Meet the $35 dollar laptop, the result of the Indian government's direct investment in information technology research. If manufactured successfully, the laptop will both revolutionize education in the developing world and serve as a testament to the power of government investment to trigger rapid technological progress.
Last week, the Indian government showcased a prototype of a low-cost laptop that could trigger an education revolution in India and elsewhere in the developing world. If successful, the newly announced computer will serve as a prime example of how direct government investments can reduce the price of technology quickly and effectively.
Funded by the Ministry of Human Resources Development and designed by students from India's top universities, the laptop is slated to enter the market in 2011.
Last week I suggested that Julia Gillard, Australia's Prime Minister, was asking for trouble by promising that carbon pricing would transform society:
When will politicians learn that climate policies are a political loser if they require that people "transform the way we live and the way we work"? The vast majority of people simply do not want their lives transformed. Promising that government will transform your life is one way to ensure a rough political road for any policy -- climate change, health care, economic, whatever.
Basically, cap-and-trade introduces uncertainty at an individual level (though it does the opposite for actual investors); in the current economic climate, that scares people into thinking that they will lose their jobs. . . Anything that the public is unfamiliar with adds to uncertainty - and that is precisely what people don't want. Second, green jobs may poll well across a wide spectrum of voters, but that doesn't mean that selling regulation or taxation with a jobs message will work.
To succeed, policies focused on decarbonizing the global economy must not be seen as adding to personal insecurities, better yet, they should add to personal security. This should be a major lesson taken from the failure of US climate legislation.
With obituaries still being written about the officially dead Senate climate bill and endless theories being offered as to where to lay blame, what is most important now is to reflect on the real culprit behind the death of cap and trade. What follows is a Q&A about that attempts to identify the real reason for cap and trade's demise.
With many obituaries still being written about the now-dead Senate climate bill and theories offered as to who is to blame, it's important to examine the most prevalent theories regarding the demise of cap and trade and see how well they stack up against the evidence.
Here is a Q&A wherein we find reason to be skeptical with several of the theories commonly cited in the last 48 hours and discuss the real culprit behind the death of cap and trade.
Myth: Cap and trade failed because of Republican opposition.
Fact: While it's undisputed that Republicans almost unanimously opposed cap and trade, Democrats, themselves, have never been united in their support of the policy. As Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey pointed out in their coverage yesterday, there is no conclusive evidence that Senate Democrats ever had enough votes to signify a high likelihood of passage:
There is little evidence that Senate Democrats had substantially more votes for cap and trade this year than they did in 2003 (when it failed with 43 votes), 2005 (failed again with 38 votes) or 2008, when Reid also pulled the bill before it could go down in embarrassing defeat and insiders put the final tally at only 35-40 votes in support of the bill.
Waxman-Markey passed the House by the slimmest of margins (219-212) with 44 Democrats in opposition, and Senate Democrats were even less willing to come together in unified support. Throughout the Congressional cap and trade debate, key Senate Democrats, including Evan Bayh, Jay Rockefeller, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, and the late Robert Byrd remained in consistent opposition while many more, such as Sherrod Brown, Byron Dorgan, Jeff Bingaman, Jon Tester, Max Baucus, Michael Bennett, Jim Webb, and Mark Warner, working to find a bill they could support but unable to fully embrace cap and trade due to concerns about impacts on their constituencies.
The endemic voting challenges also somewhat diminish the argument that the filibuster is really to blame. Although Democrats might have achieved majority support for some kind of climate bill if they hadn't needed a 60-vote super-majority, given that Democrats didn't have the certainty of even 50 votes and that whatever climate bill might have passed would still have been seriously compromised, the filibuster probably didn't prevent transformative climate and energy legislation from becoming law.
Breakthrough's Energy and Climate Director, Jesse Jenkins, appeared today on 88.9 KCRW Santa Monica and Public Radio International's nationally-syndicated show "To the Point" to discuss the recent withdrawal by Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) of a compromised Energy bill based on...
Breakthrough's Energy and Climate Director, Jesse Jenkins, appeared today on 88.9 KCRW Santa Monica and Public Radio International's nationally-syndicated show "To the Point" to discuss the recent withdrawal by Sen Harry Reid (D-NV) of a compromised Energy bill based on largely on a framework of Cap and Trade.
After more than $100 million in lobbying by green groups and allied industry players, and the bill's eventual watering down to a "utility-only" cap, Majority Leader Reid confessed that there was still no way he or the party would be able to muster the sixty votes necessary for the beleaguered legislation to pass.
This is the fourth time in seven years that this cap and trade strategy has been shot down. This time, with the Democrats just one seat shy of a super-majority and with the White House occupied by a president who came to office promising to make climate change a top priority, perhaps the latest episode in the serial failure of cap and trade indicates that it is time to bury the failed policy and develop an entirely new strategy -- one capable of overcoming the political obstacles that doomed cap and trade while successfully making clean energy cheap enough to sustainable power an energy-hungry planet.
The latest death of cap and trade demands a fundamentally new clean energy strategy designed to overcome political obstacles to carbon pricing and simultaneously achieve the primary objective upon which our climate future hinges: making clean energy cheap.
Reports put the time of death at 1 P.M. EST, July 22nd, 2010. That is when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid emerged from a meeting of the Democratic Caucus without enough support for even a severely weakened and scaled-back emissions cap on the utility sector.
With that, recognition has finallyset ineverywhere: the United States Senate is not going to enact any form of cap and trade. Not this year. And probably not any time in the foreseeable future.
Worse yet, clean energy progress this year has gone down with the long-sinking cap and trade ship.
According to a recent IEA report, the U.S. is not alone in facing the possibility of a clean technology R&D funding cliff. The report documents an uptick in global clean energy R&D investment in 2009 as a result of country-level stimulus packages, but the author of the report cautions that investment on this level must be built upon, not allowed to drop off.
According to the [IEA] report, "Global Gaps in Clean Energy RD&D," the recent burst of spending on research as part of various countries' efforts to stimulate their fragile economies has helped provide a substantial boost after decades of diminishing investment on the frontiers of energy inquiry. But the report's author, Thomas Kerr, warned that this was a transitory pulse when sustained growth was needed, particularly given signs that no global price on carbon dioxide emissions was likely any time soon. In essence, the report says, the $24 billion in such spending in 2009 needs to be the new floor for such investments, not a temporary peak.
The report describes how India, despite its poverty, has moved ahead with an initiative for raising money for energy research that the United States -- thanks to a lack of leadership, congressional polarization and fear of anything remotely resembling a tax -- has so far been unable to do: India has created a National Clean Energy Fund for research and innovation financed by a levy of $1.10 (U.S.) per metric ton of mined or imported coal. It's a very modest fee that has created hundreds of millions of dollars to stimulate Indian research and testing of promising technologies.
Click here for more on India's National Clean Energy Fund.
Not "everything should be on the table" for budget cuts to reduce the deficit, argues ITIF President Rob Atkinson in a recent essay. Despite what "neo-classical inspired budget hawks" may insist, Atkinson points out, all spending is not created equal and slashing budget line items for investments that spur innovation could actually serve to put the U.S. further in the red.
He writes:
What's behind this widespread unwillingness to prioritize investment? Budget hawks fear that sparing one item from the chopping block will only validate the demands of interest groups to exempt their pet programs. In addition, many adhere to a neo-classical economics perspective, which holds that government plays a negligible role in economic growth and should be neutral with regard to private sector activity... But government should be anything but neutral. Science and infrastructure funding is more valuable than farm subsidies. Government support for research in computer chips is more valuable than support for potato chips...
In contrast, an innovation economics approach to the budget distinguishes between spending on consumption and spending on investment. For innovation economics advocates, all spending (either on the tax or expenditure side) should be on the table, and all investment (on the tax and expenditure side) should be off the table...
We need to expand investments in education and training, science and research, technology (including, but not limited to clean energy) and physical infrastructure. In economic downturns, successful corporations don't cut key investments because they know that these investments are vital to gaining market share and competitive advantage in the moderate term. Governments should think the same way.
In the midst of a raging nation-wide debate on energy and climate policy, Alyona asked me what will it take for lawmakers to realize the U.S. is falling behind in the global clean energy industry and take the necessary action to regain our position. We discussed the clean energy race and implications for federal policy, the need for a "third way" energy and climate strategy based on public investment in technology innovation, and the DOE Clean Energy Ministerial as an alternative global forum for climate change mitigation.
In a recent Guardian op-ed, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Ulrich Beck argues that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe should be inspiring far more than just a pointless blame game. Instead, he points out, "we need the celebrated innovative power of capital and the utopian enthusiasm of engineers," to revolutionize the way we use energy and make use of the most abundant sources of energy, such as solar power.
Beck writes:
Postwar prosperity in the west laid the foundation for environmental awareness. Now environmental awareness must provide the basis for prosperity in developing countries. These countries will adopt sustainable policies to the extent that the affluent countries invest in their development and adopt a new vision of prosperity and growth. China, India, Brazil and African countries will not agree to any approach that tries to limit their efforts to achieve economic parity - and rightly so.
But does the future lie with a global environmental policy based on carbon trading, which amounts to the global sale of indulgences for CO2 sins? Or will we have the courage to invent and realise a new age of solar energy in which prosperity is not an environmental sin, and when everything from cows to electric toothbrushes is blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions? "It is time to introduce clean forms of energy," Obama has said. If he can ring in an era that is truly Beyond Petroleum, Big Oil's Bastille will be doomed.
Update (6/20): IPPR's Matthew Lockwood notes at the Political Climate Blog that the UK Government's decision to cut clean energy innovation funding doesn't jive with it's rhetoric to be the "greenest government ever.":
"Support to low carbon innovation is pretty small beer compared with the size of the deficit, but crucial not only to a deep cut in emissions, but also to the sustainable recovery we will need to deal with that deficit (the idea of cutting our way through it is not only bad economics but also a political fantasy). By comparison with potential competitors like South Korea, it looks as if we are sawing off the branch we are sitting on."
UK Guardian journalist Chris Goodall writes that the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change is poised to cut investment in energy research by about 20%, even as a government committee highlighted the need to increase such investments. As a percentage of GDP, public investment in energy R&D is now just 0.01%, 1/15th the level reached in the 1970s and far below that of other countries, according to Goodall:
From the mid-1980s the amount invested each year has fallen almost continuously. The figure today is about 0.01%, one 15th of what it was a generation ago. We now sit at the bottom of the international league. The US, for example, spends three times as much as a percentage of its GDP, Japan nine times as much.
The UK government announced last week that it was cutting yet more money from of the energy R&D budget. Some £34m is to be axed, affecting low-carbon technology programmes including offshore wind, wood fuels, building insulation and geothermal energy. This represents a reduction of just under 20% of total public expenditure on low-carbon technologies.
The UK is scaling back other forms of public support for clean energy as well:
This figure is on top of the cancellation of the £80m loan to Sheffield Forgemasters that would have paid for much of the installation of a new press to make the huge parts necessary for new nuclear power stations.
According to Goodall, the UK is poised to be an international leader in tidal and wave power equipment, but will likely lose out to international competitors without much greater public investment:
The UK had a fighting chance of becoming the world's major exporter of tidal and wave power equipment but, as with wind power two decades ago, we will lose out to countries with poorer natural resources but greater willingness to invest in hugely expensive R&D.
Breakthrough's Swezey tells the U.S-China Commission that for the United States to remain competitive in the growing clean energy race, it must implement a new public investment strategy with the overarching goal of making clean energy cheap in real, unsubsidized terms.
Breakthrough Institute Project Director Devon Swezey testified today before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on China's clean energy technology policy and the steps the United States must take to remain competitive in the growing clean energy race.
The key to competitiveness, said Swezey, is not a low price on carbon--as proposed in current congressional climate bills--but a robust and long-term investment strategy in critical areas such as research and innovation, advanced manufacturing, market creation, infrastructure, education, and new industry clusters.
The ascension of Julia Gillard provides an opportunity for Labor to reorient its climate change policy agenda.
Contrary to what its proponents have argued for years, emissions trading has not been as politically feasible as initially thought. Labor's inability to pass a market-based mechanism in its first term not only brings into question the political palatability of neoliberal-inspired policy, but also draws attention to the need for alternative approaches.
With the national climate change debate focused solely on capping and trading carbon, policymakers have forgotten that there are many paths to reduce Australia's emissions and transition to a clean energy economy.
The launch of Beyond Zero Emissions'Zero Carbon Australia Stationary Energy report is an attempt to push back against narrow-minded policymaking. It details a path for Australia to meet 100 per cent of its energy needs with renewable energy by the end of the decade. Making the plan a reality will require a radical shift in climate policy.
A recent collection of nuclear news over at the Energy Collective suggests that Japan and South Korea are taking major steps to sign lucrative nuclear deals - with relatively little competition from Westinghouse or Areva. And China is planning to increase nuclear capacity nearly eight-fold by 2020 by building reactors locally using Westinghouse AP1000 technology.
Julie Gillard, who replaced Australia's Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, has expressed interest in pursuing climate and energy policy, just not the rickety carbon emissions trading scheme proposal that ultimately cost Rudd his job.
Julia Gillard has declared she is the woman to back if voters want action on climate change, despite confirming she will not reverse the government decision to shelve the emissions trading scheme until 2013...
Ms Gillard is preparing to announce new policies to address climate change - including an energy-efficiency program and new renewable energy projects - to fill the gap left by the decision to shelve its trading scheme.
The government allocated $652.5 million in the budget to new renewable energy and energy-efficiency programs...
We will as a nation need a price on carbon; to get there we need community consensus,'' Ms Gillard said.
Gillard's focus on a carbon price - a policy that continues to be embattled in the U.S. and ineffective in the EU - raises plenty of skeptical eyebrows as to whether climate and energy policy will prove to be her undoing, as well.
Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins offers his recommendations for clean energy policy and strategy in a panel format at online environmental magazine, Grist.org.
Over at online environmental magazine Grist.org, I've been featured among a panel of "seven of Grist's favorite journos and wonks" each offering their two cents on what (if any) changes to climate and clean energy strategy should be made now that cap and trade is on the ropes.
Part 1 focuses on what to do with the remainder if this quickly-waning Congressional year, while Part 2 focuses on longer-term strategy. Here's my response to each question:
Update (Jul 16, 2010): Expanding on a Washington Post op-ed, Vinod Khosla delineates his argument "about the deficiencies of an isolated cap-and-trade or carbon-pricing bill," and joins the climate technology consensus. Khosla writes, "If we want to make a significant difference, we need to get on the path to reducing carbon worldwide by 80 percent now by focusing on what I call "carbon reduction capacity building" -- in other words, we need to develop radical carbon-reduction technologies. A utility cap (or a carbon price) won't build capacity -- it will just increase our utility costs and decrease our manufacturing competitiveness without any increase in our technological competitiveness. On the other hand, although a policy that promotes capacity building will increase research investments in the short term, it will likely decrease overall electricity costs in the medium to long run (through the magic of competition, technology and regulatory certainty), while simultaneously reducing carbon. Disruptive technologies require investment; they don't come from the status quo."
Update (Jul 14, 2010): Other observers have reached similar conclusions about the faltering pollution paradigm. Walter Russell Mead and Clive Crook weigh in on "The Big Green Lie" but can't agree on what it is. Mead argues that it is "that the green movement is a source of coherent or responsible counsel about what to do" while Crook argues that "it's the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place." But both agree that cap and trade and the effort to establish a global carbon pollution regime are dead. Meanwhile, Newsweek's Stefan Theil observes that "the whole concept of radical, top-down global targets is coming under scrutiny" and suggests that the "new climate realism" will "look at other options beyond the current set of targets" and "include a broader mix of policies" including "a shift of subsidies into research and development" and "greater efforts to adapt society to a warmer climate."
Update (Jul 10, 2010): See Andrew Pendleton and Matthew Lockwood of the UK-based IPPR think tank response to Alex Evans' contention that real action on climate will only occur after a major global warming disaster. "There is simply no reason to believe that a climate shock big enough to bring about major changes in thinking will come along before we reach a tipping point (how would we know?)" they write. "Climate change is by its nature long-term and insidious, more like a frog in a warming pot than a sudden Anschluss."
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation to make clean energy cheap. The new framework begins from the understanding that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. But hard and important questions are being asked of the new investment-and-innovation paradigm. How is it different from just increasing subsidies for clean energy? How can we be sure it will reduce emissions? What role should carbon pricing play? Here Breakthrough Institute answers frequently asked questions of the climate technology paradigm and responds to challenges raised by Alex Evans on the left and Robert Michaels on the right, among others, who have taken aim at Breakthrough's and Bill Gates' proposals, respectively.
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has not reduced emissions and is quickly fading as the central effort to decarbonize European economies. The UN process is becoming a forum for nations to compare and coordinate national policies and measures, not create or enforce a binding global treaty. And it is now clear that, if energy legislation passes the U.S. Senate, it will not create an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, nor will it increase the deployment of clean energy.
Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation. This consensus begins with the recognition that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. No nation -- not even the wealthiest in Europe -- is willing to price carbon enough to cover the difference. Until the technology gap is closed, little will be done to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
The truth is that we've never been debating a real, binding "cap" on greenhouse gas emissions, just an emissions target and a (pretty modest) carbon price signal. With that as the bar set by "cap" and trade legislation, it is certainly possible to get even better outcomes -- faster transformation of the U.S. energy sector, faster clean energy innovation, and even faster emissions cuts -- with a new clean energy strategy.
Unfortunately, Doniger, NRDC (and EDF) wind up clinging onto a "cap" on carbon they have already given away while at the same time standing opposed to a new clean energy strategy that could still salvage a substantive win despite what little time remains on the Congressional clock.
Arising out of the debates surrounding clean technology and the economic recession, is the nagging question: can the U.S. continue to lead in high tech innovation without domestic manufacturing? Increasingly, it seems, the answer is "NO" -- a response that carries serious implications for clean tech innovation and economic growth in the U.S.
Political confusion surrounding "green" jobs, clean tech, and outsourced manufacturing (largely to Asia) has caused those looking to clean energy as the next U.S. growth sector and those seeking to raise the U.S. out of a growth-numbing recession to lose sight of what has fueled U.S. technological and economic leadership in the past - public support for innovation and large scale high tech manufacturing. Recently, Alexis Madrigal posed the critical question arising from this confusion to the readers of the Atlantic: "Can the US Innovate Without Manufacturing?"
As Breakthrough and numerous high tech leaders argue, the answer is "NO."
"If you look at every advance in prosperity and wealth creation, what you'll find is that there has been a large public investment in a new technological platform."
In an interview with the Presencing Institute, Nathan Cummings Foundation's Director of Ecological Innovation and Contemplative Practice Programs, Peter Teague, describes the importance of an outsider's perspective to his philosophy of social change -- and the need for a paradigm-shift in liberal philanthropy. This is an abridged version of that interview.
Both Cummings and Teague are well-known among liberal and green foundations for their innovative grant-making. They were among the first supporters of the Apollo Alliance, green jobs advocate Van Jones, linguist George Lakoff, and the Breakthrough Institute. Before going into philanthropy, Teague worked in the Peace Corps, was senior environmental policy adviser to then-Congressman Leon Panetta (currently the Director of the CIA), Senate candidate Dianne Feinstein, and Senator Barbara Boxer.
Q: What are two or three experiences or important contexts in your life that led you to the place where you are now and to the work that you are doing now?
Peter Teague: After college I lived in a small African village in the Peace Corps for two years. Then, as a lawyer, I worked briefly for Citibank, and then went to Capitol Hill.
The one critical thing that I can't leave out is that as a gay boy and then a gay man, I was always a little bit on the outside.
When I was 24 I worked for Leon Panetta when he was in the House. We were doing some of the most significant environmental work of the '80s, fighting the oil companies, and my colleagues were in the Sierra Club, NRDC --Â all the mainstream environmental groups.
The one critical thing that I can't leave out is that as a gay boy and then a gay man, I was always a little bit on the outside.
I never felt like a member of the club. I was sympathetic -- I felt like they were my colleagues -- but I never felt like an insider.
I left Capitol Hill and moved into philanthropy. I spent about five years at the Tides Foundation, which is a classic old-school bastion of liberalism. There is a set of assumptions that everyone is expected to share about the importance of the grassroots. All wisdom comes from the bottom. You really want to support work that feels good, that makes you feel as if you're supporting people with whom you want to be in solidarity --primarily African American, Latino, and Asian people who are seen as on the margins. You're bringing your white, liberal consciousness to be of assistance and to be in solidarity.
In many ways, it's an exercise that's about feeling righteous, about feeling good. I don't think it's necessarily effective, frankly. I spent the first five years in philanthropy funding things that are really losing battles, and we knew that we were losing -- badly. I think that was in some ways less important than the fact that we were forming a community of consciousness, caring, and mutual support. It was more important to be a member of the family than to be in the world, actually changing things.
Environmentalists have long couched their opposition to nuclear power in the argument that tinkering with elementary particles to produce energy is inherently unsafe. But advances in climate and nuclear sciences suggest that the dangers posed by today's nuclear technology are far less serious than the risks of tinkering with global climate systems.
In 1945, J. Robert Oppenheimer gave the go-ahead for the Trinity test, the first human-induced nuclear explosion. As he observed the massive explosion unleashed by his creation, he uttered the now-famous phrase:
The "peak oil" theory may be false or misleading, but it does create a powerful motive for change: governments and businesses should make large-scale investments to reduce their exposure to the oil risk.
Many "peak oil" theorists suggest we will reach peak oil production by the year 2020. I argue that this peak is artificial, occurring only due to economic, technological and political limitations. While I contest the "peak oil" theory, I do believe that we can harness the real power of its assertions: governments and businesses should make large-scale investments to reduce their exposure to the oil risk. We can therefore get to the "End of Oil" without adhering to the "Peak Oil" theory. Today we need a new logic - one of environmental protection, energy security, and national prosperity - for ending our addiction to oil.
In 1956, M. King Hubbert produced his famous symmetrical exhaustion curve, forecasting a peak in global oil production. The curve that he constructed is both simple and logical, and appears to work well for the U.S. Yet this seemingly inescapable curve was wrongly fitted to the total, global oil resource. In reality the geological fact that oil, a finite resource, is depleting has thus far been estimated, as Stouteberg (2008) shows, with a wide range of uncertainty.
If Europe is to avert another Great Depression, we have to stop worrying about the imaginary climate for foreign investors and start doing something about the physical climate for our people. Only a comprehensive investment strategy in the green technology sector will pull the economy out of recession, creating millions of jobs and avoiding disruptive climate change in the process.
Europe has lost its mind. Just two years after the financial crisis pushed the global economy to the brink of collapse, we appear to have forgotten all historical lessons about the importance of stimulating aggregate demand in the face of an economic slowdown. All over the continent, deficit hawks have built their nests in the ivory towers of government, trapping the world's largest economy back into the shackles of the neoliberal straitjacket.
If we are to truly deal with the two overwhelming crises of our time - climate change and economic meltdown - we need to realize where these crises overlap and where their solutions could reinforce one another. History teaches us that the world did not emerge from the Great Depression until it mobilized for World War II and built the War Economy. Today, we need mobilization on a similar scale to build a Green Economy and avert the worst consequences of climate change. In the process, we can create millions of jobs and forestall a global depression.
In a new IEA report intended to inform and guide climate and energy policy decision makers, the Energy Technology Perspective 2010 (Exec. Summary; full report purchase required) demonstrates that the clean technology revolution will require an additional $46 trillion investment (beyond energy infrastructure investment expected in BAU scenarios) if we intend to halve carbon emissions by 2050 (from 2005 levels). And, the IEA adds, a carbon price alone will not be sufficient to drive that level of investment.
It is old news for regular readers of this blog, but today's NYT has a thoughtful article on how China's emissions are surging and efforts to increase efficiency gains are foundering.
The long holiday weekend will undoubtedly bring the usual calls for energy independence. With a hole in the bottom of the ocean continuing to spew tens of thousands of gallons of oil daily into the Gulf and hundreds of thousands of American troops stationed around the world endeavoring, among other things, to ensure the free flow of oil upon which our economy depends, it is worth remembering why it has been so difficult to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, even though the costs of that dependence have been high.
Each summer, the Breakthrough Institute offers a fellowship to ten young thought leaders from around the world interested in focusing on energy and climate or national security policy. Fellows join Breakthrough staff at our Oakland office to work on in-depth, collaborative research projects throughout the summer.
To prepare them for this work, for the first two weeks are dedicated to "Breakthrough Boot Camp," an intensive reading, writing, and lecture course that exposes our summer fellows to a wide range of thinking on many issues that inform the Breakthrough Institute's policy agenda. Topics include: modernization theory; aspirational politics and philosophy; social psychology; economics and innovation policy; technology policy; climate and energy innovation policy; and national security and counter-terrorism.
Fellows also hear directly from leading experts in the field, including many Breakthrough Senior Fellows, via virtual video lectures and discussions.
Our 2010 Breakthrough Generation Fellows having just completed Breakthrough Bootcamp and we wanted to share their experience with you.
Here is this year's Breakthrough Bootcamp. You can download a MS Word version of the syllabus here.
If you have any questions about the Breakthrough Generation program, please contact devon@thebreakthrough.org.
Despite the continued economic crisis, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have remained constant in 2009, as strong increases in CO2 emissions from fast-growing developing countries, such as China and India, have completely nullified CO2 emission reductions in the industrialised world.
As readers here know (and as readers of The Climate Fix will learn), a focus on emissions is only part of what matters, as economic growth is an important driver of emissions growth. The variable that matters most for efforts to achieve targets for the stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic activity. A reduction in this ratio means that the economy has become more energy efficient and/or is transitioning toward carbon neutral energy generation. In other words, decarbonization is a measure of technological progress in energy use and supply.
So with the 2009 data in hand, how are we doing? Not good.
The graph at the top of this post shows the decarbonization of the global economy 1990 to 2009, with 1990 set to 1.0, using emission data from the NEAA and economic data from Angus Maddison (Note: 2009 GDP is estimated based on growth rate found in the IMF data). I also did the same analysis with economic data from the IMF, reaching the same conclusions. I prefer the Maddison data because it allows cross-country comparisons, and it is also the basis of the analyses in The Climate Fix. The data shows a pronounced slowdown in the rate of decarbonization of the global economy, exactly the opposite effect that climate policies are supposed to be having. This can be seen even more dramatically in the following chart, which shows the annual rate of decarbonization, with a trend line super-imposed in green.
This graph shows that the pace of decarbonization has slowed dramatically in recent decades, with important consequences for climate policies. Tom Wigley, Chris Green and I discussed this emerging trend in Nature in 2008 (PDF). To get a sense of what is needed to achieve low stabilization targets (the exact number does not matter, but say 450 ppm), the world would need to achieve annual rates of decarbonization of more than 5-6% for many decades.
The fact that emissions did not increase from 2008 to 2009 is not good news, nor is it a reflection of the positive effects of climate policies. The one-year stabilization occurred because of the dismal state of the economy in North America and Europe, a condition that policy makers are quickly trying to remedy. When economic growth resumes, so too will growth in emissions in these regions. Meanwhile, the world as a whole took a step backwards in terms of decarbonizing the global economy. The world is falling short in terms of energy technology innovation, with consequences that will reach much further than climate policies alone.
China is planning to bring on two new reactors at the Ling Ao nuclear power plant complex, adding about 1.7 GW of average capacity (assuming a capacity factor of .87) at the complex. According to Bloomberg, China plans to bring the first new reactor online in October and the second in 2011 as part of its effort to replace some of its coal fired generation with nuclear energy.
Just to put the size of these reactors in perspective, (according to Breakthrough analysis) it would take nearly ten offshore wind farms the size of Cape Wind or about four solar PV projects the size of California's $3 billion Million Solar Roofs initiative to supply the amount of energy that these additional reactors will provide for China.
