Bavaria is expected to trade out their significant nuclear electricity portfolio for fossil generation in the coming decade, according to new analysis from Der Spiegel. While the contribution of non-hydro renewables is anticipated to increase from 10 to 36 percent of generating capacity, the largest increase comes from natural gas, which will increase its portfolio share from 10 to 46 percent, far more than any other single fuel. Spurred by recent fears following the Fukushima crisis in Japan, Bavaria is just the latest to abandon its nuclear investments in favor of fossil fuels, trading unlikely radiation risks for certain emissions and pollution increases from natural gas combustion.

Continue reading "Bavaria to Swap Nuclear for Fossil Energy" »

The "next steps" to restart climate progress should revolve around emissions strategies that don't have to be centrally motivated by climate concerns, according to a recent article in The Economist. The approach resonates strongly with the recommendations of this summer's "Climate Pragmatism," a report authored by a collection of 14 international scholars and analysts, including Breakthrough's Jenkins, Nordhaus, and Shellenberger. From the article:

The "going right" strategy also benefits from the fact that it's possible to address climate change without making it primarily or even overtly about climate change. There are a lot of policies and developments afoot that have climate benefits without being framed as such. The mercury regulation is one. The EPA's action focuses on the impacts to human health, but one result of the regulation will be to raise the costs of burning coal, a major climate culprit. Another example comes from Texas, the nation's leading wind-power state and not a particular friend of the environment. Last week in Fort Worth, I met a wind executive from Amarillo. I asked whether he supports wind for the environmental benefits or for strictly business reasons. Business, he said.

Continue reading "The Economist Embraces Climate Pragmatism as "Next Steps" for Climate" »

The following was originally submitted to the National Journal discussion "Is America Losing the Clean Energy Race?"

The global market for clean energy products grew to $243 billion in 2010, a year in which China and Germany both captured a greater share of this global investment than the United States. That has led many (myself included) to worry about the erosion of US competitiveness in a set of clean energy technology products--from solar and wind to nuclear and advanced batteries--originally invented in America.

Yet this growing market for clean tech is almost entirely dependent upon public subsidy and policy support. To be blunt: today's clean energy markets are artificial, and without perpetual policy support, conventional clean energy products could not compete in most global energy markets.

Across the globe, cash-strapped governments and recession-hit publics are pulling back clean energy subsidies, revealing the ephemeral nature of today's clean tech markets. In the last year, Spain, Italy, and the United Kingdom have all slashed feed-in tariffs for solar and certain other clean energy technologies. In America, expiring tax credits and fading stimulus investments are set to send federal clean tech expenditures plunging 75 percent from 2009 to 2014, according to our research.

There are a host of reasons why targeted policies and smart public investments in emerging clean tech sectors are justified. But clean tech business leaders and policymakers alike must be crystal clear: the true economic rewards in clean energy industries will not come from producing technology for subsidy-created markets that vacillate wildly with the public mood and the business cycle.

Without substantial innovation to improve the performance and reduce the cost of clean energy technologies, the promise that the clean energy sector might become economically viable, much less a cornerstone of American economic revival, will never be realized. The real clean energy race is thus to invent, commercialize, progressively improve, and mass-produce cheap and reliable clean energy technologies that can compete on cost not just with international competitors but also with fossil fuels.

In short, the race is to make clean energy cheap and subsidy-independent.

Continue reading "A Clean Energy Comeback Strategy" »

Stagnant and out-dated policy debates in Washington are the reason that advanced, high-tech products are mostly manufactured outside of the United States, according to a new paper jointly issued by two think tanks. The report, from the Breakthrough Institute and leading moderate think tank Third Way, argues that American manufacturing could experience a resurgence with a focus on complicated and technology-intensive manufacturing products.

"The Kindle has revolutionized how people read, but even though it was born in Silicon Valley, Amazon makes it in Taiwan," said Director of Third Way's Economic Program and the report's co-author, Ryan McConaghy. "When looking for the precision needed to build the e-reader, Amazon had to look abroad for experienced manufacturers because the technology was no longer available here. It's a huge missed opportunity."

"Manufacturing Growth: Advanced Manufacturing and the Future of the American Economy," released today, argues that the United States needs to radically rethink its approach to manufacturing to incentivize and enhance next generation "advanced manufacturing" and worker training.

Continue reading "Manufacturing Growth: Advanced Manufacturing and the Future of the American Economy" »

With the backdrop of solar company Solyndra's bankruptcy, the media has been running an endless stream of stories and op-eds seeking to discredit government investment in technology. CNNMoney, in an encouraging contrast, today published a blog post called "7 great government-backed inventions." From their story:

It's under fire for backing now-bankrupt Solyndra, but the government has a long history of investing in cutting edge technology. Without it, many products we can't live without may not have been developed, such as...

The article goes on to catalogue the history of government investment in the microchip, the Internet, GPS, fire-resistant clothing, aerodynamic commercial trucks, the bar code, and the acceleramator technology behind the iPhone, the Nintendo Wii, vehicle air bags, and other consumer products. For more on the history of government investment in technology, readers should check out Breakthrough's report "Where Good Technologies Come From," which documents the development of railroads, highways, jet turbine technology, cell phones, biotech, solar power, and others game-changing technologies.

Continue reading "CNN: Government to Thank for Technologies We Can't Live Without" »

Yale 360 published an interview this week with Mark Lynas, environmental journalist and author of The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans, which was released this past summer. Breakthrough's book review of The God Species is available here.

Lynas has become well known for his about-face on certain environmental issues like nuclear power, genetically modified agriculture, and geoengineering. In the interview, Lynas discusses his conversion, and why he feels traditional environmental opposition to these technologies is irrational and dangerous.

Continue reading "Mark Lynas Interviewed in Yale 360" »

Below is a collection of the writing by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, founders of the Breakthrough Institute.

Continue reading "Writings By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger" »

By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

If Occupy Wall Street protesters have struggled to articulate their demands beyond taxing the rich, part of their challenge is the changed nature of the economy. In a new article for The Breakthrough Journal, NYU sociologist Dalton Conley notes that while the 1929 stock market crash reduced inequality by wiping out fortunes, the 2008 crash provoked measures that sustained it. "But greater equality after the crash came at a very high price: the Great Depression. So while the response to the 2008 crisis sustained the top-heavy structure of the American economy, it also averted the free fall that threw tens of millions of Americans into unemployment and breadlines throughout the 1930s."

Moreover, even as the gap between the "99%" and the richest one percent has grown, "the interests of workers are increasingly yoked to those of their bosses," Conley notes. "Half of Americans today have direct or indirect investments in the stock market, largely thanks to the shift to defined contribution pension plans and the ease of Internet investing... So if the rest of us want to save our 401ks, we have to save the status quo for the robber barons of Wall Street in the process."

Couldn't the problem have been solved by nationalizing the banks and redistributing wealth? Such a strategy "might have distributed the costs and benefits of the bailouts more fairly," writes Conley, and "higher income taxes on the rich, along with more strongly redistributive social programs might succeed in mitigating some degree of inequality. But there are also powerful socioeconomic forces driving inequality." Conley points to growing global demand for elite knowledge workers (such as by the financial sector) and the widening skills gap.

Continue reading "Occupy Wall Street and the New Inequality" »

Register for Energy Innovation 2011 and View Full Conference Agenda

At Energy Innovation 2010, clean energy advocates, policy experts, and public officials moved the clean energy policy debate in a new direction: an innovation strategy is required to develop the transformative technologies we need to address climate change, achieve energy independence and reap potentially vast economic benefits.

This debate continues amid ever more stark economic realities. Many continue to advocate a carbon pricing or cap-and-trade regime, tough mandates, and traditional regulations and standards even though most of these offer little chance of becoming law and would not likely be effective if enacted on their own. Others remain philosophically opposed to the government's role in spurring innovation even though it is clear that the costs and risks of developing these breakthroughs are simply too high for private companies to take on by themselves. Even if there was a strong consensus for an innovation-based strategy, we would have to ask the question of how to proceed in a cost-effective and efficient way.

As a result, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute are again bringing together some of country's foremost thinkers, scientists and innovators to look at clean energy innovation strategies in a time of fiscal austerity.

Energy Innovation 2011 is sponsored by ITIF, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, Clean Air Task Force, Clean Energy Group, World Resources Institute, the New England Clean Energy Council, and the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes.

Continue reading "Energy Innovation 2011" »

The times, they are a'changing.

In August of 2010, the Economist published a special issue on the rise of the industrial state following the Crash of 2008. The newspaper warned against "intervening in individual industries and companies" and chastised the "Leviathan" of industrial policy.

How things can change in a year. In last week's issue, the Economist joined flocks of worried global citizens in beseeching governments to intervene and avert economic catastrophe. "Until politicians actually do something about the world economy...BE AFRAID" was the cover caption.

Continue reading "The Economist: Then and Now" »

By Michael Shellenberger

One year ago, scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, Breakthrough Institute, and Brookings Institution called on Congress to reform energy subsidies so they specifically fund innovation and not simply greater production of old technologies. "The death of cap and trade doesn't have to mean the death of climate policy," wrote David Leonhardt in The New York Times. "The alternative revolves around much more, and much better organized, financing for clean energy research. It's an idea with a growing list of supporters, a list that even includes conservatives -- most of whom opposed cap and trade."

Since then, the list of supporters for post-partisan energy innovation has grown further. Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers endorsed a step-wise increase in energy R&D funding, telling Time magazine, "If we can't get a consensus on carbon policy, let's put the money into research and let's drive down the cost of solar and wind and make them competitive. Think about how much it would change the debate if solar and wind were as cheap as coal?" Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney put out a policy paper stating that government has a role to play in innovation, and wrote that "history shows that the United States has moved forward in astonishing ways thanks to national investment in basic research and advanced technology."

In late September, Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) gave a speech warning of the high cost of imported oil, and proposed using funds from expanded domestic energy production for innovation. Citing research by the Breakthrough Institute, Sen. Murkowsi said, "It's certainly in our interest to promote new technologies that can lower the cost of energy. But, clearly, it's against our interest to focus on sources of energy that will depend on continuous, long-term subsidization."

Now, Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has embraced a core idea in Post-Partisan Power: shift today's subsidies away from production and toward innovation. "I would try to swap the money we're spending on permanent subsidies for energy and invest it instead in research," Alexander told Grist.org's Amanda Little. "Second, I'd like to focus these funds on the most promising areas of clean energy. I've devised a plan for seven mini Manhattan Projects for energy independence: solar, batteries, green building, capturing carbon, fusion, making fuels from crops we don't eat, and finding better ways to deal with nuclear fuel."

Sen. Alexander also points to the promise of small modular nuclear reactors, a technology singled out in Post-Partisan Power for their safety and their potential to be much cheaper than today's large plants, as well as solar panels and electric cars. And once again Sen. Alexander stresses that any effort to move to clean energy by increasing the price of fossil fuels is dead. "Making gas more expensive would be a terrible way to introduce electric cars to the country," he said.

With sad news this week of the passing of Apple's Steve Jobs, we look back at the history of public-private partnership behind so many of the platform innovations later brought to market in groudbreaking and unexpected ways by the pioneering CEO. He will be missed.

Following yesterday's announcement of the new iPhone 4S, tech bloggers this morning have been abuzz with the realization that the federal government played a strong role in the new smart phone's innovations. Siri, Apple's new voice-recognition software, is a project straight out of DARPA, the Defense Department's accomplished research agency. The new intelligent programming is just the latest addition to iPhone's many government-backed technology platforms.

Wired blogger Steven Levy tweeted about DOD's hand in Siri's development during the announcement yesterday, news that was quickly picked up by both the Wired national security blog and Adam Clarke Estes of the Atlantic's technology page. As Estes wrote,

Originally a part of the Personal Assistant that Learns (PAL) program from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Siri started out as SRI International. The technology appealed to the DARPA for making everyday tasks more efficient as much as it did for combat tasks.

Continue reading "The iPhone and the Invisible Hand of Government" »

By Alex Trembath and Jesse Jenkins

A new report on energy rebound published by the European Commission surveys the wide range of evidence and academic literature and concludes that rebound effects can and do limit the lasting reductions in energy use achievable by energy efficiency measures and policies. Efficiency, the report finds, reduces the implicit price of energy services, and triggers a rebound in demand that can erode a substantial portion of expected energy savings. By examining case studies and empirical data, the report determines:

The rebound effect can limit the environmental improvements possible through SCP [sustainable consumption and production] and sustainable products policies and technologies and, in particular, the goal of decoupling resource consumption from economic growth.

For an introductory FAQ on rebound effects, see here.

Continue reading "European Commission Publishes Report Warning Policymakers to Attend to Rebound Effects " »