By Jesse Jenkins and Devon Swezey

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has funded breakthrough innovation and new growth industries that are driving down the cost of clean energy and building the foundation for competitive 21st century U.S. industries, according to a new White House report released today on the impacts of the U.S. stimulus bill.

The report, "The Recovery Act: Transforming the American Economy Through Innovation," is notable for highlighting the multifaceted and relatively comprehensive clean economy strategy now underway with stimulus investments, and for the Administration's welcome focus on making clean energy cheap.

Yet while the White House report highlights the considerable clean energy momentum established by the Recovery Act, it also inadvertently raises the specter of an impending clean tech funding cliff which risks sending U.S. clean energy industries into deep freeze as stimulus funds begin to expire over the coming months.

Continue reading "White House Report: Stimulus Driving Clean Energy Innovation, Manufacturing, Markets - But What Comes Next?" »

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins

Updated 8/9/10. See below...

Seemingly inspired by the death of cap and trade, over at the Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan has tied together two interesting threads of conversation -- "Waiting on Innovation" and "Why Not?" -- that deal with the issues of energy innovation and energy taxes.

Highlighted in "Why Not?" the Economist's Ryan Avent is on to something when he suggests a $5 per barrel petroleum tax since it could generate about $40 billion in revenue annually. But to suggest, as Avent does, that the tax should rise by $5 each year with the objective of forcing consumers to drive less or purchase more fuel-efficient cars is a strategy that risks falling into the same political trap that ultimately ensnared cap and trade.

Continue reading "Talking Energy Innovation at the Daily Dish" »

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr's Blog

Last week I suggested that Julia Gillard, Australia's Prime Minister, was asking for trouble by promising that carbon pricing would transform society:

When will politicians learn that climate policies are a political loser if they require that people "transform the way we live and the way we work"? The vast majority of people simply do not want their lives transformed. Promising that government will transform your life is one way to ensure a rough political road for any policy -- climate change, health care, economic, whatever.

Michael Levi of the Council on Foreign Relations presents a similar argument with respect to "green jobs":

Basically, cap-and-trade introduces uncertainty at an individual level (though it does the opposite for actual investors); in the current economic climate, that scares people into thinking that they will lose their jobs. . . Anything that the public is unfamiliar with adds to uncertainty - and that is precisely what people don't want. Second, green jobs may poll well across a wide spectrum of voters, but that doesn't mean that selling regulation or taxation with a jobs message will work.

To succeed, policies focused on decarbonizing the global economy must not be seen as adding to personal insecurities, better yet, they should add to personal security. This should be a major lesson taken from the failure of US climate legislation.

Not "everything should be on the table" for budget cuts to reduce the deficit, argues ITIF President Rob Atkinson in a recent essay. Despite what "neo-classical inspired budget hawks" may insist, Atkinson points out, all spending is not created equal and slashing budget line items for investments that spur innovation could actually serve to put the U.S. further in the red.

He writes:

What's behind this widespread unwillingness to prioritize investment? Budget hawks fear that sparing one item from the chopping block will only validate the demands of interest groups to exempt their pet programs. In addition, many adhere to a neo-classical economics perspective, which holds that government plays a negligible role in economic growth and should be neutral with regard to private sector activity... But government should be anything but neutral. Science and infrastructure funding is more valuable than farm subsidies. Government support for research in computer chips is more valuable than support for potato chips...

In contrast, an innovation economics approach to the budget distinguishes between spending on consumption and spending on investment. For innovation economics advocates, all spending (either on the tax or expenditure side) should be on the table, and all investment (on the tax and expenditure side) should be off the table...

We need to expand investments in education and training, science and research, technology (including, but not limited to clean energy) and physical infrastructure. In economic downturns, successful corporations don't cut key investments because they know that these investments are vital to gaining market share and competitive advantage in the moderate term. Governments should think the same way.

Political confusion surrounding "green" jobs, clean tech, and outsourced manufacturing (largely to Asia) has caused those looking to clean energy as the next U.S. growth sector and those seeking to raise the U.S. out of a growth-numbing recession to lose sight of what has fueled U.S. technological and economic leadership in the past - public support for innovation and large scale high tech manufacturing. Recently, Alexis Madrigal posed the critical question arising from this confusion to the readers of the Atlantic: "Can the US Innovate Without Manufacturing?"

As Breakthrough and numerous high tech leaders argue, the answer is "NO."

Continue reading "U.S. Innovation Strategy: The Case for Domestic Manufacturing " »

By Jesse Jenkins, Mark Muro, and Rob Atkinson, originally at the New Republic

Having passed the U.S. House of Representatives on May 28th, the America COMPETES Act, America's flagship competitiveness legislation, will soon be debated in the U.S. Senate. The Act was originally passed in 2007 in response to mounting concern that the United States was failing to effectively compete economically with other nations, imperiling the nation's future prosperity.

Now, a new outbreak of anxiety has engulfed the nation's competitive standing particularly as regards the nation's fledgling clean energy industry. Presently, the United States lacks an effective strategy to compete in this high-growth industry, which is expected to surpass $600 billion globally by 2020. Fortunately, the America COMPETES reauthorization offers a key opportunity for Congress to strengthen U.S. clean energy competitiveness.

At this critical moment, three think tanks--the Breakthrough Institute, Brookings Metro Program and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)--have released a new policy report calling on Congress to extend the America COMPETES Act and enact a comprehensive set of investments in clean energy technology and embrace bold new paradigms in education, research, production and manufacturing.

Continue reading "Clean Energy COMPETES: Strengthening Clean Energy Competitiveness through the America COMPETES Reauthorization" »

PRESS CONTACT:
Jesse Jenkins (503-333-1737)
jesse@thebreakthrough.org

Darrene Hackler (202-626-5720)
dhackler@itif.org

In response to numerous reports documenting a sharp decline in U.S. clean energy competitiveness, experts at three leading U.S. think tanks have issued a new policy report calling on Congress to strengthen U.S. innovation and competitiveness policies in this key industry through the reauthorization of the America COMPETES Act. The report, "Strengthening Clean Energy Competitiveness: Opportunities for America COMPETES Reauthorization," was released today by the Breakthrough Institute, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), and the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program.

Congress first passed this flagship competitiveness legislation in 2007 in response to concerns that the United States was losing its ability to compete economically with other nations. On May 28, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the COMPETES reauthorization by a vote of 262-150 and the bill is set to be debated in the Senate. The reauthorization comes at a time when the United States seeks new sources of growth in a fiscally constrained environment. The clean energy market is one such growth industry--expected to surpass $600 billion by 2020--but the U.S. faces unprecedented global competition.

In "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," an authoritative report on international clean energy competitiveness, the Breakthrough Institute and ITIF recently demonstrated how U.S. leadership on a number of clean energy competitiveness metrics has declined in the last decade. The United States' historic lead in energy innovation is slipping as other countries implement national innovation strategies. America now lags economic competitors in Asia and Europe in the manufacture of virtually all clean energy technologies. And the U.S. lags its economic rivals in preparing its future workforce with critical science, technology, engineering and math education (STEM).

The new report argues that to regain leadership in the global clean energy market, the United States must prioritize major investments in clean energy technology and embrace bold new paradigms in clean energy education, innovation, and production and manufacturing policy.

"Meeting the aggressive challenges to U.S. clean energy leadership will require both increased funding for critical education and technology programs as well as new ideas for how the federal government can foster innovation in the clean energy industry, from basic research to full-scale commercialization," said Mark Muro, Director of Policy at the Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Project.

Continue reading ""Strengthening Clean Energy Competitiveness: Opportunities for America COMPETES Reauthorization"" »

The Brookings Institution is out with a new policy brief today building on their prior calls for energy discovery innovation institutes (e-DIIs). These regionally-based, collaborative research centers are designed to "serve as the hubs of a distributed research network linking the nation's best scientists, engineers, and facilities." The newest report assesses the potential for e-DII's in the Great Lakes region.

According to the general report overview:

Through such a network, the nation could at once increase its current inadequate energy R&D effort and complement existing resources with a new research paradigm that would join the unique capabilities of America's research universities to those of corporate R&D and federal laboratories.

Brookings' vision for creating an energy innovation network is consonant with a similar concept put forward by the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way in "Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy" which called for a national commitment to energy innovation modeled on the National Institutes of Health.

Continue reading "Envisioning an Energy Innovation Network for Economic Growth" »

While the Breakthrough Institute works to catalog America's lagging position in the increasingly competitive global clean tech sector and develop policy measures to bring clean energy industries and jobs to America, the Daily Show team argues that we really have nothing to worry about! Formerly outsourced jobs are already coming back to the US of A, the Daily Show's Aasif Mandvi reports, in this edition of your irregularly scheduled Monday humor break...

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Politicians talking about clean energy jobs like to claim "they can't be shipped overseas." From President Obama's State of the Union to Rep. Ed Markey stumping for the climate bill he co-authored with Rep. Henry Waxman, the promise of new "green jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced" is an all too common refrain.

The only problem with it is that it's wrong on its face.

America is already exporting clean energy jobs -- or seeing them created abroad in the first place. After pioneering wind and solar power, electric cars, and nuclear plants, America turned its back on the public investments in cutting edge technology that catalyzed these innovations, forfeiting cleantech industries to foreign countries who did not make the same mistakes. The cap and trade program at the heart of the climate bill authored by Rep. Markey may help create more clean energy jobs overseas, but it won't bring those jobs back to America. Conventional responses to today's competitiveness challenge won't cut it. Here's what will...

Continue reading "Clean energy jobs CAN be shipped overseas (and what to do about it)" »

[Update, 4/9/10: According to E&E News ($ubcr. required), the 24 member World Bank board voted to approve the $3.75 billion loan to South Africa, including $3.05 billion to construct a new 4.8 GW supercritical coal-fired power station and additional funding to construct 100 MW of utility-scale wind power and 100 MW of concentrating solar power with energy storage capability.

The United States' representative on the World Bank board abstained from the vote, and the explanation is the clearest example of the multi-faceted challenges of global development and the ways in which energy poverty and climate change objectives remain largely opposed in the absence of clean, affordable, and rapidly scalable energy technology options. According to E&E:

In a statement released just as the 24-member World Bank board started to debate the Eskom loan behind closed doors, the U.S. Treasury Department issued a statement saying its abstention "reflects concerns about the climate impact of the project and its incompatibility with the World Bank's commitment to be a leader in climate change mitigation and adaptation."

Still, the United States noted, it "recognizes South Africa's pressing energy needs and the lack of near-term feasible low-carbon alternatives."

Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, roundly condemned the World Bank decision, and chastised the U.S. for not voting in opposition. However, there is no indication that viable alternative plans to expand energy access in South Africa without exacerbating the nation's greenhouse emissions were proposed. ]

South Africa's finance minister, Pravin Gordhan, has an op ed in the Washington Post that illustrates the multi-faceted challenges facing developing nations as they struggle to provide the affordable access to modern energy needed to pull citizens out of poverty. The piece highlights the current tension between such objectives and simultaneous concerns about the environmental and climate impacts of energy development.

With South Africa's economy growing rapidly - it's expanded by two-thirds since 1994, when Nelson Mandela first took office - the nation's demand for energy has grown apace. As Gordhan notes, "Millions of previously marginalized South Africans are now on the grid." And that's a very good thing.

Consider that not having access to affordable, modern energy sources, particularly electricity, means no access to potable, running water; it means having to burn dung and wood and other primitive biofuels to provide cooking and indoor heating; and it means sputtering kerosene lamps as the only source of light after the sun goes down.

The human toll of such energy poverty is incredible. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children, while waterborne disease is one of the leading global killers, ending the lives of over 3 million annually - again, many of them young children - who lack access to clean and safe water supplies.

Continue reading "Without Affordable Clean Alternatives, South Africa Turns to Coal" »

With rising anxiety about mounting federal deficits, President Obama declared a freeze on all non-defense discretionary spending in his latest budget proposal. Heavy on symbolism and light on impact, the Administration's proposal attacks all of the areas of the government least responsible for the inexorable increase in federal deficits, while potentially starving key parts of the discretionary budget critical to America's economic prosperity.

Let's be clear: ballooning deficits do pose a real long-term threat to the United States' economic security. Under current forecasts, the accumulated deficit could total $20 trillion by 2020. That could hobble Uncle Sam with interest payments on the federal debt nearly as large as the projected total for all domestic discretionary spending. Efforts clearly must be taken to avoid such an unsustainable - and risky - financial future.

That said, curbing domestic spending is the wrong route to trim the deficit. The President's spending freeze applies to only a small fraction of the federal budget, while exempting both the mounting costs of two wars and the ever-rising bill for the nation's entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Continue reading "Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Why Obama's Symbolic Spending Freeze May Grow the Deficit" »

Here's a short (and potent) Friday Factoid to conclude this week:

In the last five years, the U.S trade deficit in renewable energy products increased by 1,400% to nearly $5.7 billion.

That's according to a report on the opportunities and challenges America faces in the production and export of environmental goods, including clean energy technologies, published in December by the Senate Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness, chaired by Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).

The graphic below shows the growth in the U.S. trade deficit in environmental goods. Imbalance in the import/export of renewable energy products ("REP" in the key) is the largest contributor to this deficit.

(Click to enlarge)

Product Key:
REP: Renewable Energy Products
CRET: Cleaner or More Resource Efficient Technologies
EMAA: Environmental Monitoring, Equipment
SHW: Management of Solid and Hazardous Waste
HEM: Heat and Energy Management
WWM: Waste Water Management and Treatment
APC: Air Pollution Control

We'll have more on this report and it's implications on Monday. Enjoy your weekend.

The United States may be stuck in the middle of a climate conundrum. A proposal to establish border tariffs to account for the carbon associated with the imported manufactured products, like steel, looks critical to securing the support of key swing Senators interested in protecting the competitive position of American manufacturing. ... Yet ... those same tariff provisions that could win passage of a U.S. climate bill are firmly opposed by China and other developing nations and could both damage Sino-American trade relations and fissure international climate negotiations.

Breakthrough's Yael Borofsky wrote that back in October, and this climate conundrum continues to present perhaps the thorniest negotiating point as world leaders prepare to meet for international climate talks in Copenhagen next week. Indeed, on the eve of the global climate talks, the negotiating positions of the United States and major developing economies, including China and India, appear to remain at loggerheads.

In a letter to President Obama today, nine moderate Democratic Senators, all key swings for climate legislation or ratification of any international climate treaty, reiterated their demands that any international climate framework U.S. negotiators sign in Copenhagen must include comparable action from all major economies and allow tariffs to adjust prices on imports from any nation that does not agree to bindings agreements to reduce emissions "in specific trade- and energy-intensive economic sectors."

"Climate change is a serious and growing threat to the United States and the world," the Senators wrote. "Smart climate change policies would guard against these risks while also spurring clean energy investments that promote economic growth and create good domestic jobs."

"Importantly, however, poorly designed climate policies could also jeopardize U.S. national interest," the Senators warned, "by imposing burdens on U.S. consumers, companies and workers without solving the climate challenge."

To address these challenges, the U.S. should seek to negotiate a new international climate agreement under which, "All major economies should adopt ambitious, quantifiable, measurable, reportable and verifiable national actions" to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

Furthermore, U.S. climate policy, the Senators wrote, should include provisions to implement border adjustment tariffs if necessary to help shield domestic industries facing international competition from countries that have not implemented carbon reduction requirements for their industrial sectors.

Here's the key excerpt from the letter, signed by Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan, Tim Johnson of South Dakota, Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Mark Begich of Alaska:

Continue reading "Climate Conundrum Continues in Run-up to Copenhagen" »

European and Asian high-speed rail manufacturers are courting U.S. government officials in hopes of securing contracts for some of the $8 billion dollars of federal stimulus funds ear-marked for domestic high-speed rail (HSR) projects.

According to Greenwire, foreign manufacturers are hosting country visits for federal and state government officials to see their high-speed train technologies, as well as dropping not-so-subtle hints that they will build new domestic manufacturing facilities, or expand existing ones, if they are awarded contracts.

States are also feverishly competing for federal funds. According to NPR, forty states and the District of Columbia have already filed applications requesting more than $100 billion for high-speed rail projects. The most ambitious project is a proposed $40 billion, 800-mile HSR network in California spanning from Sacramento to San Diego. Although the Federal Railroad Administration has yet to award any of the $8 billion in government funds to any state or project, companies from Germany, France, Canada, Japan, and China are hoping that early efforts to charm government officials will pay off down the road.

Notably absent from those promoting their HSR technologies are American companies. That's because the United States ceded international leadership in the transportation technology in the 1960s, when Japan became the first nation to construct a national high-speed rail network.

Continue reading "Foreign Manufacturers Compete for U.S. High-Speed Rail Cash" »

"Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate Clean Energy Race by Out-Investing the United States," a large new report released today by the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, is the first to comprehensively benchmark the competitive positions of the United States and key Asian challengers -- China, Japan and South Korea -- in the global clean energy race.

The report examines the competitive position of each nation in core clean energy technologies, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, advanced vehicles and batteries, and high-speed rail, as well as the government strategies each nation hopes will strengthen its position in the global clean technology sector. The report also offers recommendations for U.S. federal policymakers for regaining U.S. competitiveness.

Full Report: Download Here (PDF)
Summary Version: Download Here (PDF)
See media coverage and video below

Core findings of "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" include:

Continue reading ""Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" Report Overview" »

Despite years of campaigning, documentaries, increasingly apocalyptic narratives and supposedly landmark climate and energy legislation awaiting Senate consideration, a recent Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO poll shows the majority of the public still ranks climate change last among important issues that affect the way it votes and ranks the economy before all else, even government spending.

According to Politico:

As the nation struggles to climb out of a recession, 45 percent rated the economy as the most important issue in deciding their vote if the congressional election were held today, followed by 21 percent who said government spending, 20 percent who chose health care reform and 9 percent who said the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just 4 percent ranked climate change as the top issue.

This finding isn't new by any stretch. But it is significant news, given the heated debate on climate and energy policy that has passed through the House and is ongoing in the Senate.

Continue reading "Politico Poll Shows Climate Still Ranks Dead Last Among Voter Concerns" »

Robert Stavins, Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program and a leading proponent of cap and trade, acknowledged in an op-ed for the Huffington Post last week that capturing energy efficiency opportunities is more challenging and costly than many have predicted.

In his recent report entitled, "Too Good To Be True? An Examination of Three Economic Assessments of California Climate Change Policy," Stavins found that three separate studies of the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 - all reporting that emissions reductions targets were achievable at no, or negative, cost to the economy - grossly underestimated the economic burden through errors of omission.

An older but similar study, often referred to as the Five Labs Study (executive summary), conducted by the DOE's Interlaboratory Work Group, also reported that efficiencies to reduce emissions could be captured at no economic cost. These findings, published in the late 1990s, were used to bolster support for the Kyoto Protocol despite the fact that the authors readily acknowledged that the study had not "analyzed specific policies to achieve the cases, identified the political feasibility of policies, or described a pathway to achieve the cases." According to Stavins' critique:

"Those studies were terribly flawed, which was what led to their faulty conclusions. I had thought that such arguments about massive "free lunches" in the energy efficiency and climate domain had long since been laid to rest. The debates in California (and some of the rhetoric in Washington) prove otherwise."

Specific policies, the feasibility of policies, and the effectiveness of policies, asserts Stavins, all have cost implications that are egregious to ignore. By omitting them in the early Five Labs Study and the later California studies that Stavins analyzes in his report, only the cost of specific actions to reduce emissions are accounted for, not the often considerable costs associated with policy implementation.

Continue reading "Stavins: For Energy Efficiency, No Such Thing As a "Free Lunch"" »

The 1947 Marshall Plan seems to be referenced whenever it becomes clear that an overwhelming social problem can only be solved through large scale government spending. The results of the UN's World Economic and Social Survey 2009 (WESS) revealed the need for just that type of federal investment in order to manage the global climate and energy crisis. And, according to Reuters, the head of Development Policy and Analysis division at the UN department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), Richard Kozul-Wright, believes it may be time to call on the Marshall Plan framework, yet again, this time to fund a green new deal.

Regardless of past global policy, the UN's WESS enhances the climate debate leading up to the negotiations set to take place in Copenhagen this December, by pointing out the need for a global investment push in clean energy technology, energy efficiency, transportation, and forest-management. Thus far, much of the debate has centered on coercing developing nations to agree to carbon emissions targets - even as rich nations' carbon "commitments" skew towards symbolism over substance. But as WESS explains:

"[M]itigation and adaptation efforts can move forward effectively only if they are part of a consistent development strategy built around a massive investment-led transformation along low-carbon, high-growth paths."

That means giving up on Kyoto's tired call for empty promises to cut emissions. While reducing global carbon intensity was, and is, a primary goal of climate negotiations, targets are not only too narrow a focus to be a viable solution to the climate crisis, they have been shown to be ineffective. As has been explained by the Breakthrough Institute and most recently by Michael Levi, in Foreign Affairs, the Kyoto Protocol is failing because the too weak carbon emissions targets it set are not even being met by the participating countries.

Continue reading "UN Survey Says Massive Global Investment Needed to Fund Developing Clean Energy Economies" »

By Yael Borofsky and Jesse Jenkins

"The money is coming back,"

That's what Ethan Zindler, head of New Energy Finance Ltd, proclaimed to the Wall Street Journal in response to emerging evidence that the government's $3 billion dollar cash grant renewable energy stimulus program is successfully incentivizing private investment in the wind sector.

After falling into the doldrums for the past six-months, the wind industry is roaring back to life thanks to direct public investments enacted in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), also known as the stimulus bill. A DOE and Treasury-funded cash grant incentive program is helping to grease the pipeline for private investors looking to finance renewable projects, particularly wind farms, slated to begin construction in 2009 or 2010. According to the WSJ, just four weeks into the program $800 million in grants have already been submitted and Wall Street bankers predict that figure to reach $10 billion by the end of 2010.

The cash grant program was created to rescue the clean energy industry, a critical American growth sector, from the malaise of the credit crisis. The tax credits (PTC and ITC) that usually incite clean energy development are worthless in an economic climate where the big financial firms that typically absorb them, on behalf of project developers, are in crisis.

The solution: Congress tucked a two-year cash grant into ARRA worth 30% of qualifying wind, solar, and geothermal project costs, replacing the normal production and investment tax credits. With the money from the program officially flowing since August, the grants are breathing new vigor into clean energy investment, speeding America's economic recovery.

With big players like Morgan Stanley and Citigroup investing $120 million each to finance new wind farms, the wind sector is generating more than clean energy - it's producing clear evidence that public investment really does drive private investment. By covering 30% of a new project's cost, the cash grant program will spur more than two dollars in private investment for every public dollar, successfully leveraging taxpayer money to drive significant private investment in cleaner energy, greater energy security, and accelerated economic recovery.

The projected success of the cash grants, which bankers calculate will lead to 9-15% annual returns per deal, suggests that perhaps, public investment is even more effective at driving private investment than setting an economy-wide carbon price, an oft-suggested strategy to motivate private financing in renewable RD&D.

Continue reading "Wind in Wall Street's Sails: Investment Rushes Into Wind, But Can We Make It Last?" »

By Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellow

It's strange to hear of "insourcing"--the transfer of manufacturing jobs into the United States instead of out--but that's exactly what's happening with Denmark's wind giant Vestas, according to a New York Times article yesterday.

According to the report, a combination of global recession and domestic stimulus spending on clean energy is adding up to a boon for the American clean energy manufacturing industry.

In Europe, Vestas has seen several nations slow down their rates of added wind capacity, and flagging government support combined with financial difficulties has impeded the construction of new projects. By contrast, the United States built 8,500 megawatts of wind capacity in 2008 to Britain's 500, and demand for turbine technology is high. So for opportunities in a more robust wind market, Vestas has begun to look across the Atlantic.

Continue reading "US Must Not Blow Its Chance as Foreign Investments Bring Wind Jobs Ashore" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

A second piece on nationalism in the context of the clean energy race was published on Mother Jones' blog MoJo, and is evidence that the growing body of discourse around this issue has struck a very resonant chord. In the post, entitled "Harnessing Nationalism," Kevin Drum offers poignant, if somewhat veiled, criticism of the rhetoric behind the "clean energy race" narrative.

Inspired by The New Republic's Bradford Plumer, the post starts with a lengthy quote whose primary point is this: the clean energy race is not a zero-sum competition because everyone stands to benefit if China makes a significant effort to reduce emissions by investing in clean technology.

First, as Drum puts it, Plumer's commentary may be an attempt at "intellectual honesty," but honesty doesn't make it completely accurate. True, the whole world will benefit from advancements in clean energy no matter where it comes from, but China is not motivated to compete in the clean tech industry by emissions reductions - it is driven by the potential for economic gain.

As a (rapidly) developing nation, economic development, not emissions targets, is the highest priority. Thus, the race is not about emissions, it is about whose economy stands to benefit from leadership in clean technology.

Drum views the clean energy race through "green" tinted glasses, as well, preferring the "race" rhetoric to the alternative: the apocalyptic narrative that has clearly failed to motivate effective climate change action. Rhetorically speaking, framing the need to reduce carbon emissions as a clean energy race is both more engaging and more productive. As he aptly declares:

If this kind of thing got us to the moon, maybe it can save the planet as well. I say we go along.

The clean energy race, however, is more than just a new and improved framing mechanism or encouragement of America's honed nationalistic tendencies - it is an economic truth. What Drum misses when he writes off the recent proliferation of clean energy articles as hype, is that this issue could both be an effective rhetorical tool as well as a humbling reality.

Continue reading "Nationalism: Rhetoric or Realpolitik, Part 2" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

When the Breakthrough Institute's Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus began advocating for a paradigm shift in the global approach to climate change in the early 2000's, they could not have predicted that a paradigm shift of another variety might occur simultaneously. That is: a shift in the balance of global power.

In an op-ed entitled, "Rebalancing Relations with China," published in the Washington Post this week, Henry Kissinger assessed the power shift occurring between the U.S. and China, calling for Sino-American cooperation in lieu of boisterous assertions of nationalistic superiority and hegemonic power.

A Nobel Peace Prize winner, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during the Nixon Administration, Kissinger is a known proponent of realpolitik. Although that term typically has a negative connotation in the U.S. and is often associated with power abuse, the word actually refers to a theory of politics grounded in the realistic assessment of power, rather than ideology.

In accordance with this theory, Kissinger's puts forth an ideology-free assessment of the current relationship between the United States and China. China's position as America's largest creditor and the economic crisis, in combination, have served to level the playing field between the two nations. Faced with increasing economic interdependence and China's conflicting interest in reducing that dependence, "ambivalence," Kissinger asserts, "is the inevitable consequence."

In Kissinger's estimation, a new political framework that recognizes China as a global economic power will be crucial to revitalizing the world economy. From this standpoint, there are three ways a Sino-American relationship could play out on the global stage.

Continue reading "Nationalism: Rhetoric or Realpolitik, Part 1" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

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.

Continue reading "ARRA: DOE Announces $2.3 billion in Tax Credits for Clean Energy Manufacturers" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

Imagining China as a giant green frog seems a little ridiculous, but, as Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor reported last week in a piece entitled "China's Green Leap Forward," China's intent to "leapfrog" the United States in the clean energy race is far from ridiculous - it may soon be a reality.

While the U.S. languidly inches forward in clean energy RD&D, China's burgeoning clean and renewable energy industries are growing at an unprecedented pace for a developing nation. Much more than a response to the suffocating pollution clogging the airways of its major cities, the explosion of clean energy technology is part of a national strategy to dominate the industry. As Ford succinctly puts it:

"China price" and "China speed" are poised to snatch the lion's share of the next multitrillion-dollar global industry - energy technology... Indeed, China is pushing ahead on renewable technologies with the fervor of a new space race.

Indeed, China is approaching clean energy with a "space race" mind-set, however, the U.S. has yet to adopt the same sense of urgency. As Americans wait for a Senate decision on the significantly weakened American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), which will invest just $1 billion per year in clean energy R&D and $10 billion for clean energy investments broadly defined, China has already implemented a suite of clean energy policies beginning with the Renewable Energy Law of 2006.

By supporting the growing wind sector with subsidies, tariffs, and an obligatory renewable energy requirement for power companies, China now expects wind manufacturing to grow from 8GW in 2007 to between 12GW and 20GW by 2010. In comparison, the U.S. manufactured just 2.4 GW of wind turbines in 2007 despite having the largest wind market in the world.

Continue reading "CS Monitor: China Aims to "Leapfrog" U.S. in Clean Energy Race" »

By Jesse Jenkins and Johanna Peace

Recently, Senator Sherrod Brown refused to accept a climate bill that would simply send both emissions and U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas - inaccurately earning him a label as a "threat" to the passage of federal energy and climate legislation. This week, the Ohio Democrat formally introduced legislation to strengthen America's efforts to both cut emissions and build a prosperous clean energy economy: the Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009.

"We can revive American manufacturing through investments in clean energy," Brown said. "This bill will help our manufacturers retool, put our auto suppliers back to work, and produce clean energy technologies."

The bill would create a two-year, $30 billion revolving loan fund to help small and medium-sized American manufacturers to improve the manufacturing process and increase their production of clean energy parts and systems. The IMPACT Act would also directly invest $1.5 billion over five years to help guide manufacturers into clean energy markets and streamline their implementation of new manufacturing technologies and methods through the Manufacturing Extension Program, a division of the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Continue reading "Seeking to Have an IMPACT on Climate Policy, Senator Brown Calls for New Investments in Clean Energy Manufacturing" »

"So it seems that we aren't going to have a second Great Depression after all. What saved us? The answer, basically, is Big Government."

--Paul Krugman at the New York Times.

By Juliana Williams, Breakthrough Fellow

Thursday, 10 Senate Democrats sent a letter to the President Obama outlining their position on upcoming climate policy. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), Russell D. Feingold (D-WI), Carl Levin (D-MI), Evan Bayh (D-IN), Robert P. Casey (D-PA), Robert C. Byrd (D-WV), Arlen Specter (D-PA), John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), and Al Franken (D-MN) voiced their position to make sure that effective climate policy both reduces emissions and strengthens American manufacturing. The letter's signatories want U.S. climate policy to:

• Include transition assistance as factories become more efficient and as they retool to make clean energy products in a more efficient way;


• Set negotiating objectives around manufacturing that the U.S. can take to the Copenhagen climate negotiations in December;


• Establish mechanisms to verify emissions reductions and hold countries accountable for meeting their goals; and


• Establish a border adjustment (fee) on goods from countries with less rigorous climate provisions.

The New York Times headline editors were quick to ominously label the letter a "threat" to the passage of a climate bill, but that is hardly the case. This letter was not an ultimatum stating opposition to climate legislation, or even to the Waxman-Markey bill in particular. The letter states the Senator's support for climate action and provides a forum for addressing their clearly stated concerns that if anything, should enable the design of an effective and passable bill. If these critical swing Senators remain "a threat" to climate legislation, it is more due to failure of creative policy design than the evil machinations of industry-funded hacks from coal states. So before we vilify these ten Senators - every one of whom is likely necessary to secure passage of any climate or energy legislation - let's take a close look at what they are actually saying...

"short-term transition assistance in the form of rebates provided to energy-intensive and trade-exposed industries"

While it's unclear whether this is calling for additional emissions allowances for energy intensive industries, the simple fact is that energy is a primary input to our entire economy, making energy costs a major political and economic sensitivity. This is most pronounced in states reliant on coal for their electricity mix and/or reliant on energy-intensive industries for their economy (e.g. the states whose senators signed this letter). That's the simple reality of climate politics. It's long past time to internalize that and pursue good policy design that can still succeed in that political environment. Good climate policy should be able to support manufacturing in the clean energy economy. Let's make sure the details of policy design match the "green jobs" messaging.

Continue reading "Senators: Climate Bill Should Support Clean Energy Manufacturing" »

By Leigh Ewbank and Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellows

In a speech yesterday at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, energy secretary Steven Chu again repeated his declaration that nothing less than a technological "revolution" is necessary to meet America's energy challenge and to ensure the US position as a leading global economic power.

Speaking alongside Congressman Ed Markey, Chu told his audience that future US prosperity depends upon widely deploying renewable energy, developing carbon capture and storage capabilities, and increasing energy efficiency--but most importantly, it depends upon becoming a leading innovator in clean energy technologies.

Chu minced no words when he described this critical juncture for the US in the
global clean energy industry:

"We're faced with the following choices: We can become the leader of a new industrial revolution and lay the foundation of our future economic prosperity ... or we can hope the price of oil will go back to $30 a barrel, deny climate change is happening and let other countries take the lead in energy innovation."

Continue reading "Chu Supports Innovation Agenda, Despite Congressional Barriers" »

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).

Continue reading "Secretary of Energy: Breakthroughs Essential to Fully Meet Nation's Energy Challenges" »

By Juliana Williams, Breakthrough Fellow

Despite President Obama's call for an energy revolution, it is up to Congress to provide funding. The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-e) made a recent call for research proposals into "high-risk, high-payoff transformational energy-related R&D," for projects that "(1) translate scientific discoveries and cutting-edge inventions into technological innovations and (2) accelerate transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of high technical or financial risk."

Over 3,500 research teams submitted proposals for a slice of the available $150 million. As a result, over 98% of applicants we "discouraged" from submitting a full application.

Sure, some of the applications were "undoubtedly unrealistic, fundamentally flawed, written in crayon, or the like," as Andrew Revkin aptly noted at Dot Earth. But with 98% of all proposals rejected, there's got to be another explanation for the high rejection rate as well. Surely at least 5%, 10%, maybe even one third of these proposals are worth further consideration. Remember: this round of project proposals was simply to get into the next round of consideration where ARPA-e program managers would being the real project grant selection process. No, the reason so many proposals were rejected has more to do with the fact that there is simply not nearly enough money to fund all the good, potentially game-changing clean energy ideas out there.

This problem is not unique to this ARPA-e or this round of research proposals. It is a chronic symptom of this country's (under)commitment to clean energy.

Continue reading "Shouldn't Energy Innovation be Worth More than Rush Limbaugh?!" »

By Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellow.

In yesterday's Washington Post, prominent U.S. business leaders John Doerr (from Kleiner Perkins) and Jeff Immelt (CEO of GE) joined the growing chorus calling on the nation's leaders to prepare America for the clean-energy race. They warn that the U.S. is quickly falling behind in "the next great global industry" -- green technology -- with the risk of damaging America's economic competitiveness.

Doerr and Immelt's observations mirror recent reporting by the Breakthrough Institute and several major news sources -- including Time, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal -- that show the U.S. trailing Asia in terms of clean-energy investment and deployment. On the question of which nation is leading the U.S. in the clean-energy race, Doerr and Immelt don't mince their words:

"We are clearly not in the lead today. That position is held by China, which understands the importance of controlling its energy future. China's commitment to developing clean energy technologies and markets is breathtaking.

Consider: Chinese cars are more than one-third more fuel-efficient than U.S. cars. China is investing 10 times as much on clean power, as a percentage of gross domestic product, as the United States is. China is on track to create 150,000 jobs through the deployment of 120 gigawatts of wind power by 2020 -- an amount equivalent to today's global total and nearly five times America's."

Continue reading "U.S. Business Leaders Urge America to Get Serious about the Clean Energy Race" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

Yesterday the U.S. Senate passed the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill (H.R. 3183) appropriating $34.3 billion in energy spending for FY2010. The bill supports Barack Obama's campaign promise to shut down Nevada's Yucca Mountain nuclear waste facility and funds numerous water initiatives set-forth by the Army Corps of Engineers.

Notably absent, however, is any funding for RE-ENERGYSE (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), Obama's proposed initiative to close the energy education gap by preparing young Americans to compete in the race for clean energy. From Obama's initial proposal of $115 million, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees rejected the program by cutting funding to $7 million and $0, respectively. The bill that passed through the Senate, by an 85-9 vote, contained no mention of the forward-thinking and much-needed education program.

By rejecting RE-ENERGYSE, Congress has ignored this critical component of President Obama's call for global competitiveness in clean energy technology. This decision is especially disappointing in light of the expression of "strong" opposition to defunding RE-ENERGYSE" voiced by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) the day before the Senate bill passed.

Continue reading "Senate Rejects Obama's Energy Education Program" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

If pressed, most policymakers would concur that symbolism is not the foundation of sound and effective policy. Yet, as University of Colorado Professor and Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow, Roger Pielke, Jr. points out in his piece featured today on Yale Environment 360, climate policies contingent on carbon emissions targets are often just that: symbolic.

The article was prompted by criticism of Japan's commitment to seemingly small reduction targets, with a significant portion of the finger-wagging coming from the U.K.

The appeal of emissions targets lies in their simplicity. By setting a (usually lofty) long-term goal for reducing carbon emissions, governments appear pro-active in their efforts to deal with climate change. But as Pielke, Jr. repeatedly emphasizes, ambitious targets unsubstantiated by strategies for achieving those goals are not only simple and symbolic, they are misleading.

In lieu of a realistic plan of action and pressured by an untenable goal, governments resort to creative accounting tricks so that their carbon "budget" is balanced. Thus, a nation can be a symbolic climate change hero without actually decarbonizing. The article quotes Stanford's David Victor:

[S]etting binding emission targets through treaties is wrongheaded because it 'forces' governments to do things they don't know how to do. And that puts them in a box, from which they escape using accounting tricks (e.g., offsets) rather than real effort.

According to Pielke, Jr. the UK's recent adoption of aggressive targets provides a definitive example of why they are a "magical solution" to climate change mitigation that unfortunately will not deliver results:

To achieve a 34 percent reduction from 1990 emissions by 2022 while maintaining modest economic growth would require that the U.K. decarbonize its economy to the level of France by about 2016. In more concrete terms, Britain would have to achieve the equivalent of deploying about 30 new nuclear power plants in the next six years, just to get part way to its target. One does not need a degree in nuclear physics to conclude that is just not going to happen.

Decarbonization of an economy, however, is not driven by target-setting or accounting. Using the Kaya Identity as a guide, a simple equation that illustrates how a nation's population, GDP, energy mix, and energy use all contribute to its total carbon emissions, the only real, feasible policy recourse for achieving decarbonization is to drive improvements in the carbon intensity of the energy supply and/or energy efficiency as rapidly as possible. Neither targets nor offsets are a factor in the equation.

Continue reading "Pielke, Jr: Forget "Magical Solutions" and Directly Decarbonize the Economy" »

By Jesse Jenkins & Teryn Norris
Originally featured at the Huffington Post
Cross-posted at Grist.org

On Monday, Joe Romm of Climate Progress publicly attacked us for publishing an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle -- called "Will America lose the clean energy race?" (a longer version was posted here at Huffington Post.). In that piece, we urged Congress to fully fund President Obama's energy education initiative and scale up direct pubic investments in low-carbon energy to accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy.

Romm asserted that our op-ed "attacks" President Obama and Democratic leaders, when in fact it calls on Congress to support Obama's RE-ENERGYSE energy education program and urges greater public investment in clean energy to compete with Asian challengers. Yet Romm never mentioned the central focus of the op-ed -- RE-ENERGYSE and our efforts to rally support behind it, including a recent sign-on letter with over 100 organizations -- and instead criticized us for what he called "willfully misleading nonsense" about Asian countries' planned investments in clean energy.

Romm proceeded to make several factually incorrect statements about Asia's plans for clean energy investment that contradict research in publicly accessible reports and analyses, including those by the Center for American Progress (CAP), which employs Romm. The Breakthrough Institute wrote a comprehensive fact check here to correct Romm's numerous misstatements and clarify the details of public investment plans in China, South Korea and Japan.

Romm also criticized us for asserting that Congress must strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill with greater investments in clean energy to compete with Asian challengers and accelerate our transition to a clean energy economy. Why? Because Romm apparently believes the Waxman-Markey proposal -- which would invest only $10 billion per year in clean energy and energy efficiency, less than 0.1% of U.S GDP -- is sufficient to win the clean energy race. It is not.

"Waxman-Markey would complete America's transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill," reads the title of a prominently featured post on Romm's website, a claim he has repeated multiple times. "Waxman-Markey would generate more clean energy action than any piece of legislation passed by any country in the history of the world!" exclaimed Romm in another recent post as part of his consistent and ongoing cheer-leading for the legislation.

Continue reading "Joe Romm's Strategy to Lose the Clean Energy Race" »

"Will America lose the clean-energy race?"

That's the question Breakthrough Institute's Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins raise in an op ed featured in today's San Francisco Chronicle.

You can also read an extended version at the Huffington Post.

With China, South Korea and Japan all moving aggressively to corner the burgeoning global clean energy market, Asian competitors may dominate the clean energy sector if Congress doesn't act now to strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill with much larger investments in our own clean energy economy and fully support President Obama's energy education initiative, Norris and Jenkins argue.

Last week, over 100 organizations joined the Breakthrough Institute in urging the Senate to fund Obama's RE-ENERGYSE initiative, which would develop thousands of highly-skilled clean energy workers and new energy education programs around the country. The Senate is poised to cut the program to $0 from Obama's $115 million request at a time with the U.S. is severely lagging in energy science and technology education.

Read the RE-ENERGYSE letter press release and the New York Times Dot Earth coverage.

Monday's op-ed comes one year after Breakthrough proposed a similar National Energy Education Act, calling for an effort on par with the original National Defense Education Act of 1958, which invested billions each year to train and empower the young generation that won the space race and invented the technologies that catapulted the U.S. and the world into the Information Age.

It also comes two weeks after the Washington Post reported that "Asian Nations Could Outpace U.S. in Developing Clean Energy."

Breakthrough Institute is planning to release a full report on the USA-Asia clean energy race within the next few weeks, so stay tuned.

As President Obama put it in his Congressional address in February:

"We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient... New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders -- and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again."

President Obama is right. However, as Norris and Jenkins warn in today's op ed:

"If America does not take immediate action to bridge its energy education gap - and if we fail to make substantially larger investments in our own clean-energy economy - we will effectively cede the clean-energy race to Asia. A decade from now, we may still find the burgeoning clean-energy economy promised by Obama and Democratic leaders. It will simply be headquartered in China."

You can read the extended version of the op ed below...

Continue reading "Will America Lose the Clean Energy Race?" »

By James Burgess, Breakthrough Fellow

A recent study at NYU's Stern School of Business analyzes the returns on government energy R&D investments and comes to the conclusion that geothermal and wind power could, for a relatively low price, become cheaper than fossil fuel electricity in a matter of years.

The study used a well-known method of analyzing technology cycles that predicts learning curves for emerging technologies. This "S-curve" heuristic guesses that the performance of new technologies, plotted against effort (i.e. total money invested) is shaped like an S.

Early in the life of the technology, improvements are gradual as the basic properties are worked out and an effective design is formed. Next comes a period of rapid growth as the now-stable technology captures "process innovations" and economies of scale. Finally, the rate of improvement slows as the technology becomes mature and improvements become hampered by the dominant structure of the technology and its industry - until the potential emergence of a new competing technology with its own S-curve.

Although such an analysis makes some major simplifications, these S-curve cycles are well-documented throughout history in technologies as diverse as disk drives, steam engines, semiconductors, and automobiles (to name a few).

With the S-curve model in hand, the authors of the report sought to determine the curves of some major alternative energy technologies in order to project how much investment is necessary to reduce the their marginal costs.

Continue reading "Study: Geothermal Could be Cost-Competitive for a Fraction of Oil and Coal's R&D Investments" »

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
July 22, 2009

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."

Continue reading "PRESS RELEASE: Over 100 Groups Urge Congress to Support Obama's Energy Education Initiative" »

By Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellow

This week marks the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, the event which made the US the first and only nation to accomplish one of the greatest technological feats in human history. While space-race aficionados will argue that US-Soviet competition continued beyond the 1969 moon landing, for the layperson, Armstrong's 'small step' marked the end of the space race.

In 2009, the United States faces a new global competition, one that will have far greater implications for the future of our nation and the world: the clean energy race

The dual challenges of climate change and increased economic competitiveness are driving nations to develop new energy technologies that harness earth's abundant renewable resources. This technology is increasingly viewed as central to our economic fortunes with renewable energy and other clean technologies poised to be the next big growth sector. On several occasions President Obama has acknowledged that:

'The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.'

We've heard calls for a New Apollo project for renewable energy before, and I will not discuss the merits of such a scheme here. Instead, on this historic anniversary, I will compare the space race of the Cold War era and the clean energy race of today--both similarities and differences are apparent, and both offer insights into America's current standing in today's clean energy race.

Continue reading "40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing - Lessons for the Clean Energy Race" »

By Yael Borofsky, Breakthrough Fellow

As Congress debates the Waxman-Markey climate bill, Asia is moving rapidly to win the clean energy race. So warns a new article in the Washington Post today that should serve as a wake-up call to America's leadership at the highest level.

The new investigative article by Steven Mufson, entitled "Asian Nations Could Outpace U.S. in Developing Clean Energy," confirms increasingly urgent warnings issued by many, including the Breakthrough Institute, that the United States must dramatically increase direct investments in a clean energy technology push, or be quickly left behind by China, South Korea, India, Japan and others.

Despite Obama's intentions to increase America's international competitiveness, the article reports that the amount and scale of investments in renewable energy programs coupled with ambitious renewable energy use targets are putting these Asian nations on pace to surpass programs set forth by both the U.S. economic stimulus package and the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the massive climate and energy bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.

Citing Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins, the article warns:

"If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is the United States' entry into the clean energy race, we'll be left in the dust by Asia's clean-tech tigers," said Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that favors massive government spending to address global warming.

Much of the G8 climate discussions last week were stymied by China and India's outright refusal to accept an international (or any) ceiling on greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports, both countries, as well as South Korea, are forging ahead with dramatic steps to ramp up their renewable industries in ways that will reduce their emissions while flexing their strengthening clean-tech R&D muscles.

The full article can be read below...

Continue reading "Washington Post: Asia's Clean Tech Tigers Surging Ahead in Clean Energy Race" »

By Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellow

This week, South Korea has upped the ante for green public investment as it continues to make swift progress toward becoming a clean-tech economy. Already, a staggering 80% of South Korea's $38 billion stimulus package has been earmarked for green investments.

And today, the South Korean government announced that it will invest $85 billion more over 5 years to encourage the growth of green industries and technologies. That's more than doubling South Korea's recent promise to invest $40 billion over five years in a "Green New Deal," and the equivalent of 2% of the East Asian nation's total GDP. If the United States were to invest a comparable share of it's national wealth in clean energy technology, the sum would total over $275 billion annually.

Continue reading "South Korea to Invest $85 billion in Green New Deal" »

By Johanna Peace, Breakthrough Fellow

By mid-July, China will begin construction of a massive wind farm project in the northwestern Gansu province, at a total cost of US $17.6 billion. It will be China's biggest wind power station yet; according to local Development and Reform Commission official Wu Shengxue, it will reach an installed capacity of 20 GW by 2020. Eventually, the wind power capacity of the area is projected to reach 40 GW.

This development is the latest in what has recently been a major push by the Chinese to expand renewable energy use. Soon, Chinese officials are expected to reveal a new renewable energy stimulus plan of US $44-$66 billion per year over ten years, which will focus much of its resources on wind power. Under the plan, China will be on track to reach 100 GW of wind power capacity by 2020--more than eight times its current level.

By contrast, the American Clean Energy and Security Act invests only $6-12 billion per year in clean energy. As for the US "green stimulus," it includes a one-time clean energy spending boost of $112 billion--just half of China's $221 billion stimulus investment in green initiatives. Here's a sense of scale: If US investments in clean energy were on par with the Chinese in terms of percent GDP, we'd be spending $140-210 billion per year.

Continue reading "China to Build World's Largest Wind Project" »

"If China is going to put in $440-660 billion [in clean energy development investments this year], how will $190 billion (actually under $130 billion) over 20 years put us in the leadership position?"

-Get Energy Smart blogger A. Siegel remarking on how far the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act really gets us in the race for clean energy innovation, responding to an op ed by Rep. Ed Markey.

With most DC-based environmental organizations at least grudgingly supporting the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, and official government analysis of the latest version of the bill still pending, it has been largely up to independent think tanks, advocates and bloggers to take a critical look at the major provisions in the nearly 1,000-page climate and clean energy bill. Breakthrough has spent most of the past two weeks doing just that, and we have released some of the first analysis of the bill's cap and trade provision, allowance allocations, and renewable electricity standard.

Yesterday, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), a Knoxville, Tennessee-based non-profit organization advocating clean energy solutions throughout the southeastern United States, released their own analysis of the Waxman-Markey renewable electricity standard. SACE's independent analysis confirms Breakthrough's own earlier look at the now severely-weakened renewable electricity standard, concluding as we did, that the impact of the renewable electricity standard on U.S. renewable electricity generation will be "effectively zero."

SACE also looks at the likely impact of the efficiency requirements in the now combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard (which the Alliance refers to using yet another new acronym: "CERES") and concludes it falls far short of President Obama's campaign pledge to reduce U.S. electricity consumption 15% by 2020 (below business as usual projections).

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 9: Southern Alliance for Clean Energy Confirms Breakthrough's Analysis of Renewable Electricity Standard " »

Marc Gunther, the excellent Fortune magazine and GreenBiz.com writer and fellow blogger at the Energy Collective, published a piece last week skeptical of the Obama Administration's new push to support the commercialization of advanced batteries in the United States and help accelerate the day when efficient plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are rolling off American assembly lines and parked in a driveway near you. At issue is $2.4 billion in new funding made available by the U.S. Department of Energy to support advanced battery commercialization and manufacturing.

Gunther quotes a Wall Street Journal article that shares his skepticism of this new funding, which will (in their words) "annoint" new technological and corporate "winners" -- something the Journal clearly sees as an unnecessary intrusion of government on free markets. Gunther agrees, writing:

"They've got a point, though, don't they? One unhappy result of all the bank bailouts of the fall is that $2.4 billion doesn't seem like much--hey, Citi alone has collected north of $45 billion, last time I checked--but a billion here, a billion there, and you're starting to talk real money. And if electric cars are going to be as big a business as a lot of people think, then why government investment should be needed at all? Particularly since we have a climate change bill making its way through Congress that will, at long last, if all goes well, put a price on carbon emissions--thereby giving low-carbon energy sources what they desperately need, which is a fighting chance to compete with fossil fuels on something resembling a level playing field. I thought the whole idea behind cap-and-trade (which I strongly favor) is to capture the externalized cost of global warming pollutants, and then let the market figure out how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: regulation that would have a light touch but a profound impact.

But no--with Waxman-Markey, CAFE standards, biofuels mandates, subsidies for "green jobs" and the like--the administration is giving us a belt and a couple of pairs of suspenders, too. Much as I admire Steven Chu, the energy secretary, do we really want to entrust him and his staff to decide which battery technologies are likely to succeed and which companies can most wisely spend that $2.4 billion?"

And as much as I respect Marc Gunther, I quickly took issue with this pretty classic set of objections to government involvement in technological development. I wrote this response, which Gunther dubbed "Defending Big Government," and was happy to post at his personal blog and at GreenBiz. It has now been syndicated at The Energy Collective and at Reuters as well. Here it is for Breakthrough readers:

Continue reading "Defending Big Government - Or Why We Can't Leave Energy Innovation to Markets" »

Driven largely by strong economic growth in developing nations, world energy consumption will grow 44% between 2006 and 2030, according to updated projections released Wednesday by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

The EIA reports:

World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2006 and 2030, driven by strong long-term economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2009 (IEO2009) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

The current global economic downturn will dampen world energy demand in the near term, as manufacturing and consumer demand for goods and services slows. However, with economic recovery anticipated to begin within the next 12 to 24 months, most nations are expected to see energy consumption growth at rates anticipated prior to the recession. Total world energy use rises from 472 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2006 to 552 quadrillion Btu in 2015 and then to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030.

In the decades ahead, the world's rapidly developing nations will clearly demand abundant and affordable energy to power their economic growth. The question remains: what will the nations of the world do to ensure that demand is met by clean and cheap energy technologies?

Continue reading "EIA: World Energy Use Will Rise 44% By 2030; Developing Nations Demand Abundant, Affordable Energy" »

Originally posted at Prometheus

Robert Allen, an Oxford professor, has a new book out with Cambridge University Press titled "The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective." Allen has a precis up over at VoxEU which provokes a few thoughts about efforts to spark a new green global economy.

Allen argues that a combination of factors led to the industrial revolution, among them international trade associated with the British Empire, an educated and wealthy populace which created a demand for the fruits of technology as well as the skills necessary to produce them, and, crucially, cheap energy. Allen provides the following graph, showing a comparison of energy costs across Europe in the early 1700s.

Continue reading "Why The Industrial Revolution Started in Britain" »

Driven by record-high gas prices in the first half of the year and the economic crisis that hit in the later half of the year, United States greenhouse gas emissions plunged by the largest amount in decades, according to preliminary data released today by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, which drive global climate change, fell to 2.8% in 2008 to 5.8 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2-e), the lowest level of emissions in any year since 2000. Total U.S. energy consumption also fell 2.2% in 2008, the EIA reports.

(Sorry for poor image quality, blame the source: the EIA)

Continue reading "U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Plunge in 2008" »

As sweeping climate and clean energy legislation is readied for debate in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, details are emerging on the deals and compromises struck between the bill's architects, Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and the group of reluctant swing members of the committee who hail largely from states reliant on coal and heavy industry.

The "breakthrough deal" struck between Waxman, Markey and the swing E&C Committee Dems will enable a full subcommittee markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) beginning Thursday and likely proceeding through next week (markup = votes on a series of amendments on the proposed bill followed vote to pass the bill out of (sub)committee). The deal apparently involves a series of concessions that either incrementally weaken the objectives of the bill or give free greenhouse gas pollution permits to utilities and heavy industry in order to blunt the impact of the proposed cap and trade program on these sectors of the economy.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Heading for Markup - Will it Invest in a Clean, Prosperous Energy Economy?" »

Much ink was spilled last week around the release of the banks' stress test, and the reaction was largely negative. In case you missed the debate -- or if you're still looking for clarity -- here are a few key readings:

"Grading the Banks' Stress Test," NYT Room for Debate

"Stress Tests & the Nationalization We Got," Simon Johnson and James Kwak, Baseline Scenario

"Stressing the Positive," Paul Krugman, NYT

"We Can't Subsidize the Banks Forever", Matthew Richardson and Nouriel Roubini, Wall Street Journal

"Background on the Stress Tests," Dean Baker, American Prospect

But very few offered as comprehensive an analysis as Nouriel Roubini at RGE Monitor. For those still trying to make sense of these tests, see his take below (for the full version you need a free account at RGE):

Continue reading "Ten Reasons why the Stress Test Wasn't Stressful" »

As we predicted back in March, Cap and Trade is going under Down Undah. Several outlets are reporting that Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has promised to shelve the implementation of his proposed cap and trade system until 2011 in an apparent effort to quell concerns that the carbon pricing plan will impact the Aussie economy and shore up support for the controversial proposal in the testy Australian Senate.

To date, Rudd and his center-left Labor Party have already offered numerous industry-friendly concessions, including free allowances for major polluters as part of a so-called "global recession buffer." It wasn't enough to find the necessary votes, so today, Rudd announced even more concessions, including: more polluter giveaways; a delayed start for the program's cap and trade scheme, which won't go into effect until July 2011; and a fixed price for carbon emissions permits of just $10 (AUS) per ton of CO2 for the first full year of the program after that (through July 2012).

Continue reading "Australia Shelves Cap and Trade" »

The United States will restore its standing as the most innovative nation in the world, President Obama declared at a major speech on science, innovation, and education policy delivered today at the National Academies of Science in Washington D.C.

The President pledged to implement policies that will dramatically ramp up the United States' overall spending (both public and private) on innovation and R&D, bringing it up to three percent of the nation's total economic output (GDP). President Obama also declared that it was his goal to see the nation once again have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.

The stimulus bill's $21.5 billion investment in science and technology was the largest investment in R&D in the nation's history, Obama said. He promised that his administration would build on these investments by continuing to expand budgets for key agencies funding science and research (DOE, NSF, NIST), making permanent the federal R&D tax credit to encourage private-sector investment in innovation, and launching a major increase in funding to support the transformative innovation necessary to overcome the nation's energy and climate challenges.

The President's speech was also laden with references to the critical role innovation plays in securing the nation's prosperity and economic competitiveness and said he was committed to expanding science and innovation funding, in spite of (and even because of) the current economic crisis:

"At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today.

Continue reading "President Obama Promises New National Committment to Science and Innovation" »

For advocates of immediate and strong climate and clean energy legislation, there's one man we should all be paying close attention to: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

Senator Brown is one of several Democratic Senators from America's 'Heartland' states that form the critical swing block of legislators that will need to support any climate and clean energy bill that hopes to cross the critical 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Along with a small handful of potential Republican swing votes, these Heartland Democrats have to get behind strong climate policy if we want to see it enacted anytime soon.

Senator Brown has spoken eloquently on multiple occasions about the power of clean energy technologies to revitalize the hard-hit industrial communities of Ohio and other Heartland states. Just this week, the Ohio Senator penned an op ed in the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call declaring that the time is now to enact strong climate policy:

"If we care about the world in which we live and the generations that will follow us, then we must no longer dismiss the lethal risks global warming poses to our planet. We must craft an aggressive strategy to combat global warming, and we must do it now. ... Inaction is not an option."

And yet, the Senator has not pledged support for a specific climate policy. He was among 10 Democratic Senators who signed a letter (pdf) last June, saying they couldn't support climate legislation that resembled the Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, which had just been defeated on the Senate floor. That group now includes five more Democratic Senators, and other Democrats have joined a group led by Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana to stake their claim on climate policy as well.

Senator Brown is still on the fence, and as the old saying goes, 'the devil is truly in the details:' if the details of climate and clean energy legislation make it something Senator Brown can support and even champion, then there's a decent shot of seeing the remaining swing Senators jump on board, putting 60 votes within reach. On the other hand, if Senator Brown can't support the proposal because he's not convinced it's in the best interests of Ohio or the nation, then kiss hopes of climate action this year good bye.

It's simple: if we want to pass policies that will truly catapult the United States into a clean and prosperous energy economy, slash global warming pollution, and make clean energy cheap and abundant, we need to pass the "Sherrod Brown Test."

Continue reading "The Sherrod Brown Test: Finding Consensus on Climate Policy" »

In an editorial today criticizing the most recent Obama team announcement on bank recovery policy, the Wall Street Journal editorial board claimed it has supported bank restructuring for 2 years:

"The sounder strategy -- and the one we've recommended for two years -- is to address systemic financial problems the old-fashioned way: bank by bank, through the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and a resolution agency with the capacity to hold troubled assets and work them off over time. If the stress tests reveal that some of our largest institutions are insolvent or nearly so, it's then time to seize the bank, sell off assets and recapitalize the remainder. (Meanwhile, the healthier institutions would get a vote of confidence and could attract new private capital.)"

So the question must be raised: where is the Obama administration getting its advice on bank policy at this point, and how is it continuing to justify its opposition to swift nationalization? Even the Congressional Oversight Committee, in its latest April report, supports restructuring or liquidation of the banks. Geithners and Summers aren't stupid, so the only reasonable answer is politics.

Perhaps this is all part of a larger trend, captured by a recent memo in the NYT, "Despite Major Plans, Obama Taking Softer Stands"?

President Obama is well known for bold proposals that have raised expectations, but his administration has shown a tendency for compromise and caution, and even a willingness to capitulate on some early initiatives...

"The thing we still don't know about him is what he is willing to fight for," said Leonard Burman, an economist at the Urban Institute and a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. "The thing I worry about is that he likes giving good speeches, he likes the adulation and he likes to make people happy." So far, he said, "It's hard to think of a place where he's taken a really hard position."

Can Obama simply not stand up to the political pressure from bankers pushing against bank restructuring? That's what former chief IMF economist Simon Johnson recently argued in his seminal Atlantic piece, "The Quiet Coup." Or is it largely an ideological problem, particularly with Geithners and Summers?

Nothing is 100% clear, but what's certain is that Obama is performing poorly on this issue, and unless his administration's performance improves soon, it could become the Achilles heal of his legacy. As Robert Kuttner, author of the best-seller "Obama's Challenge" and major Obama supporter, recently concluded an op-ed:

"I fear that these columns have been too polite. They have directed criticisms at Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and national economic policy chief Larry Summers. Lord knows, they richly deserve the criticism. But let's not kid ourselves. The man they work for is named Barack Obama.

President Obama has promised to run an administration of unprecedented openness. And in some respects, such as the ground rules for spending stimulus funds, he has. But in the most important area of all, the financial rescue, the administration is making trillion dollar decisions relying on the Federal Reserve and a small Wall Street club of advisors, with no transparency or public accountability...

We were promised unprecedented openness. In the most momentous area of policy for getting the economy functioning again for ordinary Americans, we have instead unprecedented secrecy, designed by and for Wall Street. We expected better of Obama."

Congressman Henry Waxman says, "by and large," the revenues from climate and clean energy legislation should be reinvested in clean energy technologies, Bloomberg News reported Friday.

The statement is a marked improvement over Congressman Waxman's appearance on PBS' Tavis Smiley show last Monday, when he seemed to indicate that the primary driver of clean energy technology innovation and deployment would be the higher prices on dirty fuels set by proposed cap and trade legislation and made little mention of the critical role public investments in clean energy can and must play in accelerating the birth of a clean, prosperous energy economy.

Like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's prior statements that cap and trade is designed to "pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables," Waxman's latest remarks could indicate a growing consensus among House leadership that carbon revenues should be primarily used to spur clean energy technologies and accelerate the transition to a clean, new energy economy.

Congressman Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee set to draft climate and clean energy legislation over the coming weeks, was also openly critical of President Obama's proposal to send the bulk of revenues raised from a proposed cap and trade system back to taxpayers in the form of middle class tax cuts. Bloomberg quotes the Congressman as saying:

"I don't think that's the best use of it [carbon revenues]," Waxman said. "By and large" it should be spent on green technologies, he said, and part of it could be used to "help consumers with higher energy costs" and hard-hit industries, "especially coal."

The draft climate and clean energy bill circulated three weeks ago by Congressman Waxman and Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) (who chairs the subcommittee taking the first crack at the bill beginning this week) made little commitment to the public investments necessary to spur clean energy innovation and accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies. Waxman's statements last week indicate that commitment may be coming soon, as Markey and Waxman begin the real work of drawing up the climate and energy legislation they hope to send to the House floor by Memorial Day.

Continue reading "Waxman: Carbon revenues should "by and large" be invested in clean technology" »

The National Science Board, the advisory board for the National Science Foundation, issued a call for a renewed national focus on clean energy innovation this week, in a draft report titled Building a Sustainable Energy Future.

Much as the Breakthrough Institute has long advocated, the National Science Board calls for a major increase in federal funding to "[s]upport a range of sustainable energy alternatives, their enabling infrastructure, and their effective demonstration and deployment." The report calls for a ramp-up in clean energy "RD3E" activities - research, development, demonstration and deployment as well as education.

While it does not include a specific funding level recommendation, the National Science Board calls on the federal government to "support a national sustainable energy R&D program at a greatly increased and appropriate scale to meet sustainable energy technological and deployment challenges necessary to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity in a timely manner."

Continue reading "National Science Board Calls for New Commitment to Clean Energy Innovation" »

Is it just me, or is ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm working hard to marginalize himself as he reinforces an increasingly nonsensical position on energy innovation?

Yet again, Romm has recycled his assertions that no new technological development (beyond very minor improvements to existing technologies) is necessary to tackle the massive global energy and climate challenge. He repeats his efforts to label those who call attention to the scale and urgency of our energy innovation challenge and advocate major investments in energy technology as "climate delayer-equivalents." And Romm does so at the exact same time as he plainly ignores -- one might say, denies -- the wide body of evidence and expert consensus that dramatic innovation to spur both incremental and transformative developments in a whole suite of clean energy technologies is critical if we hope to overcome the climate and energy challenge and preserve a prosperous global society.

Perhaps the most striking indication of how at odds Joe Romm's "breakthrough's are totally irrelevant" position is with expert consensus is this: it directly contradicts the public statements of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (who Romm lavished praise on when he was selected by Obama).

Whether speaking before reporters or the United States Senate, Secretary Chu has not been afraid to directly challenge the myth that today's energy technologies are all we'll need to power a sustainable and prosperous 21st century global economy, nor is he shy about calling for transformative technological innovations in the energy sector.

Continue reading "Is Joe Romm an Energy Challenge Denier?" »

The following is an excerpt chapter from the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

A solar array installed along a highway near Freiburg, Germany. Japan and Germany, two somewhat unlikely nations, are now world leaders in solar energy installations and are home to booming domestic solar industries. The secret of their success: sustained public investments in both the development and deployment of solar energy technology. Each nation took a distinct path, and lessons can be learned from both.

Two distinct paths led two very different nations--Germany and Japan--to become global leaders in the production and installation of solar photovoltaic technology. Motivated variously by concerns over security, health, climate change and high energy prices, these nations are now home to robust and growing solar industries and solar panels can be found on hundreds of thousands of rooftops across these nations. However, differences in the public policies employed by each nation led to different results: Germany's solar industry is still dependent on subsidized power production costs, while Japan's investments to drive down the costs of solar energy have successfully created a domestic industry that has been independent of federal subsidies since 2005.

Continue reading "Soaking Up the Sun: Solar Power in Germany and Japan" »

The following is an excerpt chapter from the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

Wind turbines, like those deployed across Denmark. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained public investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy. Today, a third of all wind turbines produced in the world are made by Danish firms, and wind power provides twenty percent of the nation's electricity.

At the mouth of Copenhagen harbor, twenty giant wind turbines, arranged in a graceful arc, turn in the coastal breeze. This is Middelgrunden, Denmark's first cooperative wind farm and a symbol of that tiny country's impressive wind energy industry. Middelgrunden's turbines, installed in the late 1990s, were designed by Danish engineers, built and installed by Danish technicians, and generate enough electricity to power 40,000 Danish homes. Perhaps most impressively, the project is owned by over 8,500 cooperative members who share the profits of clean energy generation.

Middelgrunden is a result of Denmark's long and successful collaboration between private industry, individual citizens and, most importantly, strong government support. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy, and the results have been impressive. Today, Danish firms account for one third of the global wind power market and have driven the creation of a booming multi-billion dollar industry. In Denmark alone, 6,300 wind turbines pump energy into the regional grid today, providing roughly twenty percent of the nation's electricity. Wind power accounts for some 25,000 Danish jobs, and in 2007, the industry exported 4.7 billion euros worth of energy technology. Without a doubt, government involvement in the wind sector enabled this Danish success story.

Continue reading "Inheriting the Wind: Danish Wind Power" »

The following is an excerpt chapter from the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

An antique Apple II, one of the first commercial personal computers. The story of the PC is usually a romantic tribute to the unrestrained genius of lone inventors tinkering in garage workshops. Yet history shows that the active support of the federal government, particularly the U.S. military and space programs, was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.

The legend of the personal computer (PC), as it's normally told, emphasizes individual brilliance and initiative. The origins of today's industry titans like Microsoft and Apple are surrounded by romantic images of college dropouts tinkering away in garage workshops. This story is one of independence, of genius allowed to run free and inventions flourishing in the open market. Of course, the government is conspicuously absent here; as Bill Gates has said, "the amazing thing is that all this happened without any government involvement."

The PC legend may be compelling, but like all legends, it has more to do with fiction than fact. While the role of individual innovators can hardly be understated, the active involvement of the federal government - especially the military - was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.

Continue reading "Silicon Valley Garage or Government Lab: Personal Computing" »

The following is an excerpt chapter from the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

A modern microprocessor. The purchasing power of the federal government made the microchip an affordable and ubiquitous technology. Government procurement drove the price of microchips down by a factor of fifty in just a matter of years. Consider this: without these public investments in the semiconductor revolution, your iPod would cost $10,000 and be the size of a room!

In 1958, a truly groundbreaking idea was finally realized in the laboratories of Texas Instruments (TI). For years prior, engineers had struggled to design circuits that could drive the increasingly sophisticated electronics of the time. Complex electronic processes required circuits involving many transistors, which had to be painstakingly soldered together, and the connections were unreliable and difficult to produce.

Jack Kilby, a TI engineer, realized that this connection problem - known to the electronics industry as the "tyranny of numbers" - could be solved by making all the transistors in a circuit, as well as their connections, out of a single piece of material. In the late summer of 1958, Kilby carved a complex circuit out of a single piece of germanium metal, and the "integrated circuit" - also known as the microchip - was born.

Other engineers, most notably Robert Noyce of Fairchild Semiconductor, quickly improved on Kilby's design, turning a prototype into a promising new innovation. But the future of the microchip was by no means certain. It took the buying power of the U.S. government to make the microchip into a mass-produced, affordable and ubiquitous piece of technology.

Continue reading "The Semiconductor Revolution: Microchips" »

The following is an excerpt chapter from the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

The Wright Flyer on display in the National Air and Space Museum. Powered human flight was invented in the United States, but by the First World War, America lagged behind in the emerging field of aviation. By mid-century, government support, ranging from R&D programs to deployment contracts, had restored U.S. expertise in aeronautics and laid the foundations for the modern aviation industry.

American names like Samuel Langley and the Wright brothers loom large in the history of early flight. But just a few years after Kitty Hawk, America was already lagging behind other nations in the mastery of aviation. European governments poured resources into aeronautics over the early 20th century, compelled by the military needs of the First World War. In 1913, America ranked 14th in government spending on aircraft development, languishing in the company of Brazil and Denmark. Even as Britain, France and Germany made leaps and bounds in aviation design, Langley's "Aerodrome" lay dusty and abandoned in a Smithsonian lab.

By mid-century, however, the U.S. was well on its way to restoring its place at the forefront of civil and military aviation. U.S. factories were churning out better planes, ever faster and cheaper, and American researchers were pioneering radical improvements in aircraft design. Government involvement, from research support to deployment initiatives, was the critical catalyst for this remarkable turnaround, laying the foundations for America's modern aviation industry.

Continue reading "From Kitty Hawk to Boeing Field: the Aviation Industry" »

The following is the introduction to the Breakthrough Institute report, Case Studies in American Innovation: A New Look at Government Involvement in Technological Innovation. You can download the full report here or read more excerpts from the document here.

"It is not an exaggeration to claim that the future of human prosperity depends on how successfully we tackle the two central energy challenges facing us today: securing the supply of reliable and affordable energy; and effecting a rapid transformation to a low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply."

-International Energy Agency (World Energy Outlook 2008)

Summary

Technology is a cornerstone of American prosperity, the primary source of our economic competitiveness, and a constant presence in our everyday lives. From the 19th century's advances in manufacturing and transportation to today's cutting-edge developments in biotechnology and computer science, Americans have been world leaders in creating, producing, and deploying innovative technology. Nobel Laureate Robert Solow's classic 1956 economic model of productivity growth demonstrated that technological progress drove at least 80% of economic growth in the United States between 1909 to 19491, and innovation continues to be perhaps the most powerful engine of our prosperity.

Today, America and the world are in energy crisis. Energy prices are escalating, foreign energy dependency is increasing, global warming continues unabated, and all across the world there are billions of people who continue to live without access to energy. The single greatest solution to these crises is to once again harness America's forces of innovation to make clean energy technology both cheap and abundant.

But to harness this solution we must take a new look at the process of innovation and determine the best mechanisms to catalyze and accelerate technology development. This requires looking beyond both the mythos of the lone American inventor and the market fundamentalist ideology that has dominated American politics in recent decades. Instead, we must look closely at several key American technologies and unearth the historic and seemingly ubiquitous government investments that fueled their development.

Continue reading "An Introduction to Case Studies in American Innovation" »

In a report released in 2009, the Breakthrough Institute illuminates the stories behind the invention and diffusion of ten technologies that are everyday facets of our modern lives and offers a new look at government involvement in technological development.

The conventional wisdom on climate change -- from Thomas Friedman to the country's largest environmental organizations -- is that cap and trade regulation and carbon pricing is the best way to promote clean energy innovation. However, a growing number of experts, including Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, are challenging this assumption, recognizing the importance of direct, large-scale public investment to achieve developments in clean energy technology. The outcome of this debate and the correct emphasis on public investment and regulation may determine the course of U.S. and global climate policy.

Case Studies in American Innovation presents ten case studies showing that public investment and active government support has been one of the greatest forces behind the nation's technology development and economic growth. Indeed, public investment in the U.S. was largely responsible for railroads, airplanes, microchips, personal computers, and the birth of the Internet -- all of which drove long-term economic development. This evidence not only challenges conventional wisdom on climate policy, but also on national economic policy, which has been dominated for three decades by neoclassical economists.

Full Report: Download Here (PDF)

Excerpts from the report on our blog:

• Introduction to Case Studies in American Innovation
• From Kitty Hawk to Boeing Field: the Aviation Industry
• The Semiconductor Revolution: Microchips
• Silicon Valley Garage or Government Lab: Personal Computing
• Inheriting the Wind: Danish Wind Power
• Soaking Up the Sun: Solar Power in Germany and Japan

Continue reading "BREAKTHROUGH REPORT: Case Studies in American Innovation" »

By Teryn Norris & Jesse Jenkins
The Huffington Post
April 7th, 2009

If Democrats want to win on climate policy, they must think fast and move quickly to regain control of the debate. Last week was the opening round of the national climate fight, and the Democratic Congress was nearly knocked out.

It began on Tuesday with the introduction of a major climate bill by Democratic Congressmen Waxman and Markey. The proposal made a fateful choice: it threw out President Obama's "Apollo" plan for investing $150 billion in clean energy and focused instead on meeting the demands of leading environmental organizations, emphasizing cap and trade regulation and a laundry list of electricity and efficiency standards.

Meanwhile, the response to climate legislation in the Senate was swift and harsh, with Republicans deftly maneuvering to secure the political high ground. Senator Thune (R-SD) introduced an amendment to the budget (which as originally proposed had included revenues from carbon cap and trade) declaring that any climate legislation should "not increase electricity or gasoline prices," which quickly passed 89 to 8. Senator Ensign (R-NV) then proposed an amendment stating that climate policy should not result in higher taxes on the middle class, passing unanimously (98-0). These votes effectively put all but a handful of Democratic Senators on the record opposing policies to raise the price of dirty energy -- the central purpose of cap and trade regulation, including the provisions at the heart of the Waxman-Markey bill.

What went wrong? The Democratic Congress made a critical mistake in following the direction of leading green groups like Environmental Defense Fund and the Natural Resources Defense Council. By tossing out Obama's energy investment plan and focusing on carbon pricing and regulation, Democrats allowed Republicans to quickly and easily frame the entire debate around increased energy prices and economic costs. That's a fight Republicans take up with relish -- and one they will surely win.

Continue reading "How Democrats Can Win the Climate Debate" »

The Geithner-Summers banking plan has received much criticism (e.g. see Stiglitz and Johnson), but today Jeffrey Sachs issued one of the harshest critiques yet. Basically, the Geithner-Summers plan could allow banks to commit fraud by bidding on their own toxic assets and walking away with huge amounts of taxpayer money. Sachs sums it up here at the Huffington Post:

Continue reading "How to Game the Geithner Plan" »

Even with all that has intervened since the summer of 2008, including an historic election and the onset of the worst global recession in decades, the memory of the oil price shocks of the past year are not far from our minds. We'd better keep that memory fresh, because a recent McKinsey report warns that a second major oil shock looms just over the horizon, ready to hit the global economy hard as soon as it begins to recover.

McKinsey's analysts look at a variety of economic scenarios and warn that the global oil supply-demand balance will tighten as soon as the global economy begins to recover, as soon as 2010-2013 (depending on degree of global downturn). At that point, the global supply-demand situation will closely resemble the situation found in 2007 and the first half of 2008, when prices soared to over $140 a barrel, hitting pocketbooks and the global economy hard.

McKinsey predicts that a second oil price shock could cost the global economy $1.5 trillion or more, hitting us hard just as we're trying to stand back up again.

Continue reading "New Oil Shock Poised to Strike as Economy Recovers" »

Marking the starting bell in the long-promised fight over the nation's energy future, Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) introduced a climate and energy legislation "discussion draft" yesterday.

As Beltway insiders have repeatedly "reminded" me, this is "just a discussion draft," and its final form may be much different. But just looking at what's in this bill so far -- and just as important, what's not -- paints a clear picture of misplaced priorities and a bill in critical need of some "course correction."

Even a cursory read of this "American Clean Energy and Security Act" (ACES) -- and I've read far more of this 648 page bill than I'd like! -- speaks volumes to the priorities of the various parties driving this debate so far - namely the green groups and big industry players already cutting deals as part of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership.  This bill should be proof, once and for all, these leading greens will throw clean energy investments overboard to preserve precious regulations and an increasingly compromised "cap" on carbon.

Continue reading "New Climate Bill Proof of Misplaced Priorities" »

Republicans deftly succeeded in calling greens and Democrats on their bluff that cap and trade won't cost anything, winning yesterday an 89 to 8 vote on a resolution stating that any climate legislation must not raise gasoline or electricity prices. The Senate vote is timed to coincide with yesterday's release of a climate bill "discussion draft" in the House (more on that bill from the Breakthrough Blog coming soon).

The implications of this vote are that just eight out of 100 senators believe, and have the courage of their convictions, to openly state that fossil fuel prices should rise to deal with climate change. That is to say, there are only eight senators who agree with Thomas Friedman, EDF, NRDC, David Leonhardt, AEI, and all the others who believe that the most important, and perhaps only thing we should do to combat climate change and drive clean energy innovation is to set a price on carbon.

Continue reading "Senate Says No to Pollution Pricing Paradigm" »

James K. Galbraith has a tour de force piece in the Washington Monthly on the economic and financial crises, what's at their core and what's necessary to move forward.

Galbraith echoes and reinforces many of the criticisms and recommendations Breakthrough has been offering on the economy for the past six months: more public spending (a lot!); nationalize the banks so they can be cleaned up and re-privatized; and ultimately, spark a new engine of economic growth in the birth of a new clean energy economy.

Galbraith isn't shy either about criticizing President Obama and Treasury Secretary Geithner for stimulus.  It's not bold enough, it reflects the middle of the road economic consensus (and is therefore too timid), and it reflects a misguided attempt at bipartisanship.  Here's the choice quote there:

Second, the new team also sought consensus of another type. Christina Romer polled a bipartisan group of professional economists, and Larry Summers told Meet the Press that the final package reflected a "balance" of their views. This procedure guarantees a result near the middle of the professional mind-set. The method would be useful if the errors of economists were unsystematic. But they are not. Economists are a cautious group, and in any extreme situation the midpoint of professional opinion is bound to be wrong.

Continue reading "Galbraith on the Economy: Time to Go Big or Go Home" »

Breakthrough's director of energy and climate policy, Jesse Jenkins, speaks about climate policy and politics on a half hour radio segment that aired March 27th on KPFA radio in the Bay Area. Jenkins joins Clear Air Watch's Frank O'Donnell to discuss the hard realities of climate politics and outline a policy strategy to make clean energy cheap that can overcome these realities.

Listen to the archived segment as streaming audio here (only available through April 10, 2009):

Or listen to the segment as archived MP3 here.

Both speaking to the public today at separate events, President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Stephen Chu highlighted the administration's plans to make unprecedented investments in clean energy innovation.

Speaking at the White House, President Obama continued to advance his post-environmental, innovation and investment-oriented energy agenda.

After a spot-on introduction from articulate energy innovation advocate and MIT President Susan Hockfield (see related post), President Obama highlighted the unprecedented energy innovation investments in the stimulus bill and reiterated his pledge to invest $15 billion annually in the development of new, clean and efficient energy technologies.

Obama also promised a ten-year commitment to make the federal Research and Experimentation Tax Credit permanent in order to encourage greater private sector investment in the kind of innovation that truly drives long-term economic growth.

Continue reading "President Obama and Secretary Chu Deliver Double Dose on Energy Innovation" »

Investments in clean energy innovation offer the nation's "best strategy" for economic recovery and "the only route to the breakthrough technologies we need" to tackle the nation's pressing energy and climate challenge, said MIT President Susan Hockfield today at a speech delivered at the White House.

Hockfield, an outspoken champion of clean energy innovation, spoke at the invitation of President Obama, who followed Hockfield's remarks with a speech outlining his plans to make unprecedented investments in clean energy technology and innovation.

"[S]ince World War II, by far the largest and most important source of US economic growth has been technological innovation, much of it springing from federally funded ... research," Hockfield said, echoing much of the work we've done at the Breakthrough Institute to advance public investments in clean energy innovation.

Facing both economic recession and pressing energy and climate challenges, clean energy innovation is critical, Hockfield argued:

"The R&D and technology investments that President Obama proposes have equally profound potential as an economic catalyst. That would be good news in any economy. But today, it provides a lifeline. ...

Not incidentally, these same investments [in energy innovation] also offer the only route to the breakthrough technologies we need to address the daunting challenges of energy security, rapidly accelerating energy demand and climate change."

In January, Teryn Norris and I cautioned about the "Danger of Green Stimulus" and called for "a shift from green jobs to a broader focus on green technology," a called echoed by Dr. Hockfield in the inspirational conclusion of her remarks:

"In hard times, America always invents its way to a brighter future. We have done it before, and we can do it again. For Americans out of work today, new "green jobs" will help. But for tomorrow, we need new green industries. And the only way to build those industries is by investing ambitiously now in basic and applied research."

Couldn't have said it better myself, Dr. Hockfield.

Since this is the third time now we've highlighted Susan Hockfield's spot-on remarks at the Breakthrough Blog, I think it's time she joins Energy Secretary and Nobel laureate Dr. Stephen Chu and dons the (entirely unofficial) mantle of "Honorary Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow." Read on for her full remarks...

Continue reading "MIT President Hockfield at the White House: Investing in Energy R&D "Best Strategy" for Economic Growth" »

Guest post by Alex Park

Shell might not have been a major player in clean tech, having never dedicated more that around 1 percent of its investments to renewable energy, or a paltry 1.25 billion dollars between 1999 and 2006. But as of this week, Shell has decided that it won't be a clean tech player at all. The reason? In the words of one exec, "We do not expect material amounts of investment in those areas going forward." That's according to a story posted yesterday in Reuters.

In other words, even with diminishing oil production, even with Obama in the White House, even with climate change, Shell is taking its money out of renewable energy because as of yet, it is simply not bolstering the firm's bottom line. And if it can't do that, then Shell can't stay in renewables if it wants to stay in business. It's that simple.

But the news is not just about Shell...

Continue reading "Shell Retires Renewable Energy Business" »

It was with much fanfare and bravado that then-newly-elected Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of Australia announced at the 2007 Bali climate talks that his nation would abandon opposition to climate action and ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Better late than never, Rudd said and bravely declared, "I can unite the world on climate."

To deliver on that bold promise, Rudd directed his ministers to put together a cap and trade program to limit greenhouse gas emissions and put a price on CO2. The outline of an Australian "Emissions Trading Scheme" was rolled out last week with plans to implement a cap and trade program in June 2010 aimed at cutting emissions 5 to 15 percent below 2000 levels by 2020.

Now, the Australian Prime Minister's efforts to put a price on carbon and cap emissions are under fire from both Right and Left, and cap and trade is going under Down Undah.

Continue reading "Cap and Trade Going Under Down Undah" »

Shellenberger interviews with Planet Forward TV and argues that rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuels in the 21st century demands large-scale public investment in technology innovation to make clean energy cheap. See the clip here, and look for this new show which premieres at 8 p.m. April 15, 2009 on PBS.

Dalton Conley, sociology professor at NYU and senior fellow here at the Breakthrough Institute, recently published an article in The Nation (to appear in the March 23rd print edition) about the US's continual slide down the UN's global Human Development Index (HDI) rankings. We still rank near the top in per capita income, but Conley argues persuasively that income inequality is the driving force behind the seeming contradiction that a nation can have high income levels and low measures of development. For interested readers, the American Human Development Project has an interesting website that goes into detail about these measures at the state and local level.

Please follow the link above for the article, or you can read it below:

Continue reading "America is #... 15?" »

written by David Douglas and cross-posted from Near Walden

Roger Pielke Jr. has an outstanding post titled US Mitigation Math where he shows the general sources and sinks of US energy and resulting GHG emissions. He also throws out some reduction scenarios and concludes that they cannot come close to meeting an emissions reductions goal of 14% below 2005 levels by 2020.

So he closes with a challenge: "... present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020."

It's a busy week for me so I haven't had time to work out some complete solutions, but I took a shortcut and asked myself how much CO2 I could reduce if I took all of the Obama administrations projected $645B in revenue from emissions allowances between 2012 and 2019 and applied it to various solutions.

Since I'm living in a hypothetical world, I'm going to take a couple of liberties. First, I'm going to assume that I've either got access to all of the money on the first day of 2012, or I can get the average amount of $80B/year for a long time to come. Second, I'm going to ignore the physical and temporal realities of implementing my solutions - in my world I've got the full support of the nation and they'll do everything they can to implement these ideas. Finally, I'm going to conveniently ignore the emissions required to implement these solutions.

Solution 1: Buy Lots of Prius's

In this scenario I'm going to buy 25.6M Prius cars at an estimated 45MPG and replace 25.6M gas guzzlers at an average of 15MPG. At 12K miles/year each, we'll save 533 gallons of gas per car per year, and at about 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon, that's about 4.8 metric tons of CO2 per car per year. Grand total savings: 122MMt/year, or a 2% savings from 5991 MMt.

Continue reading "Mitigation Math: Hypothetical Answers" »

cross posted from Prometheus, the Science Policy Blog

The mathematics of United States carbon dioxide emissions are not actually that complicated. The figure below from the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows that the 5,991 million metric tonnes (MMt) of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. came from 3 sources: coal, natural gas, and petroleum (see three inputs in the upper left of the graph).

Each of these fossil fuels, plus renewables and nuclear power make up the total energy consumption in the United States. Energy consumption is measured using a unit call a "quad" which means a quadrillion BTUs (British Thermal Units). In 2007 the United States used 101.4 quads of energy (data). This amount of energy can be broken down by source as follows.

The 15.2 quads of energy from nuclear and renewable sources resulted in negligible carbon dioxide emissions. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to each quad of fossil fuel energy depends upon the source, as their carbon intensities differ. For the analysis that follows I use the following values, distilled from the EIA information provided here in .xls.

Coal = 94 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Natural Gas = 53 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Petroleum = 65 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad

Thus, to calculate total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions simply requires multiplying quads of energy by carbon dioxide per quad and summing across the three fuels. This simple math results in the following:

(94 * 22.8 [Coal]) + (53 * 23.6 [Natural Gas]) + (65 * 39.8 [Petroleum]) = 5,981 MMt carbon dioxide

This total compares quite well with the total of 5,991 MMt carbon dioxide reported for 2007 by EIA (see figure above). We can use this information to ask some straightforward questions about how an emissions reduction target of 14% below 2005 levels (5,095 MMt carbon dioxide) might be reached by 2020.

We can do a bit of hypothetical "stress testing" of these numbers, by asking, in theory, what sort of actions might lead to reaching the emissions reductions target. Before we do this, we do need to make a guess as to 2020 US energy consumption. The EIA projects that energy consumption will grow at a rate of 0.5% per year (calculated from information here). Because GDP growth is expected to be higher than this rate, it already builds in an assumption of gains in energy efficiency. But let's use the EIA estimate, which suggests that US energy consumption in 2020 will be 108.6 quads, of which 21 quads will come from renewables plus nuclear energy, representing a growth of about 40% on top of 2007 values. This leaves 87.2 quads to be produced by fossil fuels.

Here are a few examples of the effects of different hypothetical strategies:

1) What would happen if all coal consumption were to be replaced with natural gas?

Answer: In 2020 total emissions would be 5,110 MMt carbon dioxide, very close to the 2020 target.

2) By how much would renewables plus nuclear have to displace coal to reach the target?

Answer: The target could be reached if coal consumption were reduced by about 42%, and the displaced 9.2 quads of energy were replaced by renewables plus nuclear, implying more than doubling of renewable plus nuclear energy supply, to comprise 30% of all energy consumption.

If renewables alone (i.e., non-nuclear) are to carry the weight of displacing coal, then they would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 4.7 over 2007 values. If growth in renewable energy supply is restricted to solar and wind only, then these sources would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 80 (that is, e-i-g-h-t-y). The reason for this big difference is that biomass and geothermal provided about 6.4 quads of energy in 2007, whereas wind and solar only 0.4 quads. The Obama Administration's goal of doubling wind, solar, and biofuels production within 3 years may indeed be a worthwhile policy, but it is not consistent with a goal of displacing sufficient coal to reach the 14% 2020 target using wind and solar (and while biofuels have their own complexities as a policy issue, they are not really a substitute for coal in any case).

3) By how much would energy consumption have to be reduced to meet the target assuming no changes in the energy consumption mix?

Answer: Energy consumption would have to be about 85.5 quads in 2020, about equal to 1992 values when the US economy was 35% smaller than in 2007.

Some Comments on the Stress Tests

First, number (1) above is really not desirable if the goal of mitigation policy is ultimately a reduction in emission of 80% or more. The reason for this is that while natural gas is less carbon intensive than goal, it is still carbon intensive. Locking in a large natural gas infrastructure is not compatible with large emissions reductions. Consider that in the hypothetical case that all US fossil fuel needs were to be met by natural gas, then 2007 carbon dioxide emission would have been 5,375 MMt, less than observed in 2007, but not consistent with any low stabilization target.

Second, number (2) is theoretically promising but practically daunting. The following is worth repeating -- for wind and solar to displace enough coal to reach the 14% target by 2020 would require that it increase by a factor of 80 in absolute terms from 2007 production. President Obama's policy of a tripling in wind and solar energy supply in the next three years would leave a need for another increase by a factor of about 25 over the next 8 years if wind and solar are to displace sufficent coal to meet the target.

Third, with respect to number (3), while there is a lot of potential to exploit in increasing energy efficiency, to reach the 14% would require a reduction of US energy use by about 2 quads per year for the next decade. Assuming that policy makers and citizens want economic growth to resume, this is a Herculean task. If you factor in that the EIA estimates to 2020 already include a good bit of efficiency gain in the BAU scenario, the task could be even larger if these assumed gains do not occur or if economic growth happens at a faster rate than assumed.

In reality, of course, none of these "stress tests" would be applied alone; there would be a combination of all three approaches discussed above. However, I challenge readers to present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020. I am not saying that it can't be done, but I am saying that I don't see how it can be done. The comments are open, have at it.

Setting an emissions target and timetable, allocating emissions permits, and then saying that the magic of the market will efficiently take care of the task is exactly the answer I'd expect if one doesn't have an answer. Markets can't make the impossible possible, and when they are used in such a manner, often have undesirable results.

This post is a contribution to the Special Breakthrough Issue, "After Power Shift: What's Next?"

By Morgan Goodwin

Power Shift brought together the youth climate movement and let us feel how powerful we are. More of us share a strategy of how to move forward and build our power. And we see how far we still have to go in building a clean energy economy and stopping global warming.

We must accomplish the two major goals of passing bold climate legislation and stopping dirty energy. And then we must become the builders of