Importantly [the Waxman-Markey ACES climate bill] falls a long way short of Obama's election promises on most scores: the [renewable electricity standard], CO2 emission reductions and allocations. The expected price of carbon will therefore in all likelihood be too low (USD13-17) to really drive the change that's needed, resulting in no clean energy fund versus the USD150bn fund that we would have expected to have been raised from 100% auctioning of permits. This in our opinion makes the clean energy mandates ever more important. This is an area which, despite some progress, remains weaker than initial expectations. ...

[M]ore importantly, if the best that the US can bring to the negotiating table ahead of the talks on a new post-Kyoto emissions treaty, is a 3% cut in emissions versus 1990 baseline, then this may not be enough to tickle out an agreement from China and India [at the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, December 2009.]

-Global investment firm HSBC on the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (via WSJ.com's Environmental Capital blog). We note that HSBC's conclusions about the Waxman-Markey climate bill strongly echo Breakthrough's own (see links in quote above).

See Breakthrough's original analysis of the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill here.

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" »

The comment came less than a week after a congressional panel approved President Barack Obama's landmark draft bill on climate change [see Breakthrough's analysis of the bill here], bringing it closer to debate in Congress.

"There was a great deal of discussion on the Kyoto targets, and I'm not really sure which fraction of the countries that took part in that actually met their targets," Chu, a Nobel laureate for physics, said at a conference in London. "In terms of the targets, whether it's 17 percent or 20 or 25 percent, I think there's perhaps ... an over-obsession on these percentages."

Continue reading "Secretary Chu: Climate Debate May Have "Over-Obssession" With Emissions Targets" »

File this under "D" for "Depressing" and "G" for time to "Get Serious" about adaptation, geoengineering, biochar and air capture technologies and transformational clean energy innovation. Because if what these scientists say is true, we're going to need a healthy dose of each to mitigate and adapt to the warming likely to hit populations across the planet over the coming century and beyond.

According to a survey from the UK Guardian:

Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.

Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.

The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change. While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved. A continued focus on an unrealistic 2C rise, which the EU defines as dangerous, could even undermine essential efforts to adapt to inevitable higher temperature rises in the coming decades, they warned.

Continue reading "Scientists Say Don't Bet on Holding Warming to 2C" »

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.

Continue reading "Michael Shellenberger on Planet Forward TV" »

It appears that there is an effort underway (whether coordinated or just coincident) from the Obama Administration, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and United Nations to place a reality check on expectations for United States climate policy progress in advance of the international climate negotiations in Copenhagen this December.

Yesterday, IPCC chairman Rajendra Pachauri told UK newspapers that Barack Obama would have a "revolution on his hands" if he tried to implement binding cuts in emissions on the scale that the IPCC's scientific consensus recommends.

"He [Obama] is not going to say by 2020 I'm going to reduce emissions by 30 per cent," Pachauri said. "He'll have a revolution on his hands. He has to do it step by step."

Pachauri's word's echo those of U.S. special climate envoy, Todd Stern, who recently stated that the 25-40% emissions cuts called for by the IPCC are "beyond the realm of the feasible" in the U.S. Congress. Stern called for a focus on "the art of the possible," saying "we need to be guided both by science and by common sense."

Now, UN climate czar, Yvo de Boer tells Bryan Walsh in a TIME interview that he doesn't expect cap and trade from the U.S. before Copenhagen either.

Continue reading "Playing the Expectations Game as Copenhagen Looms" »

cross posted from Prometheus, the Science Policy Blog

Todd Stern, chief US climate negotiator in the State Department, gave a speech two days ago in which he laid out some of the principles that will guide the Obama Administration's approach to climate policy. In it he recognizes that what is politically possible will be the most important factor guiding the pace of policy implementation. He says the following:

. . . at the same time we are being guided by the science and doing the math, we cannot forget that we are engaged in a political process and that politics, in the classic formulation, is the art of the possible. Of course we cannot afford to be passive in our understanding of that principle - we need always to push the envelope of what is possible. But we ignore the principle at our peril.

Let me apply this principle in a couple of ways. Some assert that the United States can only meet its responsibility if it agrees to reduce emissions 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020, equivalent to at least a 40% reduction below where we are right now (a much deeper cut than the EU would have to make compared to where they are now). But, first, as a matter of substance, this is not necessary. What counts is getting on a viable path between now and 2050. Reducing 25-40% below 1990 levels would be a good idea if it were doable, since it would allow a less steep reduction path in the 2020-2050 time period. But it is not independently necessary; a somewhat steeper path in the latter period could make up for the slightly slower start.

In addition, a 25-40% requirement for the United States would garner very little support here, because it would appear both unnecessary, for the reasons I just noted, and beyond the realm of the feasible. The most ambitious proposals that have been seriously considered here, both those introduced in Congress last year and the objective that President Obama has endorsed, call for reductions equivalent to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. These would equate to around 15% below 2005 levels by 2020, and over 80% below those levels by 2050. So insisting on a 25-40% cut below 1990 for the United States is a prescription not for progress but for stalemate. Again, we need to be guided both by science and by common sense.

There are two important points to make about this passage.

First, in rejecting a 25-40% emissions reduction by 2020 target as unnecessary and unachievable Stern is openly departing from the both the conclusions and implications that many have taken from the 2007 IPCC report, including its head, Rajendra Pachauri:

We [in the IPCC] have estimated that to stabilize global temperature increases at just 2° to 2.4° Celsius, we have only about seven years to turn around global emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide. By 2015 they'll have to peak. By 2020, we'll need to put in place a 25 to 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions.

While many people have pointed to the fact that the science of climate change has advanced since the 2007 IPCC report, far more importantly, the ongoing discussion of policy options has rendered the IPCC obsolete. Pachauri has criticized the Obama Administration for its climate policies, so it will be interesting to see how the broader IPCC community reacts to the scaling back of expectations being set forth. This will be especially interesting as many IPCC scientists gather in Copenhagen later this month to "influence policy." Will the Obama Administration be criticized by the scientists?

The second important point to take from this passage is a realization that climate policy must be governed by common sense and what is politically "possible" and "feasible." This realpolitik approach is a healthy one for climate policy as it moves debate beyond aspirations and exhortations to what can actually be accomplished. However, at the same time it is also a slippery slope, as what is politically possible at present is, to be honest, not much. What will the Obama Administration do if it learns that a 15% reduction by 2020 is not possible or feasible?

A new, Post-Kyoto international climate treaty needs to take a radical new approach that focuses less on binding emissions targets and more on technology innovation, economic development, and adaptation. That's what the Breakthrough Institute has argued for years (e.g. see "Scrap Kyoto"), and that's the message coming from an increasing number of experts, according to the New York Times:

Continue reading "Post-Kyoto treaty demands radical new approach" »

At a public event at an efficient co-generation power plant in China, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Obama Climate Envoy Todd Stern both discuss the importance of partnership and collaboration to develop and deploy clean, cheap energy technologies to power sustainable development in China.

Are these the first signs of a new Obama Administration strategy for U.S.-China engagement on climate change? Are Clinton and Stern preparing to embark on a strategy focused explicitly on harnessing the best and brightest researchers, entrepreneurs and businesses and leveraging major investments on both sides of the Pacific to develop and deploy clean, cheap and scalable energy sources?

I'll be writing more about this tomorrow, but for now, the full transcript of their remarks are below. I'm interested in your reaction to these remarks and your thoughts on how the United States and the Obama Administration should engage China to ensure a climate stability and to help drive sustainable development in China?

Continue reading "Sec. of State Clinton and Obama Climate Envoy Discuss U.S.-China Clean Energy Collaboration" »

President Barack Obama has called for a global coalition on climate change mitigation:

To protect our climate and our collective security, we must call together a truly global coalition. I've made it clear that we will act, but so too must the world. That's how we will deny leverage to dictators and dollars to terrorists. And that's how we will ensure that nations like China and India are doing their part, just as we are now willing to do ours.

President Obama's call for nation's like "China and India" to "do their part" is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for some diplomatic interpretations, however, Obama's remarks probably best interpreted as a continuation of the long-standing US position on the inclusion of developing countries in any international mitigation agreement.

Continue reading "Obama vs. IPCC" »

Last week, reporting on Hilary Clinton's appointment of Todd Stern as chief envoy on climate change, we raised questions about whether or not Stern, a former Clinton administration negotiator at the Kyoto Protocol climate talks, would be able to offer a fresh, new direction at the Copenhagen negotiations this December.

However, it seems that we missed an important piece that Stern last year published in the Washington Quarterly's Winter 08 edition. A picture in broad strokes of how Stern and his co-author William Antholis would construct an international framework for emissions reductions, the report shows how Stern's views have evolved since the Kyoto negotiations. He writes:

"This is no time to indulge in orthodoxies or in the kind of overextended discussion that marked too much of the six-year Kyoto Protocol negotiation."

Continue reading "Todd Stern: A Renewed Chance for Global Cooperation" »

Some folks are surprised to learn that market mechanisms for carbon trading allow both the buying and selling of emissions permits. Clearly this sort of capitalistic behavior must be stopped if carbon markets are to work. The Guardian has the details:

Britain's biggest polluting companies are abusing a European emissions trading scheme (ETS) designed to tackle global warming by cashing in their carbon credits in order to bolster ailing balance sheets.

The sell-off has helped trigger a collapse in the price of carbon, making it cheaper to burn high-carbon fossil fuels and leading to a fall in the number of clean energy projects. The moves were seized on by environmentalists and other critics who have previously criticised the European Union's ETS for delivering more windfall profits for business than climate change.

Continue reading "Apparently Markets Allow Buying and Selling" »

Todd Stern will be named by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as the U.S. State Department's special "Climate Envoy," news outlets reported today. Stern's climate credentials include a stint as a senior negotiator representing Bill Clinton's White House at the Kyoto Protocol talks, a role he'll likely reprise at the upcoming Copenhagen climate talks this December.

As a high level negotiator at Kyoto in 1997, Stern helped forge an international climate reduction framework that has been largely ineffective (see Michael and Ted's essay, "Scrap Kyoto", here [pdf]). Stern's appointment thus makes one wonder: has the Clinton-era negotiator learned the lessons of the past 12 years and is now prepared to offer a new direction at the Copenhagen talks? Or does Stern's appointment signal that the Obama administration's official thinking on international climate policy is still stuck in the winter of 1997?

Continue reading "Will New "Climate Envoy" Bring More of the Same for the US in Copenhagen?" »

Yesterday's Financial Times reported the results of a new poll that asked people in a number of countries about what priorities they'd like to see President Obama take on in the international arena. There is a remarkable degree of congruence across countries, with (no surprise) the economy in first place everywhere. Climate change receives considerable support as well, certainly enough for action to occur. Of course the key question is, what action?

Last week in response to Michael and Ted's piece in The American Prospect, Bradford Plumer at The New Republic's "The Vine" wrote a piece called "Should We Forget About Carbon Pricing? (No.)" The post, which mischaracterizes the stances Michael and Ted take in the Prospect piece, also propagates the myth of successful emissions reductions in Europe.

Plumer writes:

"Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger have yet another essay arguing that environmentalists should abandon all hope of trying to cap or tax carbon emissions, and instead focus solely on subsidizing clean-energy sources if they want to avert drastic global warming.

...Simply having the Energy Department dole out $50 billion per year to clean-energy producers (as Nordhaus and Shellenberger suggest) will pale beside the amount of private-sector money that will flow to alternative energy and efficiency improvements if carbon is priced properly."

This characterization of S&N's positions in The American Prospect and the Breakthrough Institute in general is a strawman.

Continue reading "In "Vine" Veritas? (No.)" »

Dominic Lawson, columnist for the British newspaper "The Independent," issued a scathing condemnation of the Poznan Climate Talks aimed at renewing the Kyoto Protocol after 2012:

The truth, however, is that Kyoto, as a means to reduce carbon emissions, has been like Monty Python's parrot, long dead, despite all the protestations to the contrary by its salesmen.

You don't have to be a "climate change sceptic" to assert this unwelcome fact. Professor Gwyn Prins, Director of the LSE's Mackinder Centre for the Study of Long Wave Events, has been advocating measures to reduce what he sees as man-made climate change since 1986. He was a lead author on the Third and Fourth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and on the Advisory Board of Friends of the Earth UK. For some years now, Prof Prins has been warning that the Kyoto approach is hopelessly flawed - and his unpopularity in the environment ministries of Europe has grown, precisely as his criticisms of their approach have been vindicated.

Continue reading "Kyoto: Like A Parrot Long Dead" »

Gwin Pryns, author of "The Wrong Trousers: Radically Rethinking Climate Policy (pdf)," recently published "Time to Ditch Kyoto: the Sequel." The short pamphlet was handed out at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland.

Towards the end (pdf), Prins summarizes his point about a new direction for an international agreement on climate change:

"Poznan has an opportunity to... put in place the foundations and essential architecture for a radically re-engineered climate policy for adoption at the Copenhagen meeting next...That architecture will not depend upon carbon trading in the present form; it will not lead with emissions targets tied to specific dates (although benchmarks are part of the sectoral strategy for reducing energy intensity); it will not focus upon international legal agreements that are dubiously enforceable, if at all."

Continue reading "Prins to Poznan: Seriously, Time to Ditch Kyoto" »

The stark tone of the International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook 2008 is a dramatic departure from their normally staid and frequently rosy projections about the world's energy future (I presented highlights from the piece in this proceeding post). The report's opening statement that current world energy trends are "patently unsustainable" will no doubt receive the most attention in headlines across the blogosphere and mainstream news. But in this post, I want to delve deeper into the key statement that follows it:

"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 low-carbon, efficient and environmentally benign system of energy supply."

While the environmental community focuses primarily on the latter of those two concerns, the IEA appropriately recognizes that the future of human prosperity depends on our ability to tackle both challenges: decarbonizing the energy supply and providing ample and affordable energy supplies to power global development.

In short, the IEA confirms what is perhaps the central challenge of the 21st century: developing clean and affordable energy sources to power the globe.

Continue reading "IEA Report Confirms Clean and Cheap Energy Needed to Power Global Development" »

As the parties to the United Nation's Kyoto Protocol on global warming prepare to meet in Poznan, Poland next month, India's Minister of Science and Technology weighed in today to voice little interest in a global action plan on climate change.

In a statement that strongly favored initiatives tailored to suit local needs, Minister Kapil Sibal told attendees at a climate change conference, "You cannot have a global action plan on climate change. You can only have a global commitment."

Minister Sibal, who been representing India at international climate negotiations, said the issue of climate change has to be addressed at national, regional and local levels as each part has different sets of problems.

Continue reading "Indian Official Rules Out Global Action Plan on Climate Change" »

Cross posted from Prometheus

What happens when targets for carbon dioxide reduction run up against economic realities? A decision by the EU last week provides one answer:

EU member states are ready to grant automakers a three-year delay until 2015 to reduce the CO2 emissions of their new vehicles, in light of the global economic crisis, negotiators said Saturday.

Continue reading "Buying Time" »

China's greenhouse gas emissions could more than double by 2020, according to a new report released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Beijing has been reluctant to release official data on greenhouse gas from the nation's fast-growing use of coal, oil and gas. This new study from the state-run institute breaks that reticence and sends another clear reminder that China is where our quest for climate stability will be won or lost.

"To a significant degree, our planet's energy and environmental future is now being written in China," says the study's authors. And the only way that story has a happy ending is if China has access to clean and cheap energy sources to power its sustainable development.

Continue reading "China's Greenhouse Gas Emissions Could Double in Coming Decade" »

By Roger Pielke, Jr.  Cross-posted from Prometheus

In the coming weeks a monumental decision will be made that will influence the future evolution of global climate policies. A single country has in its power the ability to alter the course of global negotiations and change the dynamics of a political debate characterized by gridlock. That country is . . .

Poland. Yes, Poland. (It is not the U.S. presidential election.) Over the next 6 weeks, the EU, with France taking the lead, must convince Poland (plus other Eastern European countries and Italy) to fall in line with (i.e., not veto) its ambitious climate policies or else see them utterly fall apart. The following graph helps to explain the political dynamics...

Continue reading "The Future of Climate Policy Depends Upon A Single Country . . ." »

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, jr., cross-posted from Prometheus

Policy analysis is not laboratory science. But fortunately, the real world is full of "experiments" that while not conducted in the controlled conditions that researchers like, nevertheless provide much useful knowledge. On climate policy, this week Canada and the EU provide some interesting lessons for understanding global climate policy focused on decarbonization. The main lesson, which seems inescapable is the following- policies that lead to increased costs of energy are politically doomed. Here is some of the reporting from Canada and the EU:

Continue reading "Climate Policy Lessons from Around the World" »

In yet another sign of the political challenges carbon pricing faces in times of economic insecurity, AP reports that leaders from eight Eastern European countries are calling on the European Union to ease up on greenhouse gas reduction targets under the EU's cap and trade program, arguing that it would be too much of a burden on their nation's already stressed economies.

Since all 27 EU member nations must approve a proposal for it to become law, the eight European nations could derail efforts to enact the next phase of the EU's Emissions Trading System. If the EU can't bring these eight nations back to the table, forcing the Europeans to back off on their emissions reduction program, it could be a major blow to the United Nations climate talks scheduled to continue in December in Poland.

More from AP below the fold...

Continue reading "Eastern European Leaders Say EU Must Ease Climate Targets Due to Economic Crisis" »

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, jr., cross posted from Prometheus

Yesterday, I mentioned a set of important environmental votes taking place in the EU Parliament (pictured). One of these votes involved the future of coal with carbon capture and storage with the result being that the EU is betting big on this technology. The vote is very important because it provides justification for building new coal-fired plants to meet Europe's growing energy needs. Building coal-fired plants will ensure that coal will for many decades play a prominent role in EU energy supply. And if coal has a big future in Europe, then it is safe to say that it has a big future everywhere. Thus emissions reductions from the power generation sector will all but certainly now depend up the capture and storage of carbon dioxide, a technology that is not yet in wide deployment. Like it or not, a winner has been picked.

Continue reading "Coal Secures a Future in the EU" »

Next January there will be a new President and Congress, and the American public will have at least a somewhat better idea of the success or failure of the bailout that passed last week. A multiplicity of variables, from the state of our economy, to the outcome of the election, to the nuclear program of Iran will affect the American political landscape heading into 2009. Over the next few months, tons of organizations and movements will begin to take stock of how these shifting variables might affect their missions and objectives. Few could benefit from this self-evaluation more than groups demanding federal action on climate change. The long time standard of these organizations, cap-and-trade, is becoming increasingly less relevant to today's political world.

The quest for a carbon price by these green groups met abject failure back in June with the failure of Lieberman Warner. As energy prices rise, our economy stumbles and credit shrinks, it seems less and less likely that hard caps on carbon will be a viable political vehicle. Carbon pricing orthodoxy has run headlong into political and economic realities in at least three major ways.

Continue reading "What Killed Carbon-Pricing?" »

This is a response to Max Epstein's guest post, "In Defense of Carbon Pricing: Why Clean Energy RD&D Isn't Enough." Our response is written by Breakthrough Generation fellow Zach Arnold.

Before anything else, I want to thank Max for his thoughtful post. His arguments have been a big help in clarifying our own thinking.

In my response, I'm going to try to define the problem we're trying to solve, and clarify the differences I see between a carbon price driven regime (as Max advocates) and an investment-led regime (as we're more fond of at Breakthrough). I'm then going to explore the political feasibility of a carbon price, and what a politically sustainable carbon price can and can't do to address climate change. In doing so, I hope to show that, for now, we can't rely on carbon pricing to drive the shift to a clean energy economy.

Continue reading "Breakthrough Responds: Why Carbon Pricing Won't Cut It" »

We've asked our friend, UMD student, and occasional Washington Post editorialist Max Epstein to contribute his thoughts on carbon pricing to the blog. Our response, by Breakthrough Generation Fellow Zach Arnold, is here.

In the wake of the failed Lieberman-Warner Climate Security Act, there has been a widespread reevaluation of whether Cap & Trade is the most effective strategy to avert catastrophic climate change. At first many promoted a carbon tax instead, but recently there has been a call to reconsider the central focus on pricing carbon itself. Following Lieberman-Warner's abrupt death in the Senate, Michael Shellenberger wrote that the new way forward should focus on making renewable energy cheap, not polluting sources expensive. In "Scrap Kyoto," Shellenberger and Nordhaus call for a massive public investment in clean technology research and deployment. Joseph Romm in Nature calls for massive subsidized deployment of existing renewable technology, relegating R&D to the "longer-term effort aimed at a new generation of technologies for the emissions reduction effort after 2040." However, such efforts would be insufficient without a price on carbon as well.

Continue reading "Guest Post: In Defense of Carbon Pricing: Why Clean RD&D Isn't Enough" »

By Frank N. Laird, Breakthrough Senior Fellow

"There is chaos under heaven, and the situation is excellent."  
-Duke in Doonesbury, doing a parody of Mao  

NPR reports this morning that negotiations at the G-8 over climate change are stalled.  The United States does not want to commit to anything serious unless China and India also do so, and China and India won't move until the United States does, a classic stalemate.  

The temptation, of course, is to just wait until the next administration takes office, on the hope they will be more accommodating in reaching an international agreement and committing the United States the major cuts in greenhouse gases.  Most climate watchers assume that is why the Conference of the Parties want to wait until the negotiations scheduled for Copenhagen in December 2009 for reaching a post-Kyoto climate agreement.  But if the negotiations are just trying to create another Kyoto-type treaty, their wait may be in vain.   

Continue reading "Breaking Through the Stalemate" »