Last week, China invited South Africa to form a partnership to develop renewable energy in both countries. In a meeting with the Chairman of South Africa National Council of Provinces Mninwa Johannes Maghlangu, China's top legislator Wu Bangguo spoke of China's experience incorporating renewable energy and energy efficiency into its development campaign, and offered to aid South Africa in incorporating similar measures into its New Economic Growth Path. China hopes to collaborate with the country on a range of clean energy innovation and demonstration projects.

Cross-Posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog

[EDITOR'S NOTE: This is a guest post by Dan Sarewitz, professor at ASU and co-director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes. To his surprise, Dan found his work cited approvingly in a new report on the National Science Foundation just released by Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK). This post has Dan's reaction.]

Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who has a reputation as a straight-shooting, no-nonsense conservative, is also, it appears a supporter of national industrial policy, something that conservatives typically hate. He has just issued a report that alleges to be a hard-hitting critique of the National Science Foundation, but it's mostly just an attack on government funding of social science research, thus continuing a conservative tradition that dates back to the debates over the initial creation of NSF in the late 1940s.

I'll get to the social science stuff in a minute, but for now let's focus on the fact that Senator Coburn prominently--and apparently approvingly--quotes, um, ME! (Please see page 12 of his report.) In a recent Nature column (among lots of other places) I argue that US civilian R&D agencies are not appropriately structured to catalyze technological innovation or progress rapidly toward desired societal outcomes, and that this institutional weakness remains significantly camouflaged by the legacy of DOD and the military-industrial-university complex,which powered technological innovation and economic growth in the decades following World War II.

I'm pleased that Senator Coburn finds this critique to be compelling, and can only infer, then, than he would agree that what's needed is a much more coherent and strategic approach for linking knowledge creation to knowledge use and problem solving--a strategy that, in the olden days might have been called "industrial policy" and now we might term "innovation system policy." It's only slightly ironic, I guess, that the (still admittedly limited) understanding we have of how innovation systems work--the basis of my critique that he so flatteringly cites--is, well, rooted in the social sciences that he wants to de-fund.

(On this latter point, in part the Senator's report is just another example of Republicans using the banner of fiscal responsibility to attack programs that they happen not to like but whose elimination can have no conceivable impact on fiscal responsibility. The entire social and behavior science budget at NSF ($252 million) amounts to all of 3.6% of the total NSF budget, 0.3% of the civilian R&D budget, and .000006% of the federal budget. Attacking social science is good conservative politics, but it has nothing to do with serious budget policy.)

Moreover, much of Senator Coburn's report details the sorts of random, petty abuses that are simply unavoidable in any complex bureaucracy like NSF (my goodness, an NSF employee was caught watching lots of porn! And another one scheduled a work trip so he could visit his girlfriend!). Yet the report does touch on a problematic aspect of civilian science policy that has managed to escape serious political scrutiny for 60 years, even though it is fundamentally incoherent. In specific, Senator Coburn is concerned that NSF's research is insufficiently "transformative." He cites survey work (more social science!!) showing that most NSF peer reviewers believe that only a small percentage of the proposals they review are "transformative." He then goes on to list fifty or so examples of funded projects ("Are people more or less racially-focused when seeking love on-line in the Obama era?") whose potential "transformativeness" he questions. This approach follows the tradition of Senator William Proxmire's Golden Fleece Awards of the 1970s and 1980s, and it was probably fun to do. But could it be a coincidence that all of the projects he singles out have titles that a lay person can understand, and that many of them are social science projects? Or have Senator Coburn and his staff determined that all of the work that NSF funds in subatomic particle physics, deep mantle geochemistry, and molecular genetics is genuinely "transformative"?

Continue reading "Dan Sarewitz on Senator Coburn's New Report" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog

Three news studies of the benefits of innovation policy have crossed my desk in the past few days. In general I have problems with such studies, and more accurately how they are used, because they often reduce innovation to a pipeline metaphor. The pipeline has federal dollars inserted in one end and -- after some magic occurs inside the pipeline -- from the other emerge the fruits of innovation, such as computer technologies, medicine, green energy and so on.

To understand innovation requires getting a handle on the processes that translate investments into desired outcomes, which inevitably is much more complicated than any pipeline.

The first study is from McKinsey (PDF) and is on the role of the internet in the global economy. The report has some fascinating data on the role of the internet in 13 different countries around the world, but its most important contribution is its assessment of those factors that contribute to economic growth via the internet. Among these are human capital, infrastructure, a favorable business environment and financial capital. Governments have a role to play in each of these areas.

The second study comes from a group called United for Medical Research (PDF) and is focused on evaluating the economic consequences of government spending through the National Institutes of Health. This study is much more a "pipeline" study with a focus on funding to NIH and various correlates of economic consequences with only a bit of hand-waving at mechanisms of innovation.

The third report comes from Batelle (PDF) and is focused on the economic and functional consequences of the Human Genome Project. While the report has much valuable information about technologies, processes and outcomes related to the HGP, it is thin (remarkably so) on the public and private context which enabled such outcomes, lending itself to a "pipeline" interpretation.

It seems to me that the McKinsey report is far more focused on providing information that might be useful in thinking about innovation policies, whereas the UMR and Batelle studies seem aimed at providing simple justifications for more federal funding for R&D. Innovation policies however are far more than money spent on R&D.

Last week, Vice President Joe Biden vowed that the country will lead the global clean energy revolution by harnessing its citizens' entrepreneurial spirit and innovative capacity. Speaking at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Biden emphasized the vital role public-private partnerships have historically played in unleashing transformative innovations, and the critical nature of this collaboration in sparking breakthrough clean energy technologies.

Biden's speech, excerpted below, can be watched in full here.

Now, more than ever, America's future competitiveness depends on our ability to innovate and our capacity to live up to our rich history of technological advancement. This kind of public-private partnership fosters extraordinary innovation, allows brilliant ideas to develop, and gives businesses the tools they need to bring technology to the market.

What we've realized is sometimes it takes a national investment and a national vision to spark private sector investment. The government never does it. But the government can spark it on occasion. And over and over it again it has been that American model of innovation that has allowed us to lead the world in technological advances over the last 150 years. It's part of our nation's DNA. It's embedded in our nation's history.

Whether it was government collaborating with private industry to make rifles that had interchangeable parts during the revolutionary war, or Congress helping Samuel Morris build a transmission facility, the line that he could not afford to build, to demonstrate that his invention worked, proving it would go over long distances and turning it into what ended up being the telecommunications industry we know today. Or President Lincoln paying any private railroad who'd lay 40 miles of track on the transcontinental railroad in $16,000 in government treasury bonds which they would not have done otherwise to carry commerce across America and having now a $380 billion rail industry in America.

Or President Eisenhower investing in what he called beyond the horizon ideas at ARPA in the late 50s creating the internet and so much more. That's America's story. That's the history of the journey of the country.

It's been our story from the beginning.

By Jesse Jenkins and Sara Mansur

Updated 6/6/2011: The first version of this post utilized the EU-wide emissions reduction targets, rather than the more aggressive targets set in place by Germany.

Last week, a commission appointed by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel recommended that the country shut down all of its nuclear plants by 2021 and instead rely on other forms of power for its electricity, including renewable energy. This analysis finds that phasing out nuclear power would make meeting Germany's ambitious 2020 emissions reduction goals for the electricity sector twice as hard, while the country's 2020 renewable energy generation goals would fall 30% short of supplying enough power to displace the electricity currently provided by Germany's nuclear fleet.

Germany has pledged a set of carbon goals for 2020, primarily to reduce its carbon emissions by 40 percent of 1990 levels. To do so, the country has vowed to scale renewable energy to supply 35 percent of electricity demand, and to increase its economy's energy efficiency by 20 percent over 1990 levels.

However, phasing out the nuclear power sector, which currently supplies about one quarter of the country's electricity demand, would make meeting this emissions target roughly twice as difficult.

The graph below illustrates that the country's renewable generation goal falls far short of replacing the power currently supplied by nuclear power: a shortfall of 39 billion kWh. Further, if the country met its goal for renewable generation without any additional policies, it would fall roughly 60 percent short of meeting its combined emissions reduction and nuclear phase-out objectives.

Displacing nuclear while also shutting down enough fossil energy generation to meet the nation's 2020 emissions reduction goals would require renewable energy to supply 60-69% of Germany's energy supply in 2020, a roughly four-fold increase in electricity derived from non-hydro renewables like wind and solar power.

Continue reading "Updated: Nuclear and Fossil: Can Germany Shut Down Both?" »

By Roger Pielke Jr., Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

National Geographic has a pretty remarkable story up on the so-called "stabilization wedges" approach to reducing emissions (thx DM). The article has a number of lengthy quotes from Robert Socolow (co-author with Stephen Pacala on the paper) in which he says that their paper was misunderstood and misused by the advocacy community. Socolow's comments reinforce a number of arguments that I make about the wedges in Chapter 2 of The Climate Fix.

Here are a few choice excerpts from the National Geographic article:

When the torrent of predictions about global warming got too depressing, there were Robert Socolow's "wedges."

The Princeton physics and engineering professor, along with his colleague, ecologist Stephen Pacala, countered the gloom and doom of climate change with a theory that offered hope. If we adopted a series of environmental steps, each taking a chunk out of the anticipated growth in greenhouse gases, we could flatline our emissions, he said. That would at least limit the global temperature rise, he said in a 2004 paper in the journal Science.

The Princeton colleagues even created a game out of it: choose your own strategies, saving a billion tons of emissions each, to compile at least seven "wedges," pie-shaped slices that could be stacked up in a graph to erase the predicted doubling of CO2 by 2050.

It was a mistake, he now says.

"With some help from wedges, the world decided that dealing with global warming wasn't impossible, so it must be easy," Socolow says. "There was a whole lot of simplification, that this is no big deal."

He said his theory was intended to show the progress that could be made if people took steps such as halving our automobile travel, burying carbon emissions, or installing a million windmills. But instead of providing motivation, the wedges theory let people relax in the face of enormous challenges, he now says.

Socolow takes issue with how his work has been misused by advocates for action:

Socolow said he believes that well-intentioned groups misused the wedges theory. His theory called for efficiency, conservation, and energy alternatives that could keep greenhouse gas emissions at roughly today's levels, offsetting the growth of population and energy demands. Global temperatures would rise by 3°C.

"I said hundreds of times the world should be very pleased with itself if the amount of emissions was the same in 50 years as it is today," he said.

But those inspired by the theory took it farther. If Socolow's wedges could stabilize emissions with a 3-degree rise, they said, even bigger wedges could actually bring greenhouse gases back down to a level resulting in only a 2-degree rise. (This is the goal that 140 nations have pledged to try to achieve in the Copenhagen Accord.)

"Our paper was outflanked by the left," Socolow said. But he admits he did not protest enough: "I never aligned myself with the 2-degree statement, but I never said it was too much."

In holding out the prospect of success, adherents stressed the minimal goals, and overestimated what realistically could be achieved.

"The intensity of belief that renewables and conservation would do the job approached religious," Socolow said.

Of course, no one has abused the "wedges" analysis more than Joe Romm who did exactly what Socolow is critical of -- Romm super-sized each one of the wedges, doubled the number needed, and then claimed based on his perversion of the Socolow/Pacala analysis that we have (or soon will have) all the technology needed to stabilize concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 (or even 350) ppm. It is hard to imagine that Socolow's comments can be in reference to anyone other than Romm, who has probably done more to confuse issues of mitigation policy than anyone. Back in 2008 I pointed out Romm's egregious misuse of the wedges analysis to imply that achieving deep emissions cuts would be technologically and economically possible with technologies currently (or soon to be) available. The exchange with Romm was precipitated by a paper with Chris Green and Tom Wigley in which we explained how the IPCC had made a similar error in its analysis (here in PDF).

Socolow's strong rebuke of the misuse of his work is a welcome contribution and, perhaps optimistically, marks a positive step forward in the climate debate.

The United Kingdom's plans for new nuclear plants are still on track, announced UK Energy Secretary Chris Huhne earlier today. An interim report conducted by the UK's nuclear chief inspector found that the country does not need to curb operations of nuclear power stations or plans for new nuclear reactors in the aftermath of the crisis at Fukushima's Daiichi reactors. The country has plans to construct a set of new reactors to maintain electricity supply and cut carbon dioxide emissions as a generation of older power plants is shut down. This decision comes as Germany and Japan rethink their plans for nuclear power in light of the disaster at Fukushima.

By Roger Pielke Jr., Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Yesterday I posted up a short bit from the IEA which asserted that a turn away from nuclear power will make reducing emissions more difficult. Here are some numbers explaining how this works in the case of Japan.

Earlier this week the Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that Japan was no longer seeking to source 50% of its energy needs from nuclear power and terminated plans for 14 new nuclear facilities. What might this decision mean for Japan's ability to meet its current carbon dioxide emissions reduction target of 25% below 1990 levels? Here I use wind as a measuring stick, but solar or other technologies could easily be used to tell the same story.

Here is what the Japanese government said would be needed to reach its earlier 5% reduction target:

• Construct nine new nuclear power plant plants, improve utilized capacity to 80% (from 60%).
• Install 5 million kW of wind power plants (equivalent to approximately 34 units).
• Install solar panels on 5.3 million homes (an increase of 2000% over current levels).
• Increase the share of houses satisfying stringent insulation standards out of total newly built houses from 40% today to 80%.
• Increase the share of next generation vehicle out of total sales of new vehicles from 4% (2005) to 50% (2020).

Replacing 9 nuclear plants (1 GW at 0.8 capacity) with wind would imply in round numbers about 10,000 2.5 MW wind turbines (at 0.3 capacity) (See The Climate Fix for details). Currently, Japan has about 1,700 wind turbines. These 10,000 new ones are on top of the 6,600 already in the assumptions, or an increase of about 10 times current levels of deployment.

And this is just for the 5% reduction target. You'd have to multiply by more than 5 to get to the 25% reduction target.

Japan currently gets 24% of it energy needs from nuclear power. To replace that additional 26% that was supposed to come from nuclear (to get to 50%) implies 78,000 (!) 2.5 MW wind turbines (see TCF, p. 144, Table 4.4). The Japanese Wind Energy Association optimistically foresees 11.1 GW of capacity by 2020, or less than half that would have been needed to reach the 5% reduction target. Abandoning nuclear does not make the emissions reduction targets easier, but far, far more difficult.

I have argued that Japan's 2020 emissions reduction target of a 25% reduction was always far out of reach. I don't think that the phrase "even more impossible" makes much sense, but perhaps Japan's new political context will at least make its emissions reductions commitments "even more obviously impossible." Then again, there is always the appeal of magical solutions.

By Roger Pielke Jr., cross-posted from Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Blog

As I suggested last week, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has settled debate over UK emissions reduction targets in favor of adopting stronger targets far in the future. It seems that he is also interested in continued economic growth.

Meantime, back in the present Cambridge Econometrics reports that the UK has missed it 2010 emissions reduction target, despite the dramatic effects of the economic downturn. The report sees the UK continuing to miss its near-term targets, with the difference between target and performance increasing over time. Environmental groups continue to confuse the effects of a shrinking economic downturn with progress on reducing emissions. Looking ahead, the UK economy is currently positioned to have economic growth or a continued reduction in emissions, but not both. Emissions in 2010 increased sharply.

Cambridge Economietrics explains the basic dynamics at work here:

[T]here is now a firm policy commitment (made by the previous government and now endorsed by the Coalition government) but as yet no firm policies in place ...

Targets without policies. Doesn't sound too promising, does it?

By Jesse Jenkins and Sara Mansur

Updated 5/13/2011 to include construction costs for Japan's proposed 14 nuclear reactors.

On Tuesday, Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan announced that the country would scrap its plans to increase nuclear power's contribution to electricity generation to 50 percent by 2030, in response to the crisis at Fukushima's Daiichi nuclear complex. Replacing nuclear power's sizable role in Japan's energy system with a greater reliance on imported coal or liquefied natural gas (LNG) could increase Japan's CO2 emissions by up to 26 percent relative to current levels while damaging the nation's trade balance, while replacing nuclear with renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, and geothermal energy would require a roughly 50-fold increase in the electricity provided by these sources, as well as considerable replacement costs.

Japan's Nuclear Plans on Hold

Prior to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis, Japan had planned to increase nuclear power's share of national electricity generation to 50% from roughly 30% today. To achieve this increase, Japan had planned to construct fourteen new nuclear power reactors and raise the capacity factor of the country's existing nuclear power plants to 90%, an increase from roughly 72% in 2009 to a level equivalent to the capacity factors maintained by the U.S. nuclear industry. Existing nuclear plants would have their operating life extended wherever it was deemed safe to do so.

In the following scenarios, we consider the challenge of replacing nuclear power's role in Japan's energy system with fossil and renewable energy alternatives. We consider the new generation required to replace the electricity provided by the fourteen nuclear reactors planned by 2030, as well as assume that Japan does not grant license extensions to any existing plants during this period. By 2030, we therefore assume the retirement of thirty-eight existing Japanese reactors built before 1990, including the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi, totaling 28,431 MW or 61% of the nation's current nuclear capacity.

The total nuclear power generation 'lost' in this scenario totals 399 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) in 2030. We have assumed that the country will still raise the capacity factor of the remaining twenty-one reactors still operating by 2030, providing 21,555 MW of capacity. Under this scenario, nuclear power would still provide almost 15% of Japan's projected electricity demand in 2030.

Continue reading "UPDATED ANALYSIS: The Costs of Canceling Japan's Plans for Nuclear Power " »

In a slew of recent events, Bill Gates has continued his vocal support for significantly increasing federal investment in energy research and development. At a climate change meeting this morning in Seattle, Gates said that the government isn't doing nearly enough to invest in energy R&D, and should more than double its current commitment. He singled out the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) for praise, but noted that it's too small and that it's funding was almost cut in recent budget negotiations.

Gates also stressed the difference between the energy and IT sectors, and why federal investment in energy R&D is so critical:

"The decisions you make now are based on some prediction about government policy way out there, decades in the future...Those kinds of things are so risky that there's a tendency to underinvest. When it comes to software and chips, the life cycles are two to three years, you understand who wants to buy them, and it's not subject to all this regulation."

Last week, Gates spoke at the Wired Business Conference in New York, where he noted that the need for radical innovation in energy technologies necessitates a shift in emphasis away from deployment of existing technologies and toward research and early commercialization of innovative ones. Any solution, Gates said, needs to be big, noting that rooftop solar PV will have a smaller impact than utility-scale solar:

"If you are going for cuteness, go after the those things at the home. If you want to solve the energy problem go after the big things in the desert."

Last year Gates, along with other business leaders, created the American Energy Innovation Council to lobby the government to increase federal energy R&D investment to at least $16 billion annually.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog.

The IPCC has just issued a new summary for policy makers for a forthcoming special report on renewable energy that appears (indirectly and obliquely) to finally admit that we just do not have the technology necessary to achieve low targets for the stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (e.g., something like 450 ppm). You can download a copy here in PDF. Here are some key passages.

First the report tallies the current proportion of global energy supply from renewable sources (p. 5, compare my January 2011 estimate which was very similar):

On a global basis, it is estimated that RE accounted for 12.9% of the total 492 Exajoules (EJ)5 of primary energy supply in 2008 (Box SPM.2) (Figure SPM.2). The largest RE contributor was biomass (10.2%), with the majority (roughly 60%) being traditional biomass used in cooking and heating applications in developing countries but with rapidly increasing use of modern biomass as well.6 Hydropower represented 2.3%, whereas other RE sources accounted for 0.4%.

The report discusses its 164 scenarios for the future (p. 18):

More than half of the scenarios show a contribution from RE in excess of a 17% share of primary energy supply in 2030 rising to more than 27% in 2050. The scenarios with the highest RE shares reach approximately 43% in 2030 and 77% in 2050.

If renewable energy provides only 27% of energy supply in 2050 (the IPCC median scenario value), then this would imply that to meet a low stabilization target something like 60% or more of global energy supply would have to be produced by some other carbon-free energy source, such as coal or gas with CCS or nuclear power, neither of which seems to be possible without major technological innovation.

The IPCC does note that there are obstacles -- both social and technological -- that must be overcome, and appears to make some key assumptions about how this might occur (p. 12 -- exact details will have to await the full report, but track records for forecasting technological innovation and social acceptance are not so good):

A variety of technology-specific challenges (in addition to cost) may need to be addressed to enable RE to significantly upscale its contribution to reducing GHG emissions.

Even to reach the scenarios envisioned the report assumes a massive investment in energy technologies, from well over $100 billion per year to $500 billion per year starting yesterday (p. 23):

The four illustrative scenarios analyzed in detail in this Special Report estimate global cumulative RE investments (in the power generation sector only) ranging from USD2005 1,360 to 5,100 billion for the decade 2011 to 2020, and from USD2005 1,490 to 7,180 billion for the decade 2021 to 2030.

The bottom line is that the IPCC has provided a rather sobering outlook for the deployment of renewable technologies. Perhaps most surprising of all is that despite the sobering outlook, the word "innovation" appears only once and the notion of "research" into energy technologies appears only twice. The IPCC continues to show blinders when it comes to energy technology innovation (see, e.g., PDF).

By Jesse Jenkins and Sara Mansur

Kevin Drum's recent post on the low price elasticity of demand for oil has reignited an old debate over gas taxes and energy innovation.

Drum draws our attention to some "eye popping" figures for price elasticity of demand for oil from the IMF. According to Drum, these elasticities mean that, in the short term, a 50 percent increase in price leads to a 1.2 percent decrease in consumption. In the long term, it leads to a 4.7 percent decrease.

Conservative blogger Jim Manzi rightly points out that, with elasticities as low as these, a gas tax at any politically realistic level is not going to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

Specifically, to the extent that we continue to progress in making non-fossil-fuels technology cheaper and more effective for an ever wider array of applications, we can accelerate the ongoing de-carbonization of our economy. The idea of economists to use artificial scarcity pricing to do this is aggressively marketed in blogs, magazines and TV shows, but is extremely unlikely to work, because the current price elasticity of oil is so low. The work of engineers and physical scientists, however, is likely to be determinative.

Continue reading "Weighing in on the Gas Tax Debate" »

The Heritage Foundation recently released a report proposing a near dismantling of the Department of Energy's research budgets in the name of budget deficit reduction.

In a new report, the Breakthrough Institute, ITIF, and Americans for Energy Leadership pick apart the Heritage proposal and demonstrate that it displays a fundamental lack of understanding of technological innovation and therefore serves as a poor guide to America's energy, economic, and fiscal policy.

In particular, there are three major misconceptions in the Heritage proposal:

1. The proposal fails to meaningfully reduce the deficit now or in the future.

Even though the proposal advocates cutting DOE research budgets in the name of deficit reduction, the Department of Energy represents a tiny portion of the federal budget and contributes little to the deficit and national debt. Moreover, the proposal fails to distinguish between government spending and productive public investment in science and technology, which drives innovation and economic growth.

2. Heritage fails to understand where technological innovations come from.

Heritage wrongly assumes that "when it comes to energy policy, the free market works" and is best suited to develop new technologies. In fact, the energy sector is anything but free, and has always been characterized by extensive regulations and subsidies, natural monopolies, and other divergences from the free-market ideal held by Heritage. Moreover, Heritage ignores the long history of public support for innovation and assumes the private sector will invest sufficiently in energy innovation. For decades, the energy sector has consistently underinvested in R&D, and market failures plague the energy innovation process at each stage of development, from lab to market launch. There is a broad expert consensus that public investment and public-private partnerships are essential to moving new, innovative technologies into the marketplace.

3. The proposal ignores the immediacy and enormity of U.S. energy challenges.

While Heritage pays lip service to energy security, its recommendations would undermine many of the best efforts underway to achieve it. The Department of Defense has recognized the critical role that innovative clean energy technologies will play in enhancing their strategic and tactical abilities, as well as the nation's energy security. DOD also views the DOE as a strategic partner in its effort to reduce its own vulnerability from relying on fossil fuels. If Heritage had it their way, DOD would lose a key partner in the long-term effort for greater force effectiveness and security through better energy management.

The full report can be downloaded here

A point by point rebuttal to the Heritage proposal, released last week by BTI, ITIF, and AEL, can be viewed and downloaded here.

See also:

Know Your Heritage: The Heritage Foundation's Incoherent Attack On Public Investment in Energy Innovation