By Teryn Norris
Cross-posted from Americans for Energy Leadership

Today, the House of Representatives passed the flagship U.S. competitiveness and innovation legislation, the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 (full text and summary), by a vote of 262 to 150. The House Science & Technology (S&T) Committee press release is here and a full breakdown of the vote is here, including 245 Democrats and 17 Republicans in favor, 0 Democrats and 150 Republicans opposed.

The passage comes after the proposal was blocked twice within the past two weeks on the House floor, triggering significant alarm among the science and technology community. The first incident on May 13th involved a "Motion to Recommit" attached to an anti-pornography amendment, introduced by S&T Committee Ranking Member Ralph Hall (R-TX), which forced many members to vote to send the bill back to committee. The second incident on May 19th occurred when the bill failed to reach the two-thirds majority required under procedures that were used, despite the inclusion of the anti-pornography amendment and a cut in the authorization level by nearly 50 percent.

Continue reading "House Passes Competitiveness Bill After Near-Collapse" »

In lieu of Friday Factoids:

Christian Groups: Biblical Armageddon Must Be Taught Alongside Global Warming

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relation was hard pressed to find a trend amongst 36 studies projecting the share of renewable energy in 2010. "[T]hat's because there pretty much isn't one." See for yourself in the graph below.

Continue reading "The Futility of Forecasting" »

A new report by the World Wildlife Fund outlines the enormous potential economic gains associated with clean energy export market share. The report, however, misses a critical opportunity to advance the most effective solution to declining U.S. clean energy competitiveness -- major public investment in clean technology innovation and deployment to make clean energy cheap.

Three-quarters of additional energy demand between now and 2050 is expected to occur in developing countries, according to the new report, suggesting that any national strategy to capitalize on the economic benefits of the growing clean energy industry must also focus on boosting clean energy exports.

"If US businesses capture 14% market share (which reflects current US exports in environmental goods and services in developing countries) in just a subset of this new clean technology market, it would result in up to 850,000 new American jobs"

But the policies that WWF recommends--putting a rising price on carbon and subsidizing clean energy in the developing world--will fail on their own to deliver on the promise of securing U.S. market share both domestically and abroad.

Continue reading "To Boost Clean Tech Exports, U.S. Must Make Clean Energy Cheap" »

To read Part 1 click here.

GE Food for Thought On climate, Greens point to the science, but on GE crops, many find science unconvincing.

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Siddhartha Shome

The Scientific Basis of Environmentalism

Modern American environmentalism was born in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carson was a scientist and much of the book is a scientific argument about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides.

The book is replete with scientific data, quotes from scientists, and scientific reasoning. In fact, the entire concluding chapter is an impassioned plea to adopt new biology based breakthrough technologies to replace chemical pesticides.

According to Carson,

A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is available. Some are already in use and have achieved brilliant success. Others are in the stage of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative scientists, waiting for the opportunity to put them to the test. All have this in common: they are biological solutions, based on understanding of the living organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast field of biology are contributing - entomologists, pathologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists, ecologists - all pouring their knowledge and their creative inspirations into the formation of a new science of biotic controls.

Carson characterized chemical pesticides of the time as "Neanderthal" technologies, belonging to the "stone age of science". Clearly, the implication was not that we should replace chemical pesticides with even more ancient Jurassic-era technologies, but rather that we supplant them with advanced biology-based breakthrough technologies that are more environmentally friendly.

Continue reading "Green VS. Green, Part 2" »

To read Part 2 click here.

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Siddhartha Shome

Denmark Dispute Greens tout Denmark as a renewable mecca, but Sweden -- powered largely by hydro and nuclear -- has a far less carbon intense energy mix.

Here's a pop quiz. A, B, C, and D are four rich industrialized countries in Western Europe with similar living standards. Country A's carbon dioxide emissions stand at 9.24 tonnes per capita per year. The corresponding figures for countries B, C, and D are 5.81, 5.62, and 5.05 tonnes a year, respectively.

Can you guess which of these four countries has become the darling of the environmental movement, hailed as a model for a low carbon economy?

It is country A, Denmark -- even though its per capita CO2 emissions are almost twice as much as countries B (France), C (Switzerland), and D (Sweden).

Continue reading "Green VS. Green, Part 1" »

By Teryn Norris
May 26, 2010
Published by The Huffington Post

Last week, the flagship federal legislation for U.S. competitiveness containing broad support for science, technology, and advanced education - called the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010 - collapsed in Congress after it was blocked from passage through the House, despite already being significantly weakened.

Enter the age of American polarization, where bread-and-butter competitiveness and innovation policy is subject to hyper-partisan politics and obstructionism, even in the face of rapidly rising global competition. America COMPETES, which was originally passed with strong bipartisan support under President Bush, may be yet one more casualty of today's extreme political polarization, which according to one major study is at the highest level in over a century.

But beyond the issue of partisanship, this is an alarming wake-up call to how anti-government sentiment and neoliberal economic ideology - which seeks to discredit the role of federal investment in promoting technology innovation and growth - could combine forces and seriously damage our national innovation system in the years ahead.

The United States was a driving force behind the global expansion of prosperity and security in the 20^th century, due in large part to our technological leadership. The collapse of America COMPETES is one of the clearest and most alarming examples in recent history of how this leadership is being threatened - not by some foreign entity, but from within our own country. How did we get to this point, and what lessons might this incident hold?

Continue reading "The Collapse of Competitiveness Policy?" »

Despite the Deepwater Horizon calamity, if the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill gets passed then concessions on offshore drilling are likely to be part of the deal. But Brookings' Mark Muro points out that this outcome could provide a "teachable moment and tie further fossil fuel use once and for all to energy system transformation," citing a post by Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins and I, in which we argued that a 2009 GOP plan to dedicate the new oil and gas royalties to a clean energy fund would be an appropriate compromise if drilling is inevitable.

Continue reading "An Onshore Compromise over Offshore Drilling" »

Testifying before the Senate Finance Subcommittee on Energy, Natural Resources and Infrastructure, ITIF President and "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" co-author Rob Atkinson spoke in support of incentives for US clean energy manufacturing as part of a comprehensive strategy for clean energy competitiveness. Building on Breakthrough's work with him on "Rising Tigers," Atkinson warned that a carbon price, and other demand side policies, are not enough to spur the kind of innovation necessary to ensure clean energy competitiveness.

Below are some highlights from his testimony. You can read the full testimony here.

Continue reading "Atkinson: Investment in Innovation and Manufacturing Critical to US Clean Energy Competitiveness" »

Originally published at LeadEnergy.org

Today, the U.S. House of Representatives failed in its second attempt to pass the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act, a flagship bill for U.S. competitiveness containing broad support for science and technology innovation, including funding authorization for energy innovation and education programs.

The bill, which was re-introduced on the floor again today after getting derailed last week, was blocked by a minority of House Republican members despite the uncontroversial and bipartisan nature of the legislation. It was brought forward for a vote under the House's suspension process, which forbids further amendments but requires a two-thirds majority, which the bill failed to meet on a vote of 261-148 (290 votes required, full breakdown available here).

Continue reading "House Fails to Pass America COMPETES Bill" »

By Leigh Ewbank. Published by On Line Opinion, and cross-posted at The Real Ewbank

It's no understatement that last week's Federal budget was bad for climate change. The Rudd Government, fresh from its emissions trading backdown, once again failed to live up to its rhetoric. It failed to act on "the greatest scientific, moral and economic challenge of our time". And it failed to deliver the scale of investment needed to drive our transition to a clean energy economy.

There was a belief that the 2010 budget would include some big investments to combat the climate crisis. Rudd's decision to delay the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) to 2013 coincided with a sharp decline in public support for the government. The Prime Minister's own approval rating has collapsed in recent weeks, falling 14 points to 45 per cent - the lowest level since taking office in 2007. The budget was regarded as a way for Rudd to regain his edge on climate policy. He would have the opportunity to restore the confidence of voters suspicious of his government's commitment to climate change.

As we now know, the government's investment in renewable energy was markedly less than the year earlier. But should this come as a surprise? No. It shouldn't.

Continue reading "Labor Must Start Nation Building" »

Update: A commenter brought it to our attention that there have, in fact, been at least 11 fatalities from wind power accidents in the U.S. Thanks to Karen Street, at The Energy Collective, for the hat tip. According to the Caithness Windfarms Information Forum, as of March 2010 there have been 47 fatalities directly as a result of wind power worldwide.

Here are some Friday Factoids to stew on over the weekend. As usual, we'll let the numbers speak for themselves.

US fatalities from:

• Fatalities from Deepwater Horizon offshore rig explosion: 11
• Total fatalities in gulf oil and gas drilling since 2001: 69 (according to MMS, cited here)
• Fatalities from Texas City BP oil refinery explosion in 2005: 15
• Fatalities from explosion of natural gas power plant under construction in Middletown, Connecticut in February 2010: 5
• Total fatalities from Big Branch coal mine explosion: 29
• Annual average coal mining fatalities between 2001-2005: 30
• Total fatalities from wind power accidents in US history: 1 (in Sherman County, Oregon in 2007)
• Total fatalities from nuclear power plant operation or accidents in U.S. history: 0

Global climate policy should be radically overhauled in the wake of the failure of the United Nations process, an international group of 14 climate policy experts and scientists argue in a new paper. The Kyoto-Copenhagen focus on national emissions targets and timetables was bound to fail because it proposed a single over-arching framework to deal with a "wickedly' complex problem. Instead what's needed is a focus on expanding access to energy for the poor, quickly reducing non-CO2 climate forcings, and adaptation to changing climate.

The paper brings together a set of ideas that have been developing over the last decade. The meeting was convened by Gwyn Prins of London School of Ecomomics and Steve Rayner of Oxford University, who wrote "The Wrong Trousers," a 2007 critique of Kyoto. The group included, among others, East Anglia University climate scientist Mike Hulme, author of "Why We Disagree About Climate Change," Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, the economist Chris Green, co-author of a 2002 Science article calling for advanced energy research to stabilize climate emissions, and University of Colorado's Roger Pielke and Arizona State's Dan Sarewitz, authors of a 2000 Atlantic magazine story arguing climate policy to shift focus to technology innovation and adaptation. Green, Pielke, and Sarewitz are all Breakthrough Senior Fellows.

Continue reading "Hartwell Paper: A New Approach on Global Climate Policy" »

Fed up with the Australian government's failure to enact strong clean energy policy, a broad coalition of Australian academics, environmental organizations, and clean energy advocates have written an open letter calling on Australia Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to include major federal investments in clean energy technology in the new federal budget.

The letter, organized by Beyond Zero Emissions, comes as a response to the failure of the much-compromised Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, which was pilloried as a giveaway to fossil fuel industries and ineffective for driving clean energy deployment. Instead, the letter calls for a new approach to climate and energy policy in Australia.

"The time has come for the Rudd government to take an ambitious nation-building approach to climate policy. Labor should commit to a renewable energy project with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century," says Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director Matthew Wright, referring to the massive hydroelectric system that was the largest engineering project ever to take place in Australia.

Wright says that the federal government should be spending at least as much on clean energy as it is in it's new national broadband plan, which is expected to invest $42 billion over the next 8 years.

Former Breakthrough Generation Fellow Leigh Ewbank has helped spearhead this initiative over the last year. Last month, he wrote an op-ed calling for such a project in Australia's national broadcaster, ABC, and has also helped organize the effort as Director of Public Policy for Beyond Zero Emissions.

With climate policy in disarray here in the United States as well, leading environmental organizations and progressives would do well to look to our friends in Australia for a new model to move away from compromised and politically unsustainable emissions trading and toward major public investments in clean energy innovation and infrastructure to create a prosperous clean energy economy.

Here is the full press release of the letter:

Frustrated by Rudd's ETS Backflip, Thousands Call for Massive Federal Budget Investment in Renewable Energy.

MELBOURNE - Frustrated by the Rudd Government's inaction on climate change, a broad coalition of prominent Australians and organisations representing hundreds of thousands of people have signed an open letter calling for the government to massively increase renewable energy investment in tomorrow's federal budget.

Notable signatories include:

• Progressive online campaign organisation Get Up!, boasting over 350,000 supporters
• Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics
• Leading climate scientist Professor David Karoly
• Guy Pearse, Research Fellow at the Global Change Institute and author of High and Dry
• Major national environmental organisations Friends of the Earth, Environment Victoria and Greenpeace Australia
• The Australian Youth Climate Coalition, with a membership of over 50,000
• Renewable energy advocate the Alternative Technology Association
• Renewable energy industry group the Australian Solar Energy Society
• The independent think tank The Australian Institute
• The Electrical Trades Union Victoria
• Over 30 community-based climate groups from around Australia.

"The time has come for the Rudd government to take an ambitious nation-building approach to climate policy. Labor should commit to a renewable energy project with the scale and vision of a Snowy Mountains Scheme for the 21st Century," says Beyond Zero Emissions Executive Director Matthew Wright.

"There is a critical need for public investment in large-scale renewable energy projects and climate-friendly infrastructure. These projects are the best way to reduce Australia's emissions and protect the nation from dangerous climate change," says Matthew Wright.

"Most Australians would be shocked that the Rudd government is investing up to 28 times more money in the broadband rollout than in renewable energy and climate-friendly infrastructure. With a funding differential like this, it's reasonable to presume that our Prime Minister considers slow internet a greater moral challenge than climate change."

Wright says, "Public investment in sustainable infrastructure should match the investment in the National Broadband Network at a bare minimum."

See also:

The latest from the Brookings Institution's Mark Muro is a perfectly succinct summary of how one should judge the coming Kerry-(Graham?)-Lieberman Senate climate and energy bill, reportedly scheduled for release this Wednesday:

What is clear, though, is this: To get to a good bill senators need to deal properly with the revenue--whether from offshore oil drilling or pollution allowance auctions or whatever else is in the bill. And to do that they need to make sure a huge chunk of it gets applied to clean-energy research and development. Get that right and much else needn't be perfect. Blow that, and the bill is likely not worth it.

... The bottom line is this: Putting a price on carbon, or regulating emissions, ... while absolutely necessary, will not be sufficient to address the nation's climate problem and will, importantly, not put the U.S. in the position to seize the extraordinary opportunities that will come with rebuilding to global energy economy. Also necessary, as we keep saying, will be a major drive to promote large-scale technology breakthroughs. No matter how you measure it, U.S. government investment in clean energy R&D remains grossly inadequate. Right now clean energy R&D accounts for only around $3 billion a year. But if we're going to see real progress in de-carbonizing the present economy and creating the next one this number should be closer to $15 billion and probably as much as $25 billion per year.

So that's the target: $15 to $25 billion a year is "the number"--the critical investment threshold for federal clean energy investment that must become a core benchmark for evaluating any and all federal climate, energy, or indeed appropriations deal making.

Mark notes the rumors and reports of the still-not-yet-public drafts of the K-G-L bill do not bode well for the bill's ability to clear this critical clean energy innovation threshold...

Continue reading "Clearing the Clean Energy Innovation Threshold" »

Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins joined Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and moderator Marc Gunther of Fortune Magazine and Greenbiz.com to discuss the fate of climate and energy legislation in the U.S. Senate in a webinar, hosted by theEnergyCollective.com.

Jenkins and Alexander discussed the embattled Kerry-(Graham?)-Lieberman climate bill and potential alternatives to modernize our energy system, secure dependence from oil, and reduce U.S. emissions. Listen to the archived webinar here.

Bonding in Asylum Lindsay (left) and Breakthrough Generation Fellows Genevieve Bennett and Zach Arnold on the banks of the Mad River.

A fellow during the 2008 inaugural summer of Breakthrough Generation, Lindsay Meisel continues to use the knowledge of climate and energy issues as well as framing and messaging that she gained during her time here to inform her work as a copywriter at Underground Ads. Aside from being a tireless runner, Lindsay is an avid writer and maintains a blog called, "Different Kind of Human."

What have you been doing since the Breakthrough Generation Fellowship?

After the Breakthrough Generation fellowship was over, I immediately started working as a copywriter at an ad agency called Underground Ads that works exclusively with non profits and government agencies.

How has Breakthrough informed the work you are doing now?

Everyone I work with knows the background I have from Breakthrough and every time we get some sort of global warming or environmental project, they always put me on it. I've had many opportunities to share the Breakthrough perspective on these projects and inform the communication strategy we ultimately take.

With some of our environmental-focused clients, I've been able to push them a little bit to avoid those obvious, overused, antiquated ways of talking about the environment, climate, and energy, and instead find novel ways to communicate about these issues. Sometimes it's a successful, gratifying experience and I'm really thankful for everything I learned at Breakthough. Other times it can be really frustrating.

Continue reading "Fellow of the Month: Lindsay Meisel" »

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Reuters reports that China's energy intensity -- that is, energy consumption per unit of GDP -- has increased during 2010:

China's energy use in generating each dollar of gross domestic product rose 3.2 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, state media cited a cabinet statement as saying on Thursday.

The increase, which reversed steady declines in the previous years, poses severe challenges for China to meet its goal of reducing energy intensity by 20 percent from 2005 to 2010, Premier Wen Jiabao said, according to the People's Daily.

From 2005 to 2009, China has brought its energy intensity -- the amount of fuel needed for generate each dollar of national income -- down by 14.38 percent.

"This greatly increased the difficulty of our work for the last three quarters of this year," Wen was cited as telling a cabinet work meeting on Wednesday.

This means, almost certainly, that China's economy has become more carbon intensive in 2010. This should not come as a surprise, despite the praise for some quarters given to China for its green energy policies.

Continue reading "China's Energy Intensity Increases" »

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

[UPDATE: FT Energy Source is similarly over the top in their interpretation of the EIA report, writing: "The death of US coal, it seems, is marching on." With more than 45% share of US electricity generation, the death of US coal is hardly "marching on."]

Joe Romm is all excited that US energy-related emissions dropped by about 7% in 2009. However, the drop represents little more than a small, marginal change from historical trends in the relationship of emissions and the economy, as shown by the graph above.

Using data from the EIA and the BEA, the graph above [see graph after the jump] shows that the rate of decarbonization (the change in carbon dioxide emissions to GDP) of the US economy indeed did increase to above 4.5% in 2009, but that is only slightly above rates observed in a number of years in recent decades. To achieve aggressive emissions reductions targets for 2020 and 2050 as proposed in various US policy proposals would require annual rates of decarbonization of 5% or more, sustained over decades.

Continue reading "US Emissions Reductions: Business as Usual" »

Update: In the New York Times, Keith Bradsher writes that as China's economy balloons it may struggle to meet the energy efficiency goals it set in December prior to the Copenhagen summit, due to rapidly rising energy demand and increasing energy intensity:

A failure by China to meet its own energy efficiency targets would be a big setback for international efforts to limit such emissions...

The issue has major economic implications for China and for global energy markets. The nation's ravenous appetite for fossil fuels is driven by China's shifting economic base -- away from light export industries like garment and shoe production and toward energy-intensive heavy industries like steel and cement manufacturing for cars and construction for the domestic market.

Also read: The Contrivance in Copenhagen (Pt 1), (Pt 2)

Newly released audio tapes of world leaders negotiating at Copenhagen climate talks last December reveal how global warming politics has become a forum for sinophobia and the decline of European influence on a global stage. Der Spiegel has run a three part series (translated into English) and created a video special which reveals Germany's Angela Merkel, Britain's Gordon Brown, and France's Nicolas Sarkozy badgering the Chinese government to agree to 20 percent emissions reductions by 2020. Obama tells the Chinese government representative that the developed world's funding of developing world actions on climate change depend on the emissions reduction commitment.

Continue reading "Sinophobia and the Collapse of Copenhagen Climate Talks" »

Cross-posted from NearWalden

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas

We have compelling reasons to drive for clean, cheap energy, but we lack the technology to get there today. Threats of climate change, national competitiveness and energy security (OK, "clean, cheap, domestic energy") all contribute to the urgency of this innovation challenge. Given the scale of the challenge, coupled with the dire consequences of not succeeding, it is only natural that we'd look for reassurance and guidance from historical success stories of large-scale innovation.

Most frequently mentioned are the Apollo Project ("land a man on the moon by the end of the decade"), and the Manhattan Project ("develop nuclear weapons before our enemies"). They are attractive because they had urgent time tables, required outside-the-box innovation, and most importantly, as measured by their stated goals, were wildly successful. They provide some confidence that we (or maybe even just the President) need only to make the decision, and it will happen!

Continue reading "In Search of Energy Innovation Role Models" »

Al Gore has called on the U.S. to "commit to producing 100% of electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon free sources within ten years." But the ten-year hard-fought battle to secure approval for Cape Wind shows that we cannot come close to meeting even a fraction of his goal if we do not appreciate the scale of energy challenge and the incredible pace of clean energy innovation and deployment required to truly reduce carbon emissions and mitigate climate change.

First, let's put Cape Wind in perspective. A $1 billion dollar project, America's first offshore wind farm will consist of 130 turbines that can produce roughly 1.6 billion kWh of electricity annually, enough to power three-quarters of the homes on Nantucket and surrounding islands. But on a national scale, this iconic project will only meet about 0.04% of the total (forecasted) U.S electricity demand in 2010, expected to be about 3,784 billion kWh.

Continue reading "Cape Wind: Never Again" »