James K. Galbraith has a tour de force piece in the Washington Monthly on the economic and financial crises, what's at their core and what's necessary to move forward.

Galbraith echoes and reinforces many of the criticisms and recommendations Breakthrough has been offering on the economy for the past six months: more public spending (a lot!); nationalize the banks so they can be cleaned up and re-privatized; and ultimately, spark a new engine of economic growth in the birth of a new clean energy economy.

Galbraith isn't shy either about criticizing President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner for stimulus.  It's not bold enough, it reflects the middle of the road economic consensus (and is therefore too timid), and it reflects a misguided attempt at bipartisanship.  Here's the choice quote there:

Second, the new team also sought consensus of another type. Christina Romer polled a bipartisan group of professional economists, and Larry Summers told Meet the Press that the final package reflected a "balance" of their views. This procedure guarantees a result near the middle of the professional mind-set. The method would be useful if the errors of economists were unsystematic. But they are not. Economists are a cautious group, and in any extreme situation the midpoint of professional opinion is bound to be wrong.

Continue reading "Galbraith on the Economy: Time to Go Big or Go Home" »

Andy Revkin did an incisive piece on the claims around climate tipping points in the Times on Sunday. It was nice to have the antidote to Tom Friedman's apocalyptic column on tipping points just pages away.

In 2006 a retired software executive insisted to me that we had only 10 years to do something dramatic about climate change (because that's what James Hansen had told him). When I gently suggested that 10 years was not a scientific number but rather an arbitrarily political one, the executive accused me of being anti-science. But the funny thing is that in January of this year Hansen told the Guardian that we have only four years left for the U.S. to act -- coincidentally, the same length of time in Obama's first term in office.

The assumption behind all of it is that throwing out these numbers -- four years, 10 years, 350 ppm, etc. -- will provide the public and policy makers with a sense of urgency that global warming as an issue currently lacks. But there's no evidence to back up that assumptions. If any correlation were to be drawn, it would likely be the opposite, that the increasingly apocalyptic tone of those seeking action on climate change has resulted in an increasing number of voters (according to Gallup) who believe that the threat of global warming is being exaggerated.

Continue reading "Are Greens Tipping the Debate Away from what Really Matters?" »

An article in Saturday's New York Times reports on the day to day problems some climate-conscious adopters of CFL technology are having with their own conversion to the greener lightbulbs du jour. From quality control issues, to the very perception of the light, consumers are racking up their minor annoyances on blogs across the net; and while this highlights many problems associated with being on the forefront of technology -- namely, that things sometimes just don't work perfectly right out of the box, or on version 1.0 -- what the article only briefly mentions before setting it aside is the fact that no one would be having these debates on anything but a small, niche level if the cost of CFL's had not been bought down on a massive scale in a large, concerted effort by the Department of Energy.

It used to be compact fluorescents cost $30 a pop, but beginning in 1998 the Department of Energy asked manufacturers "to create cheaper models and then helped find large-volume buyers, like universities and utilities, to buy them."

In fact, CFL's never would have made it outside of the General Electric IP vault had the design not been leaked and then copied. Because GE, once they examined the invention -- engineered by GE designer Ed Hammer in 1976 in response to the 1973 oil crisis -- shelved it after they determined that it would cost around $25 million to build new factories to produce them.

Continue reading "To Build a Better Lightbulb" »

by Tyler Burton

Americans desperate for cleaner, cheaper energy are looking more than ever to science and the breakthrough technologies that will be necessary to bring down the price of clean and renewable energy to a parity with existing, dirty technologies. And, while the desire has long been in place for something to supplant the old order of carbon technologies, the actual motor of change -- that is, the money -- has been in short supply.

Since the early 1980's, this desire manifest itself in rhetoric and little else. Now change has started to come to Washington, and now that we have in place a president who clearly understands the investment centered approach, the pragmatic question to ask is not if, but how soon? With Obama's guarantee of unprecedented investments in clean energy technology development will also come the onus on the scientific community -- particularly the innovators supported by the U.S. Department of Energy which will receive the bulk of these new investments -- to deliver real, commercially applicable solutions; and while the appropriation of funds signals a windfall of support that had previously only existed in nebulous rhetoric, the actual breakthrough technologies we are so desperately hedging the future of our economy (and also the greater world) on are still only glimmers in the mind's eye of a few brave and bold scientists.

In it's most recent edition, the Economist looks at what those familiar with the DOE are saying about this huge windfall of capital. The consensus seems to be: now is the time to stand up and deliver.

Continue reading "The Economist Weighs in on the Energy Innovation Challenge" »

Breakthrough's director of energy and climate policy, Jesse Jenkins, speaks about climate policy and politics on a half hour radio segment that aired March 27th on KPFA radio in the Bay Area. Jenkins joins Clear Air Watch's Frank O'Donnell to discuss the hard realities of climate politics and outline a policy strategy to make clean energy cheap that can overcome these realities.

Listen to the archived segment as streaming audio here (only available through April 10, 2009):

Or listen to the segment as archived MP3 here.

Both speaking to the public today at separate events, President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu highlighted the administration's plans to make unprecedented investments in clean energy innovation.

Speaking at the White House, President Obama continued to advance his post-environmental, innovation and investment-oriented energy agenda.

After a spot-on introduction from articulate energy innovation advocate and MIT President Susan Hockfield (see related post), President Obama highlighted the unprecedented energy innovation investments in the stimulus bill and reiterated his pledge to invest $15 billion annually in the development of new, clean and efficient energy technologies.

Obama also promised a ten-year commitment to make the federal Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent in order to encourage greater private sector investment in the kind of innovation that truly drives long-term economic growth.

Continue reading "President Obama and Secretary Chu Deliver Double Dose on Energy Innovation" »

Investments in clean energy innovation offer the nation's "best strategy" for economic recovery and "the only route to the breakthrough technologies we need" to tackle the nation's pressing energy and climate challenge, said MIT President Susan Hockfield today at a speech delivered at the White House.

Hockfield, an outspoken champion of clean energy innovation, spoke at the invitation of President Obama, who followed Hockfield's remarks with a speech outlining his plans to make unprecedented investments in clean energy technology and innovation.

"[S]ince World War II, by far the largest and most important source of US economic growth has been technological innovation, much of it springing from federally funded ... research," Hockfield said, echoing much of the work we've done at the Breakthrough Institute to advance public investments in clean energy innovation.

Facing both economic recession and pressing energy and climate challenges, clean energy innovation is critical, Hockfield argued:

"The R&D and technology investments that President Obama proposes have equally profound potential as an economic catalyst. That would be good news in any economy. But today, it provides a lifeline. ...

Not incidentally, these same investments [in energy innovation] also offer the only route to the breakthrough technologies we need to address the daunting challenges of energy security, rapidly accelerating energy demand and climate change."

In January, Teryn Norris and I cautioned about the "Danger of Green Stimulus" and called for "a shift from green jobs to a broader focus on green technology," a called echoed by Dr. Hockfield in the inspirational conclusion of her remarks:

"In hard times, America always invents its way to a brighter future. We have done it before, and we can do it again. For Americans out of work today, new "green jobs" will help. But for tomorrow, we need new green industries. And the only way to build those industries is by investing ambitiously now in basic and applied research."

Couldn't have said it better myself, Dr. Hockfield.

Since this is the third time now we've highlighted Susan Hockfield's spot-on remarks at the Breakthrough Blog, I think it's time she joins Energy Secretary and Nobel laureate Dr. Stephen Chu and dons the (entirely unofficial) mantle of "Honorary Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow." Read on for her full remarks...

Continue reading "MIT President Hockfield at the White House: Investing in Energy R&D "Best Strategy" for Economic Growth" »

Renewing America's economy, responding to the threat of global climate change, and finally securing the nation's energy independence all compel the transformation of United States energy system. Accomplishing this transformation requires the rapid development and deployment of a suite of clean, affordable, and scalable energy technologies.

The challenge is this: Over the next four decades, global energy demand is expected to triple. But at the same time, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall rapidly, decreasing at least 50 to 85 percent by mid-century to avert potentially catastrophic climate change.

Read the full article here.

"We have to invest in our intellectual capability, because it is the intellectual horsepower of the country that will create new wealth."

-- Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu speaking this afternoon at an energy forum sponsored by the The Washington Post and Siemens.

There's been a spate of recent public announcements from moderate Democrats and Republicans alike, voicing caution about a proposed cap and trade program to place a price on carbon dioxide and cut global warming pollution. More than one third of the U.S. Senate now joins the fifteen moderate Democratic Senators we've dubbed the "Technology Fifteen" as vocal swing votes in the upcoming debate on climate policy.

Below the fold is an updated tally of where the Senate stands on climate policy by my assessment, based on recent public announcements and past voting histories. With using budget reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote filibuster hurdle off the table, to secure passage of any climate policy in the U.S. Senate, all but seven of the 37 Senators I identify as swing votes must be convinced to support the proposal (joining the 30 Senators I classify as "Assumed Yes" votes).

I provide the vote count below without further comment, and will delve into the implications of this tally in further detail in an upcoming post...

Continue reading "The Challenge Ahead: More than a Third of Senate Now "Swing" Vote on Climate" »

Guest post by Alex Park

Shell might not have been a major player in clean tech, having never dedicated more that around 1 percent of its investments to renewable energy, or a paltry 1.25 billion dollars between 1999 and 2006. But as of this week, Shell has decided that it won't be a clean tech player at all. The reason? In the words of one exec, "We do not expect material amounts of investment in those areas going forward." That's according to a story posted yesterday in Reuters.

In other words, even with diminishing oil production, even with Obama in the White House, even with climate change, Shell is taking its money out of renewable energy because as of yet, it is simply not bolstering the firm's bottom line. And if it can't do that, then Shell can't stay in renewables if it wants to stay in business. It's that simple.

But the news is not just about Shell...

Continue reading "Shell Retires Renewable Energy Business" »

It was with much fanfare and bravado that then-newly-elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia announced at the 2007 Bali climate talks that his nation would abandon opposition to climate action and ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Better late than never, Rudd said and bravely declared, "I can unite the world on climate."

To deliver on that bold promise, Rudd directed his ministers to put together a cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on CO2. The outline of an Australian "Emissions Trading Scheme" was rolled out last week with plans to implement a cap and trade program in June 2010 aimed at cutting emissions 5 to 15 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.

Now, the Australian Prime Minister's efforts to put a price on carbon and cap emissions are under fire from both Right and Left, and cap and trade is going under Down Undah.

Continue reading "Cap and Trade Going Under Down Undah" »

A little more than four years after we started a debate about the future of environmentalism, President Obama has largely ended it. In his State of the Union address, Obama called for the most far-reaching program ever proposed by an American president to remake America's energy economy - with hardly a mention of the environment.

Read the full article...

Roger Pielke, Jr., Breakthrough senior fellow, was recently interviewed by Robert Bryce over at Energy Tribune. The interview is currently featured on their frontpage, and you can read the whole thing here. At the end of the interview Pielke outlines the policies he would implement if he were appointed 'Energy Czar'. Here they are:

Continue reading "Pielke on Adaptation, Coal, and the Politicization of Science" »

In a thought-provoking piece at the Energy Collective (registration req'd) and Huffington Post Green, Marc Gunther interviews geoengineering expert David Victor and asks us to look hard at potential options to save the climate.

With scientific reports on climate change getting more and more dire and a major top-to-bottom reorganization of the entire massive global energy system needed to overcome the climate/energy challenge, it may be high time we invest in an insurance policy, including R&D in geoengineering and new carbon capture technologies (like biochar) that may offer new options to help mitigate the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change.

Still, there are tough questions ahead, which Gunther takes a crack at in his post. You can read it below the fold....

Continue reading "Is it Time to Get Serious About Geoengineering?" »

Shellenberger interviews with Planet Forward TV and argues that rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels in the 21st century demands large-scale public investment in technology innovation to make clean energy cheap. See the clip here, and look for this new show which premieres at 8 p.m. April 15, 2009 on PBS.

"Political will and a price on CO2 won't be enough to bring about low-carbon energy sources" needed to overcome the global energy and climate challenge, concludes Sharon Begley in an excellent piece, "We Can't Get There from Here," due out in the upcoming issue of Newsweek (and online now here).

Begley puts the spotlight on Nate Lewis of CalTech and Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution who succinctly explain the massive scale of the challenge and why we currently lack the full portfolio of energy technologies necessary to overcome it. "The clock is ticking," Begley concludes, and investments to accelerate energy innovation are much needed.

The full piece is below the fold...

Continue reading "Newsweek Nails the Energy Challenge" »

"Rather than seeing public opinion as a something to move as a prerequisite to action on certain climate policies, perhaps it is time for the experts to instead shape climate policies to fit the realities of public opinion. To paraphrase Walter Lippmann, the goal of politics is not to get everyone to think alike, but rather, to get people who think differently to act alike."

-- Roger Pielke, on Prometheus, responding to a Gallup poll that the American public increasingly views media representations of climate science to be exaggerated.

Dalton Conley, sociology professor at NYU and senior fellow here at the Breakthrough Institute, recently published an article in The Nation (to appear in the March 23rd print edition) about the US's continual slide down the UN's global Human Development Index (HDI) rankings. We still rank near the top in per capita income, but Conley argues persuasively that income inequality is the driving force behind the seeming contradiction that a nation can have high income levels and low measures of development. For interested readers, the American Human Development Project has an interesting website that goes into detail about these measures at the state and local level.

Please follow the link above for the article, or you can read it below:

Continue reading "America is #... 15?" »

A few days ago I came across an article in the New York Times entitled "Trashing the Fridge", a mildly amusing piece about some environmentalists who have decided to give up their home refrigerators, ostensibly in order to become more environmentally responsible.

The anti-refrigerator movement may represent nothing more than a harmless fashion statement - an attempt to achieve a "holier than thou" status in fringe environmentalist circles, but the broad thinking behind it is something that is quite widespread in the environmental movement today: the notion that technology is the problem, that human prosperity is the problem, and that we will have to make major sacrifices of technology and prosperity (such as refrigerators) if we want to save the planet.

For me, one particular quote by an environmentalist in the New York Times article stood out: "Refrigerator lust is one of the things driving huge energy-use increases in the developing world".

Continue reading "Refrigerator Lust and Disgust" »

Two weeks ago Andrew Revkin of the New York Times wrote an article with the headline, "In Climate Debate, Exaggeration is Common Pitfall." In it he pointed to Washington Post columnist, George Will, on the right, who claimed global warming is not happening by drawing unscientific conclusions from sea ice data, and to Al Gore, on the left, for claiming that increased hurricane damage is due to global warming. There is not scientific evidence for either claim, Revkin noted.

Revkin quoted American University communications professor, Matthew Nisbet, who studies the social science of global warming communications. Nisbet said:

Mr. Gore's approach, focusing on language of crisis and catastrophe, could actually be serving the other side in the fight.

"There is little evidence to suggest that it is effective at building broad-based support for policy action," Dr. Nisbet said. "Perhaps worse, his message is very easily countered by people such as Will as global-warming alarmism, shifting the focus back to their preferred emphasis on scientific uncertainty and dueling expert views."

The article inspired Media Matters and Center for American Progress to level harsh attacks on Revkin, claiming that while Will's statements were gross lies, Gore's statements were mere exaggerations.

But now there is new empirical evidence to support Revkin's claim that hyping the threat of global warming is actually hurting public support for action.

Continue reading "What's driving opinion on global warming? " »

It appears that there is an effort underway (whether coordinated or just coincident) from the Obama Administration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations to place a reality check on expectations for United States climate policy progress in advance of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

Yesterday, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told UK newspapers that Barack Obama would have a "revolution on his hands" if he tried to implement binding cuts in emissions on the scale that the IPCC's scientific consensus recommends.

"He [Obama] is not going to say by 2020 I'm going to reduce emissions by 30 per cent," Pachauri said. "He'll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step."

Pachauri's word's echo those of U.S. special climate envoy, Todd Stern, who recently stated that the 25-40% emissions cuts called for by the IPCC are "beyond the realm of the feasible" in the U.S. Congress. Stern called for a focus on "the art of the possible," saying "we need to be guided both by science and by common sense."

Now, UN climate czar, Yvo de Boer tells Bryan Walsh in a TIME interview that he doesn't expect cap and trade from the U.S. before Copenhagen either.

Continue reading "Playing the Expectations Game as Copenhagen Looms" »

This post is a contribution to the Special Breakthrough Issue, "After Power Shift: What's Next?"

By Helen Aki

For the activists and advocates of my generation, the 2008 election was possibly our first taste of political success. And despite the daunting task of starting our careers in a plummeting economy, there is a sense of hope for those of us who eventually plan to make a living off clean energy, sustainable development, environmental design, and other green jobs.

But between today and the clean energy economy of tomorrow, we still have a lot to do. After witnessing Obama's election and inauguration, and after Power Shift 2009 (the party of the year for the youth climate movement), what can the youth movement do to sustain momentum and advance energy and environmental solutions? It has become clear that the traditional model of youth activism must be improved upon. Although canvassing, rallying, and subscribing to a larger movement can be important political tools, the problems we face today demand more from this generation of activists. On Tuesday, Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins called for an "innovation-centric approach" to climate and energy, urging the youth of today to use their strengths and passions to solve the challenge of making clean energy cheap. The new model for youth activism should empower individuals to rise to this challenge.

Continue reading "What's Next? A New Model for Student Innovation" »

written by David Douglas and cross-posted from Near Walden

Roger Pielke Jr. has an outstanding post titled US Mitigation Math where he shows the general sources and sinks of US energy and resulting GHG emissions. He also throws out some reduction scenarios and concludes that they cannot come close to meeting an emissions reductions goal of 14% below 2005 levels by 2020.

So he closes with a challenge: "... present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020."

It's a busy week for me so I haven't had time to work out some complete solutions, but I took a shortcut and asked myself how much CO2 I could reduce if I took all of the Obama administrations projected $645B in revenue from emissions allowances between 2012 and 2019 and applied it to various solutions.

Since I'm living in a hypothetical world, I'm going to take a couple of liberties. First, I'm going to assume that I've either got access to all of the money on the first day of 2012, or I can get the average amount of $80B/year for a long time to come. Second, I'm going to ignore the physical and temporal realities of implementing my solutions - in my world I've got the full support of the nation and they'll do everything they can to implement these ideas. Finally, I'm going to conveniently ignore the emissions required to implement these solutions.

Solution 1: Buy Lots of Prius's

In this scenario I'm going to buy 25.6M Prius cars at an estimated 45MPG and replace 25.6M gas guzzlers at an average of 15MPG. At 12K miles/year each, we'll save 533 gallons of gas per car per year, and at about 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon, that's about 4.8 metric tons of CO2 per car per year. Grand total savings: 122MMt/year, or a 2% savings from 5991 MMt.

Continue reading "Mitigation Math: Hypothetical Answers" »

cross posted from Prometheus, the Science Policy Blog

The mathematics of United States carbon dioxide emissions are not actually that complicated. The figure below from the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows that the 5,991 million metric tonnes (MMt) of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. came from 3 sources: coal, natural gas, and petroleum (see three inputs in the upper left of the graph).

Each of these fossil fuels, plus renewables and nuclear power make up the total energy consumption in the United States. Energy consumption is measured using a unit call a "quad" which means a quadrillion BTUs (British Thermal Units). In 2007 the United States used 101.4 quads of energy (data). This amount of energy can be broken down by source as follows.

The 15.2 quads of energy from nuclear and renewable sources resulted in negligible carbon dioxide emissions. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to each quad of fossil fuel energy depends upon the source, as their carbon intensities differ. For the analysis that follows I use the following values, distilled from the EIA information provided here in .xls.

Coal = 94 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Natural Gas = 53 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Petroleum = 65 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad

Thus, to calculate total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions simply requires multiplying quads of energy by carbon dioxide per quad and summing across the three fuels. This simple math results in the following:

(94 * 22.8 [Coal]) + (53 * 23.6 [Natural Gas]) + (65 * 39.8 [Petroleum]) = 5,981 MMt carbon dioxide

This total compares quite well with the total of 5,991 MMt carbon dioxide reported for 2007 by EIA (see figure above). We can use this information to ask some straightforward questions about how an emissions reduction target of 14% below 2005 levels (5,095 MMt carbon dioxide) might be reached by 2020.

We can do a bit of hypothetical "stress testing" of these numbers, by asking, in theory, what sort of actions might lead to reaching the emissions reductions target. Before we do this, we do need to make a guess as to 2020 US energy consumption. The EIA projects that energy consumption will grow at a rate of 0.5% per year (calculated from information here). Because GDP growth is expected to be higher than this rate, it already builds in an assumption of gains in energy efficiency. But let's use the EIA estimate, which suggests that US energy consumption in 2020 will be 108.6 quads, of which 21 quads will come from renewables plus nuclear energy, representing a growth of about 40% on top of 2007 values. This leaves 87.2 quads to be produced by fossil fuels.

Here are a few examples of the effects of different hypothetical strategies:

1) What would happen if all coal consumption were to be replaced with natural gas?

Answer: In 2020 total emissions would be 5,110 MMt carbon dioxide, very close to the 2020 target.

2) By how much would renewables plus nuclear have to displace coal to reach the target?

Answer: The target could be reached if coal consumption were reduced by about 42%, and the displaced 9.2 quads of energy were replaced by renewables plus nuclear, implying more than doubling of renewable plus nuclear energy supply, to comprise 30% of all energy consumption.

If renewables alone (i.e., non-nuclear) are to carry the weight of displacing coal, then they would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 4.7 over 2007 values. If growth in renewable energy supply is restricted to solar and wind only, then these sources would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 80 (that is, e-i-g-h-t-y). The reason for this big difference is that biomass and geothermal provided about 6.4 quads of energy in 2007, whereas wind and solar only 0.4 quads. The Obama Administration's goal of doubling wind, solar, and biofuels production within 3 years may indeed be a worthwhile policy, but it is not consistent with a goal of displacing sufficient coal to reach the 14% 2020 target using wind and solar (and while biofuels have their own complexities as a policy issue, they are not really a substitute for coal in any case).

3) By how much would energy consumption have to be reduced to meet the target assuming no changes in the energy consumption mix?

Answer: Energy consumption would have to be about 85.5 quads in 2020, about equal to 1992 values when the US economy was 35% smaller than in 2007.

Some Comments on the Stress Tests

First, number (1) above is really not desirable if the goal of mitigation policy is ultimately a reduction in emission of 80% or more. The reason for this is that while natural gas is less carbon intensive than goal, it is still carbon intensive. Locking in a large natural gas infrastructure is not compatible with large emissions reductions. Consider that in the hypothetical case that all US fossil fuel needs were to be met by natural gas, then 2007 carbon dioxide emission would have been 5,375 MMt, less than observed in 2007, but not consistent with any low stabilization target.

Second, number (2) is theoretically promising but practically daunting. The following is worth repeating -- for wind and solar to displace enough coal to reach the 14% target by 2020 would require that it increase by a factor of 80 in absolute terms from 2007 production. President Obama's policy of a tripling in wind and solar energy supply in the next three years would leave a need for another increase by a factor of about 25 over the next 8 years if wind and solar are to displace sufficent coal to meet the target.

Third, with respect to number (3), while there is a lot of potential to exploit in increasing energy efficiency, to reach the 14% would require a reduction of US energy use by about 2 quads per year for the next decade. Assuming that policy makers and citizens want economic growth to resume, this is a Herculean task. If you factor in that the EIA estimates to 2020 already include a good bit of efficiency gain in the BAU scenario, the task could be even larger if these assumed gains do not occur or if economic growth happens at a faster rate than assumed.

In reality, of course, none of these "stress tests" would be applied alone; there would be a combination of all three approaches discussed above. However, I challenge readers to present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020. I am not saying that it can't be done, but I am saying that I don't see how it can be done. The comments are open, have at it.

Setting an emissions target and timetable, allocating emissions permits, and then saying that the magic of the market will efficiently take care of the task is exactly the answer I'd expect if one doesn't have an answer. Markets can't make the impossible possible, and when they are used in such a manner, often have undesirable results.

This post is a contribution to the Special Breakthrough Issue, "After Power Shift: What's Next?"

By Morgan Goodwin

Power Shift brought together the youth climate movement and let us feel how powerful we are. More of us share a strategy of how to move forward and build our power. And we see how far we still have to go in building a clean energy economy and stopping global warming.

We must accomplish the two major goals of passing bold climate legislation and stopping dirty energy. And then we must become the builders of the clean energy economy by starting innovative businesses and working in companies that drive our goals forward.

We are going to pass bold national climate legislation in 2009, and it's going to take a lot of our work to make it happen. Our planet's ecology and energy supplies shorten the timeline to solve our energy problems, but our world's political processes give us an exact number: 41 weeks. The US must go to Copenhagen ready to lead, with all the moral conviction that our nation used to command.

Continue reading "What's Next: Climate Entrepreneurs" »

The opportunity to advance transformative, progressive change has never been greater. Now, in the wake of the 2008 election and the historic Power Shift summit, young progressives have a unique opportunity to take a step back and look at the big picture: How can the we continue advancing bold solutions on energy and climate? What can young people do beyond energy and climate? And if national climate legislation succeeds, what's the next "Big Idea" for the progressive youth movement?

These are just some of the ideas we're exploring in a Special Breakthrough Issue - "After Power Shift: What's Next?" - to examine the next steps for the progressive youth movement. The issue will include contributions from some of the country's top young leaders throughout the week, and we hope you'll join the discussion. Here's our first piece to kick it off.

---------------------------------------------

Want to Save the World? Make Clean Energy Cheap.

By Teryn Norris & Jesse Jenkins
The Huffington Post

Over 12,000 young adults attended the recent Power Shift 2009 summit in Washington, DC. Their goal? Building the largest youth movement in decades to save the world from global warming.

Largely missing from Power Shift, however, was a critical group: young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Maybe it was mid-terms. Perhaps the event seemed too political. Or maybe the summit recruited too many traditionally-defined "activists."

Whatever the cause, we have very little chance of overcoming climate change without enlisting young innovators at a drastically greater scale. Simply put, they represent one of the most important catalysts for creating a clean energy economy and achieving long-term prosperity.

The reason is this: at its core, climate change is a challenge of technology innovation. Over the next four decades, global energy demand will approximately double. Most of this growth will happen in developing nations as they continue lifting their citizens out of poverty and building modern societies. But over the same period, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall dramatically to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Continue reading "Want to Save the World? Make Clean Energy Cheap." »

Last Thursday, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu delivered groundbreaking Congressional testimony (testimony PDF) to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee about Obama's energy plan and what's necessary to create a clean energy economy:

"Our previous investments in science led to the birth of the semiconductor, computer, and bio-technology industries that have added greatly to our economic prosperity. Now, we need similar breakthroughs on energy. We're already taking steps in the right direction, but we need to do more...

Developing Science and Engineering Talent: Several years ago, I had the honor and privilege of working on the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" report commissioned by Chairman Bingaman and Senator Alexander. One of the key recommendations was to step up efforts to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers. The FY 2010 budget supports graduate fellowship programs that will train students in energy-related fields. I will also seek to build on DOE's existing research strengths by attracting and retaining the most talented scientists.

Focusing on Transformational Research. The second area that I want to discuss is the need to support transformational technology research. What do I mean by transformational technology? I mean technology that is game-changing, as opposed to merely incremental...

Speeding Demonstration and Deployment: While we work on transformational technologies, DOE must also improve its efforts to demonstrate next-generation technologies and to help deploy demonstrated clean energy technologies at scale...

We will move forward on all of these fronts and more, as we invest in the transformational research to achieve breakthroughs that could revolutionize our Nation's energy future."

Continue reading "Steven Chu calls for $150 billion investment in "breakthrough" energy R&D" »

"We live in a world of growing demand for energy as billions of people are rising out of poverty. As that demand for energy grows, it will require new energy production capacity. Today, that new capacity generally consists of coal-fired power plants with the same high carbon dioxide emissions as our current energy infrastructure. Just a couple of weeks ago, India announced that it is building a new 4 GW coal-burning power plant complex. These plants will emit more than 23 million tons of CO2 a year. The justification? That the need to bring electricity to one of the world's poorest regions is more pressing than the need to limit carbon dioxide from burning fuel, and this is the least expensive way to do it. It is difficult to argue against such a statement, when most of us here have never known a life without electricity.

As we struggle to develop alternatives to our current energy infrastructure, we must recognize that in order to achieve sustainable use of those alternatives worldwide they must become cost-competitive, so that they are the option of first resort.

To accomplish all of this, we will need both a revolution in technology and major changes in our economy. Our past technological choices are inadequate for our future. The solutions we need can only come from new technologies. And if the challenge of developing those new energy technologies, and implementing them worldwide, is immense, so too are the opportunities afforded by tackling this problem the right way. If we see our most pressing environmental problems as an opportunity to reassert U.S. leadership in science, technology, and innovation, we have the potential not only to resolve those problems, but also to revitalize our R&D enterprise and to rebuild our manufacturing base in the United States."

-- Senator Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resource Committee, speaking at MIT in April 2008.

"I strongly believe that the key to our prosperity in the 21st century will lie in our ability to nurture our intellectual capital in science and technology. Our previous investments in science that lead to the birth of the semiconductor, computer and biotechnology industry added greatly to economic prosperity. And now we need similar breakthroughs in energy today. We already taking steps forward, but we need to do more."

-- Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, testifying before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on March 5th.

Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow Marty Hoffert joined a panel of energy experts from both industry and academia at an American Association for the Advancement of Science panel on energy innovation held in Washington D.C. this week. The panel of experts called for major, direct government investments and targeted public policies designed to spur high-risk, high-reward energy innovation.

Businesses and the private sector are ill-suited to perform the kind of critical, long-term energy research needed to solve national energy challenges, panelists said, calling for targeted public policies and investments designed to drive improvements and lower costs of clean energy technologies.

They also encouraged federal energy R&D initiatives to not overlook some of the more outlandish proposals for new energy and climate technologies, including space-based solar power and geoengineering techniques. With early-stage R&D a low-cost investment, putting money behind these potentially high-payoff technologies has no downside, they say.

Read on for excerpts from Energy and Environment Daily's coverage of the AAAS panel...

Continue reading "Energy Experts Call for High-Risk, High-Reward Energy Innovation" »

Obama has already been compared to FDR. But do his proposals really measure up?

No, says Michael Lind from the New America Foundation in today's Salon. In a fantastic critique of Obama's budget, Lind argues that his proposal reflects the ongoing dominance of market fundamentalism. If Obama is to recreate liberalism and achieve a transformational presidency, Lind argues, he must break with this ideology and embrace the public provision of public goods -- just like Roosevelt and Eisenhower once did -- from energy and infrastructure to education and healthcare.

Lind echoes my recent call in the Huffington Post for Obama to put forth a new economic philosophy, and he cites Breakthrough's Shellenberger and Nordhaus as offering "the Roosevelt approach" on energy:

The problem with alternative energy sources like solar power and wind power is that they are still too expensive, compared to coal, natural gas and nuclear energy. The answer, according to a minority of enviromentalists like Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, should be massive, Manhattan-style public sector R&D to discover ways to bring alternative energy prices down -- in absolute, not just relative, terms, to maintain cheap electricity for American industry and American households. That would be the Roosevelt approach. But the Obama approach is to use a cap-and-trade system to artificially raise the prices of conventional energy, in the hope that private capital (with modest help from public capital) will pay for efforts to invent a cheaper solar cell or wind turbine. The fact that most of the left embraces cap-and-trade should not blind us to the fact that cap-and-trade is a classic example of an indirect, overly complicated, "market-friendly" neoliberal approach, touted originally by conservatives and neoliberals as an alternative to the allegedly discredited "top-down, command-and-control" approach that gave us, among other things, the TVA, the Manhattan Project and the Internet.

Here's the full piece:

Continue reading "How Can Obama Really Become the Next FDR?" »

cross posted from Prometheus, the Science Policy Blog

Todd Stern, chief US climate negotiator in the State Department, gave a speech two days ago in which he laid out some of the principles that will guide the Obama Administration's approach to climate policy. In it he recognizes that what is politically possible will be the most important factor guiding the pace of policy implementation. He says the following:

. . . at the same time we are being guided by the science and doing the math, we cannot forget that we are engaged in a political process and that politics, in the classic formulation, is the art of the possible. Of course we cannot afford to be passive in our understanding of that principle - we need always to push the envelope of what is possible. But we ignore the principle at our peril.

Let me apply this principle in a couple of ways. Some assert that the United States can only meet its responsibility if it agrees to reduce emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, equivalent to at least a 40% reduction below where we are right now (a much deeper cut than the EU would have to make compared to where they are now). But, first, as a matter of substance, this is not necessary. What counts is getting on a viable path between now and 2050. Reducing 25-40% below 1990 levels would be a good idea if it were doable, since it would allow a less steep reduction path in the 2020-2050 time period. But it is not independently necessary; a somewhat steeper path in the latter period could make up for the slightly slower start.

In addition, a 25-40% requirement for the United States would garner very little support here, because it would appear both unnecessary, for the reasons I just noted, and beyond the realm of the feasible. The most ambitious proposals that have been seriously considered here, both those introduced in Congress last year and the objective that President Obama has endorsed, call for reductions equivalent to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. These would equate to around 15% below 2005 levels by 2020, and over 80% below those levels by 2050. So insisting on a 25-40% cut below 1990 for the United States is a prescription not for progress but for stalemate. Again, we need to be guided both by science and by common sense.

There are two important points to make about this passage.

First, in rejecting a 25-40% emissions reduction by 2020 target as unnecessary and unachievable Stern is openly departing from the both the conclusions and implications that many have taken from the 2007 IPCC report, including its head, Rajendra Pachauri:

We [in the IPCC] have estimated that to stabilize global temperature increases at just 2° to 2.4° Celsius, we have only about seven years to turn around global emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. By 2015 they'll have to peak. By 2020, we'll need to put in place a 25 to 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

While many people have pointed to the fact that the science of climate change has advanced since the 2007 IPCC report, far more importantly, the ongoing discussion of policy options has rendered the IPCC obsolete. Pachauri has criticized the Obama Administration for its climate policies, so it will be interesting to see how the broader IPCC community reacts to the scaling back of expectations being set forth. This will be especially interesting as many IPCC scientists gather in Copenhagen later this month to "influence policy." Will the Obama Administration be criticized by the scientists?

The second important point to take from this passage is a realization that climate policy must be governed by common sense and what is politically "possible" and "feasible." This realpolitik approach is a healthy one for climate policy as it moves debate beyond aspirations and exhortations to what can actually be accomplished. However, at the same time it is also a slippery slope, as what is politically possible at present is, to be honest, not much. What will the Obama Administration do if it learns that a 15% reduction by 2020 is not possible or feasible?

"This is not just about emissions but about creating a massive investment in a new global energy economy." -- Angela Anderson, director of the Pew Environment Group's Global Warming Campaign, speaking about a Post-Kyoto climate treaty.

Chief US climate negotiator, Todd Stern, said last week that the United States would be involved in the negotiation of a new treaty -- to be signed in Copenhagen in December -- "in a robust way."

A new, Post-Kyoto international climate treaty needs to take a radical new approach that focuses less on binding emissions targets and more on technology innovation, economic development, and adaptation. That's what the Breakthrough Institute has argued for years (e.g. see "Scrap Kyoto"), and that's the message coming from an increasing number of experts, according to the New York Times:

Continue reading "Post-Kyoto treaty demands radical new approach" »

"A cap-and-trade system is absolutely essential to spur private sector innovation, but must be combined with clean energy technology funding to meet the president's ambitious emissions goals," he said. "This funding should be a top priority when dealing with revenue generated by the program."

--Paul Bledsoe, a spokesman at the National Commission on Energy Policy, in the New York Times

Ezra Klein reports this morning that Pelosi wants "heavy investment" in clean energy technology and infrastructure as part of a cap and trade policy this year, declaring energy policy the "flagship priority" for Congress. She said she'd like to see this all in one bill -- a sentiment I also heard from Harry Reid in a meeting yesterday with Power Shift delegates. Here's Klein:

Just returned from a small breakfast the Maria Leavey Memorial series put on with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. This much, I think, was clear: Pelosi is focused on energy legislation. She named energy policy as this Congress's "flagship" priority. Cap and trade, she promised, would come to the floor this year, in a bill that she hoped would include not only carbon pricing but heavy investment in renewables and a reform of the energy grid. "I'd like to see it as one bill," she said. "That would show the integrity of it: How each piece relates to the other."