The Breakthrough Institute, a think tank known principally for its work on climate and energy issues, has launched a new journal dedicated to rethinking progressive politics.
"We wanted to create a place where iconoclastic thinkers could work out challenging new ideas," said Ted Nordhaus, Breakthrough Institute co-founder. "Our ambition is to publish sharply argued essays that question common assumptions."
"How can we renew the American Dream in a post-American world?" said Michael Shellenberger, who along with Nordhaus serves as Executive Editor of the Breakthrough Journal. "That's a really hard question and the one that our contributors wanted to address in different ways."
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.
Breakthrough Institute and other leading think tanks sponsor day-long conference rethinking energy innovation in the United States: getting to scale, making clean energy cheap, securing American leadership.
After
two years of often-tumultuous debate in Congress, the national debate
over energy and climate change policy has now been altered: cap and
trade policy efforts have run aground in Congress, perhaps fatally, and
Republicans are ascendant, reshaping the national political landscape.
Meanwhile, with economic recovery the top priority for the public and
policymakers alike, America's clean tech competitors are surging ahead,
raising the stakes for energy policy.
Against this backdrop,
support is growing on both right and left for new national investments
in energy innovation that can help address some of the most urgent
imperatives of our time - renewing the economy, improving energy
security and public health, and overcoming key environmental challenges.
A growing chorus of voices thus counsels a renewed national commitment to develop breakthrough energy technologies - and to the reform of America's energy innovation system itself.
In
recent months, energy experts have advised policymakers to: take a page
from the nation's long history of successful military research and
procurement; build on the success of agricultural research stations and
the National Institutes of Health by establishing new innovation
institutes and clusters nationwide; promote the right mix of both
competition and collaboration to spur innovation and productive
knowledge spillover; reform energy subsidies to reward innovation; and
restructure business taxes to promote investment in the building blocks
of an innovation economy.
On December 15th, a group of America's leading policy think tanks will host a day-long conference in Washington D.C. to rethink energy innovation.
Energy Innovation 2010,
held at the National Press Club, will bring together leading experts
from government, think tanks, academia, and business to ask hard
questions about how energy innovation efforts can be brought to scale,
how the innovation system must be restructured and reformed, and how to
renew the kind of active partnerships between the public and private
sectors that were responsible for so much of America's prior
technological innovation and economic strength.
Breakthrough Institute is proud to organize and sponsor this free, day-long conference, along with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and with sponsoring partners the American Enterprise Institute, Third Way, Clean Air Task
Force, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Securing
America's Future Energy, and the Brookings Institution. We are pleased to
welcome TheEnergyCollective.com and Yale Environment 360 as media sponsors for the event.
Earlier this month, we posted early reviews of the book, but since then "The Climate Fix" has received more high acclaim. In addition to the reviews below, you'll find an excerpt from Pielke Jr.'s interview with the Houston Chronicle as well as details about upcoming book events and ways to get your hands on a copy.
Pielke is unusual, as he neatly separates the science of climate change from the rhetoric, bringing the issue back to the realm of rational discussion ... Overall, an excellent primer for getting past the politically charged debate clouding the issues.
Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. and co-editor Roberta Klein of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado released a new book documenting the role of the presidential science adviser as well as the reflections of previous advisors, including those who served under Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.
The two editors co-authored an essay critically analyzing what has become a controversial presidential position. The book also contains an introduction authored by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz.
You can read a brief overview of the book as well as preview the table of contents here.
Update (6/30/10):Andrew Revkin highlighted the ITIF report today on his blog, Dot Earth, noting that "the report is a healthy challenge to anyone, including me, with ingrained views on how to propel an "energy quest." Breakthrough has consistently worked to debunk many of the myths highlighted in ITIF's report. For additional reading, click the links in the list below.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has released a new report dismantling the top ten myths in the climate change debate, including the claim that "we have all the technologies we need" and that carbon prices are enough to drive a transition to a clean energy economy. The full report is well worth the read, but here's a summary from ITIF:
The debate on policy responses to climate change is fueled by myths ranging from assumptions that high carbon taxes will alter behavior significantly to overconfidence that green energy is poised to restore our economic prosperity overnight. What's more, many analysts are glossing over the complexity and possible unfairness of cap-and-trade and underestimating just how big a dent we have to make in our greenhouse gas production. What is missing is an understanding that innovation in the energy sector is essential to the transformation in how we produce and consume energy that we want and need. ITIF dismantles the top ten myths in this debate in a new report.
In spite of endless NIMBY opposition Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has handed a big win to Cape Wind. The triumph of this level-headed decision over continued efforts to block the project in the name of the "natural" or "sacred" provides a humbling lesson for opponents of Cape Wind and future clean energy projects.
Defining Sacred Compare for yourself the destruction of the sacred rainforest by oil drilling to the modest development of this region (right) by wind turbines.
After almost a decade of NIMBY opposition Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has handed a big win to Cape Wind -- what will become the country's first offshore wind farm -- and the future of offshore wind in the U.S.
Yet, environmentalists are bitterly divided over support for Cape Wind -- a 130 turbine, 430 megawatt clean energy project that is scheduled for siting about six miles offshore and could meet up to 75% of Cape Cod's power needs. The conflict between those who see Cape Wind as a step towards a clean energy future and those who consider it a "corporate giveaway to private industrial energy developers" says much about the scale of the challenges to clean energy adoption in the U.S.
The Breakthrough Institute has advocated for the project since 2005, when Robert Kennedy Jr. led a public fight to block the wind farm. Breakthrough's Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger published an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle and organized an open letter with other global warming writers, including Bill McKibben, Ross Gelbspan, and Jon Isham, calling on Kennedy to support the project. Over 150 other global warming writers and activists signed the letter. Nordhaus and Shellenberger continued their critique in a chapter of their 2007 book, Break Through, writing about Cape Wind as a cautionary tale against green NIMBYism.
This Thursday April 22, 2010, Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger will debate cap and trade at the San Francisco Commonwealth Club at 6 pm PST. For more information and tickets, click here:
Since the passage of the Waxman-Markey climate bill last summer, many have questioned the bills effectiveness in creating a prosperous clean energy economy due to its reliance on dubious carbon offsets, weak renewable electricity standard, and low level of investment in clean energy technology.
A comprehensive analysis of the Waxman-Markey legislation conducted by Breakthrough Institute revealed that the bill would not require emissions reductions in U.S. capped sectors, would not increase the deployment of renewable energy beyond business-as-usual projections, and would invest only a fraction of annual revenues -- less than two percent -- in clean energy innovation.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: info@leadenergy.org
April 08, 2010 | Washington, DC
Calling Young Leaders: Apply for Policy Fellowship with Americans for Energy Leadership
Americans for Energy Leadership, a new project of Scientists & Engineers for America, is now accepting applications for the position of Policy Fellow, seeking the nation's brightest young adults to perform high-level research, development, reporting, and advocacy on energy and innovation policy. Full-time and part-time positions are available in Washington, DC and across the country.
The position is paid and designed especially for college students, graduate students, recent graduates, and young professionals, including a full-time summer track and a non-resident, part-time track. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until May 2nd for the summer track, and May 23rd for the non-resident track. See http://www.leadenergy.org/our-team/positions for more information (also posted below), and for upcoming information on open positions.
Andrew Revkin's well-regarded Dot Earth blog has moved to the Opinion page, now that he has moved on from his staff position at the New York Times. As Curtis Brainerd notes at the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Revkin "has expressed a desire to move even farther beyond the constraints of traditional news reporting."
To kick off the "new iteration" of his blog, Revkin has an excellent post laying bare his thoughts on the "climate crisis" and the "energy quest" - specifically what we need to do fill the global energy gap and mitigate climate change:
"I'm talking about a sustained [energy] quest, from the household light socket to the boardroom, the laboratory to the classroom, the smart post-industrial American city to the struggling, (literally) powerless sub-Saharan village. This is not some onerous task, but an active, positive assertion that the ways we harvest and use energy -- an asset long taken for granted and priced in ways that mask its broader costs -- really do matter. Dry places do this with water all the time. In Israel, there is no toilet without two flush options. It's not some goofball green concept; it's just the way things are done.
You've heard a lot about an energy revolution of late, involving a (temporary) burst of spending from the stimulus legislation. But it's building from a paltry base of both public and private investment in the energy arenas where breakthroughs could really expand the menu of energy options required to sustain a prospering, healthy planet as the human growth spurt crests. I'm not saying that a sustained investment in scientific research is remotely sufficient, on its own, to drive an energy transformation. But I do see levels of investment in such inquiry as a proxy for our overall interest in this issue."
Renowned energy expert, Vaclav Smil, launched his new website this week which offers access to many of his publications and information about his numerous published books. In addition to being required reading for Breakthrough Staff and Breakthrough Generation Fellows, Smil's work is widely acclaimed, most recently by Bill Gates, who highly recommended three of Smil's books on his blog.
"None of us knows what lies ahead. What we know is that our uses of energy that define and sustain our physical well-being and allow for an unprecedented exercise of our mental capacities will be the key ingredients in shaping that unknown future."
The House and Senate appropriations committee reached a final agreement on the FY2010 budget which offered no funding for President Obama's RE-ENERGYSE education program and a total of $66 million for just three out of eight proposed Energy Innovation Hubs
Yesterday, the tiny window of opportunity for President Obama's national energy education initiative, RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), unceremoniously vanished, at least for FY2010, when House and Senate Conferees on the Energy and Water Appropriations bill completed the final conference agreement and provided no funding for RE-ENERGYSE.
This isn't a total surprise. RE-ENERGYSE - originally a $115 billion initiative designed to support the education of the next generation of scientists, engineers, and energy innovators - was allocated only $7.5 million by the House appropriations committee and then subsequently slashed by the Senate committee earlier this summer. Not surprising, maybe, but certainly disappointing and representative of a larger lack of support for American clean energy competitiveness at a time when energy and climate change is a top national policy priority and several Asian nations are aggressively positioning themselves to corner burgeoning clean energy technology markets.
After both the House and Senate appropriations were announced in July, the Breakthrough Institute's Jesse Jenkins and Teryn Norris penned an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle comparing the number of science, math, and engineering undergraduates in the U.S. to those in China.
"Only 15 percent of undergraduate degrees earned in the United States are in science and engineering, compared with 50 percent in China, according to the National Academies... If the United States had responded to the Soviet launch of Sputnik the way today's Congress is responding to the Asian energy challenge, America would have lost the space race and been left behind in the industries that fueled a half century of economic progress."
Perhaps even more disheartening, is that more than 100 universities, professionals, and youth groups - in other words those individuals most cognizant of the need for an education program focused on building American competitiveness - submitted a letter urging Congress to fully fund RE-ENERGYSE, which it appears was roundly ignored.
The Breakthrough Institute and Third Way are proud to accept the Global Accelerator Award from the Health Strategy Innovation Cell and Longwoods Publishing for their joint report, "Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy."
This honor is given to "organizations or people who have helped propel into action an idea that holds the promise of dramatically improving..human health anywhere in the world," including, "the promotion of clean energy initiatives, of the sort imagined by the joint proposal from the Breakthrough Institute and the Third Way."
The award-winning report - which proposes the creation of a National Institutes of Energy (NIE) based on the National Institutes of Health, with goal of funding developments in clean, cheap energy - was selected by a systematic research methodology that gauges what people around the world think is valuable via "buzz" generated on the internet.
The Health Strategy Innovation Cell is a health policy think tank based in Toronto whose work has been cited in the Economist and BusinessWeek. Longwoods Publishing is a highly respected publisher of academic journals in healthcare policy and global health.
A growing consensus of experts, including the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way, advocate for a dramatic increase in federal investments in clean energy R&D and for new models of federal innovation in order to spur a prosperous clean energy economy and overcome the greatest challenge of our time
Today, the United States faces a nation-defining challenge and opportunity - getting America running on clean energy. In the past, the United States has confronted other significant obstacles by making a national commitment to invest the resources necessary to overcome it. In light of the clean energy, climate, and economic challenges we now face, the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way will release a report detailing why the U.S. must make just this sort of national commitment, once again, by scaling-up clean energy R&D on the order of $15 billion per year and creating a National Institutes of Energy to expand our clean energy innovation capacity and jumpstart a clean energy revolution.
This Thursday September 17, the Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will be holding a forum on Capitol Hill to reveal, Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, and to discuss how a focused innovation program will lead to a prosperous clean energy economy by making promising clean energy technologies a reality.
The Breakthrough Institute and Third Way report is the latest among a growing chorus of expert voices advocating the importance and urgency of both a dramatic increase in federal investments in clean energy R&D and the implementation of new models for federal innovation. The following is a selection of recent reports and recommendations, all part of the gathering consensus that the U.S. currently lacks both the structure and the financial commitment necessary to spur the dramatic clean energy innovation necessary to meet critical national economic, energy and climate objectives.
Ten African nations drafted a resolution calling for "rich countries" to contribute $67 billion annually in climate change compensation. If its accepted in Copenhagen, the U.S. will be expected to shoulder much of the burden, but short-term investments and a potentially weak climate bill may leave the U.S. unprepared to help
Recognizing the need for a united stance on climate change in preparation for international negotiations in Copenhagen in December, ten African nations issued a joint draft resolution calling for "rich countries" to commit $67 billion per year in compensation for the deleterious effects of unmitigated climate change, according to a report in Reuters.
Africa, which houses 15 of the 20 most climate-change vulnerable countries, will almost certainly endure the most severe negative consequences of climate change, yet it contributes relatively little to the problem.
This new proposal arrives on the heels of a flurry of Copenhagen related news. The Financial Times reported yesterday that both China and India blame developed nations, such as the U.S., for impeding the progress of a climate treaty. As developing nations, they are demanding financial and technological assistance from the major historic contributors to climate change in order to mitigate the effects of a problem they are not primarily responsible for causing.
Under the economic stimulus, DOE announces $2.3 billion in tax credits for advanced energy manufacturing projects in order to stimulate economic growth, create jobs, and secure American leadership in clean energy
Last Thursday, the Department of Energy announced a boost for the advanced energy manufacturing industry in the form of a $2.3 billion Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit (MTC). The MTC is authorized under the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 (ARRA), otherwise known as the $787 billion economic stimulus package.
Intended to expand the clean energy domestic manufacturing industry, the MTC provides a 30% credit for investments in advanced energy manufacturing facilities that either are new, expanded, or re-equipped. The $2.3 billion in MTCs will stimulate 7.7 billion in total capital investments in new renewable and advanced energy manufacturing projects. By fostering growth of the clean energy manufacturing industry, this investment will enforce and enhance ARRA's larger purpose - boosting economic growth, creating jobs, and securing "American leadership in the clean energy sector" - all while helping reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
According to Energy Secretary Steven Chu:
These tax credits will help create thousands of high quality manufacturing jobs in some of the highest growth segments of the economy. This is an opportunity to develop our global leadership in clean energy manufacturing and build a secure, sustained base of jobs for America's workers.
The application process to receive the tax credits began last Friday and the preliminary deadline is September 16, 2009. Applicants will be offered tax credits based on expected commercial viability, and rankings of expected job creation, reduction of pollutants and GHGs, technological innovation, and speed of project implementation.
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $377 million in funding to establish 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) pursuing potentially path-breaking basic and translational research at the cutting-edge of clean energy innovation. Of this funding, $277 comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, otherwise known as the stimulus package) and $100 million comes from the DOE's FY2009 budget. The funding will be sustained over the next five years, with the DOE committing $100 million of its budget to the research centers each year.
"Meeting the challenge to reduce our dependence on imported oil and curtail greenhouse gas emissions will require significant scientific advances," said Energy Secretary Steven Chu as he announced the new funding for EFRCs. "These centers will mobilize the enormous talents and skills of our nation's scientific workforce in pursuit of the breakthroughs that are essential to expand the use of clean and renewable energy."
The majority of EFRCs are based in universities, with several harnessing the skills and resources of the national laboratories, and just three awarded to non-profit organizations and private corporations. Over the course of the program, these centers will employ over 1,800 people in research into four primary realms: Renewable and Carbon-Neutral Energy (including Solar Energy Utilization, Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Biofuels, and Geological Sequestration of CO2); Energy Efficiency (Clean and Efficient Combustion, Solid State Lighting, Superconductivity); Energy Storage (Hydrogen Research, Electrical Energy Storage); and Crosscutting Science (Catalysis, Materials under Extreme Environments).
A group of over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups joined the Breakthrough Institute yesterday in submitting a letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully support the Obama administration's RE-ENERGYSE initiative.
PRESS CONTACT:
Jesse Jenkins (510-550-8930 x465 or 503-333-1737)
jesse@thebreakthrough.org
Teryn Norris (510-550-8930 x464 or 510-593-3716)
teryn@thebreakthrough.org
A group of over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups joined the Breakthrough Institute Tuesday in submitting a letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully support the Obama administration's national energy education initiative. The initiative, named "RE-ENERGYSE" (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), would produce thousands of highly-skilled U.S. energy workers and develop new energy education programs at American universities and K-12 schools.
The Senate is poised to reject the proposal in its FY2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill by cutting the RE-ENERGYSE program's funding to $0 from the $115 million requested in President Obama's FY2010 budget. Mr. Obama announced the initiative in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences in April, stating, "The nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy... [RE-ENERGYSE] will prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge."
According to the Department of Energy, the program would develop between 5,000 and 8,500 highly educated scientists, engineers, and other professionals to enter the clean energy field by 2015, which would rise to 10,000 -17,000 professionals by 2020. The Technical Training and K-12 Education subprogram would create between 200 to 300 community college and other training programs to prepare thousands of technically skilled workers for clean energy jobs.
The letter, which was distributed to every Senate office on Tuesday, urged lawmakers to fund RE-ENERGYSE at the full $115 million request. "America is in danger of losing its global competitiveness and the [global] clean energy race without substantial new investments in STEM education," wrote the signatories, which included 53 colleges and universities and dozens of student and youth groups. "RE-ENERGYSE... will train America's future energy workforce, accelerate our transition to a prosperous clean energy economy, and ensure that we lead the world's burgeoning clean technology industries."
Last week, eight young leaders and intellectuals from around the country arrived at the Breakthrough Institute for the 2009 Breakthrough Generation Fellowship. Breakthrough Generation is the young leaders initiative of the Breakthrough Institute, a public policy think tank, and this summer represents our second annual fellowship program.
Selected from a large pool of applicants from the world's top universities, this year's fellows will continue Breakthrough Generation's efforts to empower progressive young leaders to advance bold ideas for a stronger, safer, and more prosperous world. I invite you to follow their writing and join the discussion at the Breakthrough Generation website:
Our 10-week fellowship includes a two-week introductory program, including a graduate-level reading course, daily blogging, and presentations from some of the country's top energy and economic experts (reading syllabus is available for PDF download here). After this introduction, the fellows will perform research and writing throughout the summer to develop and advance the Breakthrough Institute's efforts on energy, climate, and economic policy.
Later this month, three Senior Fellows at the Breakthrough Institute will speak at UC Berkeley as part of a special public lecture series on national climate policy and environmental politics (lecture descriptions below). Please RSVP to teryn-at-thebreakthrough.org if you plan on attending. Note that seating is only guaranteed for those who RSVP.
Lecture I: Dr. Marty Hoffert: June 17th, 6:00-7:30PM
Lecture II: Dr. William Chaloupka: June 24th, 6:00-7:30PM
Lecture III: Dr. Roger Pielke, Jr: July 1st, 6:00-7:30PM
