What does energy have to do with ending poverty? Bill Gates -- whose philanthropic largesse has made him one of the most prominent advocates for the world's poor -- should know.

At the recent Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics forum, Gates made a pitch for making energy cheap and clean around the world.

"If you want to improve the situation of the poorest two billion on the planet, having the price of energy go down substantially is about the best thing you could do for them," Gates said. "Energy is the thing that allowed civilization over the last 220 years to dramatically change everything."

Continue reading "Bill Gates: Make Energy Cheap, Clean" »

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

Ideas Whose Times Have Come

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Post-"Post-pollution"

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

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

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

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

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

India is at a political, environmental, and economic impasse -- and the common denominator is coal. According to recent reports, India simultaneously has too much coal and not enough, a problem that results from the collision of a variety of factors: rising energy demand, greenhouse gas emissions, and environmental degradation; environmental regulations on coal productions, bureaucratic red tape, and poor infrastructure that appear to be motivating coal producers to import; and limits to the potential for clean energy deployment to keep pace with the demands of an emerging economy.

While the crisis is largely political, one thing is clear: over the long term, an intensifying coal shortage is likely to drive the cost of electricity up and India's energy poor are likely to suffer the most.

From the Washington Post:

India's dependence on coal will continue to grow for 30 years, experts say. Proposed nuclear power reactors will take many years to complete, and renewable-energy sources can, at best, light up rural homes and streetlights but not power factories, said Jaiswal, the coal minister.

"We have solar energy for six hours a day. But it can light only two bulbs. If the coal can bring 24 hours of electricity to our homes, my children can study better, and I can buy a television," said Amme Lal, from Morga village in Chhattisgarh, who was taking home on his bicycle logs from the forest for cooking fire. "But I have also seen how sad coal mines look -- all black, no trees, fumes rising."

Written by Natalie Relich and cross-posted with permission from Americans for Energy Leadership.

In the age of iPhones, Facebook, and Twitter, we have instant access to information and constant means of communication. It is difficult to imagine life without these luxuries, but they are just that, luxuries. For a large portion of the world these technologies are not only a rarity, but an impossibility, as there is no access to electricity.

1.5 billion people do not have access to electricity; 585 million of them living in Sub-Saharan Africa and 404 million in India. Three billion people, almost half of the world’s population, rely on biomass, such as wood, charcoal, and dung for cooking and heating purposes. Sub-Saharan Africa is an especially dire case. Only 31% of the population has access to electricity and the Sub-Saharan African population (excluding South Africa) of 791 million consumes as much energy annually as the city of New York, a population of 19.5 million, according to a recent IEA and UNDP report entitled “Energy Poverty: How to Make Modern Energy Access Universal.”

These people are living in energy poverty, the ramifications of which extend far beyond heating and cooking. Instead of children – usually young girls – going to school, they have to spend hours collecting firewood to heat their homes and cook. If the children are able to go to school, they can only do school work during daylight hours because they have no light to study by at night.

Energy poverty is one of the least discussed aspects of our current energy challenge, yet it poses serious threats to economies, national security, the environment, and public health throughout the world. It is unacceptable that such a massive social problem exists, yet here in the U.S. we do little to alleviate it. This article seeks raise awareness about energy poverty and to describe the threats posed by it and what is being done to remedy them.

Continue reading "Solving the Energy Poverty Problem" »

By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

The failure of the U.N. climate process is proof that shared economic sacrifice cannot be the basis of global action. Nations will not scale up clean energy as long as it remains so much more expensive than fossil fuels. Thinking past talks in Cancun, nations should focus instead on energy innovation, adaptation, and no regrets policies that do not require agreement about global warming. The first step is recognizing that the global market for clean energy exists only thanks to government subsidies and mandates. Instead of imposing emissions controls and subsidizing existing technologies, nations should use competitive deployment to purchase advanced energy technologies, benchmark the winners, and allow intellectual property to spill-over between firms and nations.

This is the framework we propose for pragmatic global climate action in the cover story for a special energy section in today's Wall Street Journal, pegged to the start of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Today also marks the launch of a new web site, Breakthrough Europe, and its kick-off post, "Cancun Can't: The Twilight of European Climate Leadership," which documents the failure of Europe's cap and trade system to reduce emissions.

Our Wall St. Journal essay, "How to Change the Global Energy Conversation," builds on Breakthrough Institute's thinking about the failure of the UN process ("Scrap Kyoto," Democracy Journal), the clean tech intellectual property illusion ("The Revolution Will Not Be Patented," Slate), the green Keynesianism and neoliberalism behind Obama's green jobs fiasco ("Green Jobs for Janitors," The New Republic), and our proposal to make clean energy cheap through technology innovation ("Fast, Clean & Cheap," Harvard Law and Policy Review, Feb 2008).

Continue reading "WSJ: Forget the U.N. Climate Convention, Rethink Innovation Instead" »

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

Today's FT has a special report on Nigeria, and has a very interesting discussion of energy access:

Despite average cash injections of $2bn annually over recent years and large untapped gas reserves, electricity capacity remains at about 40 watts per capita, roughly enough to run one vacuum cleaner for every 25 inhabitants.

China manages 466 watts per person, Germany 1,468. South Africa, the continent's economic powerhouse, generates 10 times as much electricity as Nigeria for a population one-third the size.

Officials calculate that the potential activity stymied by lack of electricity amounts to $130bn a year.

In the absence of a functioning grid, those who can afford it, spend about $13bn a year running the small generators whose rattle and sputter is the soundtrack of urban life. The poorest 40 per cent have no access to electricity.

Banks estimate that spending on power drives up their costs by 20 per cent, helping push interest rates well beyond what small businesses can afford.

Potential investors are hardly filled with confidence when the lights go out at ministries or - terrifyingly - airports.

The article has two very powerful quotes:

As Babatunde Fashola, Lagos state governor, said of the [Nigerian business conference] audience: "For them, electricity has become as important as oxygen."

And:

As if the audience needed reminding, the organisers added: "The cost of darkness is infinite."

Turns out that decades of energy efficient lightbulbs and Energy Star appliances haven't led to reductions in energy consumption in the average household, but they have given the average American relatively more disposable income to devote to new (energy-guzzling) gadgetry.

As David Fahrenthold reports in the Washington Post:

The amount of energy that the average American requires at home has changed little since the early 1970s -- despite advances in technology that have made many home appliances far more energy efficient...

But on a per-capita basis, Americans still require about 70 million British thermal units a year to heat, cool and power their homes, just as they did in 1971...

A key reason, experts say, is that American homes are getting bigger, which means more space to heat and cool. And consumers are buying more and more power-sucking gadgets -- meaning that kilowatts saved by dishwashers and refrigerators are often used up by flat-screen televisions, computers and digital video recorders.

These trends "have balanced each other out. It's been a wash, basically," said Lowell Ungar of the nonprofit Alliance to Save Energy.

Continue reading "In 40 Years of Energy Efficiency Improvements, No Change in Household Energy Consumption" »

One of the most curious facts about energy is that economies continue to use more of it even as they use it more efficiently. This strikes us as strange because it has become an article of faith that making cars, buildings, and factories more energy efficient is the key to cheaply and quickly reducing energy consumption, and thus pollution.

But energy experts have never seen this as particularly mysterious. As energy historian Vaclav Smil notes, "Historical evidence shows unequivocally that secular advances in energy efficiency have not led to any declines of aggregate energy consumption." A group of economists beginning in the 1980s went further, suggesting that increasing the productivity of energy would increase economic growth and energy consumption. Efficiency advocates dismiss the evidence of rebound in energy use pointing to direct behavioral changes at the household or business level that are easiest to measure. But the most significant energy rebounds are indirect -- in the production of energy, raw materials, and consumer goods -- not in the "end use" of consumer products.

Below, a leading energy economist, Harry Saunders, explains why energy efficiency does not decrease energy consumption in the way we conventionally understand it. In the process, Saunders clarifies the controversy over his recent co-authored study for the Journal of Physics, which reviews 300 years of lighting history to predict the impact of new solid-state lighting technologies (e.g. LEDs). Against the widespread belief that new lighting technology will reduce energy consumption, Saunders and his colleagues found that they will likely increase it -- greatly expanding the global use of lighting in the process, especially in developing countries. Saunders clarifies some important questions, and explains the basics of "the rebound effect."

With the new study, rebound has firmly moved from the theoretical to the empirical, and the implications of it must now be dealt with by all of us who were counting on efficiency to be an easy way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

-Michael Shellenberger, President, Breakthrough Institute

Why Energy Efficiency May Not Decrease Energy Consumption

By Harry Saunders

I recently co-authored an article for the Journal of Physics ("Solid-state lighting: an energy-economics perspective" by Jeff Tsao, Harry Saunders, Randy Creighton, Mike Coltrin, Jerry Simmon, August 19, 2010) analyzing the increase in energy consumption that will likely result from new (and more efficient) solid-state lighting (SSL) technologies. The article triggered a round of commentaries and responses that have confused the debate over energy efficiency. What follows is my attempt to clarify the issue, and does not necessarily represent the views of my co-authors.

Continue reading "Why Energy Efficiency May Not Decrease Energy Consumption" »

In a new interview with Technology Review, Bill Gates nails the global energy and climate challenge and discusses the need for dramatic increases in energy innovation funding to make clean energy cheap.

Bill Gates has been speaking out publicly over the last few months--first in a blog post on his website, then in a talk at the TED conference, and now as part of the American Energy Innovation Council--for radical energy innovation to drive carbon emissions to zero.

In a climate discourse dominated by emissions targets and carbon caps, Gates has provided a refreshing and clear-eyed look at the first-order importance of direct public investment to develop clean, affordable technologies to replace fossil fuels on a global scale.

In this new interview, Gates discusses why dismissing the difficulty of the challenge is counter-productive, and argues that carbon pricing can never drive the dramatic innovation required to transform the global energy system. Instead of raising the price of fossil fuels, Gates argues that the time has come to shift our attention to raising the revenues necessary to fuel innovation and make clean energy cheap.

Below the fold, you can find excerpts from Gates' interview, which can be read in full here.

For more, the NYTimes Andy Revkin and TIME magazine's Bryan Walsh each spotlight the interview here and here, respectively.

Continue reading "Gates: Invest in Innovation to Make Clean Energy Cheap" »

Just ten years into the second millennium, the U.S. finds itself in a situation complicated by a catastrophic oil spill dumping hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil into the Gulf, a badly wounded, if recovering, economy whose historic dominance is being ably challenged, and a growing demand for energy that must be produced without hastening the impacts of climate change. There is a growing consensus that energy innovation offers a pathway to the solutions for all of these challenges, but the White House and Congress seem flummoxed by what steps to take next. As TIME magazine's Bryan Walsh suggests in his latest cover story (subs. req'd) profiling the influence of Thomas Edison's innovative genius on the energy industry in the 20th century, it may be time to look to history for some guidance.

As Walsh explains, Edison "spent his career "inventing the century" - the 20th century." But he did not devise the inventions that gave birth to the electrical power industry (not to mention the recorded music and motion picture industries) in a vacuum. Instead, Edison's innovative potential was nurtured from a young age and as an adult, he continued to encourage his creativity by surrounding himself with others whose knowledge base could help him realize his ideas.

Continue reading "Inventing the 21st Century" »

Two new posts for Earth Day argue that we need to move from nature protection to tech innovation. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are in Slate and Mother Jones arguing that the focus on technology transfer as part of a global climate agreement is a distraction: clean tech IP has already been rapidly transferred to China -- soon it will be transferred back here.

And Breakthrough's Director of Climate and Energy Policy, Jesse Jenkins, dings America's political 'elites', including cap and trade author Rep. Ed Markey, for frequently suggesting, in the face of all this, that "clean energy jobs cannot be exported." Like American IP, U.S. clean tech jobs in manufacturing and innovation are already flowing overseas -- or being created there in the first place.

Continue reading "Earth Day: From Conservation To Innovation" »

Obama invokes this classic imagery in his video message explaining the history of Earth Day.

Forty-one years ago, in the city of Cleveland, people watched in horror as the Cuyahoga river, choked with debris and covered in oil, caught on fire. Images of the burning Cuyahoga shocked the nation and it led one Wisconsin senator, the following year, to organize the first Earth Day to call attention to the dangers of ignoring our environment.

But as Michael and Ted wrote in Break Through in 2007, the image of the burning river that purportedly catalyzed Earth Day and the modern environmental movement was actually taken in 1952, not 1969, because the "historic" latter fire didn't even burn long enough to be photographed.

Continue reading "Nostalgia Clouds the Larger Purpose of Earth Day" »

Andy Revkin has posted several commenter responses to his great piece at the new Dot Earth 2.0, declaring that a global, "sustained energy quest" should be "an organizing principle if humanity wants to avoid hard knocks in the next few decades."

One response, from Hugh Whalan of New York provides a powerful way to envision the realities of energy poverty and it's central importance to the global energy quest of the 21st century:

More than 125,000 years ago, your ancestors discovered fire. With it came a source of heat, warmth, and light. Unfortunately, for 1 in 3 people living today, very little has changed. This is energy poverty.

Really let that sink in - one third of the world's population lives like this.

Addressing energy poverty is a key step to alleviating poverty - with the IEA noting that an additional 700 million people need to gain access to modern energy services by 2015 if the UN's millennium development poverty alleviation goal is to be met (halving world poverty).

Just as importantly, energy poverty is a huge contributor to climate change, as those stuck in energy poverty are forced to rely on fuels like kerosene and firewood which caused enormous amounts of pollution.

Significantly expanding green energy access to developing countries is a simple solution - addressing poverty and reducing emissions - with the possibility that we can set developing countries on a 'clean energy' path to development.

It won't be easy. It won't be cheap. But importantly companies are starting to show that delivering clean energy to billions of poor can be profitable.

Energy is important to everything. Policy makers, governments and the general public need to be more aware of this because we all too easily take access to energy for granted.

Continue reading "Energy Poverty is Being Stuck 125,000 Years in the Past" »

[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" »

Discover illuminates the differing perspectives of climate scientists, Judith Curry (Georgia Tech) and Michael Mann (Penn State), on the implications of ClimateGate and the state of climate science, in general. Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. has excerpts from the interview on his blog.

Here's Judith Curry in response to the question: "So where does climate research go from here?"

"I personally don't support cap-and-trade. It makes economic sense but not political sense. You're just going to see all the loopholes and the offsets. I think you're going to see a massive redistribution of wealth to Wall Street, and we're not going to reduce the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. We need a massive investment in technology. We do need to help the developing world that is most vulnerable now to the impacts of climate variability, not even the stuff that's related to carbon dioxide. There are a lot of things going on--floods, hurricanes, droughts, and whatever--that can't even be attributed to global warming right now. By reducing the vulnerability of the developing world to these extreme events, we'll have gone a long way to helping them adapt to the more serious things that might come about from global warming."

Originally published by The Stanford Daily

"If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years," declared the world's wealthiest man during last week's TED 2010 conference, "I can pick who is president, I can pick a vaccine - or I can pick that an [energy technology] at half the cost with no carbon emissions gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact."

Bill Gates is right. And he is not just talking about the impact on climate change, which does of course present a major threat. He is also talking about one of the most critical global imperatives to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.

"If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy," said Gates in his introduction. Gates should know as well as any development expert, since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation - the world's largest transparent private foundation - has invested billions of dollars in extreme poverty alleviation since 1994.

Nearly 1.6 billion of our fellow human beings have no access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people - over one third of global population - meet their basic cooking and heating needs by burning biomass, such as wood, crop waste, and dung. "Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment," concludes the International Energy Agency.

Continue reading "To Make Poverty History, Make Clean Energy Cheap" »