The last year was an exciting one for all of us at Breakthrough Institute. Despite rising anti-government sentiment, 2011 saw everyone from President Obama to Fareed Zakaria to George Will, Lisa Murkowski, and Mitt Romney championing government investments in innovation as critical to America's future.

We launched Breakthrough Journal and our first e-book, Love Your Monsters, to critical acclaim. And we issued ground-breaking reports on everything from efficiency rebound to the end of the war on terror to the role of government in creating the shale gas boom.

This was the year our work expanded from modernizing environmentalism to modernizing liberalism. Founded in 2003 and first funded in 2007, Breakthrough today has 11 full-time staff, 25 Senior Fellows, 41 Breakthrough Generation Fellows, and seven foundation funders.

This message describes the 10 big breakthrough moments of 2011 and, at the end, asks for your ideas.

Continue reading "Top Ten Breakthrough Moments of 2011" »

The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new (and long-overdue) regulations today to rein in mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants. The new mercury rules, designed to save lives and protect children from the potent neurotoxin, are likely to trigger the closure of many of America's oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants over the next decade.

As the NYTimes reports:

If and when the new rule takes effect, it will be the first time the federal government has enforced limits on mercury, arsenic, acid gases and other poisonous and carcinogenic chemicals emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.

Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said that the regulations, which have taken more than 20 years to formulate, will save thousands of lives and return financial benefits many times their estimated $11 billion annual cost. ...

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, harming the nervous systems of fetuses and young children and causing lifelong developmental problems. Other pollutants covered by the new rule, including dioxin, can cause cancer, premature death, heart disease, and asthma.

Power plants generally will have up to four years to comply, although waivers can be granted in individual cases to ensure that the lights stay on. The EPA estimates that utilities will be forced to retire plants that currently provide less than one-half of 1 percent of the nation's total generating capacity.

In this sense, the EPA's new pollution rules appear to be another example of the ongoing success of "oblique" strategies to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. While the new rules may only force the closure of 0.5 percent of the nation's electricity generating fleet, those plants will be among the least efficient and most carbon-intensive power plants in the nation. The coal-fired power plants most likely to be retired in the face of new pollution regulations emit at least twice as much CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity as the national average.

This is a small step forward on climate, but a real one, strongly justified on public health grounds alone, even before any climate benefits are considered. The new rules will eliminate "up to 17,000 premature deaths" per year, along with thousands of heart attacks, asthma attacks and emergency room visits, according to EPA estimates.

Continue reading "Climate Pragmatism in Action: New Mercury Regulations To Trigger Less Coal Use" »

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr. Originally published at his blog.

The dim bulb saga continues. Congress in its wisdom, has decided to try to score some political points by revisiting an issue that was largely dormant in a political sense and largely resolved in a policy sense. That issue is of course light bulb standards. In the Omnibus Budget bill, which has nothing to do with light bulbs, a rider has been attached to overturn the 2007 efficiency standards signed into law by the Bush Administration.

What does the lighting industry say about this turnabout?

The lighting industry has been gearing up since 2007 -- when the standards were originally enacted -- to make light bulbs that meet the requirements.

All five of the major light bulb manufacturers are already selling new incandescent bulbs that give off the same amount of light as a traditional 100-watt bulb using about 30 percent less energy. And while they are not planning to pull those bulbs from the shelves if the controversial language is enacted, they are faced with numerous questions moving forward.

"Eliminating funding for light bulb efficiency standards is especially poor policy as it would leave the policy in place but make it impossible to enforce, undercutting domestic manufacturers who have invested millions of dollars in U.S. plants to make new incandescent bulbs that meet the standards," a group of dozens of lighting manufacturers, efficiency groups and environmentalists said in a letter yesterday to senators.

Continue reading "Politics vs. Innovation" »

The technological revolution allowing for the cheap extraction of natural gas from shale occurred thanks to more than three decades of government subsidies for research, demonstration, and production, a new Breakthrough Institute investigation finds.

Both directly and indirectly, the government was behind the critical moments and tools in the shale gas revolution - massive hydraulic fracking (MHF), 3-D mapping, horizontal drilling, and horizontal wells.

"I'm conservative as hell," Dan Steward, the former Mitchell Energy geologist whose company pioneered shale gas in Texas, told us. But when asked about the role of government, Steward told us, "They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can't give them enough credit for that. [The Department of Energy] started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement."

Steward said the government directly or indirectly supported Mitchell energy every step of the way. "[The government] helped us to evaluate how much gas was there and evaluate its critical properties," he explained. "They helped us with our first horizontal well. They helped us with pressure build-ups. And we worked with them on crack mapping."

For more expert analysis on the development of shale gas extraction technologies, see our interview with Penn State's Terry Engelder.

While Jimmy Carter is often pointed to as the President who initiated the energy push in response to the oil crises of the early seventies, it was Republican President Gerald Ford who began a concerted federal effort to seek "unconventional" natural gas in response to shortages. "The DOE's [1976] Eastern Gas Shales Project [in the Appalachia basin] determined there was a hell of a lot of gas in shales," explained Steward. "Mitchell was interested in Barnett [shale] and his geophysicist said, 'It looks similar to the Devonian [shale], and the government's already done all this work on the Devonian.'"

"Mitchell raided the EGSP [Eastern Gas Shales Project] folks for help," Penn State geologist Terry Engelder told us, "and EGSP support came from that 10-fold ramp up of DOE" in the mid-seventies.

Continue reading "New Investigation Finds Decades of Government Funding Behind Shale Revolution" »

The shale gas revolution, which has been the primary source of increased natural gas production since 2000, [1] is the result of technological breakthroughs more than three decades in the making. All of the key technologies -- massive hydraulic fracking, horizontal wells, and advanced earth imaging -- were developed by government scientists and by government agencies working with and sometimes funding private entrepreneurs.

Presidents Ford and Carter both prioritized gas exploration in the face of the 1970s energy crises. While there was a general awareness that large shale fields like the Devonian field in New England and the Texas Barnett Shale had ample reserves of natural gas, nobody -- not government agencies and not private industry -- had either the needed imaging tools nor cheap ways to extract it. [2]

Click here to view our Shale Gas Timeline.

In a major effort begun in 1976, the Morgantown Energy Research Center (MERC), a lab within the Bureau of Mines, launched the Eastern Gas Shales Project. The Project mapped and tested core samples from unconventional gas deposits. MERC contracted with dozens of universities and private companies to demonstrate gas recovery from shale formations and other unconventional gas reserves. Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, Sandia, and other national labs contributed by modeling, monitoring, and evaluating the MERC-contracted demonstration projects. In 1976, two MERC engineers - Joseph Pasini III and William K. Overby, Jr. - patented an early directional drilling technique that would unlock substantial future natural gas recovery. [3]

Continue reading "History of the Shale Gas Revolution" »

Mitchell Energy's first horizontal well was subsidized by the federal government, according to former geologist and Vice President for Mitchell. "They did a hell of a lot of work," said Steward, "and I can't give them enough credit for that. DOE started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement."

The federal government's work on shale gas began in the 1970s. As Steward recalls, "The DOE's [1976] Eastern Gas Shales Project [in the Appalachia basin] determined there was a hell of a lot of gas in shales. It was the biggest accumulation of data and knowledge to date." From there, Mitchell and his team experimented to find the best and most economical way to fracture the Barnett Shale. Variations of fracking techniques through the 1980s led George Mitchell to bring the Department of Energy and the Gas Research Institute in in 1991. "By the early 1990s," said Steward, "we had a good position, acceptable but lacking knowledge base, and then Mitchell said, 'Okay, I'm open to bringing in DOE and GRI' in 1991."

Mitchell Energy's blockbuster contribution to the modern natural gas boom is not discredited by a partnership with federal agencies. Steward is the first to point out the pivotal long-term role the government must play in technological innovation: "Government has to be looking down the road. We really cannot wait to develop those other energies. Industry doesn't look as far down the road as the government should."

For more, see the Breakthrough Institute's "History of the Shale Gas Revolution" and "A boom in shale gas? Credit the feds" by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in the Washington Post.

The Breakthrough Institute: How would you describe the government's role in the shale gas revolution?

Dan Steward: In the seventies we started looking at running out of gas, and that's when the DOE started looking for more.

The DOE's [1976] Eastern Gas Shales Project [in the Appalachia basin] determined there was a hell of a lot of gas in shales. It was the biggest accumulation of data and knowledge to date. It set the stage for people to have the basic background and caused people to start asking questions, and that's always important.

They did a hell of a lot of work, and I can't give them enough credit for that. DOE started it, and other people took the ball and ran with it. You cannot diminish DOE's involvement.

BTI: Did Reagan cut the R&D money for unconventional gas research?

I know I'm conservative as hell, but the truth is that Reagan did a world of good for the gas business. When Carter was in, he put a moratorium on gas fired electrical plants. He was worried we were running out of gas. But with the moratorium on new plants the demand for developing more gas started going away. That is no fault of anybody, and I'm not throwing stones, I'm just telling you what happened. When Reagan came back, Reagan said we need those plants. This is where Mitchell came in. Mitchell felt like there was a lot of gas, and it wasn't until he could get the Barnett [shale gas] work that he felt he could prove he get it.

BTI: What was Mitchell doing?

DS: Mitchell got involved in the Cotton Valley limestone looking for gas, but it was tight rock, and George said, "I want to frack it." But he had a hard time to get his people to go along.

Mitchell was interested in Barnett and his geophysicist said, "It looks similar to the Devonian, and the government's already done all this work on the Devonian."

BTI: What help did you get from the government?

DS: In the 1990s they helped us to evaluate how much gas was there, and evaluate the critical properties as compared to Devoninan shale of Appalachia basin. They helped us with our first horizontal well. They helped us with pressure build-ups. And we worked with them on crack mapping. In 1999 we started working with GTI (formerly GRI) on re-fracks of shale wells.

Continue reading "Interview with Dan Steward, Former Mitchell Energy Vice President" »

By Matthew Stepp, Clean Energy Policy Analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and 2010 Breakthrough Generation Fellow." Originally published at the ITIF Blog.

The FY2012 Omnibus Appropriations bill, passed through the House and Senate conference committee last week, provides a small 2.5 percent increase in DOE energy innovation investment-related Offices and programs compared to FY2011. The budget includes key investments for new Energy Innovation Hubs, next-generation small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) RD&D and licensing programs, as well as a boost in funding for ARPA-E. Compared to the roughly $800 million cut to energy innovation investments in FY2011 and the additional cuts sought in the House version of the appropriations bill, the FY2012 budget provides renewed, albeit modest, government support for developing affordable and viable clean energy technologies.

To be clear, the 2012 federal budget still falls short of FY2010's peak in energy innovation investments made through the Stimulus and represents only 72 percent of what the President requested for next year. It's vital that more work is done to increase public investments in clean energy innovation, as the government must play an energetic role in supporting the development of next-generation technologies. However, the FY2012 budget does take steps to stabilize, and in some cases boost, high-impact clean energy investments (Figure 1, below). Below are a few of the highlights:

Continue reading "2012 Federal Budget Halts Further Cuts to Energy Innovation" »

Amidst an emerging consensus among economic and innovation experts that the government must do more to support a robust advanced manufacturing sector, the Obama administration announced on Monday that it is creating a new cabinet-level Office of Manufacturing Policy to provide greater direction for federal efforts to boost manufacturing.

The new office will be co-chaired by U.S. Secretary of Commerce John Bryson and National Economic Council director Gene Sperling, giving the position and the manufacturing issue cabinet level attention for the first time.

In the past two years, numerous reports by think tanks, academics and industry groups have documented the precarious state of U.S. manufacturing and have urged the government to do more to secure U.S. manufacturing competitiveness.

In March of this year, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) made the case for a "National Manufacturing Strategy," showing that in the last 10 years output actually declined absolutely in 15 of 19 manufacturing sectors tracked by the federal government. Another ITIF report finds that Germany invests 20 times more as a percentage of GDP than the United States in manufacturing technology and innovation, and Japan 40 times more. Both countries' share of global manufacturing output is stable or growing, while the United States' share has declined. They argue that a comprehensive U.S. manufacturing strategy should focus on the "4 T's": taxes, trade, technology, and talent.

In November, the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way released a report, "Manufacturing Growth: Advanced Manufacturing and the Future of the American Economy," which found that manufacturing is important not just for jobs on the factory floor. Indeed, with advanced automation becoming an increasing feature of high-tech manufacturing, fewer factory jobs are to be expected. Nevertheless, a robust manufacturing sector is core to a healthy economy, because it is central to technological innovation, creates many jobs in manufacturing supply chains and regional communities throughout the country, and is key to closing the nation's large and persistent trade deficit.

Just this week, the Council on Competitiveness, a group of company CEOs, university Presidents, and labor leaders, released a report on U.S. manufacturing competitiveness, citing many of manufacturing's same contributions to national economic vitality. In particular, the study dismantles the myth, highlighted in prior work, that manufacturing can be separated from design and innovation:

"Conventional wisdom emerged that as long as high-value added work--e.g. engineering and design--remained in the United States...the economy would grow and large-scale production could be left to its own devices.

This model is not sustainable...without strong public and private support for the complete life-cycle innovation and production process, the United States cannot maximize the return on its innovation investments--a return measured in jobs, growth and tax revenue."

Fortunately, the U.S. government is finally starting to pay attention. The creation of an Office of Manufacturing Policy is a positive step forward and builds on earlier efforts in the Obama Administration to make advanced manufacturing more of a national priority. Last June, the Administration announced that it would invest $500 million in a new Advanced Manufacturing Partnership among industry, academia and government, which is focused in part on developing next-generation manufacturing technologies that improve productivity and enhance manufacturing competitiveness. After a decade in which the U.S. manufacturing sector lost 5.5 million jobs and as foreign competitors increase their investments in advanced materials and manufacturing technology, such efforts are long overdue.

By Mark Caine, Research Officer at the London School of Economics, Co-ordinator for the Hartwell Group, and 2010 Breakthrough Generation Fellow

Ideas Whose Times Have Come

Something profound is happening in the world of energy and climate policy.

In the wake of another tepid COP conference that, once again, failed to put the world even "on a path to solve the climate problem", previously heterodox ideas are entering mainstream thinking.

From the inadequacy of the Kyoto protocol and the immediate imperative for adaptation to an innovation-centric climate policy, no-regrets action on non-CO2 forcers, and energy access for all: a set of pragmatic ideas that the Breakthrough Institute, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr., the authors of The Hartwell Paper, and others have advocated for years -- often to an onslaught of cynical opposition -- are now being promoted as front-line strategies to manage our complex set of energy and climate challenges.

Take the Kyoto protocol, which despite its well-documented structural flaws has been treated for years as the only game in town--the plan A for which "there really is no plan B". Now, realizing that the modest agreement reached at Durban is little more than a face-saving maneuver that means, at best, an eight year punt on universally binding emissions reductions, commentators are beginning to sing a different tune.

"Kyoto was built to fail," reports left-of-center UK paper The Guardian. The process has faltered, writes John Broder in the New York Times, because it taken on "too great a task." Political analyst Andrew Charlton reports from down under that there is, in fact, a plan B, consisting primarily of policy prescriptions that will sound remarkably familiar to anyone who has read Fast, Clean, and Cheap, The Hartwell Paper, The Climate Fix, or a growing body of books and academic articles advocating innovation-centric energy policies combined with robust adaptation measures and a commitment to universal energy access.

Perhaps more than any, this last issue has sailed from the margins to the mainstream. A key tenet of the 2010 Hartwell Paper, the imperative to empower the world's poor through the provision of universal energy access -- and bring energy poverty to the center of energy and climate debates -- has become a cause celebre at the UN Foundation. Did you know that 2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All? Finally, something everyone from Ban-Ki Moon to nu metal band Linkin Park can agree on!

In all seriousness though, the global community's newfound support for universal energy access is a heartening development--not least for the 1.3 billion people lacking electricity and the 2.7 billion people burning dung and sticks to cook and heat their homes. To be sure, the emissions implications of empowering these people using available technology remain inconclusive: the IEA's rosy estimate of a .7% increase in global CO2 emissions defines 'access' for rural denizens at a paltry 250 kWh/year, 1/55th of the US average and 1/32nd that of ultra-efficient Japan (World Bank data). Yet any steps to bring modern energy to the energy-poor are justifiable in their own right on basic principles of equity, not to mention their contingent benefits for public health, education, economic opportunity, and enhanced resilience to future climate impacts.

Post-"Post-pollution"

In his New York Times review of the shifting dynamics in the energy and climate debate, Andrew Revkin cites both Roger Pielke Jr. and the authors of The Hartwell Paper, crediting them for helping spread this "post-pollution" emphasis on climate resilience, energy modernization, and strategic public and private investment in clean energy innovation. Revkin is nearly alone amongst journalists in tracing back the roots of these approaches, but a frequent lack of attribution is predictable. Indeed, the broad, uncoordinated adoption of these "post-pollution" framings and policy approaches may have been inevitable, a reflection less of their progenitors than their sensibility.

As these framings and policy ideas become more widely accepted, the challenge for those of us who have long advocated these positions, including the Hartwell Group network which I work to coordinate, will begin to shift. As once-heterodox problem definitions and policy approaches from the Breakthrough Institute, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the Hartwell Group, and others enter mainstream discussion, what can we offer going forward?

Arguably, the most important thing we must do now is deliver top-quality research and analysis on the hard questions of innovation that are not yet being addressed in most climate policy discussions. Though many have accepted rapid innovation as a necessity, few have actually opened up the "black box" of innovation to understand what specific kinds of innovation we need, how to fund and scale them, and how to overcome persistent challenges such as rent-seeking behavior, energy efficiency rebound and backfire, and the "valleys of death" that plague the innovation and commercialization process. Understanding the need for innovation is not the same as knowing how best to do it.

The Breakthrough Institute has already taken up this effort, backing up its long-standing support for innovation as an energy and climate solution with detailed analysis of the mechanics of how innovation works and, by extension, how to spark, accelerate, direct, fund, and scale it. And the Hartwell Group is working to coordinate a network of international scholars and analysts to further develop key recommendations for actionable and pragmatic climate solutions.

This work alone won't solve the myriad complex, interconnected energy and climate challenges that face us. But it will help lay the foundation for a safer, more prosperous, and more equitable future--a future in which the essential functioning of the earth system is preserved and all people have access to safe, reliable energy and protection from the vagaries of extreme weather, whatever its cause.

In case you missed it, the Council on Foreign Relations just listed the Breakthrough Institute report, "Taking on the Three Deficits: An Investment Guide for American Renewal," as a "must read" report in their round up of "the best online analyses and inquiries on foreign policy."

Written with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, the report shows that the United States faces not one but three interrelated deficits challenges. As the report notes:

"An oftentimes myopic focus on the budget deficit has obscured the fact that America actually faces three deficits--the budget deficit, the trade deficit, and the investment deficit--that, if left unchecked, could total over $41 trillion in the next 10 years. Reducing all three deficits, not just the budget deficit, is critical to future economic prosperity."

The only way to reduce the three deficits, we argue, is to increase productive public investments in innovation, productivity, and competitiveness, while making targeted cuts to areas of consumptive government spending.

More economic experts are embracing the idea that the only way to both climb out of our economic doldrums and close the budget deficit, is through growth-enhancing public investments.

In last week's Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria argues that federal investment is central to long-term economic growth. Yet over the last two decades America has failed to make long-term investments to sustain economic prosperity. In "Taking on the Three Deficits," we estimate that America's "investment deficit" now totals $2.5 trillion and may grow to $5 trillion by 2020. "If we want the next generation of growth," Zakaria writes, "we need a similarly serious strategy of investment."

You can read the full "Taking on the Three Deficits" report here.

With the latest round of international climate negotiations coming to an anticlimactic close in Durban, South Africa, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's chief advisor Andrew Charlton offers a pragmatic "Plan B" for tackling the challenges of climate change and energy access. Writing for the Canberra Times, Charlton promotes an agenda centered on technological innovation and the expansion of human welfare.

Our goal should be to create a world with abundant, clean and cheap energy for all. This is an objective that reconciles progress and planet. This is a challenge that can bring rich and poor countries together in a common goal. If we are to address climate change, we must turn to humanity's familiar benefactor - technological innovation - and apply it to developing better clean energy.

This framework resonates strongly with the policy platform put forward by the Breakthrough Institute and other members of the Hartwell Group in our recent report "Climate Pragmatism."

Continue reading "Climate Pragmatism in Australia" »

By Matthew Stepp. This post was originally published at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Blog.

Robert Solow, Nobel laureate and father of neoclassical economic growth theory, says that policymakers' current economic solutions are nothing more than "drivel" and that spurring innovation - especially energy innovation - must be a central goal of public policy moving forward.

As ITIF and the Breakthrough Institute recently reported in "Taking on the Three Deficits," policymakers of all stripes largely ignore the role innovation must play to break America out of its current economic rut and restore budget balance in Washington. The top-line message - only targeted public investments in programs that boost innovation, productivity, and next-generation industries combined with targeted cuts in consumptive spending will put the United States on a long-term path to sound fiscal footing.

Continue reading "Let's Shelve the Drivel: Boosting Energy Innovation to Reduce America's Three Deficits" »

How can the world finance a massive scale up of clean energy technologies?

That is the topic of the Clean Energy Group's latest report, "Strategies to Finance Large-Scale Deployment of Renewable Energy Projects: An Economic Development and Infrastructure Approach." The report, commissioned by the International Energy Agency (IEA), treats decarbonization as fundamentally an economic and infrastructural transformation, similar in scale and scope to the construction of the carbon energy economy and the buildup of industrial transportation and telecommunication infrastructure.

The benefits to such a transformation are clear, according to the report's authors, but current incentives do not drive public, private, or hybrid institutions to invest in the type of innovation needed to scale and deploy clean energy technologies. To that end, the report seeks clarity on a policy framework by addressing these key questions:

• Which policies can influence clean energy infrastructure investments to perform like (or better than) traditional infrastructure, industrial, and municipal bonds?


• What kinds of policies will reduce risk and generate competitive returns for clean energy?


• Are existing investment institutions sufficient or should new institutions help restore investor confidence where it has been eroded by a history of changing or short-term policies?

Continue reading "New IEA Report Issues Strategic Recommendations for Clean Energy Scale-Up" »

In a series of policy briefs released last month by the Breakthrough Institute, we document the challenges faced by clean energy innovators and entrepreneurs working to bring advanced energy technologies from the lab to market and offer policy proposals for carrying nascent technologies across the clean energy "Valleys of Death." In particular, we offer detailed recommendations for the establishment of a Clean Energy Deployment Administration, or CEDA, a flexible, independent government financing entity which would use a diverse set of financing tools to bridge the Commercialization Valley of Death.

Continue reading "A Clean Energy Deployment Administration" »

In a series of policy briefs released last month by the Breakthrough Institute, we document the challenges faced by clean energy innovators and entrepreneurs working to bring advanced energy technologies from the lab to market and offer policy proposals for carrying nascent technologies across the clean energy "Valleys of Death." One detailed proposal offers recommendations for the establishment of a National Clean Energy Testbeds Program, or N-CET, which would employ public lands as dedicated demonstration sites for proving innovative energy technologies at scale.

Continue reading "A National Clean Energy Testbeds Program" »