As we projected in "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," the latest Pew report finds that China has a commanding lead over the rest of the G-20 in clean energy investment:
"Even in the midst of a global recession, the clean energy market has experienced impressive growth," said Phyllis Cuttino, who directs the Pew Environment Group's Global Warming Campaign. "Countries are jockeying for leadership. They know that investing in clean energy can renew manufacturing bases, and create export opportunities, jobs and businesses."
"The facts speak for themselves," said Bloomberg New Energy Finance Chief Executive Michael Liebreich. "2009 clean energy investment in China totaled $34.6 billion, while in the United States it totaled $18.6 billion. China is now clearly the world leader in attracting new capital and making new investments in this area."
Countries with strong nationwide policy frameworks, including renewable energy standards, carbon markets, priority loans for renewable energy projects and mandated clean energy targets, such as China, Brazil, Spain, United Kingdom and Germany, have the most robust clean energy sectors as a percentage of their economies. Countries without such policy frameworks including the United States, Japan, and Australia lag behind.
"The United States' competitive position is at risk in the emerging clean energy economy," said Cuttino. "Our nation has a critical choice to make: pass the federal policies necessary to position us as the world leader in the large and growing global clean energy market or continue to watch as China and other countries race ahead."
For those who need a reminder, those steps include:
1) Significantly increasing investment in clean energy innovation by making a sustained commitment to research, development, and demonstration (RD&D).
2) Spurring the adoption of innovative manufacturing processes and accelerating economies of scale in U.S. clean energy manufacturing.
3) The U.S. government actively supporting, through targeted public policy and investment, the acceleration of clean energy deployment and market creation in order to reduce the price of promising clean energy technologies and encourage their widespread adoption.
The Jews' exodus from Egypt isn't the only one garnering some attention this week. BusinessWeekreports that BP is going the way of other solar panel producers (Evergreen Solar announced its moving plans earlier last week) and packing up its domestic manufacturing and moving to China - where public investments in clean tech lead to cost reductions that have not been matched domestically despite stimulus dollars.
In Asia, "not only do you get cheaper labor but you also get major tax breaks just not happening here," Bencik said. "They're not getting the same incentives here in the states as elsewhere, and that's pushing these positions overseas."
Both Wired and the New Scientist covered a somewhat controversial gathering of geo-engineering scientists and policy makers at Asilomar last week that evoked both nostalgia and criticism. Nostalgia for the original conference that last week's was modeled after -- a 1975 meeting of scientific minds intent on self-regulating recombinant DNA experimentation. Criticism because the assumption that scientists, then and now, can self-govern without making regulations that would ultimately benefit their own self interest.
"Susan Wright, a historian of science at the University of Michigan, has called the bargain supposedly struck at Asilomar -- some research restrictions in exchange for scientific self-governance -- a myth on both sides of the deal.
"It is a myth that most scientists working under competitive pressures can address the implications of their own work with dispassion and establish appropriately stringent controls -- any more than an unregulated Bill Gates can give competing browsers equal access to the world wide web," she wrote. "Sure enough, some five years later, the controls proposed at Asilomar and developed by the National Institutes of Health were dismantled without anything like adequate knowledge of the hazards."
Further, she says, "it is equally a myth that scientists in this field are self-governing." Instead, their research agendas are shaped by utilitarian interests of government or corporate sponsors. Even at that early stage, before the biotech boom of later years, molecular biologists were never doing pure science."
And even with regulations, the New Scientistposits, as experiments progress to larger and larger scales, which countries or governing bodies decide whether the benefits outweigh the risks of altering the climate:
"If experiments progress to a larger scale, a second problem arises: which nations should decide whether a proposal has proved safe enough to implement? Most agreed that as some solutions could have a global impact, they could only be deployed after global talks, led by the United Nations, for instance. Talks would have to include plans to compensate people whose livelihoods could be damaged by side effects. Others argued that global negotiations could become impossible to manage, and cited UN-led climate talks as an example of how all-inclusive efforts can fail to solve problems requiring decisive action."
Geoengineering represents a potentially critical tool in mitigating climate change and warrants continued, expanded research. With that in mind, it is definitely not too soon to be tackling these tough questions and developing viable solutions so that research can move forward safely and responsibly.
For more information, the New Scientist also has an excellent graphical summary of the risks, costs, and potential effectiveness of different geo-engineering options (embedded below).
The Guardian has the full transcript of an interview with James Lovelock's opinions on the tribalism of some climate scientists -- as well as the role skeptics should play in the debate. Strong stuff coming from the founder of Gaia theory and a long-time advocate of aggressive action on global warming.
"We're very tribal. You're either a goodie or a baddie. I've got quite a few friends among the sceptics, as well as among the "angels" of climate science. I've got more angels as friends than sceptics, I have to say, but there are some sceptics that I fully respect. Nigel Lawson is one. He writes sensibly and well. He raises questions. I find him an interesting sceptic. What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: "Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?" If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. Some of them, of course, are corrupted and employed by oil companies and things like that. Some even work for governments. For example, I wouldn't put it past the Russians to be behind some of the disinformation to help further their energy interests. But you need sceptics especially when the science gets very big and monolithic."
Who killed cap and trade? Harvard economist Robert Stavins and the New York Times' John Broder blame a conservative political environment. Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke's not having it:
"[Stavins'] argument is wrong in at least two dimensions. First, since the 2008 elections the US has large Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate (including a Senate "supermajority" for much of 2009) and a Democratic President. This fact alone renders Stavins argument flawed. The problem was not a lack of political support, but failed policy design despite the strong political support."
Perhaps, by switching off the lights for an hour and looking at what our world would look like without the constant buzz of electrons that powers our daily lives, Earth Hour and similar efforts can re-instill a sense of appreciation and wonder for the incredible gift that is modern energy.
March 27th marked "Earth Hour 2010," the now annual event that has cities and buildings across the globe switched off the lights for an hour to ... apparently draw attention to the need for conservation.
As I looked at the incredible collection of images from around the globe here, however, I was struck by a somewhat opposite impression: they struck me with a wonder for how awe-inspiring modern energy sources (particularly electricity) are, how ubiquitous they are in our daily lives, and how widespread such energy consumption has become across the world, as we become an increasingly urban and 'grid-connected' global population.
Environmentalists have long sought to use the threat of catastrophic global warming to persuade the public to embrace a low-carbon economy. But recent events, including the tainting of some climate research, have shown the risks of trying to link energy policy to climate science.
Update: Michael and Ted are not the only ones who have argued that there are many reasons to catalyze an energy transformation regardless of the certainty of climate science. In 2002, Oxford Professor Steve Rayner made a similar point in the Guardian that " further research is not a prerequisite for sound policy action."
Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus have an essay up at Yale e360 arguing that in the wake of Climategate, energy policy should be made independent of climate science. The piece is already beginning to set the climate blogosphere aflutter, with coverage from the National Journal, E&E News (subs. req'd), The Hill, and the North County Times.
While Michael and Ted's argument has particular resonance in the wake of Climategate, in truth, they have been making this argument for a long time.
Last week, DOE Under Secretary Kristina Johnson testified on behalf of RE-ENERGYSE before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development (excerpted below) emphasizing the critical need to invest in energy education in 2011. Breakthrough has been call for a national investment in STEM education since June 2008 when we proposed the National Energy Education Act.
"One crosscutting initiative that I'd like to highlight is RE-ENERGYSE, or REgaining our ENERGY and Scientific Edge. RE-ENERGYSE is a $55 million collaborative effort which includes EERE ($50 million) and NE ($5 million) and involves close coordination with the Offices of Science, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. This initiative is aimed at filling the gaps in the energy workforce pipeline by training current and future generations of energy professionals through fellowships for higher education, energy-focused curriculum development for technical training, and K-12 education and outreach. We have extensively surveyed existing educational activities within the Department and in other agencies and found that we lack a coordinated funding approach for these proposed activities. REENERGYSE will focus on engineering and applied sciences, separate and distinct from existing Office of Science educational programs focused on basic science and experiential teacher training. REENERGYSE will also, however, tap into existing Department resources to administer fellowships and coordinate other activities.
Our RE-ENERGYSE request is consistent with the spirit and intent of several authorizing provisions in the America COMPETES Act of 2007. For example, Section 5003 of the Act authorizes the Secretary to establish the Protecting America's Competitive Edge (PACE) Graduate Fellowship Program. Eligibility criteria for students applying for fellowships under this program include: the pursuit of a field of science or engineering of importance to a mission area of the Department; imagination and creativity; leadership skills in organizations or intellectual endeavors; and excellent verbal and communication skills to explain, defend, and demonstrate an understanding of technical subjects relating to the fellowship. These are exactly the types of students to whom we would like to award fellowships through RE-ENERGYSE.
As President Obama said on April 29, 2009: "RE-ENERGYSE is...an educational campaign to capture the imagination of young people who can help us meet the energy challenge...Energy is this generation's greatest project. America's young people will rise to the challenge if given the opportunity - if called upon to join a cause larger than themselves." The Administration looks forward to working with the Committee and other Members of Congress to help make this vision and program a reality."
Turns out energy efficiency measures aren't the only things susceptible to rebound effects. In "The Green Bubble," Michael and Ted wrote about the Green tendency to "proselytize the virtues of downscaling." Now, thanks to two Canadian researchers, we have social scientific evidence that Greens don't just have a habit of being condescending and narcissistic but, it turns out, the greener you are, the meaner you just might wind up:
"Do Green Products Make Us Better People?, a paper in the latest edition of the journal Psychological Science, argues that those who wear what the authors call the "halo of green consumerism" are less likely to be kind to others, and more likely to cheat and steal. Faced with various moral choices - whether to stick to the rules in games, for example, or to pay themselves an appropriate wage - the green participants behaved much worse in the experiments than their conventional counterparts. The short answer to the paper's question, then, is: No. Greens are mean.
The authors, two Canadian psychologists, came up with an intriguing explanation for this. "Virtuous acts," they write, "can license subsequent asocial and unethical behaviour." It's the yin-yang theory of psychology, or "compensatory ethics", to give it its proper name. Buy an organic potato, then go home and beat your wife with The Guardian. Hop smugly into a green hybrid car, then use it to run over little old ladies doing their shopping."
While these two examples may be a tad extreme, you get the picture...
Making your home more energy efficient is often described as picking low hanging fruit or money up off the ground, but it looks like efficiency may not save you quite as much on your energy bill as you'd expect. According to the New Scientist:
"SURVEYS of hundreds of UK households reveal that people who have made their houses more energy efficient are more likely to indulge in small excesses - turning up the heating, for example, or keeping it on for longer.
Small excesses add up to large costs. The results of the studies - seven of them in total - suggest that such energy creep could wipe out as much as half of the anticipated savings from making homes more energy efficient (Building Research & Information, vol 38, issue 1)."
Update: Mark Muro has more insight into the movement of clean tech R&D to China here.
Last week, an NYT story detailed the hastening movement of clean energy R&D facilities from the U.S. to China and the simultaneous migration of some of America's leading researchers and innovators in the same direction. This news highlighted the now, undeniable implications of a brain drain that was initiated by China's aggressive moves to invest in and dominate clean tech manufacturing.
"Now, Mr. [Mark] Pinto said, researchers from the United States and Europe have to be ready to move to China if they want to do cutting-edge work on solar manufacturing because the new Applied Materials complex here is the only research center that can fit an entire solar panel assembly line...
President Obama has often spoken about creating clean-energy jobs in the United States. But China has shown the political will to do so, said Mr. Pinto, 49, who is also Applied Materials' executive vice president for solar systems and flat-panel displays."
What does big picture, public investment in clean energy look like?
It looks like nine European countries planning to invest up to 30 billion euros (nearly $40 billion) in an underwater North Sea super grid that would harness and integrate Europe's vast renewable resources:
It would connect turbines off the wind-lashed north coast of Scotland with Germany's vast arrays of solar panels, and join the power of waves crashing on to the Belgian and Danish coasts with the hydro-electric dams nestled in Norway's fjords: Europe's first electricity grid dedicated to renewable power will become a political reality this month, as nine countries formally draw up plans to link their clean energy projects around the North Sea...
...All those involved also have an eye on the future, said [EWEA's Justin] Wilkes. "The North Sea grid would be the backbone of the future European electricity supergrid," he said. This supergrid, which has support from scientists at the commission's Institute for Energy (IE), and political backing from both the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Gordon Brown, would link huge solar farms in southern Europe - producing electricity either through photovoltaic cells, or by concentrating the sun's heat to boil water and drive turbines - with marine, geothermal and wind projects elsewhere on the continent. Scientists at the IE have estimated it would require the capture of just 0.3% of the light falling on the Sahara and the deserts of the Middle East to meet all Europe's energy needs."
Last weekend marked the passing of the last surviving member of John F. Kennedy's cabinet and perhaps, the end of a bipartisan era that is rapidly being replaced by a particularly nefarious form of hyperpartisan politics that has resulted in Climate McCarthyism on the left and the Tea Party movement on the right.
Stewart L. Udall, an interior secretary in the 1960s and a well-known conservationist from Arizona, imparted his concern about the growing partisanship in Washington and its potential consequences for conservation to his son, Senator Tom Udall (D-NM), prior to his death:
"But Tom Udall said that in recent years his father had become greatly concerned over the state of politics in the country, worrying "we were losing the bipartisanship in the environmental area."
He added that Mr. Udall had recently written a letter to his grandchildren, urging them to focus on "trying to transform our society to a clean energy and clean job society.""
In the video below, Revkin offers a refreshingly pragmatic assessment of climate change in the context of the broader arc of global development:
"The energy challenge is not just about carbon dioxide. The energy challenge we face right now on this planet includes the two billion people on this planet right now, who, if they have something to eat today will be cooking it on dung or firewood. And a million and a half of them die young, mostly women and kids, every year because they are breathing indoor smoke from these guttering fires built from those fuels. That's just as much an energy challenge as figuring out how to store electricity from windmills."
Revkin also explains why we need innovation - both technological and societal - to deal with the global challenges we face:
"To me, climate is not the story of our time. That underpinning transitional moment as we are making this potential leap from that testosterone fossil fuel sprint to a more reasoned pace, a more reasoned, literally, pace...If we can find away to get through that transition, to soften the blows, to think a little bit ahead, to start to pull on our greatest resources as a species which is our innovative potential. And the thing that is going to make this really hard is it can't just be a technological innovation....This isn't just turning down the lights. We do need that huge sustained effort at innovation if we are going to get through this transition."
Watch the video below to see the full talk he gave at Warren Wilson College.
Until clean and cheap energy sources are available for deployment on a massive scale, developing nations like South Africa will remain stuck in the Development Trap: forced to either sacrifice climate and ecological security in the name of development and poverty alleviation or to condemn countless millions of citizens to energy poverty in the name of climate protection. Breaking out of this untenable position is the urgent challenge of the century. It's time to make clean energy cheap.
[Update, 4/9/10: According to E&E News ($ubcr. required), the 24 member World Bank board voted to approve the $3.75 billion loan to South Africa, including $3.05 billion to construct a new 4.8 GW supercritical coal-fired power station and additional funding to construct 100 MW of utility-scale wind power and 100 MW of concentrating solar power with energy storage capability.
The United States' representative on the World Bank board abstained from the vote, and the explanation is the clearest example of the multi-faceted challenges of global development and the ways in which energy poverty and climate change objectives remain largely opposed in the absence of clean, affordable, and rapidly scalable energy technology options. According to E&E:
In a statement released just as the 24-member World Bank board started to debate the Eskom loan behind closed doors, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a statement saying its abstention "reflects concerns about the climate impact of the project and its incompatibility with the World Bank's commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation."
Still, the United States noted, it "recognizes South Africa's pressing energy needs and the lack of near-term feasible low-carbon alternatives."
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, roundly condemned the World Bank decision, and chastised the U.S. for not voting in opposition. However, there is no indication that viable alternative plans to expand energy access in South Africa without exacerbating the nation's greenhouse emissions were proposed. ]
South Africa's finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty. The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental and climate impacts of energy development.
With South Africa's economy growing rapidly - it's expanded by two-thirds since 1994, when Nelson Mandela first took office - the nation's demand for energy has grown apace. As Gordhan notes, "Millions of previously marginalized South Africans are now on the grid." And that's a very good thing.
Consider that not having access to affordable, modern energy sources, particularly electricity, means no access to potable, running water; it means having to burn dung and wood and other primitive biofuels to provide cooking and indoor heating; and it means sputtering kerosene lamps as the only source of light after the sun goes down.
The human toll of such energy poverty is incredible. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children, while waterborne disease is one of the leading global killers, ending the lives of over 3 million annually - again, many of them young children - who lack access to clean and safe water supplies.
After his governing conservative party took a pounding in regional polls on Sunday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has dropped a key environmental goal: setting up a carbon tax to limit the growth of carbon emissions and spur the development of renewable fuels.
"We want decisions that are taken in common with other European countries, or else we will see our competition gap widen," said François Fillon, the French Prime Minister, according to The Financial Times.
The idea of a carbon tax had been widely opposed by France's business lobby, which argued that it would increase costs, as well as by members of the governing party which opposed the idea of a new tax. A law was initially voted by parliament last year but was censured by France's top court, the Constitutional Council because it was too weak on polluting industries.
That's actually a trick question: both a Boeing 747 and a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier have peak power output of around 190 MW!
(That's the peak rating for an aircraft carrier, and a 747 has an average rating of 140 MW, both according to Wikipedia, so I'm assuming the 747's peak rating is about the same as the carrier).
The 'miracle' of human flight at near super-sonic speeds is certainly an energy-intensive endeavor.
Here's another perspective: a typical U.S. house uses about 1.3 KW of power on average. So a 747 jet flying with 140 MW of average power output (140,000 KW) is consuming as much power as over 100,000 U.S. homes!
Or put another way, a 747 flying five hours from San Francisco to Washington D.C. consumes 700,000 KWhs of energy, enough to fuel the electricity use of an average American home for more than 61 years!
This should actually come as no surprise when you consider that a jet can vault a couple hundred people through the air in a steel tube across an entire continent in five hours... But these figures are astonishing in some ways nonetheless.
(Almost as astonishing as the shear amount of energy and power involved in jet travel is it's relative affordability in the modern age...)
Miller-McCune Magazine has published a question and answer with me about the clean energy race, "Throwing the Race for Green Energy," to discuss the growing global competition for clean-tech and what the U.S. can do to regain its leadership:
Discover illuminates the differing perspectives of climate scientists, Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Michael Mann (Penn State), on the implications of ClimateGate and the state of climate science, in general. Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. has excerpts from the interview on his blog.
Here's Judith Curry in response to the question: "So where does climate research go from here?"
"I personally don't support cap-and-trade. It makes economic sense but not political sense. You're just going to see all the loopholes and the offsets. I think you're going to see a massive redistribution of wealth to Wall Street, and we're not going to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We need a massive investment in technology. We do need to help the developing world that is most vulnerable now to the impacts of climate variability, not even the stuff that's related to carbon dioxide. There are a lot of things going on--floods, hurricanes, droughts, and whatever--that can't even be attributed to global warming right now. By reducing the vulnerability of the developing world to these extreme events, we'll have gone a long way to helping them adapt to the more serious things that might come about from global warming."
Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. reviews four books on climate change for Nature and concludes that asserting the scientific high ground and demanding action on that premise won't make better climate policy--"admitting the limitations of science in compelling political agreements," he says, is the critical step towards that end.
"If science leads inexorably to particular political outcomes, then it would seem to favour autocratic forms of governance. The middle man -- the general public -- is easily ignored if heads of state need only hear the expert voice of science. Schneider worries that democracy finds it hard to deal with complex issues: if only the public understood the real risks, he explains, they would be "much more likely to send strong signals to their representatives". He bemoans a public debate that includes the participation of "special interests" and that is filtered through an inept media, a perspective echoed by Hansen."
Climate scientists won't make very good "cable news and blogosphere culture warriors," writes Matthew Nisbett in Slate, explaining why climate scientists who feel they are fighting a "'war' against 'anti-science' forces" are over-reacting to threats to their credibility post-ClimateGate. "To...
Climate scientists won't make very good "cable news and blogosphere culture warriors," writes Matthew Nisbett in Slate, explaining why climate scientists who feel they are fighting a "'war' against 'anti-science' forces" are over-reacting to threats to their credibility post-ClimateGate.
"To be sure, there is a need for better, clearer explanations of the science, but it's wrongheaded to imagine that researchers and their organizations could ever compete effectively, in the long term, in a political debate with climate skeptics and their allies at the Chamber of Commerce and Fox News. Instead of exaggerating the problem of an allegedly hostile American public, scientists need to wake up to the fact that they continue to enjoy almost unrivaled trust and communication capital."
Originally posted at Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas's blog, Near Walden.
Bloom Energy's recent announcement of their fuel cell-based "energy server" drew lots of attention from the press, and for good reason. It set some nice marks for performance, and, if successful, will likely be the first of a new market category of energy products.
At Sun we looked at this technology a couple of years back. The use case was as the backup for a datacenter, and to switch to it as primary power when grid power was more expensive (e.g. mid-day in the summer during peak AC time). In this example the technology would enable us to change our view of backup power, from something we only use in emergencies to an energy insurance plan against rising costs. If I recall the only issue was the number of the units that would be required to support a MW or higher datacenter, but improvements in their technology have likely reduced this problem in the meantime.
Beyond work applications, I can't wait to see the home version of this technology, providing electricity and hot water from a single process. Hopefully the folks at Bloom or one of their competitors is working on a version for that!
But putting my nerdish desires aside, its useful to use this milestone to look at the environment in which the Bloom technology came into being. In this case there are two interesting aspects.
In order to succeed in the clean-tech industry, the U.S. must develop an energy education strategy to develop tens of thousands of advanced energy scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, as well as technicians.
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the United States faces serious questions about the future of its economy and jobs market. Where will the good jobs of the future come from, how do we prepare the American workforce, and what is our strategy to maintain economic leadership in an increasingly competitive world?
A growing consensus suggests that clean tech will be one of our generation's largest growth sectors. The global clean-tech market is expected to surpass $1 trillion in value within the next few years, and a perfect storm of factors - from the inevitability of a carbon-constrained world, to skyrocketing global energy demand, to long-term oil price hikes - will drive global demand for clean-energy technologies.
That is why the national debate about global clean-tech competitiveness is so important, sparked by the rapid entry of China and other nations. My colleagues and I recently contributed to the discussion with "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a large report providing the first comprehensive analysis of competitive positions among the U.S. and key Asian challengers. In order to compete, we found, "U.S. energy policy must include large, direct and coordinated investments in clean-technology R&D, manufacturing, deployment, and infrastructure."
But even if the United States adopts a real industrial policy for clean energy, there is little evidence that our workforce is skilled enough to compete. Unfortunately, according to the Department of Energy, "The U.S. ranks behind other major nations in making the transitions required to educate students for emerging energy trades, research efforts and other professions to support the future energy technology mix."
In the face of energy and financial companies pushing for offsets in Senate climate legislation, Public Citizen forces Senators Kerry, Graham, and Lieberman to wrestle with a tough question: Will they allow carbon offsets to gut the Senate bill, the way it did under ACES?
Polluting energy companies and giant financial firms are once again allying to advance international offsets that have the potential to render a carbon cap entirely non-binding. The Coalition for Emissions Reductions Projects (CERP), wrote to Senator Maria Cantwell earlier this month criticizing the CLEAR Act she co-sponsored with Senator Susan Collins for not including an offsets program.
Membership of the CERP coalition includes: Alpha Natural Resources, American Electric Power, BlueSource, Global, C-Quest Capital, C-Trade Comercializadora de Carbono, Deutsche Bank, Dominion, DTE Energy, Duke Energy, EcoSecurities, Element Markets, El Paso Corporation, Environmental Credit Corp, Equator, John Deere, Leaf Clean Energy Company, Macquarie Bank, Natsource, Noble Carbon Credits, PG&E Corporation and Verdeo Group.
Renowned energy expert, Vaclav Smil, launched his new website this week which offers access to many of his publications and information about his numerous published books. In addition to being required reading for Breakthrough Staff and Breakthrough Generation Fellows, Smil's work is widely acclaimed, most recently by Bill Gates, who highly recommended three of Smil's books on his blog.
"None of us knows what lies ahead. What we know is that our uses of energy that define and sustain our physical well-being and allow for an unprecedented exercise of our mental capacities will be the key ingredients in shaping that unknown future."
A recent Gallup Poll shows American concerns about eight major environmental issues are the lowest they've been for 20 years - including worry about climate change.
One of the country's most respected liberal foreign policy voices, Walter Russell Mead, blames Al Gore for the magical climate thinking that led to the contrivance and ultimate failure of Copenhagen:
"Environmentalists are still trying to avoid pulling the plug, but the corpse is already cool to the touch and soon it will begin to smell. As the global greens move from the denial stage of the grief process, brace yourself for some eloquent, petulant and arrogant rage. Tears will be shed and hands will be wrung. The world is stupid, uncaring, unworthy to be saved. Horrible Republicans, evil Chinese, demented know-nothing climate skeptics have ruined the world and condemned our grandchildren to lives of sorrow and pain. Messengers will be shot; skeptics will be blamed for asking questions and the media (and the internet) will be blamed for reporting the answers.
....
The climate change movement now needs to regroup, and at some point it will have to confront a central, unpalatable fact: the wounds from which it is bleeding so profusely are mostly its own fault. This phase of the climate change movement was immature, unrealistic and naive. It was poorly organized and foolishly led. It adopted an unrealistic and unreachable political goal, and sought to stampede world opinion through misleading and exaggerated statements. It lacked the most elementary level of political realism-all the more egregious given the movement's politically sophisticated and very rich opponents. Foundation staff, activists and sympathetic journalists cocooned themselves in an echo chamber of comfortable group-think, and as they toasted one another in green Kool-Aid they thought they were making progress when actually they were slowly and painfully digging themselves into an ever-deeper hole."
Fortunately for the U.S., China is ready and willing to share as it speeds ahead in its development of domestic high-speed rail. Even though China still imports HSR technology to manufacture trains, it has developed its own model that it has yet to commercialize. And now, ABC reports that China is not only planning to build out 16,000 miles of high speed track by 2020, it is aiming to bid for a piece of the $8 billion U.S. HSR pie.
"China is willing to share its mature and advanced technology with other countries to promote development of the world's high-speed railways," Wang [Zhigou] said."
Over at Grist, Gar Lipow explained, last week, why a carbon price is far from the answer to all our climate and energy prayers and why even Adam Smith "would have laughed at the idea of capitalism without a strong state," despite what modern day libertarians would have you believe.
"Any society that needs infrastructure more complicated than that built by hunter-gatherers will need public involvement, whatever "public" means in that particular society... The best we can do is explicitly choose what we want regulation and public investment to accomplish, and focus our rules and our public investments on those goals. The minimal state is not an option and never has been."
Steve Hayward gives a shout-out to Breakthrough Institute founders, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in this week's Weekly Standard:
Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, two of the more thoughtful and independent-minded figures in the environmental movement, have been warning their green friends that the public has reached the point of "apocalypse fatigue." They've been met with denunciations from the climate campaign enforcers for their heresy. The climate campaign has no idea that it is on the cusp of becoming as ludicrous and forlorn as the World -Esperanto Association.
The conventional wisdom among greens and liberals for the last 20 years has been that more climate science research would lead to political consensus but as Breakthrough Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz points out, that hasn't happened. Now he argues in Slate that more climate science has made climate politics even more polarized:
"When people hold strongly conflicting values, interests, and beliefs, there is not much that science can do to compel action. Indeed, more research and more facts often make a conflict worse by providing support to competing sides in the debate, and by distracting decision-makers and the public from the underlying, political disagreement. In such cases each side will claim to have the scientific high ground."
IBM's announcement that it will invest $40 million in an energy R&D center in China is further evidence that without a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness that includes public investment in both innovation and manufacturing, America's once dominant lead in energy innovation could quickly disappear.
A recent announcement that IBM will invest $40 million in an"energy and utilities solutions lab" is further evidence that China's large-scale investments in clean tech are attracting private investment in R&D, not just manufacturing.
This latest news from IBM will be difficult for pundits like Thomas Friedman and Brad Plumer to ignore. Friedman and Plumer have argued that the U.S. will be able to maintain its competitive edge in innovation even as clean tech manufacturing relocates overseas.
IBM is not the first, nor is it likely to be the last to set-up a clean-tech R&D center in China. Dow Chemical opened one last June and a few months later Applied Materials follow suit, opening an advanced solar R&D center in Xi'an.
The Passing of Sierra Club Giant Edgar Wayburn is a reminder of how much has changed in ecological politics -- and that prosperity and conservation go hand in hand.
He helped saved America's last giant ancient redwoods, build the Sierra Club and hiked among grizzlies. It must have been great for his health, because Edgar Wayburn, medical doctor and a great conservationist, passed away yesterday at 103.
Given his long life, this famous quote of his rings true:
Wayburn was still active when the two of us were working to save Headwaters Forest, which was truly the last great ancient redwood grove in private hands, in the late 1990s. He helped create some of the most important parks nationally like Redwood National and Alaska, as well as ones closer to home: Golden Gate, Mt. Tamalpais, and Pt. Reyes -- achievements that helped keep the Bay Area (and Marin in particular) one of the most ecologically pleasing urban environments in the world.
The passing of an environmentalist giant like Wayburn is a reminder of how much things have changed. In remembering Wayburn and his achievements we should not lapse into nostalgia. The two greatest ecological issues of today are the far more complicated problems of global warming and global habitat destruction, both of which involve not just us, wealthy Americans, but also the world's poorest needing more energy and food to live like we live.
What we should carry on from Wayburn was his fierce love of nature and of the Bay Area. And from that love for the Bay Area, one of the most economically vibrant areas in the world, we should learn a vital lesson for our politics: prosperity goes well with conservation.
CBS profiles the state of the clean energy race between the United States and China. The result is not pretty. In order to stay in the game, the U.S. government policies should support technological innovation and highly efficient manufacturing, according to the CBS report.
The CBS Evening News has profiled the U.S. position in the global clean energy race for a segment called, "Where America Stands," and unsurprisingly, America stands behind China and other nations in developing and producing the technologies that will underpin the tremendous growth of the global clean energy sector over the coming decades.
CBS correspondent Celia Hatton reports, "China is the country cashing in on the green revolution." The video echoes the findings of a recent report on clean tech competitiveness by Breakthrough Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," which notes that other countries have surpassed the United States in the production of virtually all clean energy technologies, from solar and wind, to nuclear and high-speed rail.
Hatton reports that China also dominates manufacturing in other "eco-products" like electric bikes, solar hot water heaters, and electric vehicles.
What should the United States do to stay in the game?
Some have argued that all the United States needs to do to stay competitive is to put a price on carbon, and wait for the market to do its magic. But CBS takes a closer look at what's needed to compete: "In the long-term, experts say U.S. government policies should build on America's strengths: technological innovation and highly efficient manufacturing to compete with China's unbeatable wages." Investing in clean technology research and development is particularly critical since other countries, including China, are moving quickly to close the innovation gap with the United States.
Without such investments, the new clean energy technologies may not just be manufactured in China, but invented there, too.
The careers needed to secure competitive clean energy industries will run the gamut from cutting-edge researchers and high-tech engineers to innovative designers and fearless entrepreneurs, and Congress has so-far failed to make the investments necessary to RE-ENERGYSE a new generation of intrepid American innovators.
When you think 'green jobs,' do you conjure images of green hard hats, caulk guns, and tool belts? Well it might be time to start thinking about 'green' lab beakers, 'green' drafting tables and 'green' brief cases as well, because the careers needed to secure competitive clean energy industries will also run the gamut from cutting-edge researchers and high-tech engineers to innovative designers and fearless entrepreneurs, according to Dr. Henry Kelly, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.
So what is a green job? Well green jobs are architects and engineers that build buildings, design buildings that operate at extremely low energy use. They are people that design, manufacture, and install devices in buildings ranging from high-tech windows to lighting to sensors and controls and electronics. It means looking at radically new industrial processes which simply replace previous kinds of industrial manufacturing with sophisticated bionumetics and nanotech approaches, to cutting down the material intensity and energy intensity of production, this is the kind of thing you need to do to stay competitive in the modern world.
If you look at what the nation's transportation system is going to look like, Henry Ford looks like he's toast, it's going to be replaced with an entirely new generation of either extremely high efficiency fuel powered vehicles, electric vehicles, perhaps even hydrogen fuel cells - the people that make and maintain these are going to be operating in a different world that's an enormously sophisticated operation.
If you're looking at where power comes from, of course you have the entire range of science and engineering involved, you mentioned we're relying on geologists to tell us how to get geothermal energy, getting very sophisticate semiconductor manufacturers involved in the production of solar cells and CSP, if you look at biologically based fuels and materials, some of the most sophisticated biological processing techniques.
So this is an enormous range of skills, but apart from the technical skills you also need people who really understand the economics of finance... behavioral economics, people who understand policy, all of these qualify as green jobs and it touches I think almost every academic discipline.
The good news is that if we do this right we're generating a lot of new interesting jobs, not just for sophisticated designers but for people who are manufacturing and operating these.
The Center for American Progress came out with a new report last week entitled "Out of the Running? How Germany, Spain, and China Are Seizing the Energy Opportunity and Why the United States Risks Getting Left Behind." Sound familiar? Renewable Energy World thought so and they had this to say about the report:
This is not exactly news. Rising Tigers Sleeping Giant, a Breakthrough Institute 2009 report, showed that U.S. New Energy R&D spending is embarrassing in comparison to that of important Asian economies. (See ASIA, THE U.S. AND THE NEW ENERGY RACE) Investing in Climate Change 2010, a Deutsche Bank 2010 study, showed that investments in the New Energy economy pay better than the economy as a whole but require favorable policies and incentives to put them on a level playing field against the entrenched Old Energies.
Speaking to a packed auditorium at Stanford University, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu called for a Manhattan Project for energy, emphasizing the need for "tens of billions of dollars" annually in public funding for energy technology innovation, but he missed a golden opportunity to inspire and rally our nation's future leaders to tackle the political, economic, and technological hurdles standing in the way of a clean, prosperous U.S. energy economy.
Video: View the Secretary Chu's speech at Stanford in its entirety here and view the "Educating the Energy Generation" panel at Stanford here.
The federal government should be investing "tens of billions of dollars" annually to drive a Manhattan Project-style pace of innovation necessary to address the scale of the energy challenge facing the U.S., said Energy Secretary Steven Chu yesterday.
"If you look at the amount of funding for that [the Manhattan Project], and the amount of funding to put a man on the moon, it was a huge spike in funding. I think we do need that. The recovery act actually was the start of that...you still need I think tens of billions of dollars as a minimum per year invested in these technologies and the associated science. The DOE, our base budget for energy research is on a scale of $3 billion...the primary energy industry budget is about $1 trillion, if it's a high tech industry 10-20% is the usable amount of sale that you invest so that's $200 billion, so what we're investing in federal dollar is less than 1% of that or on a scale of 1% of what should be invested."
The Secretary highlighted the steps the Department of Energy was taking to encourage innovation given the limited funds available, including including the launch of the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy and several Energy Innovation Hubs (nicknamed Bell-lablets) based on the storied Bell Labs innovation model.
Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal on the problem facing many governments today, of how to spark and continue along the path towards a clean energy economy. The reality, Shellenberger says, is that you'll never induce the birth of a new energy economy by taxing the old into obsolescence:
Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal on the problem facing many governments today, of how to spark and continue along the path towards a clean energy economy. The reality, Shellenberger says, is that you'll never induce the birth of a new energy economy by taxing the old into obsolescence:
"I think the reality is that we are not going to get beyond a fossil-fuel economy, and I don't think we are going to impose big costs on the fossil-fuel economy either in the U.S. or in foreign developing countries like China, until the alternatives become a lot cheaper. I think while it is conceivable to have a carbon tax in the U.S., it will never be high enough to make fossil fuels as expensive as clean energy technologies are today."
Nordhaus in the Albuquerque Journal
John Fleck, of the Albuquerque Journal, profiled Breakthrough Institute Chairmen Ted Nordhaus in a column entitled, "A Third View on Climate Change." He describes Nordhaus as "the liberal environmentalist that some liberal environmentalists love to hate," alluding to the criticism Nordhaus, along with Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger, leveled on the efficacy of the environmental movement first in their landmark essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," and then in their book, "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility."
Fleck writes:
But he [Nordhaus] thinks the core strategy offered by conventional environmentalism -- emissions caps, putting a higher price on carbon-based energy like coal and gasoline to raise the cost of its use and spur a switch to alternatives -- is a failed approach and a distraction from the actions needed to deal with the problem.
The notion that governments will voluntarily jack up energy prices today to benefit future generations seems like a nonstarter to Nordhaus. The fact that the public, faced with government imposition of rising energy costs, will suddenly find reasons to question the underlying science of climate change is exactly what the 44-year-old pollster and political activist says we should expect...
Discourse over climate change and energy in this country has devolved into a ritualized political argument unmoored from the underlying issues, Nordhaus argues.
Greens, he said, think they are battling anti-science Neanderthals and fossil fuel-funded climate change skeptics. Skeptics, he said, think they are fighting a hoax being perpetrated in the name of black helicopter-driven government control.
It is identity politics. "They're really fighting over their identities," he said. "They're not fighting about actually doing anything."
The pair, as Fleck notes, have sought to override that debate by advocating a solution to climate change that has proven to be publicly popular:
Chief among their ideas is that the best way to deal with climate change is government investment in clean energy technology. While polls show waning public support in the United States for action on climate change, Nordhaus noted that clean energy remains tremendously popular.
The key, he said, is to make clean energy economically viable, so there is no need to negotiate the political minefield associated with using taxes or caps to raise the cost of dirty energy. "We're not really going to tackle any of these issues until this stuff is cheaper than coal," Nordhaus said."
Learn More
Shellenberger and Nordhaus have made this case in a number of publications. "The End of Magical Climate Thinking", which originally appeared in the journal Foreign Policy, explores the demise of the (perhaps slightly misappropriated) hope that many progressives vested in the figure of Barack Obama's coming to the White House, the belief that the transition to a new carbon economy, and thereby a new era, was already underway and its arrival was all but guaranteed to be swift and painless.
Also check out the formative white-paper: "Fast, Clean & Cheap: Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot, first published in Harvard Law & Policy Review (Jan 2008), which explores the idea that societies will never rid themselves of incumbent energy sources so long as the alternatives are less reliable and more expensive.
The clean tech sector has been booming in recent years, but can that rate of rapid growth sustain itself? In their most recent critical analysis, given as a keynote speech at the Cleantech Group's Feb 2010 Conference in San Francisco, Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that it cannot. "Storm Clouds on the Clean Tech Horizon?" continues to press the point that subsidies will not solve the crisis alone. For clean tech to really take off and gain a majority of the market share, radical innovation is the key.
The introduction of "Buy American" legislation in the Senate in response to reports that more than three quarters of funds from a clean energy stimulus program went to foreign companies might be good politics. Unfortunately it will do nothing to solve the root of the problem, which is that for 30 years Congress has done little to support the development of domestic clean energy industries.
The introduction of "Buy American" legislation in the Senate in response to a report that more than three quarters of funds from a clean energy stimulus program went to foreign companies is understandable and probably good politics. Unfortunately it will do nothing to solve the root of the problem, which is that for 30 years Congress has done little to support the development of domestic clean energy industries. Given the decades-long absence of a national clean energy strategy in the United States, the fact that foreign companies are benefiting most from the stimulus grant program should come as no surprise.
The U.S. has always lacked a proactive, consistent clean energy technology strategy that provided support for clean tech companies through each stage of the technology value chain, from R&D and innovation, to manufacturing and commercial deployment at scale.
Instead, U.S. clean energy policy has historically been characterized by a disjointed collection of loosely associated, often inconsistent incentives. One example is the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), a demand incentive that has routinely been at perpetual risk of expiration, and actually lapsed on three separate occasions over the last decade. With the real possibility that the policy-driven demand for wind turbines would dry up in any given year, companies were understandably wary of investing in large manufacturing facilities in the United States.
While the United States was once a pioneer in developing and commercializing clean energy technologies, from solar cells to nuclear power, we now lag behind our competitors in Asia and Europe in the production of virtually all clean technologies.
This week, U.S. clean tech news is almost as dramatic as the buzz surrounding the 2010 Academy Awards. And while the outcome of intensifying competition has more serious implications in the clean tech sector, like any motion picture worthy of a nomination, there's a very distinct underlying theme to the clean tech drama unfolding: the U.S. needs a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness.
As Joan Fitzgerald suggested in a lengthy American Prospect piece in December, "America's failure to have a coherent, national industrial policy," has dire consequences for long-term economic competitiveness.
That's part of the reason the Department of Energy (DOE) held its inaugural ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Washington D.C. earlier this week, which amassed about 1,700 scientists, engineers, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs to discuss the details of a national competitiveness strategy.
This post collects the articles surrounding Bill Gates recent push for an innovation focused R&D agenda that aims to bring down the carbon intensity of energy production to zero CO2 within the next fifty years:
Gates: Efficiency Won't Cut It:Innovation, says Bill Gates, "not insulation," is the way for the United States to transform its energy sector and achieve its "80% by 2050" goal.
Bingaman and Gates Back Chu on Energy R&D:Energy Secretary Steven Chu is ready to stand up for R&D - and he's not alone - Sen. Jeff Bingaman and famous billionaire, Bill Gates, are joining Chu in his fight to make investment in clean energy R&D a policy priority.
Innovating to Zero: Gates Wants Clean, Cheap Energy Fast:Despite the philanthropic focus of his foundation, Bill Gates confided to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week that if he could have one wish granted he wouldn't ask for "vaccines or seeds," he'd ask for clean, cheap energy, and fast.
To Make Poverty History, Make Clean Energy Cheap:Bill Gates understands the challenge of poverty alleviation, which is why he's identified the most critical global imperative to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.
Clean tech has been booming, with 25, 30, even 40 percent growth in recent years. Can it last? It cannot. A new Breakthrough analysis and PowerPoint presentation shows storm clouds on the horizon. More subsidies for solar and wind won't do the trick. Radical innovation is the key. The goal? Radical cost reductions so clean energy is as cheap -- or cheaper than -- coal.
The double digit growth of clean tech industries like solar and wind can't last, and climate legislation in Congress won't continue the momentum, according to a new Breakthrough Institute analysis made for a keynote speech at the Cleantech Group's February 2010 conference in San Francisco.
The rapid growth of renewable energy over the last few years will be difficult to maintain politically as solar and wind achieve a larger share of the energy market. If the U.S. were to maintain its production tax credit (PTC) subsidy for wind power to become 20 percent of America's energy generation, the cost would be $20 billion per year. Moreover, existing transmission is rapidly meeting capacity, which will push wind and solar into sites with higher load management, storage, and transmission costs.
Climate legislation currently being considered in Congress would do little to help the clean tech industry. Cap and trade legislation that passed the House would provide a .8 - 1.5 cent/kwh subsidy to renewables in contrast to the current 2.1 cent/kwh subsidy from the PTC, the 2 - 4 cents/kwh subsidy the Chinese government provides to wind, the 36 - 51 cents/kwh the Germans provide to solar, and the 11 - 17 cents/kwh the Chinese provide to solar.
Joe Romm debates skeptics and Fox News hosts. Why won't he debate Roger Pielke, Jr., a non-skeptic, liberal, and prominent climate disaster loss researcher?
The last few months have been rough for Joe Romm. Forced to spin Copenhagen as a success, climategate as a skeptics' conspiracy, and cap and trade legislation as world-changing, Romm has started making increasingly wild accusations against working journalists and academics.
A telling moment came last week after Revkin wrote on the Times blog Dot Earth, that one test of the IPCC's credibility is whether it will choose Pielke to co-author the next IPCC report on climate change and natural disasters. Revkin noted that Pielke has one of the longest, if not the longest, list of peer-reviewed publications on the matter.
A race is on to lead in the burgeoning clean energy sector. While the United States might be behind for now, we are far from the finish line.
America once led the global solar business, but manufacturing scale is shifting to Asia. Strong, targeted government incentives supported markets for solar technology in Japan, a country almost completely dependent upon imported energy.
At the same time, public investment in research and innovation helped build the technical prowess needed to establish solid manufacturing capabilities. The Chinese government, along with numerous entrepreneurs, is developing manufacturing and technical capabilities for solar and other clean energy technologies that will combine economies of scale with a growing market, which many project could be the largest in the world in five years.
This piece was written by Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus of the Breakthrough Institute and Charlie Gay of Applied Materials, and originally published in the Austin Statesman. Applied Materials is the world's leading manufacturer of the equipment used to produce solar panels.
Charlie Gay, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus, Special Contributors
A race is on to lead in the burgeoning clean energy sector. While the United States might be behind for now, we are far from the finish line.
America once led the global solar business, but manufacturing scale is shifting to Asia. Strong, targeted government incentives supported markets for solar technology in Japan, a country almost completely dependent upon imported energy.
At the same time, public investment in research and innovation helped build the technical prowess needed to establish solid manufacturing capabilities. The Chinese government, along with numerous entrepreneurs, is developing manufacturing and technical capabilities for solar and other clean energy technologies that will combine economies of scale with a growing market, which many project could be the largest in the world in five years.
Asia's current momentum is not exclusive to solar power. A Breakthrough Institute report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," found that America lags behind Asia's rising "clean tech tigers" -- China, South Korea and Japan -- in producing virtually all clean energy technologies, from wind to nuclear power, from high-speed rails to plug-in hybrid cars and the advanced batteries that power them.
The governments of these three nations are expected to invest more than $500 billion over the next five years to extend their lead in clean technology products and applications. That's enough to out-invest the U.S. by a 3-to-1 margin unless this country establishes a national clean energy competitiveness strategy. Devising a strategy and fulfilling the vision is feasible, and there is historical precedent to prove it.
When the U.S. faced global competitors willing to invest enormous sums to dominate defense and information technologies during the Cold War, the nation's response was bold and proactive.
Our government introduced procurement programs, policies and incentives that provided strong demand for emerging information technology, semiconductor and computing technologies, while U.S. investments in research and education provided the human capital needed to block the threat. These investments sparked the IT revolution and helped create economic clusters such as Silicon Valley that have given the U.S. an enduring competitive edge.
Today, government investment is determining the location of the new "Silicon Valleys" of clean technology -- in China. One Chinese city, Baoding, is home to more than 200 renewable energy companies. Dubbed "Electricity Valley," the city is a national clean energy hub, linking manufacturing to research institutions and public policy.
In contrast to the investments made by the U.S. government during the Cold War era, the U.S. response to today's clean energy race has not been mobilized, threatening the promise of a new wave of American prosperity fueled by emerging clean energy industries and jobs.
On Jan. 8, President Barack Obama announced $2.3 billion of funding from the economic stimulus for the "domestic manufacturing of advanced clean energy technologies," according to an administration official. While these steps toward a clean energy economy are potentially consequential, energy and climate legislation working its way through Congress is more focused on limiting pollution than continuing the investments needed to secure our nation's competitiveness.
We need an integrated strategy, combining the insights and vision of industry, government, academia, utilities and consumers. This approach will facilitate the investment climate required to ensure stability and long-term demand for renewable energy.
There's room for another "Silicon Valley" of clean technology outside of China. The U.S. can close the investment gap with Asia and provide direct support for its clean tech research and innovation, manufacturing capacity and domestic markets if we pursue a long-term national clean energy competitiveness strategy. Robust and targeted public investments such as the ones committed recently by Obama can pave the way to a new era of U.S. technology leadership and economic prosperity -- but only if we act now.
Gay is president of Applied Solar at Applied Materials. Shellenberger is president and Nordhaus is chairman of the Breakthrough Institute.
