Over at the Atlantic, technology writer Alexis Madrigal ran the numbers and found some pretty daunting scale issues with Obama's seemingly ambitious SOTU goal for electric vehicles (EV): 1,000,000 by 2015.
[Note: updated on 1/31 to correct typo in one of our figures]
With last night's State of the Union address, President Obama has shifted the debate from the partisan climate wars to an expansive energy innovation policy which has the potential to draw support from across the political spectrum.
With last night's State of the Union address, President Obama has shifted the debate from the partisan climate wars to an expansive energy innovation policy which has the potential to draw support from across the political spectrum.
"In embracing breakthrough innovation for solar and nuclear power alike -- for economic competitiveness rather than climate reasons -- President Obama took a bold first step toward a national commitment to energy innovation that is in the long tradition of bi-partisan support for science and technology," wrote Breakthrough Institute co-founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus in a statement. "While the road forward will not be easy, at least it is one America has traveled before."
In a State of the Union speech framed centrally around restoring America's global economic leadership, President Obama argued forcefully for increasing federal investment in energy innovation, declaring that "breakthrough" technologies have driven decades of innovation that "created new industries and millions of new jobs."
Obama's speech was a rejection of proposals to cut federal spending across the board, as he finally made the case before the American people about why public support for innovation is critical for the country's long-term prosperity:
In tonight's State of the Union Speech, President Obama will call for increased federal investment in education, science, technology and infrastructure. In doing so, he will join a long list of Republican Presidents who recognized that such investments are key to America's economic vitality and a hallmark of true fiscal responsibility. The question now is whether today's Republican leaders will don this mantle, or will continue to recklessly pursue cuts to America's most productive public investments?
Tonight, President Obama is prepared to call for renewed federal investment in infrastructure, research, education, and clean energy technology in his State of the Union Address, according to his advisers. He is likely to argue that new productive investments in education and technology are central to generating jobs and laying a new foundation for economic prosperity. Indeed, the long, bipartisan history of American innovation is one of federal investment in new technologies--even in tough economic times.
But as Republicans in Congress continue their campaign to cut everything in sight (except for what might reduce the growing federal debt -- defense and entitlement spending), with seemingly little regard for the difference between spending and smart investment, it may be difficult for Obama to enact policies that could seriously address the deficit by growing the economy.
David Owen's recent New Yorker article on energy efficiency and rebound phenomena has sparked a lively debate in a number of blog posts but it has also resulted in some confusion. The purpose of this post is to lend clarity to the rebound debate by dispelling some misconceptions about rebound.
Rebound comes from several sources, requiring important distinctions. Typically, rebound analysts distinguish consumer-side effects from producer-side effects. A second distinction frequently called upon is between so-called direct and indirect rebound. On top of these rebound classifications, some analysts identify a so-called macroeconomic effect.
This morning we saw this dual photo of Shanghai posted at Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr's blog -- the top shot was taken in 1990, the bottom in 2010. In just twenty years, the difference between the two cityscapes is breathtaking. The post also left us wondering what other drastic societal changes occurred alongside this rapid-fire urban development in Shanghai.
Update 1/31/11: If you missed Michael Shellenberger, Ted Nordhaus, and Steve Hayward at Duke last week, check out the video of their full lecture, "Hitting the Reset Button on Energy Policy," below:
Next week Breakthrough's Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus begin a university speaking tour focused on taking a look at energy policy beyond the climate wars. The duo will discuss "Post Partisan Power," an October 2010 report co-authored by think tanks on the left, right, and center, which calls for $25 billion in federal funding to accelerate energy innovation.
The first leg of the tour will take them to Duke and NYU, along with Steve Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute, a co-author of the "Post-Partisan Power" report. Later in February, Ted and Michael will extend their tour with an event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
On January 26, the two stop at Yale for a special retrospective on "The Long Death of Environmentalism." Michael and Ted last visited Yale in 2005 to defend their thesis that the modern environmental movement was incapable of effectively addressing the planet's most serious ecological challenge, global warming, and will return to discuss the evolution of the environmental movement and where we stand today.
We have a new, peer-reviewed paper just out on media coverage of climate change, specifically sea level rise to 2100. We find that overall the major print media in the US and UK has done a nice job reporting on this topic. This post describes our paper and its findings. The image above comes from the paper and shows (a) media reports of predicted sea level rise to 2100, (b) IPCC projections of sea level rise to 2100, and (c) projections of sea level rise to 2100 found in the peer-reviewed literature.
The print media is often the subject of criticism for its coverage of climate change. The criticism usually occurs in the context of a high-profile article that this or that person happens to disagree with. Since there are varied agendas and perspectives on climate change it is virtually certain that someone in the climate debate is not going to like pretty much any article, leading to a steady chorus of criticism.
Energy innovation expert William Bonvillian's latest article presents a "Plan B" for climate change, "a new approach that pushes the development of energy technologies and fosters markets for them."
In the face of Congressional failure to pass a national cap-and-trade bill, it is "Time for a Climate Plan B" that encompasses the full cycle of energy technology innovation, according to a new article in "Issues for Science and Technology" by energy innovation expert William Bonvillian.
"The cap-and-trade solution for climate, if prices are set at sound levels, is strong on creating potential markets for innovations (demand pull) but weak on developing needed innovations (technology push) to feed the new markets. The United States will need a program that encompasses technology push as well as new means for demand pull, supporting all the technology stages in between, from research to deployment."
Bonvillian writes that innovation in the clean energy sector hasn't yet come to bear in the US because, while the country is adept at innovating to open up entirely new economic sectors, it doesn't do as well with innovation in complex, established sectors.
The energy sector is one such entrenched market, with a variety of economic and political forces inhibiting the entrance of new contenders. As clean energy doesn't offer a new functionality to the market, new technologies will have to be cost-competitive from the moment they enter the market.
"This profound price/scale problem is why 'the moment of market launch' is as important as the traditional 'valley of death' problem for new technologies entering established sectors such as energy."
This is also precisely why, according to Bonvillian, the energy challenge requires the nation to design a new innovation system, one that will have to focus not only on the "front end" of R&D, but also on the "back end"- which includes demonstrations, test beds, and the creation of initial commercial markets for new clean energy technologies.
Bucking the conventional D.C. wisdom of the day, Senator Kerry delivered a rousing speech Tuesday calling for a major bipartisan investment strategy for infrastructure, technology, research, and education to keep the United States competitive.
On Tuesday, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) delivered a major speech in Washington that may be remembered as one of the most important political responses to the Tucson shooting and as a powerful new post-partisan vision for restoring American vitality and leadership in the 21st century.
As Ezra Klein of Washington Post noted, "Frankly, it's the speech President Obama should be giving." In this moment of national reflection, the speech should be read by Americans of all political stripes and serve as a model for Democratic and Republican leaders alike.
In short, Senator Kerry argued that today's violent and divisive political dialogue -- which may or may not have contributed to the event in Tucson -- is damaging U.S. global leadership and preventing us from making the critical investments we need to stay prosperous and secure. Unless Democratic and Republican leaders can wake up and come together around a new agenda for strategic public investments -- including infrastructure, technology, research, and education -- we will not be able to maintain our place in the world.
Internalizing market externalities through pricing carbon is unlikely to spur the development of new solar photovoltaic technologies, writes Americans for Energy Leadership Contributor Tucker Willsie.
By Tucker Willsie, originally published at Americans for Energy Leadership.
For proponents of clean energy technology, the holy grail is to reach price parity with conventional power sources such as coal. For photovoltaics, this tipping point is generally regarded as a dollar per watt ($1/Wp), a measure that indicates the generation capacity of a cell in peak sunlight. At this point the stage will be set for a massive explosion in the number of solar panels being installed and sold - a situation eagerly anticipated by the PV industry and environmentalists alike.
While most agree that cost competitive solar panels would be a good development, there is a great deal of disagreement on how to reach this point. In this debate, two major schools of though have emerged. The first school recognizes that market externalities such as the cost of pollution must be internalized in order to allow the free market to allocate enough resources to renewable energy. Proponents of this view back programs such as carbon taxes and cap and trade.
The second school of thought acknowledges that market signals need to be corrected, but believes that the free market is not able to support the massive upfront costs required to advance renewable energy technology. This group maintains that the market is excellent for creating incremental advances and lowering costs for existing products, but it does not support the decades of investment required to develop a new technology before profit can be generated. In these cases, it is necessary for government entities to ensure that necessary advances occur despite the lack of a market.
As Ryan Avent writes: "economics is clearly moving beyond the carbon-tax-alone position on climate change, which is a good thing. If the world is to reduce emissions, it needs technologies that are both green and cheap enough to be attractive to economically-stressed countries and people. And a carbon tax alone may not generate the necessary innovation."
Over at the Economist, Ryan Avent notes that economists are beginning to move beyond a simple reliance on carbon pricing as the sine qua non of climate policy:
The typical baseline economist response to the problem of global warming is a very simple and straightforward one. Climate change is a negative externality, and the carbon emissions that generate it are easily targetable. The clear thing to do, then, is to place a tax on carbon emissions which will lead economic actors to internalise the cost of the warming they create with their decisions. This will discourage carbon-intensive activities and contribute to the development of clean alternative, reducing emissions and climate change.
Easy enough. Unfortunately, this strategy quickly runs into difficulty. One big problem is political. It's very difficult to convince people to accept higher energy costs, and it's very difficult to coordinate policy across countries, which is necessary to ensure that the policy works correctly. But there are also economic challenges. ... Economies are good at finding substitutes for key technologies, but it does take some time. And so because the world has waited so long to act, it now seems that the disaster-avoiding carbon tax path may itself be too economically damaging. So what's an economist to advocate?
Third Way's Josh Freed takes a look at what Republican budget cuts might mean for America's ability to compete in the burgeoning clean energy sector. It's not pretty.
Over at the Huffington Post, Josh Freed, the Director of Third Way's Clean Energy Program, takes a look at what the Republican plan to cut 20% of all non-defense discretionary funding might look like if spread equally across clean energy programs. It's not pretty:
-- A $1.6 billion cut in the federal loan guarantee program would potentially cripple the much-needed nuclear renaissance at a time when China is planning a five-fold expansion over the next decade. Without loan guarantees, it's unlikely we'd be building first nuclear power plant in the US in almost 30 years, and creating as many as 3,500 jobs, in Georgia today.
-- $60 million less for ARPA-E's already meager $300 million budget, gutting funding for advanced energy storage, next generation nuclear power and micro-battery technology that could also be used by the US military.
-- Eliminating almost $500 million in grants to companies innovating in renewable energy, advanced vehicle technology, and battery storage. This could kill emerging clean energy businesses that have the potential to become the 21st century's Google, General Electric or Exxon.
-- Slicing $20 million from R&D investments to schools like Purdue University, Penn State, University of Wisconsin, and Iowa State University, which are developing the next generation of innovators and ideas that could spawn new businesses and jobs across the U.S.
As Freed notes, even well known and well respected conservative commentators like George Will are warning Congressional Republicans to exchange their budget hatchets for scalpels and preserve or even strengthen key science and technology investments.
Clean energy is certainly one of the global growth sectors that could help lead an industrial revival in the United States. But Republican budget cutting mania could hamper U.S. competitiveness in the sector even as other nations like China, Japan, and South Korea increase their investments. Will Innovation Conservatives be able to forestall such an outcome?
Climate science was supposed to unite us, on the left and the right, and result in common, concerted action. Instead, the science of climate change has proved to be ideologically polarizing. In a speech for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus explain why climate science divides us. By contrast, energy technology may actually be able to transcend politics and unify Republicans and Democrats alike.
[Updated 1/11/2011: Robert Stavins was previously misidentified as the former chief economist of the Environmental Defense Fund. He is a former staff economist. We regret the error.]
By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus
Thank you very much. We'd like to start by thanking William Ott for inviting us to give this colloquium, which is an honor. NIST has a long record of advancing innovation by developing new ways of measuring new natural phenomena and creating standards for critical technologies. The Institute, famous for the first atomic clock, played a critical role in creating the technologies behind modern computers, semiconductors, sonar, and blood pressure machines. We are grateful for NIST's work and reminded of the critical role played by America's sustained investments in science and technology in creating our prosperity.
It may be hard to remember now but it wasn't that long ago that much of the American political establishment came to believe that the science of climate would transcend ideological and national boundaries and result in common national and global action. The idea was that climate scientists would tell us what the safe level of atmospheric emissions was, and that nations would take shared steps to reducing their emissions over the next 50 years.
But things didn't work out that way. The United Nations treaty process has devolved into an endless exercise in empty promises and angry recriminations. The growth of global carbon emissions has only accelerated in the 13 years since Kyoto was signed. The United States failed last summer for the fourth time in seven years to cap its emissions while Europe, which supposedly has, has seen its emissions grow faster than the United States since 1997.
The Reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act is not what most technology and innovations advocates hoped it would be, but it's still a major win for key science and technology agencies. Conservative budget hawks should recognize, as a number of influential conservatives recently have, that true "fiscal responsibility" means accelerating economic growth by increasing federal investments in science and technology.
On Tuesday, President Obama signed into law the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, a critical reauthorization of the landmark 2007 competitiveness bill that authorizes increased funding for critical science and technology agencies including the Department of Energy's Office of Science, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Science and Technology.
Unfortunately, the ambition of the bill is much reduced from its original incarnation just four years ago, even as international economic competition has grown ever more fierce. The final version of the bill, passed by Congress on December 21, authorizes $45 billion in science, research, and education funding over three years, less than the five year, $85 billion authorization first approved by the House of Representatives in May of last year.
Here's an intriguing story to kick off the new year with a little retrospection...
Flash back to 2008, and nearly all of the top GOP contenders for a 2012 presidential run were taking global warming pretty seriously and offering real, if measured, endorsements of Congressional or state action to curb pollution and GHGs.
On the campaign stump, in books, speeches and nationally-televised commercials, aspiring GOP White House candidates such as Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have warned in recent years about the threats from climate change and pledged to limit greenhouse gases. Some have even committed the ultimate sin, endorsing the controversial cap-and-trade concept that was eventually branded "cap and tax."
Back in 2008, Newt Gingrich took to a couch next to the Right's current-day arch-nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, to endorse Congressional climate action in an ad sponsored by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.
And as Politico notes, even Sarah Palin has flip flopped on the issue:
Just days after McCain picked her as his running mate, Palin told ABC News she believes human activities "certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change" and that "we've got to do something about it, and we have to make sure that we're doing all we can to cut down on pollution."
Politico's Darren Samuelsohn calls it the McCain effect, with John McCain's prominent endorsement of cap and trade legislation making it safe for GOPers to talk about climate.
"I think McCain is moving in a responsible direction," then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told E&E News in May 2008. "Clearly the issue of climate change is on the minds of a lot of people. Humans clearly contribute to this. It just really depends on what kind of a cap-and-trade system, what kind of safety valves are in there."
Flash forward just a few years and each of these prominent GOPers are likely running for an excuse, a mea culpa, or another way to distance themselves from green records that are now liabilities with a Republican base strongly influenced by the Tea Party movement.
So what happened? Was it simply the polarizing direction of the cap and trade debate? The shift in the economic winds? The rise of the Tea Party? The inherent politics of a proposal centered on making our current base of energy sources more expensive, rather than making the cleaner alternatives cheaper?
Whatever the constellation of causes, the change is quite stark. Looking ahead to 2011 and beyond, can we build a new and enduring consensus around an innovation-centered approach to energy reform, building a clean economy, and responsibly reducing pollution? And can we make it sustained enough to avoid the factors that turned the endorsements of prominent GOP leaders into liabilities just a few years later?
In a new column, conservative commentator George Will challenges Congressional Republicans to "rev the scientific engine" by increasing federal investment in research, arguing that such investments are "pre-requisites for long-term economic vitality." Will is one of an emerging group of "innovation conservatives" exhorting a newly emboldened crop of Republican budget-cutters to distinguish between government spending and productive public investment in science and technology that has long driven American innovation and national prosperity.
Bucking the conventional wisdom that newly empowered conservatives are out to cut government spending at all costs, an influential group of conservative voices has emerged to urge Congressional Republicans to take a more measured approach toward federal programs and challenge them to increase federal investment in science and technology.
In yesterday's Washington Post, conservative columnist George Will exhorted new Republican legislators to "rev the scientific engine" by increasing federal investment in research, arguing that such investments are the "pre-requisites for long-term economic vitality":
"Republicans are rightly determined to be economizers. They must, however, make distinctions. Congressional conservatives can demonstrate that skill by defending research spending that sustains collaboration among complex institutions - corporations' research entities and research universities."
True fiscal conservatism, Will writes, means knowing that "making the government lean by cutting the most defensible--because most productive--federal spending is akin to making an overweight aircraft flight-worthy by removing an engine."
Nobel Laureate physicist Dr. Burton Richter discusses the three dimensions of the global energy challenge - economy, security, and environment - in his keynote at the "Energy Innovation 2010" conference in December.
"Energy Innovation 2010" keynote presentation delivered by Nobel laureate physicist Dr. Burton Richter on December 15, 2010.
(Richter's Keynote begins at 5:56 in the video below)
I have been asked by the organizers to be provocative at this discussion of energy innovation - the more provocative the better, I was told. So far, the talks have focused on the need for innovation to get the technologies of the future developed and deployed so that the issue of climate change can be effectively addressed. We all know that the country is not getting the action on the Federal front that the issue warrants, and thinking about how we might do better leads me to three questions.
1. Have we focused so exclusively on climate change as a justification for action on energy that we have excluded potential allies?
2. Have we emphasized ultra-green technologies that are not yet ready for the big time, and so had our desire for the perfect drive out the available good?
3. Have we pushed policies that are so narrowly targeted as to prevent much larger and less costly emissions reductions to be made in the nearer term than have been made with the renewables?
On December 15th 2010, hundreds of leading thinkers, scientists, public officials, and innovators gathered in Washington, DC for the Energy Innovation 2010 Conference to initiate a new conversation on a new energy policy paradigm for the 21st century
For 35 years, government and the market have been trying and failing to get energy policy right. Congress has failed to pass large-scale clean energy and climate legislation, while China and other competitors are moving aggressively to take the lead in new energy technology. And the market has failed to create needed low-carbon technology on its own. Meanwhile, the nation's dependence on oil and coal deepens and global temperatures continue to rise. To address these issues, we need to get past the old energy policy paradigm - and we just may be turning the corner.
On December 15th 2010, hundreds of leading thinkers, scientists, public officials, and innovators gathered in Washington, DC for the Energy Innovation 2010 Conference to initiate a new conversation on a new energy policy paradigm: one that recognizes the central role of innovation in resolving the world's looming energy challenges and boosting American competitiveness. Climate change aside, we can't rely on carbon-based fuels for the next 150 years the way we did for the last 150. And we can't create the transformational energy innovations we need without putting innovation front and center.
"Energy Innovation 2010" merely begins a new national energy dialog that must continue well into the coming years. Breakthrough Institute and our partners will continue to spearhead this conversation as we seek new strategies to address the multifaceted energy challenges facing America and the world.
In case you missed the conference, held before a packed house at the National Press Club, or if you simply want to revisit the top notch presentations delivered throughout the packed day, videos from the full conference can be viewed below.
