The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency projects renewable energy sources like wind, solar and biomass will generate just 9% of U.S. electricity by 2020 under the Waxman-Markey renewable electricity standard (RES). This contrasts with the bill's nominal 20% combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard due to numerous exemptions in the standard. Total renewable electricity generation under EPA's modeling of Waxman-Markey with the renewable electricity standard is just 41 terawatt-hours (or 7%) higher than the Agency's business as usual projections.

Yesterday, the Breakthrough Institute examined several of the surprising assumptions and projections underlying the EPA's "core scenario," which projects the impacts of the Waxman-Markey bill's efficiency and cap and trade provisions. This core scenario's conclusions about the likely cost impacts of the Waxman-Markey bill have been widely cited, and Breakthrough delved into this scenario in our last post.

As we reported, EPA concludes that the expansion of new wind farms, solar arrays and other renewable energy power plants will actually be somewhat slower under their core scenario for Waxman-Markey than under their BAU projections [p. 27]. Total renewable electricity generation under their core scenario is somewhat higher (3%) in 2025 under Waxman-Markey than in their BAU scenario, but this extra generation comes in the form of biomass co-firing at existing coal-fired power plants, EPA predicts [p. 26].

However, EPA's core scenario does not attempt to model the impacts of the Waxman-Markey bill's RES. EPA apparently decided they were not confident enough in their results to include the effects of the RES in their core scenario and chose to model it instead as a "sensitivity analysis" for the power sector only. Here we look at their projections for the impacts of the bill's RES.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis Part 18: Understanding EPA's Analysis of the ACES Renewable Electricity Standard" »

The Waxman-Markey climate bill (AKA the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would reduce the amount of renewable energy deployed in the United States relative to business-as-usual, increase the amount of coal-fired electricity generation relative to 2005 levels, and provide no incentive for a move to cleaner cars, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

We certainly can't vouch for EPA's methodology or assumptions. However, with EPA's conclusions about the likely cost of the Waxman-Markey bill on U.S. Households and the broader economy being widely cited, the surprising and even counter-intuitive projections that underlie EPA's cost estimates are worth a close look. In this post we dig passed the EPA's executive summary to take a closer look at their modeling and projections.

The climate bill is now poised for a vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as soon as Friday, following a deal struck late yesterday between the bill's champion and Energy Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN). Waxman agreed to further concessions to secure the support of agricultural interests and their Congressional champions, including agreeing to strip EPA of primary oversight over the domestic carbon offsets market, giving the US Department of Agriculture jurisdiction over these programs instead, provide additional free allowances for rural electric co-operatives, and place a moratorium on new EPA rules to strengthen the environmental integrity of biofuels like corn ethanol.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis Part 16: EPA Projects Fewer Renewables Under Waxman Markey than Business As Usual " »

Jesse Jenkins, Breakthrough's Director of Energy and Climate Policy appeared on KPFA radio's Morning Show today to discuss the current shape of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act, the 1,201 page climate and energy legislation scheduled for a vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday.

The segment with Morning Show host Amy Allison begins at 1:10:00 into the show which you can listen to below or click here to download an mp3 of the segment and listen on your computer:

Electricity generation from coal will grow if Waxman-Markey climate legislation becomes law, according to a Los Angeles Times investigation. The Times notes that "coal-fired power plants are the largest source of heat-trapping gases that cause global warming," and yet the EPA projects [pdf] (p. 23) that conventional (not CCS) coal power generation will increase from 2013 TWh in the year 2005 to 2030 TWh in 2020.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis Part 15: EPA Projects Coal Will Expand Under Waxman-Markey" »

According to a new analysis [pdf] by Public Citizen, the Waxman-Markey (W-M) climate legislation would inadequately protect American consumers from electricity price increases, despite claims by the bill's authors that the value of the free pollution allowances allocated to utilities would be returned to consumers. W-M grants 30 percent of all of the emission allowances to local distribution companies (LDCs) -- otherwise known as regulated utilities. The bill's authors suggest that 50 different state utility regulators will ensure that the benefits will be passed onto consumers.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis Part 14: Waxman-Markey Puts Ratepayers at Risk" »

[Updated 6/18/09 with graphics that more clearly reflect banking of offsets under EPA's projected offsets scenario.]

The Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454) will not require emissions reductions below projected business as usual (BAU) growth in emissions for at least a decade ahead, according to an EPA analysis [pdf]. EPA projects that firms covered under the bill's cap and trade program will opt to purchase over one billion tons of offsets each year from 2012-2020 rather than reduce their own emissions.

EPA predicts that firms would use 110 - 120 million metric tons (mmt) of available domestic offsets each year between 2012 and 2020 [see graphic, p. 6] and the full 1 billion mmt of international offsets permitted under the cap and trade program [p. 5].

If offsets are utilized at the levels projected by EPA, cumulative emissions in the sectors of the U.S. economy covered by the Waxman-Markey cap and trade program will be legally permitted to exceed EPA's business as usual emissions rates from 2012-2020 by nearly five billion mmt. If emissions in covered sectors were actually required to fall to the 17% below 2005 levels by 2020 targeted by the legislation, cumulative emissions would be just 49.5 billion mmt, 10.1 billion mmt lower than the levels legally permitted under EPA's projections for offsets utilization.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 13: EPA Analysis Projects Waxman-Markey Would Not Require Emissions Reductions Through 2020" »

By Michael Shellenberger and Jesse Jenkins

[Updated with correction, 6/18/09: Thanks to John Larson at WRI for alerting us to an error in our data. Our data is now corrected and impacted figures and conclusions have been bolded in the text below so readers can see what has changed. An updated spreadsheet has been uploaded.

In summary: a smaller portion of economy-wide emissions were included in the emissions profile for sectors that fall under the cap starting in 2012 and a larger portion was included in the sectors that are phased into the cap starting in 2014. The result is slightly lower emissions under the ACES target scenario and CBO projected offsets scenario for the years 2012 and 2013 and slightly lower cumulative emissions between 2012-2020.

This effects the post's key result: assuming offsets are utilized at CBO's projected levels, cumulative emissions from 2012-2020 are 2.0% below BAU levels , not 0.5% as originally posted. This change has no effect on other years, on the difference between emissions at the CBO projected offsets scenario and emissions at the ACES target scenario, or on the BAU scenario. As always, we will continue to publish all of our assumptions and calculations and invite readers to look at the data and our analysis themselves. - Jesse Jenkins, Director of Energy and Climate Policy]

The Waxman-Markey climate bill (HR 2454 or the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would reduce cumulative emissions by just 2% between 2012 and 2020 in the sectors of the U.S. economy regulated under the bill's cap and trade program, according to the Congressional Budget Office's analysis of the legislation.

The CBO analysis is significant in that it is the first published predictions from a government agency about the likely actual impact on U.S. emissions resulting from the version of Waxman-Markey legislation passed by the Energy and Commerce Committee and now heading towards debate on the House floor.

CBO's analysis confirms earlier analysis by the Breakthrough Institute that revealed the climate legislation would only establish a non-binding emissions target, not a binding cap on emissions in covered sectors. Whereas Breakthrough's analysis examined the total emissions legally permitted under the legislation (without projecting likely scenarios), CBO's new analysis utilizes economic models to project what the legislation would actually accomplish under a likely set of assumptions.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 12: CBO Projects Waxman-Markey Would Cut Cumulative Emissions by Just 2% Through 2020" »

By Michael Shellenberger

According to a new, as-yet-unpublished analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard (CERES -- formerly RES) in the Waxman-Markey climate legislation will not increase renewable electricity generation and might actually reduce it.

UCS concludes:

"Bottom line: The Waxman-Markey RES does not ensure that any new renewable electricity will be developed beyond the renewables that are already projected to occur under the business as usual forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)."

UCS created a high-deployment and a low-deployment scenario to predict the impact of the CERES provision in Waxman-Markey, as compared to the EIA's business-as-usual (BAU) baseline projections of renewable electricity generation. Under the high-deployment scenario, the Waxman-Markey CERES provision "would lead to slightly more renewable energy to be developed than business as usual" -- but only starting in 2020.

[Download the graphic and scenario descriptions here.]

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 11: New UCS Analysis Finds Waxman-Markey RES Won't Increase Clean Energy Deployment" »

"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.

As Breakthrough's analysis of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) has revealed, the climate bill will effectively establish a non-binding "cap" on U.S. emissions while generating a pretty modest price for CO2 pollution. The implication: we can't count on the "cap" and trade provision alone -- nor the now ineffective renewable electricity standard -- to drive deep cuts in U.S. emissions or adequately accelerate clean energy deployment.

To maximize the chances that the emissions reductions aimed for by the bill -- i.e. 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020 -- are actually achieved, Congress must adopt a proactive set of policies and public investments to accelerate clean energy technology development and deployment and supplement the bill's weakened regulations and price signals.

Several of the bill's provisions aim to do that, but we conclude that most are currently either completely unfunded or critically underfunded. Here we take a look at three smart provisions in the ACES bill that could be key components of a proactive clean energy technology strategy -- but only if they are adequately funded.

1. Clean Energy Deployment Administration: this provision would establish a sort of public clean energy bank charged with creating an attractive investment environment for the widespread deployment of a suite of advanced clean energy technologies. Notable for being a deployment policy explicitly dedicated to advancing technology development goals, this provision also enjoys strong bipartisan support on both the House and Senate. However, ACES provides zero funding for this critical component of a proactive clean energy technology strategy. At least $16 billion in initial seed funding should be provided for CEDA, consistent with the Senate version of this provision.
2. Energy Innovation Institutes: largely consistent with the recommendations of the Brookings Institution, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way and others, ACES establishes new "Clean Energy Innovation Centers" at research universities, national labs and private research facilities, creating new cross-sector and multi-disciplinary hubs for applied research and development on clean energy technologies. However, these energy innovation institutes are critically underfunded, receiving less than $1 billion/year in funding from the bill's cap and trade allowance value. To bring federal energy R&D programs to a scale sufficient to address the urgent energy innovation imperative and address the needs of a $1.5 trillion annual industry, at least $15 billion in new annual funding should be dedicated to energy R&D, with a significant portion of this new funding dedicated to establishing a robust nationwide network of energy innovation institutes.
3. Carbon Capture and Sequestration Demonstration and Early Deployment Program: financed by a micro-carbon fee on all electricity sold in the United States, this program would dedicate $10 billion over the next ten years to promote the commercialization and large-scale demonstration of carbon capture and sequestration technologies for coal plants and other major point-source emitters of CO2. This program is a good example of the kind of direct public investment necessary to bring down capital and technology risk barriers and accelerate clean technology commercialization. But a much better-funded and technology neutral program that would provide competitively awarded funding for the demonstration of a whole suite of first-of-their-kind clean energy technologies is needed, and would be vastly superior to this technology-specific, industry-managed program.

We delve into each of these programs in more detail after the break...

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 10: Smart Provisions Could Spur Clean Technology - If They Are Funded" »

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" »

By Michael Shellenberger

Since we released our initial analysis of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), other analysts have confirmed our conclusion that the "cap" in Waxman-Markey would allow carbon emissions in regulated sectors of the U.S. economy to rise at business as usual (BAU) rates through 2030. This includes the Center for American Progress' Joe Romm who, in reversing his long-standing opposition to offsetting wrote, "just because American companies can purchase international offsets to replace their own emissions, that doesn't mean they will."

But whether or not you believe the legislation would result in lower emissions, there appears to be universal acknowledgment that various provisions in Waxman-Markey -- including but not limited to the extensive number of offsets permitted and the strategic reserve pool -- prevent the "cap" from being binding. Given this, Waxman-Markey cannot be accurately referred to as establishing a "cap" on U.S. emissions, much less a "binding cap." Probably the most accurate term is "non-binding cap."

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 8: Waxman-Markey's Non-Binding Emissions "Cap"" »

The solar energy advocacy organization VoteSolar issued a pretty clear verdict on whether or not the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act will effectively make solar energy cheap and abundant: "The accurate answer is nuanced, but the short answer is no."

Continue reading "Solar Advocacy Group Says Climate Bill Will Fail to Make Solar Energy Cheap" »

Advocates of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454, or "ACES" for short) argue that the bill is far more than just a climate bill. It's a comprehensive piece of clean energy, efficiency and climate legislation, and taken as a whole, they argue, it should be considered transformational -- even if the cap and trade portion of the bill may have been significantly weakened (see Breakthrough's detailed analysis of the ACES cap and trade program here).

The ACES bill does indeed include many provisions to set a new course for our nation's energy policy, including efficiency standards and regulations, authorization for new programs aimed at modernizing the nation's electricity infrastructure and paving the way for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, and a national renewable electricity standard. Many of these will move America in the right direction.

But the question remains: will ACES really be transformational? And will it propel American quickly away from business as usual and towards the prosperous clean energy economy and dramatic emissions reductions we need?

Breakthrough's team has taken a close look at the bill's cap and trade provision, and discovered that the combination of offset provisions and a little-known provision called the "strategic reserve pool" could allow U.S. emissions to greatly exceed the supposed emissions "cap" set by the legislation.

Here we examine one of the other major provisions of the ACES bill, the national renewable electricity standard (RES) established by Title I of the bill. Unfortunately, our analysis concludes that the RES has been severely weakened since initially proposed in the discussion draft version of the ACES bill; as it now stands, the RES may barely increase U.S. renewable electricity generation compared to business as usual projections.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 7: Renewable Electricity Standard Severely Weakened; May Have Little to No Impact" »

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" »

Late last Thursday night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 33-25 to pass landmark legislation that promises to address our nation's urgent energy challenges and help avert potentially catastrophic climate change. The legislation, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (or ACES), also presents an unprecedented opportunity to renew our economy and position the United States at the forefront of a burgeoning global market for clean and affordable energy technology.

Momentum is now behind a serious effort to address climate change, and that itself is cause for celebration. The bill's champion's - notably Henry Waxman, Ed Markey and Jay Inslee and their dogged staff - deserve praise for bringing the bill through some pretty hostile territory in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and for their tireless efforts during the marathon sessions of the past week.

However, knowing how much is at stake, we must also take a close look at whether or not the bill lives up to its promises.

In my latest exclusive monthly column at the Energy Collective, I explain why, after spending all week digging through the 1,000 page ACES bill, I'm left worried, very worried. Head over to the Energy Collective and find out why...

U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday that the long-standing focus of climate policy on setting precise emissions reductions targets and timetables has led to an "over-obsession" with numbers, according to Reuters.

Reuters reports:

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" »

[Updated 6/18/09 to more clearly explain and depict the potential banking of offsets.]

At the heart of the nearly thousand page long climate change and clean energy bill being debated in the U.S. House of Representatives this week is a "cap and trade" mechanism aimed at limiting greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming.

However, a provision in the bill, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454 or "ACES"), allows polluting firms in the U.S. to finance emissions reductions overseas in lieu of reducing their own global warming pollution and may allow American emissions to continue to rise for up to twenty years, according to new analysis from the Breakthrough Institute.

The provision allows power plants, oil refiners, and other polluters regulated under the bill's cap and trade program to use up to one billion tons of international emissions reductions, or "offsets," to be used instead of reducing their own emissions each year. The bill also allows up to one billion tons of additional offsets each year, sourced from sectors of the U.S. economy that do not fall under the pollution cap, such as forestry and agriculture. If a suitable supply of domestic emissions offsets are unavailable, the limit on the use of international offsets may be raised to 1.5 billion tons annually at the discretion of the Administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

The extensive use of these international and domestic offsets would effectively allow U.S. firms in capped sectors to continue emitting global warming pollution at levels well above the reductions supposedly driven by the emissions cap. New analysis from the Breakthrough Institute reveals that if fully utilized, the offset provisions in the ACES bill would allow continued business as usual growth in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions until 2030. Emissions in supposedly sectors of the economy supposedly "capped" by ACES could continue to grow at BAU rates until as late as 2037.

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 4: Emissions "Cap" May Let U.S. Emissions Continue to Rise Through 2030" »

[Updated 5/22/09: the ACES bill now includes a $10/ton price floor for auctioned pollution permits. The analysis below has been updated to reflect that change in the legislation]

Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). The bill promises to cap and reduce carbon pollution, create clean energy jobs, and spur technology innovation. Unfortunately, as our analysis of the use of carbon pollution allowances in the ACES bill revealed, the bill is on course to invest very little of the hundreds of billions of dollars in value created by the bill's cap-and-trade program over the coming years towards those objectives.

Most of the allowance value (74 percent) created by the ACES cap and trade program is dedicated to blunting the impact of the carbon price established by the program on industries and consumers (and securing the critical swing votes on the committee representing these entrenched energy and industry interests). In contrast, just 12 percent of the allowance value is dedicated to clean energy investments, broadly defined.

At an average allowance price of $10 to $20 dollars per ton of CO2 between 2012-2025, that would amount to clean energy investments of just $6-12 billion per year, and just $490-980 million for clean energy R&D (see our full analysis of the allowance allocations in ACES for more).

President Obama has repeatedly promised to, "Invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy" (from WhiteHouse.gov). The President's 2010 Budget Outline specifically dedicated $15 billion per year in new revenue generated by a cap and trade program to this purpose. Yet the bill before us, depending on the allowance value it establishes, would invest just one-fifteenth to one-thirtieth of the $15 billion President Obama has pledged -- and specifically requested from Congress. Furthermore, this new energy R&D spending may amount to just a ten percent increase in current federal energy R&D budgets.

Likewise, the total investments in a new clean energy economy, more broadly defined, are an order of magnitude smaller than proposals advanced by the Breakthrough Institute, Apollo Alliance and others have deemed necessary to drive clean energy innovation, create millions of new energy jobs, and jump-start a prosperous, clean energy economy.

Below the fold, you can see how the clean energy investments made by the ACES bill compare with what a range of proposals and current R&D funding levels...

Continue reading "Climate Bill Analysis, Part 2: Clean Energy R&D Investment May Be 30 Times Smaller than President Obama's Budget" »

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?" »

One of the most often-repeated assumptions in the climate policy debate is that cap and trade, the preferred mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, worked for SO2 and acid rain, so it will work for GHGs. Sounds good. Until you take a second to think about the comparison.

Dealing with GHGs is a challenge of an order of magnitude greater scale and complexity. To see why, see the two graphics below:

First, here's a graphical representation of the Acid Rain cap and trade challenge:

Below the fold, you'll see a graphic representation of the global flow of greenhouse gas emissions, the challenge we have to deal with to avert potentially catastrophic climate change...

Continue reading "Cap and Trade Worked for Acid Rain, Why Not for Climate Change?" »

Stream it directly from the ABC News Australia site, or download the mp3 here (particularly if you're a Mac/Linux user).

From Peter Mares at ABC Australia National Radio:

"This week, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced changes to the Australian federal government's planned emissions trading scheme, postponing the start date, increasing the compensation for big polluters and promising deeper cuts to Australia's greenhouse gases (with the proviso that the rest of the world does the right thing). The result is a scheme that's both greener and browner - if such a thing were possible. But as we examine the pros and the cons of the decision, some argue it's all pointless anyway. Climate change sceptics dispute the need for any reductions at all; then there's the critique from sections of the environmental movement that an emissions trading scheme is like rearranging deckchairs on the Titantic: far too little, far too late. On the program today, we're going to hear the case for state intervention - the idea of a Marshall Plan for alternative energy in which public money is used to solve the global warming problem."

See more on the Breakthrough's take on this issue here: Australia Shelves Cap and Trade Until 2011.

President Obama and the Department of Energy are launching a new energy education initiative, very similar to the National Energy Education Act recommendations advanced by the Breakthrough Institute beginning in June 2008 (see recent post here). Today, the Department of Energy released official FY 2010 budget documents that start to flesh out what this new program will look like. It appears the program will receive $115 million in funding, if the President's budget request is implemented.

Here's the description of the program from the new 'Budget Highlights' document available here (pdf):

RE-ENERGYSE (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge)

The Department will launch a comprehensive K-20+ science and engineering initiative, funded at $115 million in FY 2010, to educate thousands of students at all levels in the fields contributing to the fundamental understanding of energy science and engineering systems. This initiative, which complements the Department's other education efforts, will provide graduate research fellowships in scientific and technical fields that advance the Department's energy mission; provide training grants to universities that establish multidisciplinary research and education programs related to clean energy; support universities that dramatically expand energy-related research opportunities for undergraduates; build partnerships between community colleges and different segments of the clean tech industry to develop customized curriculum for "green collar" jobs; and increase public awareness, particularly among young people, about the role that science and technology can play in responsible environmental stewardship.

Continue reading "DOE Budget Fleshes out Obama Energy Education Initiative" »

Bjorn Lomborg wants to make clean energy cheap. Unfortunately, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It doesn't seem to understand that making clean energy cheap is about much more than R&D.

In an interview on Wednesday with the San Francisco Examiner's Thomas Fuller, Lomborg says:

"I love this thought--it comes from the Breakthrough Institute. Basically, the idea is that everyone seems to be trying to make fossil fuels so expensive that we won't use them. But that's never going to happen. So why don't we try to make green energy so cheap that everyone will want to use it?"

He then argues, "We should spend vastly more on research and development."

Lomborg get's that part right. As we've long argued, today's paltry investments in clean energy R&D -- from both public and private sectors alike -- is woefully inadequate to the energy innovation imperative we face today. With a broad expert consensus making the case and politicians from President Obama to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) calling for more public investment in clean energy R&D, we seem to be approaching the political 'critical mass' necessary for real change on that front.

But for Lomborg, clean energy R&D is something you do instead of deploying clean energy technology available today, and that's where we part ways with "the Skeptical Environmentalist."

What Lomborg apparently doesn't understand is that efforts to truly "make green energy so cheap that everyone will want to use it" will necessarily involve major direct public investments to spur the rapid deployment of emerging clean energy technologies. Far from something that just occurs in the lab, the innovation process extends well beyond R&D.

Continue reading "Bjorn Lomborg Wants to Make Clean Energy Cheap, Doesn't Know How" »

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" »

American climate policy advocates should watch our neighbor to the north closely. With social and political values not too distant from our own and an economic makeup broadly similar, Canada's experiments with climate policy - particularly carbon pricing schemes - offer a real-world laboratory we would be wise not to ignore. While Canadians are broadly supportive of actions to address climate change, proposals at both the federal and provincial levels to establish a price on global warming pollution have met with difficulty. We covered the failure of the national Liberal Party's "Green Shift" carbon tax proposal in the October 2008 elections here, and have watched closely as British Columbia battles over their controversial, first-in-North American carbon tax system. Now, social values research firm Environics (the sister firm to our colleagues at American Environics) has new research findings that shed light on the difficulties facing 'environmental pricing reform' proposals like carbon taxes, cap and trade, and congestion pricing. Environics' Keith Neuman presents their findings in this piece, originally posted at Green Business...

By Keith Neuman, Ph.D.

Environmental pricing reform (or EPR) is the term now used to describe the various types of market mechanisms (e.g. carbon pricing, cap and trade, congestion fees) which are now being given serious attention as the most promising strategy for addressing climate change and other pressing environmental challenges such as water scarcity and traffic congestion. This concept has been around for some time, and is now finally receiving serious attention on the North American policy agenda. Economists have long been making a persuasive case for harnessing market forces to achieve environmental objectives, but only recently has this cause been adopted by major players, such as the Canadian Council of Chief Executives and the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy. The idea that society puts a monetary price on environmental "goods" and "bads", and then letting market forces do their work (as they do with most other forms of business and consumer behavior) is compelling.

Governments and industry now seem ready to move forward with environmental pricing strategies, but is the Canadian public ready to buy in? The limited experience to date is hardly promising. Over the past year, the B.C. provincial carbon tax has been implemented but remains highly controversial (it has become a major issue in the current provincial election), and the Federal Liberal Party's touted "Green Shift" election platform failed spectacularly with the electorate. These early examples suggest there is sufficient citizen resistance to make EPR a difficult political sell. Why should this be the case, given the clear evidence that EPR can be an effective environmental policy? There are three central reasons.

First, is it axiomatic that consumers prefer not to pay more for goods and services, and will resist at varying levels when asked to do so. This is the most commonly understood basis for resistance to EPR, and many policy makers mistakenly believe it is the overriding obstacle. But in fact this dilemma is by no means limited to environmental policy, and has not prevented other successful economic policy measures that shifted costs to consumption, such as the GST and the Ontario Health Premiums. Such measures do not succeed because they are popular, but when they are deemed acceptable given their purpose by a sufficiently critical mass of relevant constituents.

Second, the public is skeptical about the effectiveness of EPR, in terms of how paying more for gasoline, water or consumer goods will actually benefit the environment. Research has shown that public resistance to B.C.'s carbon tax has as much to do with doubts about its effectiveness in reducing the province's greenhouse gas emissions as it does with paying a few more cents per litre at the pump. Consumers can readily understand how stiffer regulations or new technologies can make a difference in cleaning up pollution, but it requires a greater act of faith to believe that higher prices or trading systems will accomplish the same goals. Such faith requires confidence in both the intentions and efficacy of governments and industry, and neither has been seen to have done much to justify this level of confidence. Moreover, there continues to be a widely-held public sentiment that market-based environmental policies, such as cap and trade systems, favour industry by giving it a "license to pollute."

Third, at a deeper level environmental pricing reform is not currently well-positioned in terms of how it fits within Canadians' social values and broad world views. This conclusion comes from a research study Environics recently completed for Sustainable Prosperity, a multi-stakeholder non-profit initiative dedicated to promoting EPR policy in Canada (www.sustainableprosperity.ca). This research revealed that Canadians generally view environmental pricing mechanisms in narrow economic terms (akin to other conventional financial levers), without much appreciation of the broader principles of "polluter pays" and the positive force of the market to achieve important social goals.

The research identified distinct segments or groups of the Canadian population, based on their orientation to EPR and their broader social values. It found that among supporters of EPR, there is only a very small group (4%) who understand and support EPR in the same way as the economists and policy-makers who promote it. Most of the Canadians who express support for EPR (13% of the population) do so for very different reasons - they put much less priority on environmental solutions but rather are pro-market enthusiasts who accept the inevitability of market forces whatever their effect (e.g. they are very strong on a social value Environics defines as "social darwinism", and weak on one called "primacy of environmental protection"). While this latter group is on-side with environmental pricing, they are hardly the kind of supporters sought by EPR advocates.

On the opposite side of the issue, the strongest opponents of EPR are those Canadians who make up the most vulnerable parts of society, including women, older Canadians, and those with the lowest levels of education. This group (21% of the population) sees EPR more as a threat than as a solution to anything. They may care about the environment, but tend to be more focused on day-to-day concerns. There is little potential for building support for environmental pricing initiatives within this group, but it is hardly one that can be ignored if EPR policy is to succeed in Canada.

In the middle is a sizeable group (33%) which is on the fence about EPR. This group (we call them "responsible citizens") has a high degree of social responsibility and concern about the environment. These Canadians are open to the potential of market mechanisms to offer solutions to issues like climate change because they are truly worried about these issues and feel strongly that progress is essential. But they are also concerned about how EPR might affect those more vulnerable than themselves; they are unlikely to support pricing policies that do not treat everyone fairly and make provisions for those who are disadvantaged. The size and composition of this group makes it a critical constituency for building public support for broad-based environmental pricing initiatives, and attracting its support will require demonstrating how such initiatives address social and economic equity issues.

What does this research tell us about what it will take to build the necessary public support in Canada to move forward with environmental pricing reform? EPR will continue to be a tough sell to consumers until such market mechanisms are framed in ways that are more in tune with Canadians' social values, and in particular address the discomfort many citizens have with using market forces to address environmental objectives. This cannot be accomplished through facts and arguments alone (which rarely sway established public attitudes), but through developing a new narrative that more effectively defines EPR in what it will accomplish, in meeting broadly held environmental, economic and social aspirations.

Keith Neuman (keith.neuman@environics.ca) is Group Vice-President, Public Affairs, for Environics Research Group Ltd.

The 'interwebs' are abuzz today with the surprise announcement that moderate Republican Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania is switching parties and plans to run as a Democrat when he makes his 2010 re-election bid.

The move is clearly a powerful symbol of how far to the right the Republican Party has moved in recent years. What it means for policy is less clear.

Senator Specter's membership in the Democrat ranks would nominally give the party the sixty votes necessary to overcome the near-constant threat of Republican filibuster in the Senate (assuming Democrat Al Franken wins the contested court battle that will decide Minnesota's senate seat). That has prompted a sudden burst of optimism about the prospects of contentious Democratic policy priorities, including health care reform and climate change legislation.

ClimateProgress's Joe Romm blithely asserts, for example, that Senator Specter's new party allegiance will mean he'll change his stance on climate legislation. "One assumes that if he is going to seriously run as a Democrat, he'll support an energy and climate bill," Romm wrote today.

More astute observers, however, quickly recognize that Senator Specter's move changes little in the landscape of climate politics. For serious advocates of urgently needed and effective climate legislation, it's not hard to see why. We simply have to ask ourselves: does the "D" next to this free-thinking Senator's name suddenly change his vote on climate legislation? Of course not.

Continue reading "Senator Specter Changes Parties, Doesn't Change Climate Politics" »

Cross-posted from David Douglas' Near Walden blog

In my role of Chief Sustainability Officer at Sun, I take part in an annual discussion of whether the company should purchase carbon offsets as part of our GHG reduction plan. Since we can buy carbon offsets at a price which is lower than what it costs us to reduce our GHG directly, we have four different approaches available to us:

1. use offsets to report a greater emissions reduction at the same price as if we only did internal projects
2. use offsets to report the same emissions as internal projects, but at a lower price
3. ignore offsets and just do internal projects
4. some mix of offsets and internal projects

So far, each year we have elected to only invest in internal projects. Our rationale is that we can help the company and the environment with that choice -- the company gets more efficient and the we lower our direct GHG emissions. Furthermore we find that this rationale is applicable to each marginal dollar of investment, so that we end up only investing in internal projects as opposed to a mix. This means that the emissions reductions that we report aren't as low as they theoretically could be, but that's a tradeoff that we think makes sense for us, since we keep reducing our own emissions instead of paying others to reduce theirs.

As it thinks about creating a cap and trade system, the US Government faces the same decision: do we allow international offsets in order to keep costs down and/or make the results look better, or do we stick to investing within the country?

Continue reading "International Carbon Offsets: The Next Trillion Dollar Issue" »

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" »

By Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

We have a post up at Salon today that criticizes cap and trade legislation in the House (Waxman-Markey). We argue that it cannot achieve the clean energy revolution we need. Compromises will no doubt be necessary to pass climate legislation in Congress, but as currently drafted, Waxman-Markey looks like it will make all the wrong compromises, allowing firms to buy dubious and sometimes phony carbon offsets rather than invest in clean energy, giving away billions of pollution allocations to incumbent energy interests for free, and committing a fraction of the funds needed for direct public investments in clean energy research, development, and deployment.

We propose an alternative cap and trade, which would explicitly cap the price of carbon dioxide pollution at roughly $10 per ton, rising over time, would auction all pollution allowances with no free giveaways and no offsetting, and would use the vast majority of the revenues, about $60 billion a year, to fund the accelerated development and deployment of clean energy technologies. We believe that such a solution would more rapidly achieve the technological innovations we need at a lower cost. It is also great politics, given strong public support for government investment in clean energy technology. This is the same position we have held since 2007, when we laid out this basic approach in Break Through and other writings.

Continue reading "The Cap and Trade We Need" »

Max Epstein is a sharp young policy thinker at the University of Maryland (UMD) in College Park. You may remember him from a kind of point-counterpoint debate about carbon pricing Max had here on our blog with Breakthrough Generation fellow Zach Arnold last summer. Well, Max continues to follow our writing closely and asks smart questions frequently. Today, his excellent question about the role of clean energy investments spurred a response that I'm turning into a separate blog post here.

Max asks:

Jesse, what exactly is investing public money in deployment of wind farms and PV arrays supposed to accomplish if you do it [along] with a carbon cap/trade? Its one thing to address market failures like a lack of research and transmission, but deploying extra carbon-reduction measures in sectors covered by the cap will not compel emissions reductions beyond what the cap mandates. What am I missing?

Below the fold, you'll find my reply, which articulates three reasons why clean energy investments are critical to climate objectives. We'll leave the part about how investing in a clean and prosperous energy economy is also a politically powerful proposition that strengthens the political appeal of climate policy for another day (check here if you're interested (pdf)).

Continue reading "What are Clean Energy Investments Good For?" »

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 the cap and trade system at the core of the draft Waxman-Markey climate and clean energy bill full of hot air? That's what a new report from two environmental organizations warns.

Rainforest Action Network and International Rivers released an initial analysis (pdf) of the Waxman-Markey climate and energy discussion draft yesterday. The two environmental groups conclude that the cap and trade regulations established by the bill would be "blown to pieces" by the up to two billion metric tons of carbon offsets the bill allows polluters to use in lieu of pollution permits.

Despite all of the talk of establishing hard caps on global warming pollution, the use of so many offsets would stuff the cap full of hot air, making it not much of a cap at all. The report concludes:

Unfortunately the "firm" caps exist only on paper. In reality, the caps will be blown to pieces by allowing polluters to meet their emission reduction responsibilities through buying offset credits rather than reducing their emissions.

If the full amount of offsets allowed by the Waxman-Markey draft legislation were utilized by polluters, the report concludes that any actual emissions reductions in capped sectors of the U.S. economy would be delayed until 2026, allowing a full seventeen years of continued business as usual. (See figure below...)

Continue reading "Is Waxman-Markey's "Cap" and Trade System Full of Hot Air?" »

Kate Galbraith at the NYTimes' Green Inc. blog dives into that question in a recent post, "Deciphering California's Energy Efficiency Success." Galbraith looks at a new study critical of the attempts frequently made by climate and energy efficiency advocates to hold up California's low per-capita electricity use as proof that cutting carbon emissions won't be all that hard.

Talk to any California utility or environmental advocate, and at some point they are bound to cite - with pride - the flattening out of the state's per-capita electricity use.

Since 1975, the amount of electricity per person has grown by almost 50 percent in the rest of the country, but California's numbers have stayed nearly level.

Advocates often credit energy-efficiency measures taken by utilities, at the behest of the state.

Unfortunately, matters aren't that simple it seems, according to a new study from Cynthia Mitchel and two colleagues at Energy Economics, which suggests that many of the drivers behind California's low per-capita electricity consumption have nothing to do with the state's battery of policies encouraging energy efficiency.

Continue reading "Is California a Model for an Energy Efficient Economy?" »

In his column today, New York Times columnist Tom Friedman criticized cap and trade as politically unworkable and suggested that greens shouldn't be the spokespersons for the climate agenda. This comes on the heels of an interview with Newsweek's Sharon Begley where he attributes the increase in Americans who say news of global warming is being exaggerated to Al Gore.

The mood must be transatlantic, as British environmentalist Stephan Hale has also published an op-ed piece in the Guardian titled "Climate change is too big a problem to be left to the environmentalists," which makes many similar points.

In the Newsweek interview, Friedman claims that polling by the Times shows that while voters oppose taxes, they support them if you target the money for action on global warming and energy independence. But Friedman has mis-remembered the Times poll in ways that support his policy agenda of a high carbon tax. The difference has significant policy implications

I went back and read the 2007 Times/CBS poll Friedman is referring to. Voters told pollsters they would pay more in taxes or for electricity from solar and wind and would pay more for gasoline to reduce oil dependency. But they said they would NOT want to pay higher taxes if it 'combats climate change' or 'relieves us from living under the thumb of petro-dictators,' as Friedman claimed to Begley. The difference is critical.

Here are the questions that Friedman is mis-remembering. Voters told the pollsters that they:

* Would be willing to pay more in taxes on gasoline and other fuels if money went to research for renewables like solar and wind (64-33)

* Would pay more for electricity if it came from solar or wind (75-20)

* Oppose raising gasoline taxes to deal with global warming (58­38)

* Support a gasoline tax to reduce dependence on foreign oil (64-30)

* Oppose a gasoline tax to pay for war on terrorism (49-44)

* Oppose a gasoline tax if it was $2/gallon, or $1/gallon (76-20, 70-27)

Contrary to Friedman's claim, voters in the Times/CBS survey support paying more in taxes or for electricity for solar and wind for reasons that are independent of their concern over global warming. Indeed, what this survey found is that voters oppose paying more in gasoline taxes to deal with global warming or the war on terror.

This is consistent with other polls, and is the reason that we have long encouraged a policy agenda focused on increasing investment in clean energy for economic and energy independence reasons, rather than increasing the price of fossil fuels for global warming reasons. If the money for investment comes from a modest carbon tax, all the better. But the public has clearly and repeatedly stated it would only support a tax or higher fossil fuel prices if it used for clean energy investments.

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 new report released today, 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 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.

The new Breakthrough Institute report, 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.

You can download the full document here or read the following excerpts from the new report on our blog here:

• 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
  

See the report's full table of contents below the fold...

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" »

"Technology policy lies at the core of the climate change challenge. Even with a cutback in wasteful energy spending, our current technologies cannot support both a decline in carbon dioxide emissions and an expanding global economy. If we try to restrain emissions without a fundamentally new set of technologies, we will end up stifling economic growth, including the development prospects for billions of people.

Economists often talk as though putting a price on carbon emissions--through tradable permits or a carbon tax--will be enough to deliver the needed reductions in those emissions. This is not true. Europe's carbon-trading system has not shown much capacity to generate large-scale research nor to develop, demonstrate and deploy breakthrough technologies. A trading system might marginally influence the choices between coal and gas plants or provoke a bit more adoption of solar and wind power, but it will not lead to the necessary fundamental overhaul of energy systems.

For that, we will need much more than a price on carbon. ...

Economists like to set corrective prices and then be done with it, leaving the rest of household and business decisions to the magic of the market. This hands-off approach will not work in the case of a major overhaul of energy technology. We will need large-scale public funding of research, development and demonstration projects; intellectual property policies to promote rapid dissemination to poor countries; and the promotion of public debate and acceptance of new options. We will need to back winners, at least provisionally, to get new systems moving. "

An oldie but a goody from well-known economist and direct of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, Jeffrey Sachs, April 2008 in Scientific American, "Keys to Climate Protection."

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" »

A major new climate bill hit the House of Representatives this week and was met with deft political maneuverings from Senate Republicans that could render cap and trade dead on arrival. The Breakthrough Institute team has the angles covered:

Jesse Jenkins says this new climate bill is proof of misplaced priorities as the leading green groups setting the climate agenda walk away from billions of dollars in critical clean energy investments in favor of regulations, standards and carbon pricing. See also "Climate Bill is All About the Coal Hard Cash" at Huffington Post and listen to Jenkins talk about the Markey-Waxmen bill on KPFA radio.

Meanwhile in the Senate, two Republican amendments may leave cap and trade with no where to go. In reaction to the House climate bill, the Senate this week voted 89-8 to preemptively reject any cap and trade bill that increases consumer energy prices and voted 98-0 to ensure that any climate bill protects middle-income taxpayers from any tax increases.

Roger Pielke jr. thinks the Thune Amendment may have preemptively killed cap and trade and says Republicans have outflanked Democrats on climate already with the Ensign Amendment.

Michael Shellenberger sees these votes as the clearest rejection yet of the pollution pricing paradigm and examines the artful political maneuverings at play.

Ted Nordhaus is left worrying that the climate bill is on a crash course for compromise that will leave us stuck with the worst of both worlds: a climate policy lacking both a price signal sufficient to drive private investment anywhere near the scale we need and NO money for public investments in an RD&D strategy sufficient to make clean energy cheap.

Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins outline what Democrats can do to regain the political high ground and win the climate debate in this op ed, featured at Huffington Post. If Democrats want to win, they should quickly follow President Obama's lead by shifting the focus of climate legislation from pollution regulation to bold government investment in the clean energy economy.

As Congressional Democrats and DC greens gear up to fight for cap and trade, yet another another public opinion poll shows voters want investments in clean energy, not new taxes or regulations.

While Congressional Democrats and leading green groups insist that what the public wants is cap and trade to deal with climate change, yet another poll was released today showing voters want investments in clean energy, not new taxes or regulations.

If I were a Republican, I'd be relieved to have climate legislation to attack right about now...

Here's a quick look at the highlights from the new Public Agenda/Yankelovich poll...

Continue reading "Congress Debates Pollution Pricing; Public Wants Clean Energy Investment" »

We are now witnessing the inevitable entailment of putting pollution caps and climate at the center of the political proposition.

Everyone is all for capping carbon until it comes time to pay for it. Then it is a consumption tax and few politicians and voters are prepared to support it. It inevitably leads to a debate centered on the costs and regulations, not the social benefits of the policy.

The Apollo approach, which puts the immediate social and economic benefits - a clean energy economy, energy independence, new industries that can create good jobs - at the center of the debate and uses modest carbon price revenues to pay for it has always been vastly more robust to the kinds of political attacks that we are seeing this week. The debate becomes about whether or not we are going to make these investments in America's future - not whether or not we are willing to take our medicine in order to avoid the end of the world. But making this move requires more than simply swapping out the picture of the polar bear on the front page of your newsletter for a picture of a construction worker. It requires taking the investment agenda seriously and making it the central objective of policy.

The choice that greens and sympathetic policy makers will have in the coming months will be whether to move to this kind of plan B or accept a cap and trade bill that is likely to provide neither a very significant price signal nor any serious money for RD&D.

Continue reading "The Worst of Both Worlds: Climate Bill on Crash Course for Compromise" »

Cross posted from Prometheus: The Science Policy Blog

As I mentioned yesterday, some stark political lines are being drawn in the Senate on cap and trade legislation. The Thune Amendment had 89 members of the Senate going on record opposing any increases to electricity or gasoline prices as a result of cap and trade legislation. In the Senate yesterday another important amendment to the Budget Resolution was approved unanimously, 98-0, sponsored by Senator Ensign (R-NV), chair of the Republican Policy Committee. Here is its text:

To protect middle-income taxpayers from tax increases by providing a point of order against legislation that increase taxes on them, including taxes that arise, directly or indirectly, from Federal revenues derived from climate change or similar legislation.

What does this amendment mean?

It means that money raised from cap and trade (or even a carbon tax) cannot lead to a net increase in the overall tax burden on the "middle class." What is "middle class"? According to Senator Ensign in a press release trumpeting the amendment, it includes those households earning less than $250,000 per year. Senator Ensign cites the President on this point, referring back to his campaign promises not to raise taxes on this group.

Politically and practically, this amendment could then mean that proponents of cap and trade will need to pursue an explicit "cap and dividend" approach with any such policy being tax neutral for those earning less than $250,000 per year. In other words, the costs of cap and trade will have to be fully borne by those earning above $250,000 per year. Some of the challenges of the distributional effects of cap and trade are discussed in recent CBO testimony (PDF). Whether or not legislation can be written that allows supporters to claim to have met the spirit of the Ensign Amendment, it is clear that the Amendment makes the political challenge that much more difficult.

Continue reading "Senate Republicans Outflank Dems on Climate" »

Cross posted from Prometheus: The Science Policy Blog

The ability of Congressional legislation on cap and trade to result in actual emissions reductions was dealt a serious blow yesterday. An Amendment was introduced by Senator John Thune (R-SD) on the Budget Resolution and its text is as follows:

To amend the deficit-neutral reserve fund for climate change legislation to require that such legislation does not increase electricity or gasoline prices.

What is this? Climate change legislation cannot increase electricity or gasoline prices? The entire purpose of cap and trade is in fact to increase the costs of carbon-emitting sources of energy, which dominate US energy consumption. The Thune Amendment thus undercuts the entire purpose of cap and trade.

Continue reading "Did the Senate Just Preemptively Kill Cap and Trade?" »

Breakthrough director of energy and climate policy Jesse Jenkins appeared again today on KPFA radio in the Bay Area, talking on The Morning Show about the newly released Markey-Waxman climate bill "discussion draft."

You can listen to the segment below (apologies for the rapid talking!), which begins about 1:34 into the show:

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" »

There's been a spate of recent public announcements from moderate Democrats and Republicans alike, voicing caution about a proposed cap and trade program to place a price on carbon dioxide and cut global warming pollution. More than one third of the U.S. Senate now joins the fifteen moderate Democratic Senators we've dubbed the "Technology Fifteen" as vocal swing votes in the upcoming debate on climate policy.

Below the fold is an updated tally of where the Senate stands on climate policy by my assessment, based on recent public announcements and past voting histories. With using budget reconciliation to bypass the 60-vote filibuster hurdle off the table, to secure passage of any climate policy in the U.S. Senate, all but seven of the 37 Senators I identify as swing votes must be convinced to support the proposal (joining the 30 Senators I classify as "Assumed Yes" votes).

I provide the vote count below without further comment, and will delve into the implications of this tally in further detail in an upcoming post...

Continue reading "The Challenge Ahead: More than a Third of Senate Now "Swing" Vote on Climate" »

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.

Continue reading "Michael Shellenberger on Planet Forward TV" »

"Political will and a price on CO2 won't be enough to bring about low-carbon energy sources" needed to overcome the global energy and climate challenge, concludes Sharon Begley in an excellent piece, "We Can't Get There from Here," due out in the upcoming issue of Newsweek (and online now here).

Begley puts the spotlight on Nate Lewis of CalTech and Mark Muro of the Brookings Institution who succinctly explain the massive scale of the challenge and why we currently lack the full portfolio of energy technologies necessary to overcome it. "The clock is ticking," Begley concludes, and investments to accelerate energy innovation are much needed.

The full piece is below the fold...

Continue reading "Newsweek Nails the Energy Challenge" »

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" »

The opportunity to advance transformative, progressive change has never been greater. Now, in the wake of the 2008 election and the historic Power Shift summit, young progressives have a unique opportunity to take a step back and look at the big picture: How can the we continue advancing bold solutions on energy and climate? What can young people do beyond energy and climate? And if national climate legislation succeeds, what's the next "Big Idea" for the progressive youth movement?

These are just some of the ideas we're exploring in a Special Breakthrough Issue - "After Power Shift: What's Next?" - to examine the next steps for the progressive youth movement. The issue will include contributions from some of the country's top young leaders throughout the week, and we hope you'll join the discussion. Here's our first piece to kick it off.

---------------------------------------------

Want to Save the World? Make Clean Energy Cheap.

By Teryn Norris & Jesse Jenkins
The Huffington Post

Over 12,000 young adults attended the recent Power Shift 2009 summit in Washington, DC. Their goal? Building the largest youth movement in decades to save the world from global warming.

Largely missing from Power Shift, however, was a critical group: young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Maybe it was mid-terms. Perhaps the event seemed too political. Or maybe the summit recruited too many traditionally-defined "activists."

Whatever the cause, we have very little chance of overcoming climate change without enlisting young innovators at a drastically greater scale. Simply put, they represent one of the most important catalysts for creating a clean energy economy and achieving long-term prosperity.

The reason is this: at its core, climate change is a challenge of technology innovation. Over the next four decades, global energy demand will approximately double. Most of this growth will happen in developing nations as they continue lifting their citizens out of poverty and building modern societies. But over the same period, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall dramatically to avert the worst consequences of climate change.

Continue reading "Want to Save the World? Make Clean Energy Cheap." »

Last Thursday, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu delivered groundbreaking Congressional testimony (testimony PDF) to the Senate Energy & Natural Resources Committee about Obama's energy plan and what's necessary to create a clean energy economy:

"Our previous investments in science led to the birth of the semiconductor, computer, and bio-technology industries that have added greatly to our economic prosperity. Now, we need similar breakthroughs on energy. We're already taking steps in the right direction, but we need to do more...

Developing Science and Engineering Talent: Several years ago, I had the honor and privilege of working on the "Rising Above the Gathering Storm" report commissioned by Chairman Bingaman and Senator Alexander. One of the key recommendations was to step up efforts to educate the next generation of scientists and engineers. The FY 2010 budget supports graduate fellowship programs that will train students in energy-related fields. I will also seek to build on DOE's existing research strengths by attracting and retaining the most talented scientists.

Focusing on Transformational Research. The second area that I want to discuss is the need to support transformational technology research. What do I mean by transformational technology? I mean technology that is game-changing, as opposed to merely incremental...

Speeding Demonstration and Deployment: While we work on transformational technologies, DOE must also improve its efforts to demonstrate next-generation technologies and to help deploy demonstrated clean energy technologies at scale...

We will move forward on all of these fronts and more, as we invest in the transformational research to achieve breakthroughs that could revolutionize our Nation's energy future."

Continue reading "Steven Chu calls for $150 billion investment in "breakthrough" energy R&D" »

Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow Marty Hoffert joined a panel of energy experts from both industry and academia at an American Association for the Advancement of Science panel on energy innovation held in Washington D.C. this week. The panel of experts called for major, direct government investments and targeted public policies designed to spur high-risk, high-reward energy innovation.

Businesses and the private sector are ill-suited to perform the kind of critical, long-term energy research needed to solve national energy challenges, panelists said, calling for targeted public policies and investments designed to drive improvements and lower costs of clean energy technologies.

They also encouraged federal energy R&D initiatives to not overlook some of the more outlandish proposals for new energy and climate technologies, including space-based solar power and geoengineering techniques. With early-stage R&D a low-cost investment, putting money behind these potentially high-payoff technologies has no downside, they say.

Read on for excerpts from Energy and Environment Daily's coverage of the AAAS panel...

Continue reading "Energy Experts Call for High-Risk, High-Reward Energy Innovation" »

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?

I know I may be chastised for criticizing Obama so soon after he delivered an unprecedented clean energy investment in the stimulus. But let's be clear: those investments were just the beginning, and Obama needs to articulate a clear and viable plan to make the sustained commitment and ongoing public investments necessary to truly build a new energy economy.

The public is overwhelmingly behind President Obama right now, and if he was elected with a mandate to do anything beyond stem the economic crisis, it was a mandate to build a new, clean energy economy that finally secures America's energy independence and averts potentially catastrophic climate change.

Yet once you start looking at the critical areas for public investment - research, development and demonstration, or RD&D; critical infrastructure, like a modernized electrical grid; deployment incentives to spur emerging technologies; and efficiency incentives, financing and other investments to retrofit American homes, businesses and factories - it's not hard to see why $15 billion per year is simply not up to the task.

Continue reading "Will Obama Put Real Money on the Table for Clean Energy?" »

In his latest piece, Time magazine's energy and climate writer Bryan Walsh takes readers beyond carbon pricing, to look at the more active government engagement in energy innovation necessary in the race against climate change.

"[A] growing chorus of experts is beginning to doubt whether cap-and-trade alone will reduce CO2 enough to curb runaway climate change," Walsh writes, before turning to the need for new energy innovation on an unprecedented scale. As Walsh writes, "If the U.S. is to invent its way out of climate change, which some suggest is our only hope, it will need to spend [a] lot more and a lot more wisely on basic energy research."

Selected excerpts after the jump...

Continue reading "Time's Bryan Walsh Takes Us Beyond Carbon Pricing" »

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" »

The New York Times reports that even as President Obama signs the economic stimulus bill into law today, he and his aids are indicating that the President has not ruled out the need for continued public spending to stimulate economic recovery:

The president said he would not pretend "that today marks the end of our economic problems."

"Nor does it constitute all of what we have to do to turn our economy around," Mr. Obama said at the signing ceremony in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. "But today does mark the beginning of the end, the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the way of layoffs."

Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs told reporters on the way to the stimulus bill signing, "I think the president is going to do what's necessary to grow this economy." The Times reports that he then added, "[While] there are no particular plans at this point for a second stimulus package, I wouldn't foreclose it."

This rhetorical shift suggests that Obama recognizes that economic recovery will be a long process that will require sustained action and last deep into his first term. The President seems to be beginning to prepare the public for that reality as well.

Continue reading "Obama: Sowing Seeds for Stimulus 2.0?" »

James Hansen of NASA has written an op-ed for the Guardian that, more than any other piece of his that I've seen, expresses his political philosophy. In a phrase, that philosophy can be characterized as "scientific authoritarianism." Scientific authoritarianism, as I am using it here, holds that political decisions should be compelled by the political preferences of scientists. It is a very strong form of the "linear model" of science and decision making that I discuss in The Honest Broker.

Hansen believes that the advice of experts, and specifically his advice alone, should compel certain political outcomes. He opens his op-ed in the Guardian with this statement:

A year ago, I wrote to Gordon Brown asking him to place a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants in Britain. I have asked the same of Angela Merkel, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd and other leaders.

Continue reading "The Political Philosophy of James Hansen" »

The House of Representatives approved the conference report of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act today, by a vote of 246-186. Not a single Republican joined Democrats in approving this version of the bill, which was the product of long negotiations between leadership in both the House and Senate, as well as a block of centrist Senate Democrats and Republicans who have taken control of much of the debate on the stimulus.

The public investment numbers in the stimulus have bounced around during the countless negotiations, so if you've been following this crazy game at home (all twelve of you), here's our detailed summary, provided without further comment, of the energy-related investments and tax provisions in the conference version of the stimulus.

Assuming the block of centrist Senators remains supportive, this will be the version passed into law by the Senate soon, as early as later this evening.  Keep in mind that all spending will be spread out over roughly two years.

Continue reading "Detailed Summary of Energy Investments in Stimulus" »

In an op-ed in the Boston Globe today, Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Susan Hockfield championed long term federal investments in technologies and technology-based sectors as an engine of long term economic growth.

Hockfield invokes World War II and Cold War investments in education and fundamental and applied research and development, citing the many technological innovations--in electronics, aerospace, computing and communications and others--that directly resulted from these investments. These innovations, she points out, and created industries and growth sectors that provided decades of prosperity for the American economy. Hockfield writes:

With stimulus plans now in place, Congress and the Obama administration must plant the seeds of longer-term economic growth. Economists broadly agree that more than half of US economic growth since World War II has come from technological innovation, much of it stemming from federally funded, fundamental research. In the late 1990s, for example, US productivity grew at more than 3 percent per year. The revolution in information technology - a direct outgrowth of federally funded research - was pivotal to this extraordinary growth.

Citing the potential for future technological breakthroughs to help America overcome pressing national challenges, she continues:

Finding new energy answers may be the most pressing concern, given the implications of the current energy mix for the economy, national security and climate change. To help unleash an innovation wave in energy technology, the United States must go beyond the priorities of the stimulus package, which aims to create tens of thousands of "green jobs"; it must now invest in the kind of research and innovation that will ultimately spin-off millions of jobs by building a new economy. This includes investing in early- and later-stage research on the most promising technologies; funding new R&D centers to accelerate critical breakthroughs; equipping research labs with state-of-the-art instrumentation for advanced research, prototyping and demonstration of emerging technologies; and training a new energy talent base.

With debate over the stimulus coming to an end, progressives need to begin using the recovery bill as a springboard to advocate for a new model of governance that values sustained federal investments that can yield broad societal benefits and fuel economic growth. It is great that MIT's respected president is moving the discourse around creating a new progressive economic philosophy for forward.

(Read the whole op-ed after the jump)

Continue reading "MIT President Champions Federal Innovation Investments" »

In a candid conversation with reporters yesterday, newly-confirmed Energy Secretary Dr. Stephen Chu called for "a second industrial revolution" in energy technology to overcome the world's energy and climate challenges.

Sounding like an honorary Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow, Dr. Chu said solving these pressing challenges would require Nobel-level "breakthroughs" in at least three core energy technologies: advanced batteries for vehicles, new crops for biomass energy, and solar panels cheap enough to deploy without subsidy.

Continue reading "Energy Secretary Steven Chu: Honorary Breakthrough Fellow?" »

The following is a question and answer question with Breakthrough Institute friend and ally Dr. Dan Sarewitz. Dr. Sarewitz is the co-Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. His thinking about how innovation happens, and how government and society can best foster technology innovation makes his insights invaluable to policymakers, engineers and others who seek to transform's America's energy system from its current fossil-fuel dependent form into a clean, low carbon system that utilizes a myriad of new technologies.

Adam: Dr. Sarewitz, your work on innovation policy has forced you to confront some hard truths about the limits of policy in driving technology innovation and deployment. Would you say that we know how to properly draft policy that stimulates the proper technology innovation necessary to transition to a low-carbon energy system in America?

Dr. Sarewitz: In fact we do understand how to stimulate innovation. What we don't understand is how to drive innovation down particular social paths to yield particular society-wide outcomes over particular time frames.

Adam: So setting a goal like "80 percent emissions reduction by 2050"--deciding on an outcome and a time frame--aren't exactly helpful to the job of decarbonizing an energy system?

Continue reading "Q&A With Dan Sarewitz" »

After the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act passed in the lower chamber of Congress with absolutely no support from House Republicans two weeks ago, it was hard to predict what shape the debate would take in the Senate. But with perspective, the course of the Senate debate offers lessons for how we could secure investments in making clean energy cheap, and transform American politics in the process.

Just as it seemed that debate over the stimulus might stall, Ben Nelson, a Democrat from Nebraska, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine took the lead in an effort to bring a centrist approach to the bill in order to secure bipartisan support. What came out of this effort is a bill that slashes necessary and fast acting stimulus in the form of aid for state budgets and money for education, among other spending measures, while expanding tax cuts that will help the more affluent disproportionately to middle and lower class Americans.

Continue reading "Energy, Economy, and How to Rebuild the Center" »

By Jesse Jenkins & Teryn Norris

The Brookings Institution officially unveiled a new proposal yesterday calling for "a new paradigm in energy innovation" at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. The proposal, which was developed for over a year and is one of the most in-depth proposals for new energy R&D out there, calls for an "order of magnitude" increase in federal energy R&D investment and proposes a new model for clean energy technology research and commercialization: establishing a national network of regionally-based "Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes" (e-DIIs) to serve as hubs of distributed research linking the nation's best scientists, engineers, and facilities and effectively combining the forces of academia, government and industry.

Continue reading "A New Paradigm in Energy Innovation: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes" »

An article in last week's New York Times delved into Japan's "Lost Decade," - the prolonged period of economic stagnation that hit the nation in the 1990s - and explores what lessons for U.S. stimulus efforts can be learned from Japan's efforts to restart their economy. The article's findings echo some of the arguments Breakthrough has been making regarding the stimulus debate. Japan's stimulus missteps reinforce the argument that our recovery program should be focused on modern infrastructure--not traditional public works--in addition to spending on other national priorities such as energy and education.

The Times story begins with a look at which types of public spending helped Japan grow out of its recession, and which types stifled recovery:

[I]t matters what gets built: Japan spent too much on increasingly wasteful roads and bridges, and not enough in areas like education and social services, which studies show deliver more bang for the buck than [traditional] infrastructure spending.

"It is not enough just to hire workers to dig holes and then fill them in again," said Toshihiro Ihori, an economics professor at the University of Tokyo. "One lesson from Japan is that public works get the best results when they create something useful for the future."

Continue reading "Lessons from Japan: How to Avoid A "Lost Decade" in America" »