San Jose Mercury Special Series: "The Cleantech Revolution"
A three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News highlights the enormous economic opportunity in the clean-tech sector and warns that the U.S. is quickly falling behind.
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By Ishan Nath
Cross-posted from LeadEnergy.org
A special three-part series in last week's San Jose Mercury News, entitled "The Cleantech Revolution," highlighted the enormous economic opportunity in the clean-tech sector and warned that the U.S. is quickly falling behind while Asia seeks to gain global market dominance.
In its analysis of the clean technology market, the Mercury's rhetoric is grand and its data convincing. The first part of the series begins:
"Cleantech is poised to be the valley's third great wave of innovation -- not just the next big thing, but perhaps the biggest thing ever. Confronting the peril of greenhouse gases and climate change happens to be a multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity."
The numbers provided support this claim: U.S. yearly utility bills exceed $1 trillion annually and the global energy and transportation market is estimated at $7 trillion. The wind and solar industries -- valued at $80 billion in 2008 -- are projected to triple in 10 years and employ 2.6 million people. Smart-grid technology, according to Morgan Stanley, will grow to $100 billion by 2030 and Cisco Systems believes smart-grid communications infrastructure could be worth $20 billion in the next 5 years.
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Friday Factoids: Clean Energy R&D Top Policy Response Finds Yale Poll
Funding for more research on renewable energy is the most popular policy response to climate change across all respondents, netting 85% support, according to a Yale poll.
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At long last, here's your Friday Factoid for the week:
Yale just released the latest iteration of their "Climate Change and the American Mind" tracking polls. Once again (this has been a consistent finding), the poll shows funding for more research on renewable energy is the most popular policy response to climate change across all respondents, netting 85% support.
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Daily Breakthrough: All is Not Lost
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What did last week's State of the Union and Tuesday's "Lost" season premiere have in common?
If you guessed, "a drinking game," you'd certainly be correct, but if you also guessed, "more twists and turns than your small intestine" you'd be right on the mark.
Obama's address was not the stuff of Clinton-era small ball that we, and others, expected. That left Nancy Pelosi's exuberant clapping to be one of the most reliably predictable aspects of the evening (and happily, gave everyone playing at home a reason to drink).
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Leading Science and Technology Experts Named Breakthrough Senior Fellows, 2010
A founder of Science and Technology Studies, the leader of Google's "Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal" program, the sociologist behind the concepts of 'risk society' and 'second modernity,' and three of the world's leading energy technology thinkers were named Senior Fellows in 2010 by the Breakthrough Institute.
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The Breakthrough Institute is honored to announce its 2010 Breakthrough Senior Fellows. As leaders in the fields of sociology, science policy, energy, and technology, we are excited to welcome them to our unique team of multi-disciplinary experts and look forward to benefitting from their insight and collaboration on some of the most challenging issues of our time.
Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour A professor and vice president for research at the Institut d'etudes politiques in Paris, France, he did pioneering fieldwork on the subjective quality of scientific practice, and has argued for an ecological politics that transcends outmoded ideas of science and nature.Bruno Latour is a founder of science and technology studies (STS) and was listed as the 10th most-cited intellectual in the humanities and social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide. His 1979 "Laboratory Life" was a watershed ethnography of how science works in the real world. Latour studied scientists and found that subjective judgments that look unscientific to outsiders are central to the scientific enterprise. In his most famous work, "We Have Never Been Modern," Latour's argues that modernity is a kind of faith characterized by efforts to purify concepts like nature and science even as they become invariably mixed up in politics, society, religion, and tradition.
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A Critical Moment for Energy Leadership
President Obama is right about the global energy race. Now his administration must get to work and advance a real strategy for global energy leadership.
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Originally published by The Stanford Daily
One of the most powerful moments during last week's State of the Union came when President Obama warned that while Washington stalls, other nations are moving quickly to dominate the global clean-energy industry.
"China is not waiting to revamp its economy," Obama declared. "These nations aren't playing for second place... They're making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America... The nation that leads the clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation."
Obama is right, and as always, his words were eloquent. Now his administration must get to work and advance a real strategy for global energy leadership.
The current proposals under consideration in Congress are far too weak. China, Japan and South Korea are launching massive, comprehensive clean-energy projects, investing a combined total of around $500 billion over the next five years. In contrast, the House-passed American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA), combined with the 2009 economic recovery package, poises the U.S. government to invest only $172 billion in this industry over the next five years, according to a recent report I co-authored with the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.
That is hardly an effective strategy for energy leadership, and advocates should be careful about labeling the House and Senate climate bills as comprehensive solutions for U.S. clean-tech competitiveness.
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Australian Climate Politics: Time Labor Adopted a New Approach?
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Published by On Line Opinion, Australia's leading e-journal of social and political debate.
By Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellow
Recently, the Australian Greens challenged the Rudd Government to "break the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) deadlock" by implementing an interim price on carbon. The move no doubt stunned many with its pragmatism and has since won the backing of the government's former chief climate change adviser Ross Garnaut. While the move may give the Greens a PR boost, the proposal will work to strengthen the Coalition's recent framing of carbon pricing as a "great big tax". This of course has implications for Labor's climate policy agenda in an election year.
The Greens proposal would impose a $20 per tonne "price" on carbon emissions for two years, starting from July this year. According to the Greens, the interim measure would allow the nation to start addressing its ballooning carbon emissions and provide the Parliament with enough time to resolve differences over the government's emissions trading legislation. While this sounds like a sensible proposition, it plays into Abbott's strategy of framing Labor's emissions trading scheme and other carbon pricing measures as a "great big tax." Without the presence of carbon trading, Coalition MPs will have an easier time convincing the public that "carbon pricing" is in fact a form of taxation.
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RE-ENERGYSE America: Obama's proposal for clean-energy education
The Obama administration's 2011 budget request includes a proposal for the nation's first comprehensive federal education initiative focused on the clean energy sector.
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Cross-posted from LeadEnergy.org
In a promising development for aspiring clean energy scientists, engineers, and technicians, the Obama administration's 2011 budget request includes a proposal for the nation's first comprehensive federal education initiative focused on the clean energy sector, called RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our Energy Science and Engineering Edge).
The initiative was originally proposed by President Obama in his April 2009 speech to the National Academy of Sciences, which he said would inspire and train young Americans to "tackle the single most important challenge of their generation -- the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy."
If appropriated by Congress, RE-ENERGYSE will be coordinated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF), beginning with an initial investment of $74 million in clean energy-related education at universities, community and technical colleges, and K-12 schools. This will include a new $50 million program within DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (see full proposal), a $5 million program in DOE's Office of Nuclear Energy (see full proposal), and a $19 million program within NSF (see overview and fact sheet). A summary of each program is included below. DOE's well-known Solar Decathlon is also proposed to become part of RE-ENERGYSE in FY2011.
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Jenkins on ABC: U.S. Needs a National Strategy to Win the Clean Energy Race
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Jesse Jenkins joined ABC's Diane Sawyer on "The Conversation" via Skype today, to discuss clean technology competitiveness in the United States. In the interview, Jenkins emphasized the findings of the Breakthrough Institute/ITIF report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," explaining to Ms. Sawyer that a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness -- something China, Japan, and South Korea all have -- is the primary limiting factor for the U.S. in its effort to keep pace with rising clean tech tigers, as well as the E.U.
View the entire video below or click here:
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Australia Update: Opposition Attempts to Brand Emissions Trading a Tax
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Originally posted at The Real Ewbank
By Leigh Ewbank
Australia's new Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has declared war on the Rudd Government. He has kicked-off his leadership by implementing a polarisation strategy, with the emissions-trading policy forming a central part of the political battlefield. The Opposition's new strategy provides some insight into the way in which the cap and trade politics might unfold in the United States.
The new Opposition Leader has identified the proposed emissions-trading scheme as a weak point for the Rudd Government. Labor exposed its vulnerability with efforts to keep the public debate centred on climate change 'skeptics' and 'deniers', the best example of which being Rudd's high-profile speech at the Lowy Institute late last year.
The Rudd Government has created the perception that emissions trading is the only available climate policy option. They have framed opponents of the so-called Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme as 'climate skeptics' and opposition to the policy as preventing action on climate change. Former Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull bought into this logic--or played along with it--throughout the emissions trading debate and diminished the need for the Government to explain the details of the CPRS to the general public. The result is that while the Government's emissions trading policy is well known to the electorate, how it functions remains largely unknown--excluding of course the climate campaigners, policy wonks, and politicos closely following the passage of the legislation.
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Daily Breakthrough: Did the President Choke or Panic?
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The choke job that Democrats pulled in Massachusetts last week has the Obama Administration in full blown panic. Unfortunately, tonight's State of the Union, it appears, will not offer much hope for displays of courage, perseverance, valor, and oh yeah, level-headed leadership.
Last year, Obama used his congressional address to take on every major challenge facing the nation, all at once, but it appears Obama will revert back to Clinton era small ball in his first State of the Union address tonight. Press reports suggest that the President intends to offer the nation a range of small and symbolic actions - a $100 million or so in middle class tax breaks and a freeze on non-military discretionary spending, most prominently.
For those keeping score at home, $100 million is approximately equivalent to 1/20th of what George Soros made last year betting against the Bush economy and non-military discretionary spending covers pretty much everything except all the stuff that is actually driving up the budget deficit.
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