Earlier this month, China surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy and since, has snared a flurry of clean tech headlines that collectively tell a very clear story: China is rapidly and effectively securing its position as a global clean technology leader as the U.S. watches in stagnated wonder.
Below we've aggregated some of the most important updates coming out of China over recent weeks as it surges to the front of the global clean technology sector:
Starting in the 1970s green groups helped kill new nuclear plants by claiming greater energy efficiency would slash energy consumption. It didn't. Energy demand rose 40 percent more than Amory Lovins predicted. The result? A coal-plant building boom. Time to rethink the role of energy efficiency.
By Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Jesse Jenkins
If there's one thing everyone knows for certain, it's that energy efficiency reduces energy consumption. President Obama, Steven Chu, Fortune 500 chieftains, Silicon Valley VCs, the U.N. and McKinsey all say it.
Why, then, does ever-greater efficiency go hand-in-hand with ever-greater energy consumption? In this week's New Yorker, journalist David Owen explains this apparent paradox. The essay (excerpted below) is as fascinating as anything written by Malcolm Gladwell. And the implications for energy and climate policy are of great significance.
The governments of six developing countries may be out-investing the governments of twenty-one IEA member countries, finds a new report by the Harvard Belfer Center.
The governments of six developing countries may now be investing more in energy research than the governments of twenty-one of the world's most developed economies, according to a new report by the Harvard Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
The report takes a close look at the federal energy innovation policies of Brazil, Russia, India, Mexico, China and South Africa - we'll call them the 'Big Six' developing nations here.
The Belfer Center researchers conclude that in 2008 the governments of the Big Six nations invested about $13.8 billion (measured in PPP) in energy research, development, demonstration, and deployment activities (RDD&D). This inches ahead of the roughly $12.7 billion in combined energy technology investments made by the governments of the 21 IEA member countries, each of which is also a member of the OECD bloc of developed nations.
In deconstructing this figure, however, $11.8 billion of the $13.8 billion in RDD&D funds deployed by the Big Six developing nations are investments by the Chinese government. Further, 90% of this total investment originated from state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
From hybrid crops to blockbuster drugs, nuclear power to wind power, and microchips to the Internet, government support was critical to the productive public-private partnerships that spawned so many revolutionary American technologies.
This presentation was delivered by Jesse Jenkins (Director of Energy and Climate Policy, Breakthrough Institute) and Daniel Sarewitz (Director, Center for Science, Policy, and Outcomes, ASU; Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow) at the Energy Innovation 2010 Conference, December 15th, 2010.
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Apple, Amgen and General Electric. Bill Gates, Thomas Edison, and Alexander Graham Bell.
We are all familiar with these genius inventors and titans of industry.
Yet most of us remain unaware of the almost constant presence of a silent partner in American innovation: the federal government.
We might recall something about microchips and the space race, or know that the National Institutes of Health funds research into new drugs and treatments.
But most of us remain unaware of the depth and breadth of government support for technology innovation.
As we gather today to consider how to drive forward the dramatic innovation needed to deliver cheap, clean and massively scalable energy sources to power world, we would do well to pause and take a look back at the United State's long history of limited but energetic public investment in breakthrough technologies.
The country's leading energy experts gathered in Washington, DC on Wednesday to reframe the national energy discussion in the aftermath of cap and trade, beginning the transition toward a new federal clean energy strategy.
On Wednesday, several of the country's leading energy experts gathered at the National Press Club in Washington, DC for the Energy Innovation 2010 conference. Their purpose? Reframing the national energy discussion in the aftermath of cap and trade and beginning the transition to a new federal clean energy strategy.
Hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation and Breakthrough Institute, and co-sponsored by a large coalition of think tanks across the political spectrum, the conference drew hundreds of attendants for a day of presentations and panels. Speakers and moderators included ARPA-E Director Dr. Arun Majumdar, DOE Under Secretary of Energy Cathy Zoi, Nobel Laureate Burton Richter, Andrew Revkin of New York Times, Bryan Walsh of Time Magazine, and many others.
Where do good technologies come from? The history of American innovation shows that an active partnership between the public and private sectors has been key to developing breakthrough technologies, which have driven generations of economic prosperity. In an updated report, the Breakthrough Institute explores this partnership through a set of case studies in American innovation.
Driving directions from your iPhone. The cancer treatments that save countless lives. The seed hybrids that have slashed global hunger. A Skype conversation while flying on a Virgin Airlines jet across the continent in just five hours.
Where did these everyday miracles come from?
As soon as the question is asked we know to suspect that the answer is not as simple as Apple, Amgen, or General Electric. We might recall something about microchips and the Space Race, or know that the National Institutes of Health funds research into new drugs and treatments.
But most of us remain unaware of the depth and breadth of American government support for technology and innovation. Our gratitude at being able to video chat with our children from halfway around the world (if we feel gratitude at all) is directed at Apple, not the Defense Department. When our mother's Neupogen works to fight her cancer, we thank Amgen, not NIH or NSF.
By Rob Atkinson, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger
For forty years, presidents and policymakers have promised and planned for a new energy future just over the horizon. While the rationales have varied - reducing dependence on imported oil, stopping global warming, reducing air pollution, creating clean energy jobs - the song has largely remained the same: America has most, if not all, of the technologies needed today to make a quick and relatively painless transition away from fossil fuels.
Yet America is more dependent upon fossil fuels than ever before. U.S. oil consumption rose from 15 to 20 million barrels a day between 1970 and today, while coal still provides about 50 percent of our electricity. U.S. carbon emissions continue to rise unabated, as efforts to cap them have repeatedly foundered in the face of daunting political, economic, and technological obstacles. And renewable technologies like wind and solar only meet a tiny fraction of America's energy needs despite several decades of efforts to subsidize their deployment.
When experts convene in Washington next week to discuss energy policy at the Energy Innovation 2010 conference, they will do so in the wake of yet another failed federal effort to pass legislation to support a transition away from fossil fuel-based energy.
Albert Einstein famously defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. ITIF's Steve Norton explores why we may be doing just that when it comes to the prevailing thinking on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) education.
Most Americans appreciate the fact that the world is a very competitive place. Policy makers and parents have long known that our kids, from grade school through college, need to step up their skills and understanding of science, technology, engineering and math - know in education circles as STEM studies - if they are going to compete successfully with their counterparts in China, India, Korea, and many European countries. For this reason, for nearly 40 years there has been a lot of interest in improving STEM education. While it is laudable that we are focusing on STEM education, we are running the risk of tethering ourselves to assumptions that might be a little faulty and outdated. We can't be truly innovative as a nation if we are not innovative in our thinking about STEM education.
The current assumption driving STEM education is that all students should get at least some STEM education at every step of their educational journey. Supply students with high standards, great teachers and get as many kids excited about STEM as possible. Call this the "some STEM for all" approach. It sounds appealing, right? Universal tech literacy for the 21st century.
Well, one problem with this is that most of us are not destined to be scientists and engineers - maybe five percent. Some of us simply don't have the acumen and the economy only needs so many engineers and scientists and actuaries. So why should state and local governments, many of which are in deep financial peril, lavish resources on the "Some STEM for all" approach? The answer is that they shouldn't.
Japan's blunt declaration last week that it was walking away from the Kyoto climate treaty marked the end of an era. Since Copenhagen, international climate negotiations have proceeded on two parallel tracks, with most major emitting nations simultaneously participating in efforts to extend Kyoto while also working to formalize the Copenhagen Accord - the face-saving agreement among major emitters wrought in the dying hours of the COP-15 meeting in Denmark.
In stating, unequivocally, that it would only make further emissions reductions commitments under the auspices of the Copenhagen Accord, not the Kyoto Protocol, Japan left no doubt about which framework will be the primary vehicle for future international efforts to address climate change.
The announcement set off a small diplomatic riot, largely because Japan had single-handedly destroyed two contradictory fantasies at once. The first, held by Europeans and greens, was that the 2009 Copenhagen Accord would someday merge with Kyoto and require mandatory emissions limits from the U.S. and China. The second, held by China, India, and other big developing nations, was that they could demand emissions reductions from rich countries but adhere to no obligations themselves.
While the Copenhagen Accord, like Kyoto, still maintains the pretense that it will culminate in a binding agreement among major emitters to reduce emissions, the same intractable conflicts among major economies that have thwarted international agreement to legally binding emissions caps are not likely to be resolved through the Copenhagen approach. In reality, the post-Kyoto world is a post-emissions cap world. Future climate action is more likely to resemble what Japan has been proposing since the 2007 Bali climate talks - developed nations primarily focusing on developing and deploying advanced energy technologies in order to reduce their own emissions while working sector by sector with developing economies to transfer the appropriate technologies that can facilitate growth with low carbon technology.
Breakthrough Institute and other leading think tanks sponsor day-long conference rethinking energy innovation in the United States: getting to scale, making clean energy cheap, securing American leadership.
After
two years of often-tumultuous debate in Congress, the national debate
over energy and climate change policy has now been altered: cap and
trade policy efforts have run aground in Congress, perhaps fatally, and
Republicans are ascendant, reshaping the national political landscape.
Meanwhile, with economic recovery the top priority for the public and
policymakers alike, America's clean tech competitors are surging ahead,
raising the stakes for energy policy.
Against this backdrop,
support is growing on both right and left for new national investments
in energy innovation that can help address some of the most urgent
imperatives of our time - renewing the economy, improving energy
security and public health, and overcoming key environmental challenges.
A growing chorus of voices thus counsels a renewed national commitment to develop breakthrough energy technologies - and to the reform of America's energy innovation system itself.
In
recent months, energy experts have advised policymakers to: take a page
from the nation's long history of successful military research and
procurement; build on the success of agricultural research stations and
the National Institutes of Health by establishing new innovation
institutes and clusters nationwide; promote the right mix of both
competition and collaboration to spur innovation and productive
knowledge spillover; reform energy subsidies to reward innovation; and
restructure business taxes to promote investment in the building blocks
of an innovation economy.
On December 15th, a group of America's leading policy think tanks will host a day-long conference in Washington D.C. to rethink energy innovation.
Energy Innovation 2010,
held at the National Press Club, will bring together leading experts
from government, think tanks, academia, and business to ask hard
questions about how energy innovation efforts can be brought to scale,
how the innovation system must be restructured and reformed, and how to
renew the kind of active partnerships between the public and private
sectors that were responsible for so much of America's prior
technological innovation and economic strength.
Breakthrough Institute is proud to organize and sponsor this free, day-long conference, along with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and with sponsoring partners the American Enterprise Institute, Third Way, Clean Air Task
Force, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Securing
America's Future Energy, and the Brookings Institution. We are pleased to
welcome TheEnergyCollective.com and Yale Environment 360 as media sponsors for the event.
Facing renewed international challenges to American technological and economic leadership, the United States "cannot cut back on those investments that have the biggest impact on our economic growth," including science, technology and education, President Obama declared at a speech in Winston-Salem, North Carolina this week.
Echoing his Secretary of Energy and chief science and technology advisers (as well as a pairof familiar op eds from 2008), President Obama told audiences in North Carolina today that the United States faces a new "Sputnik moment" - a challenge to American technology and economic leadership akin to the global race to dominate nascent aerospace, computing, and information technology fields during the Cold War Era.
The United States responded to the 1957 launch of the Soviet Sputnik satellite with a series of major investments in science and education, including the National Defense Education Act and the creation of the Apollo Space Program. Maintaining economic competitiveness in the 21st century similarly demands a renewed national commitment to invest in the building blocks of a dynamic innovation economy, the President said.
The U.S. clean energy industry is heading for a funding cliff as Wall Street bets on its decline and critical stimulus funds run out with no investments to replace them.
Four months ago, we warned that while the stimulus bill had created considerable momentum in the domestic clean energy sector by funding clean energy research, manufacturing, and markets, a looming clean tech funding cliff threatened to send clean energy markets into a deep freeze as stimulus funds expired with no new investments in line to replace them.
Now it looks like that funding cliff is in sight, and Wall Street is threatening to push us over it. As Bloomberg News reports, hedge funds have increased their short selling of U.S. renewable energy stocks--essentially betting on their decline--to an annual high. The investment decisions follow widespread skepticism that the federal government will continue to invest in nascent clean energy industries.
As Daniel Goldfarb of Americans for Energy Leadership writes, in the short term, the move could advantage international competitors in the clean tech space:
In an increasingly globalized world such a flight of capital from U.S. clean energy companies will mean a distinct advantage for American competitors who are moving rapidly to corner the market. By failing to commit to these crucial industries we risk wasting the money already invested in making our clean energy companies competitive.
The impending funding cliff also imperils the thousands of domestic jobs tied to clean energy projects and manufacturing supply chains. If they disappear, there's no guarantee they'll return as other nations forge ahead with concerted efforts to build competitive clean energy industries and supply the growing global market.
Ultimately, the news from Wall Street exemplifies the precarious nature of a clean energy industry that still requires major public subsidies to survive, particularly in a time of budgetary constraint. Over the long-term, the only way to catalyze a global clean energy revolution and reclaim American leadership in the global clean tech industry is a national commitment to an energy technology innovation strategy that can make clean energy cheap.
Just this week the President's top science advisors called for such a strategy. Congress should listen before it's too late.
