but by regulation. The goal is to create a grid that does not require huge, centralized power plants.
7. Raise CAFE standards for cars and trucks as part of a comprehensive package. Cars and trucks are a large part of the problem, but coal and buildings must be addressed at the same time.
8. Set a date for the ban of incandescent light bulbs that gives industry time to create alternatives. If the date is set, industry will meet this challenge.
9. Create Connie Mae, a carbon-neutral mortgage association. Connie Mae will defer the costs of things like insulation and energy-efficient windows that cut carbon but are often not used by builders or renovators because they add to the upfront costs of homes, only paying for themselves after several years of energy savings.
10. The SEC should require disclosure of carbon emissions in corporate reporting.

- from AlGore.org.