Leading environmental organizations "re-brand" climate mitigation efforts as key to reducing public health risks, embracing recommendations of a Hartwell Group report.
Leading green groups, including the National Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club, are embracinga pragmatic approach to advance climate mitigation efforts by refocusing public outreach efforts around the near-term health benefits associated with reducing reliance on coal-fired power plants and increasing vehicle fuel efficiency.
"We're going to talk a lot about the health implications of dirty air," Heather Taylor, director of NRDC's political arm told Politico.
That's a smart move, says climate change communication expert and American University professor Matthew Nisbet.
While efforts to tackle climate change will avoid potentially significant long-term damages, to secure broad public support, those efforts must be linked to more salient and immediate public concerns while delivering near-term benefits. As Nisbet explains:
"In a polarized America, if you are going to build support for candidates in the Midwest and other battleground states that will back legislation on climate change during the next Congress, you have to switch focus to emphasize public health and economic resilience, goals realized through incremental actions like eliminating coal plants and boosting fuel efficiency."
Nisbet's observations echo the recommendations outlined in Climate Pragmatism, a July 2011 report authored by an international group of 14 scholars and analysts representing a diverse range of political and ideological positions -- from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to moderate Democratic think tank Third Way and the liberal Breakthrough Institute.
Obama's focus on energy innovation and the regulation of conventional pollutants, rather than climate science and carbon pricing, is part of a growing climate centrism that could hold bipartisan support on addressing issues related to climate change.
In his 2011 State of the Union address, President Obama tacitly acknowledged how politically toxic climate change had become by not mentioning it once. His move angered many environmentalists who insisted there could be no significant action without a full-throated defense of the climate science against skeptics.
But one year later, President Obama's shift can be understood as part of a new climate centrism, one focused less on climate science and carbon pricing and more on energy innovation and the regulation of conventional pollutants like mercury. In his 2012 address, Obama briefly mentioned the divisiveness of climate change as a segue to touting his energy policies.
Polls show that Obama's call for continued energy innovation funding was one of the most popular elements of his speech. Meanwhile, the EPA's new mercury regulations—which will result in the shuttering of some of America's dirtiest coal plants—have long been more popular with Independents and Republicans than carbon regulations.
These policies have a growing number of supporters on the right. Last week, John Tierney of the New York Times pointed to a new study in Science that touted the climate benefits of dealing with non-carbon pollutants:
After looking at hundreds of ways to control these pollutants, the researchers determined the 14 most effective measures for reducing climate change, like encouraging a switch to cleaner diesel engines and cookstoves, building more efficient kilns and coke ovens, capturing methane at landfills and oil wells, and reducing methane emissions from rice paddies by draining them more often.
Oblique strategies appear to be working to reduce CO2 emissions. New rules from the EPA to limit emissions of the neurotoxin mercury and other toxic and carcinogenic pollutants from the nation's coal-fired power plants represents a small, but real, step forward toward a cleaner, healthier, and lower-carbon energy system.
The Environmental Protection Agency unveiled new (and long-overdue) regulations today to rein in mercury and other toxic pollutants from coal and oil-fired power plants. The new mercury rules, designed to save lives and protect children from the potent neurotoxin, are likely to trigger the closure of many of America's oldest, dirtiest coal-fired power plants over the next decade.
If and when the new rule takes effect, it will be the first time the federal government has enforced limits on mercury, arsenic, acid gases and other poisonous and carcinogenic chemicals emitted by the burning of fossil fuels.
Lisa P. Jackson, the E.P.A. administrator, said that the regulations, which have taken more than 20 years to formulate, will save thousands of lives and return financial benefits many times their estimated $11 billion annual cost. ...
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, harming the nervous systems of fetuses and young children and causing lifelong developmental problems. Other pollutants covered by the new rule, including dioxin, can cause cancer, premature death, heart disease, and asthma.
Power plants generally will have up to four years to comply, although waivers can be granted in individual cases to ensure that the lights stay on. The EPA estimates that utilities will be forced to retire plants that currently provide less than one-half of 1 percent of the nation's total generating capacity.
In this sense, the EPA's new pollution rules appear to be another example of the ongoing success of "oblique" strategies to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions. While the new rules may only force the closure of 0.5 percent of the nation's electricity generating fleet, those plants will be among the least efficient and most carbon-intensive power plants in the nation. The coal-fired power plants most likely to be retired in the face of new pollution regulations emit at least twice as much CO2 per kilowatt-hour of electricity as the national average.
This is a small step forward on climate, but a real one, strongly justified on public health grounds alone, even before any climate benefits are considered. The new rules will eliminate "up to 17,000 premature deaths" per year, along with thousands of heart attacks, asthma attacks and emergency room visits, according to EPA estimates.
By Mark Caine, Research Officer at the London School of Economics, Co-ordinator for the Hartwell Group, and 2010 Breakthrough Generation Fellow
Ideas Whose Times Have Come
Something profound is happening in the world of energy and climate policy.
In the wake of another tepid COP conference that, once again, failed to put the world even "on a path to solve the climate problem", previously heterodox ideas are entering mainstream thinking.
From the inadequacy of the Kyoto protocol and the immediate imperative for adaptation to an innovation-centric climate policy, no-regrets action on non-CO2 forcers, and energy access for all: a set of pragmatic ideas that the Breakthrough Institute, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr., the authors of The Hartwell Paper, and others have advocated for years -- often to an onslaught of cynical opposition -- are now being promoted as front-line strategies to manage our complex set of energy and climate challenges.
Take the Kyoto protocol, which despite its well-documented structural flaws has been treated for years as the only game in town--the plan A for which "there really is no plan B". Now, realizing that the modest agreement reached at Durban is little more than a face-saving maneuver that means, at best, an eight year punt on universally binding emissions reductions, commentators are beginning to sing a different tune.
"Kyoto was built to fail," reports left-of-center UK paper The Guardian. The process has faltered, writes John Broder in the New York Times, because it taken on "too great a task." Political analyst Andrew Charlton reports from down under that there is, in fact, a plan B, consisting primarily of policy prescriptions that will sound remarkably familiar to anyone who has read Fast, Clean, and Cheap, The Hartwell Paper, The Climate Fix, or a growing body of books and academic articles advocating innovation-centric energy policies combined with robust adaptation measures and a commitment to universal energy access.
Perhaps more than any, this last issue has sailed from the margins to the mainstream. A key tenet of the 2010 Hartwell Paper, the imperative to empower the world's poor through the provision of universal energy access -- and bring energy poverty to the center of energy and climate debates -- has become a cause celebre at the UN Foundation. Did you know that 2012 is the International Year of Sustainable Energy for All? Finally, something everyone from Ban-Ki Moon to nu metal band Linkin Park can agree on!
In all seriousness though, the global community's newfound support for universal energy access is a heartening development--not least for the 1.3 billion people lacking electricity and the 2.7 billion people burning dung and sticks to cook and heat their homes. To be sure, the emissions implications of empowering these people using available technology remain inconclusive: the IEA's rosy estimate of a .7% increase in global CO2 emissions defines 'access' for rural denizens at a paltry 250 kWh/year, 1/55th of the US average and 1/32nd that of ultra-efficient Japan (World Bank data). Yet any steps to bring modern energy to the energy-poor are justifiable in their own right on basic principles of equity, not to mention their contingent benefits for public health, education, economic opportunity, andenhanced resilience to future climate impacts.
Post-"Post-pollution"
In his New York Times review of the shifting dynamics in the energy and climate debate, Andrew Revkin cites both Roger Pielke Jr. and the authors of The Hartwell Paper, crediting them for helping spread this "post-pollution" emphasis on climate resilience, energy modernization, and strategic public and private investment in clean energy innovation. Revkin is nearly alone amongst journalists in tracing back the roots of these approaches, but a frequent lack of attribution is predictable. Indeed, the broad, uncoordinated adoption of these "post-pollution" framings and policy approaches may have been inevitable, a reflection less of their progenitors than their sensibility.
As these framings and policy ideas become more widely accepted, the challenge for those of us who have long advocated these positions, including the Hartwell Group network which I work to coordinate, will begin to shift. As once-heterodox problem definitions and policy approaches from the Breakthrough Institute, the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the Hartwell Group, and others enter mainstream discussion, what can we offer going forward?
Arguably, the most important thing we must do now is deliver top-quality research and analysis on the hard questions of innovation that are not yet being addressed in most climate policy discussions. Though many have accepted rapid innovation as a necessity, few have actually opened up the "black box" of innovation to understand what specific kinds of innovation we need, how to fund and scale them, and how to overcome persistent challenges such as rent-seeking behavior, energy efficiency rebound and backfire, and the "valleys of death" that plague the innovation and commercialization process. Understanding the need for innovation is not the same as knowing how best to do it.
The Breakthrough Institute has already taken up this effort, backing up its long-standing support for innovation as an energy and climate solution with detailed analysis of the mechanics of how innovation works and, by extension, how to spark, accelerate, direct, fund, and scale it. And the Hartwell Group is working to coordinate a network of international scholars and analysts to further develop key recommendations for actionable and pragmatic climate solutions.
This work alone won't solve the myriad complex, interconnected energy and climate challenges that face us. But it will help lay the foundation for a safer, more prosperous, and more equitable future--a future in which the essential functioning of the earth system is preserved and all people have access to safe, reliable energy and protection from the vagaries of extreme weather, whatever its cause.
The best way to move forward on climate policy is to not focus on climate at all. "Climate Pragmatism" argues that we can move past the climate wars by focusing on what we already agree on: energy innovation, pollution reduction, and resilience to extreme weather.
The best way to move forward on climate policy is to not focus on climate at all.
That's the conclusion of new report by authors from Oxford, London School of Economics, Third Way, the American Enterprise Institute, the Breakthrough Institute and others. Climate Pragmatism argues that we can move past the climate wars by focusing on what we already agree on: energy innovation, pollution reduction, and resilience to extreme weather.
While there is no evidence -- and indeed, great counter-evidence -- that nations can reduce their carbon emissions through caps, there is more than 200 years of evidence of nations moving to cleaner energy, reducing toxic air pollution, and adapting to the climate. These three pillars of climate pragmatism swim with, rather than against, the process of human development and modernization.
The "Climate Pragmatism" paper explodes a myth that's held by many greens: that energy is too cheap. For most of the world, the opposite is true, which is why more than 1.4 billion people lack virtually any access to electricity. That's an astounding figure, but one that rarely gets the attention it deserves. Lack of electricity impacts public health -- try running a modern hospital without any power -- and retards economic growth. If we want developing nations to be better prepared to deal with the effects of climate change -- or just about any other threat -- we need to get them wired.
Where the old climate regime spent 20 years developing a bureaucracy waiting on the two largest emitters -- China and the U.S. -- Climate Pragmatism says that we can get started right away doing more of the things we already agree on and have great experience doing.
Such an approach disappoints climate warriors and partisans. Al Gore, for one, is organizing another day of PowerPoint lectures. But public support for the environment is at more than 30 year-low, cap and trade is dead, perhaps for good, and global warming has become as partisan and polarizing an issue as abortion and gun control.
Climate Pragmatism also comes at a time when national political leaders are moving toward a more pragmatic approach to climate. In the Guardian/Yale360, we argue that Obama's greatest contribution to the environment was moving the Democratic discourse away from global warming apocalypse and toward economic aspiration. Last week, when New York Mayor Bloomberg donated $50 million to anti-coal activism, he pointedly framed his remarks around public health, not climate change.
Climate warriors and skeptics will, to be sure, keep their 20-year feud alive. But they may no longer impede climate progress.
A pragmatic strategy to restart stalled global climate efforts through the pursuit of energy innovation, climate resilience, and no regrets pollution reduction (Report Overview)
Climate Pragmatism, a new policy report released July 26th by the Hartwell group, details an innovative strategy to restart global climate efforts after the collapse of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. This pragmatic strategy centers on efforts to accelerate energy innovation, build resilience to extreme weather, and pursue no regrets pollution reduction measures -- three efforts that each have their own diverse justifications independent of their benefits for climate mitigation and adaptation. As such, Climate Pragmatism offers a framework for renewed American leadership on climate change that's effectiveness, paradoxically, does not depend on any agreement about climate science or the risks posed by uncontrolled greenhouse gases.
The new report brings the Hartwell framework into an American perspective, and it is authored by a broad group of 14 international scholars and analysts representing a diverse range of political and ideological positions -- from the conservative American Enterprise Institute to moderate Democratic think tank Third Way and the liberal Breakthrough Institute.
Climate Pragmatism is the third paper released by the Hartwell group, an informal international network of scholars and analysts dedicated to innovative strategies that uplift human dignity through mitigation of climate risk, enhancement of disaster resilience, improvement of public health, and the provision of universal energy access. Previous publications include The Hartwell Paper (May 2010) and How to Get Climate Policy Back on Course (July 2009).
Climate Pragmatism also builds on the limited and direct energy technology innovation strategy outlined by the Breakthrough Institute along with scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution in the October 2010 policy report, Post-Partisan Power.
As the report's authors explain:
The old climate framework failed because it would have imposed substantial costs associated with climate mitigation policies on developed nations today in exchange for climate benefits far off in the future -- benefits whose attributes, magnitude, timing, and distribution are not knowable with certainty. Since they risked slowing economic growth in many emerging economies, efforts to extend the Kyoto-style UNFCCC framework to developing nations predictably deadlocked as well.
The new framework now emerging will succeed to the degree to which it prioritizes agreements that promise near-term economic, geopolitical, and environmental benefits to political economies around the world, while simultaneously reducing climate forcings, developing clean and affordable energy technologies, and improving societal resilience to climate impacts. This new approach recognizes that continually deadlocked international negotiations and failed domestic policy proposals bring no climate benefit at all. It accepts that only sustained effort to build momentum through politically feasible forms of action will lead to accelerated decarbonization.
In tonight's State of the Union Speech, President Obama will call for increased federal investment in education, science, technology and infrastructure. In doing so, he will join a long list of Republican Presidents who recognized that such investments are key to America's economic vitality and a hallmark of true fiscal responsibility. The question now is whether today's Republican leaders will don this mantle, or will continue to recklessly pursue cuts to America's most productive public investments?
Tonight, President Obama is prepared to call for renewed federal investment in infrastructure, research, education, and clean energy technology in his State of the Union Address, according to his advisers. He is likely to argue that new productive investments in education and technology are central to generating jobs and laying a new foundation for economic prosperity. Indeed, the long, bipartisan history of American innovation is one of federal investment in new technologies--even in tough economic times.
But as Republicans in Congress continue their campaign to cut everything in sight (except for what might reduce the growing federal debt -- defense and entitlement spending), with seemingly little regard for the difference between spending and smart investment, it may be difficult for Obama to enact policies that could seriously address the deficit by growing the economy.
By Rob Atkinson, Ted Nordhaus, and Michael Shellenberger
For forty years, presidents and policymakers have promised and planned for a new energy future just over the horizon. While the rationales have varied - reducing dependence on imported oil, stopping global warming, reducing air pollution, creating clean energy jobs - the song has largely remained the same: America has most, if not all, of the technologies needed today to make a quick and relatively painless transition away from fossil fuels.
Yet America is more dependent upon fossil fuels than ever before. U.S. oil consumption rose from 15 to 20 million barrels a day between 1970 and today, while coal still provides about 50 percent of our electricity. U.S. carbon emissions continue to rise unabated, as efforts to cap them have repeatedly foundered in the face of daunting political, economic, and technological obstacles. And renewable technologies like wind and solar only meet a tiny fraction of America's energy needs despite several decades of efforts to subsidize their deployment.
When experts convene in Washington next week to discuss energy policy at the Energy Innovation 2010 conference, they will do so in the wake of yet another failed federal effort to pass legislation to support a transition away from fossil fuel-based energy.
Forcing countries to agree to emissions caps will never work, argue Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. The duo argues in a special Wall Street Journal column that the global community should think past U.N. climate talks in Cancun and focus instead on energy innovation, adaptation, and no regrets policies that do not require agreement about global warming.
The failure of the U.N. climate process is proof that shared economic sacrifice cannot be the basis of global action. Nations will not scale up clean energy as long as it remains so much more expensive than fossil fuels. Thinking past talks in Cancun, nations should focus instead on energy innovation, adaptation, and no regrets policies that do not require agreement about global warming. The first step is recognizing that the global market for clean energy exists only thanks to government subsidies and mandates. Instead of imposing emissions controls and subsidizing existing technologies, nations should use competitive deployment to purchase advanced energy technologies, benchmark the winners, and allow intellectual property to spill-over between firms and nations.
This is the framework we propose for pragmatic global climate action in the cover story for a special energy section in today's Wall Street Journal, pegged to the start of U.N. climate talks in Cancun, Mexico. Today also marks the launch of a new web site, Breakthrough Europe, and its kick-off post, "Cancun Can't: The Twilight of European Climate Leadership," which documents the failure of Europe's cap and trade system to reduce emissions.
Our Wall St. Journal essay, "How to Change the Global Energy Conversation," builds on Breakthrough Institute's thinking about the failure of the UN process ("Scrap Kyoto," Democracy Journal), the clean tech intellectual property illusion ("The Revolution Will Not Be Patented," Slate), the green Keynesianism and neoliberalism behind Obama's green jobs fiasco ("Green Jobs for Janitors," The New Republic), and our proposal to make clean energy cheap through technology innovation ("Fast, Clean & Cheap," Harvard Law and Policy Review, Feb 2008).
Neal Lane, of Rice University former science advisor to President Bill Clinton, showed the slide above in a recent talk at the University of Colorado (which he provided to me today, Thanks Neal!). It shows a number of technologies somehow connected to federal innovation investments and their relationship to the iPod, discussed in an earlier post today.
Apple has long boasted of its culture of innovation, and how this led to such products as the original Mac and the iPod. However, it turns out that, at least in the case of the iPod, Apple had a hidden ally: the US government. During a speech at Tuskegee University, President (and iPod user) George W. Bush told his audience, "the government funded research in microdrive storage, electrochemistry and signal compression. They did so for one reason: It turned out that those were the key ingredients for the development of the iPod." While we have to gratefully acknowledge the efforts of government agencies such as DARPA in some of the fields mentioned by the President, we also feel obligated to point out the accomplishments of private companies in the US and abroad, including IBM, Hitachi and Toshiba -- not to mention the Fraunhofer Institute, which developed the original MP3 codec, and codeveloped (with Sony, AT&T and others) the AAC format used by Apple in the iPod.
In a recent interview with NPR's Robert Siegel, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. discusses why cap and trade policy collapsed under the weight of its political and practical limitations. He proposes a new path forward focused on making clean energy cheap, instead of continually trying to make fossils fuels more expensive.
Below is an excerpt from the interview transcript. Click here to listen to the full interview and read the entire transcript:
In an effort to develop a truly effective post-cap and trade climate strategy, policy is not the only aspect that requires deep reflection - philanthropists, too, must reconsider the best way to channel grants in order to successfully fund solutions to climate and energy challenges. Breakthrough's Director of Climate and Energy Policy Jesse Jenkins recently spoke to a foundation about re-thinking philanthropic efforts in a post-cap and trade policy environment, offering insight into how policy makers, activists, and philanthropists, alike, must re-orient away from the focus on limits and toward an approach that harnesses human ingenuity to directly confront the scale of the global climate and energy challenge.
David Ropeik brings to light a pragmatic point about the psychological challenges to new nuclear power deployment caused by fear of nuclear power:
But, as is often the case with risk perception, emotional filters, more than the facts, determine how afraid we are, or aren't.
Whether this is rational or irrational, right or wrong, is irrelevant. It is, inescapably, how it is. But we must recognize that our response to risk can pose a danger all by itself. Our fear of nuclear power has led to energy economics that favor coal and oil for electricity, at great cost to human and environmental health. Particulate pollution from fossil fuels kills tens of thousands of Europeans every year, and CO2 emissions fuel a potentially calamitous shift in global climate.
No amount of education or good communication can get around this. Subjective risk perception is hard-wired into our architecture and chemistry. What governments can do is to learn what psychological research has established: our perceptions, as real as they are and as much as they must be respected in a democracy, can create their own perils.
With that understanding, government risk assessment can account not only for the facts, but also for how we feel about them and how we behave. That way, we can reduce conflict over nuclear power and other risk issues, and foster wiser and more productive policies for public and environmental health.
When policies on emissions reductions collide with policies focused on economic growth, economic growth will win out every time. Climate policies should flow with the current of public opinion rather than against it, and efforts to sell the public on policies that will create short-term economic discomfort cannot succeed if that discomfort is perceived to be too great. Calls for asceticism and sacrifice are a nonstarter.
The "iron law" thus presents a boundary condition on policy design that is every bit as limiting as is the second law of thermodynamics, and it holds everywhere around the world, in rich and poor countries alike. It says that even if people are willing to bear some costs to reduce emissions (and experience shows that they are), they are willing to go only so far...
To succeed, any policies focused on decarbonizing economies will necessarily have to offer short-term benefits that are in some manner proportional to the short-term costs. In practice, this means that efforts to make dirty energy appreciably more expensive will face limited success.
...
The unavoidable reality is that policy makers and those they represent are committed to sustaining economic growth, bringing populations out of poverty, and expanding access to energy. Emissions reduction goals will not be achieved by policies that seek to stimulate innovation by constricting, much less by reducing, economic activity.
Yesterday, scholars from the American Enterprise Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the Breakthrough Institute released a joint report proposing a post-partisan way forward on climate and energy policy that moves beyond the framework of cap and trade. The report, "Post-Partisan Power," ignited a firestorm of discussion.
To answer some of major questions about the report, E&E News OnPoint TV host Monica Trauzzi invited Breakthrough Institute Director of Climate and Energy Policy Jesse Jenkins and Brookings' Senior Fellow and Director of Policy for the Metropolitan Policy Program to join her show.
Throughout American history, federal investments in areas like science and technology have been a long-term driver of national prosperity under presidents both Democrat and Republican.
Throughout American history, strategic government investments in areas like education, technology, infrastructure, and energy catalyzed the entrepreneurship and innovation that has paved the way for so many of the great American technological and economic successes of the 20th century. In the words of conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks, the American story is one of "limited but energetic governments that used aggressive federal power to promote growth."
The new report calls for increasing federal innovation investment from roughly $4 today to $25 billion annually, and using military procurement, new, disciplined deployment incentives, and public-private hubs to achieve both incremental improvements and breakthroughs in clean energy technologies. The authors point to America's long-history of bi-partisan support for innovation.
Writes David Leonhardt in today's New York Times, "the death of cap and trade doesn't have to mean the death of climate policy. The alternative revolves around much more, and much better organized, financing for clean energy research. It's an idea with a growing list of supporters, a list that even includes conservatives -- most of whom opposed cap and trade."
Mark Muro of Brookings tells Politico the proposal's four parts "are broadly popular, provide a very broad and appealing American vision of economic transformation and are certainly far more doable than a global pricing system at this point." Added Steve Hayward of American Enterprise Institute, "The entire climate and energy agenda that we've been talking about for several years now has hit a dead end, so it's time to hit the reset button."
The new report calls for increasing federal innovation investment from roughly $4 today to $25 billion annually, and using military procurement, new, disciplined deployment incentives, and public-private hubs to achieve both incremental improvements and breakthroughs in clean energy technologies. The authors point to America's long-history of bi-partisan support for innovation.
Writes David Leonhardt in today's New York Times, "the death of cap and trade doesn't have to mean the death of climate policy. The alternative revolves around much more, and much better organized, financing for clean energy research. It's an idea with a growing list of supporters, a list that even includes conservatives -- most of whom opposed cap and trade."
Mark Muro of Brookings tells Politico the proposal's four parts "are broadly popular, provide a very broad and appealing American vision of economic transformation and are certainly far more doable than a global pricing system at this point." Added Steve Hayward of American Enterprise Institute, "The entire climate and energy agenda that we've been talking about for several years now has hit a dead end, so it's time to hit the reset button."
As the Times's Leonhardt explains the new post-partisan proposal, and the growing energy innovation consensus surrounding it, "reflect[s] the political reality that raising the cost of dirty energy is unpopular, especially when the economy is so weak. Finding the money to make clean energy cheaper, even when government budgets are tight, will probably be an easier sell."
While cap and trade legislation became embattled by partisan wars over climate science and compromised to the point of inefficacy, Leonhardt reminds readers that there is a successor strategy waiting, if one only turns to the long, bipartisan history of American technological leadership.
"[H]istory shows that government-directed research can work," Leohardt writes.
"The Defense Department created the Internet, as part of a project to build a communications system safe from nuclear attack. The military helped make possible radar, microchips and modern aviation, too. The National Institutes of Health spawned the biotechnology industry. All those investments have turned into engines of job creation, even without any new tax on the technologies they replaced.
"We didn't tax typewriters to get the computer. We didn't tax telegraphs to get telephones," Breakthrough Institute's Michael Shellenberger told the Times. "When you look at the history of technological innovation, you find that state investment is everywhere."
And in that history, lies a new path forward to deliver clean cheap energy, economic productivity, and national prosperity.
By Steven F. Hayward, American Enterprise Institute; Mark Muro, Brookings Institution; Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, Breakthrough Institute
If ever there were a time to hit the reset button on energy policy, it is today. Congress is set to adjourn without taking substantive, long-term action on either climate or energy. While conservatives may be celebrating the death of cap and trade, the truth is that the right's longstanding hopes for the expansion of nuclear power and oil production have also run aground, foundering on the high cost of constructing new nuclear plants and the impacts of the devastating oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. As a result, energy policy is at a standstill, despite overwhelming public support for accelerating the move to clean, affordable energy sources and tapping fast-growing clean energy industries to create jobs and wealth in the United States.
Instead of raising the price of fossil fuels, Gates argues that the time has come to shift our attention to raising the revenues necessary to fuel innovation and make clean energy cheap.
In a new interview with Technology Review, Bill Gates nails the global energy and climate challenge and discusses the need for dramatic increases in energy innovation funding to make clean energy cheap.
In a climate discourse dominated by emissions targets and carbon caps, Gates has provided a refreshing and clear-eyed look at the first-order importance of direct public investment to develop clean, affordable technologies to replace fossil fuels on a global scale.
In this new interview, Gates discusses why dismissing the difficulty of the challenge is counter-productive, and argues that carbon pricing can never drive the dramatic innovation required to transform the global energy system. Instead of raising the price of fossil fuels, Gates argues that the time has come to shift our attention to raising the revenues necessary to fuel innovation and make clean energy cheap.
Below the fold, you can find excerpts from Gates' interview, which can be read in full here.
For more, the NYTimesAndy Revkin and TIME magazine's Bryan Walsh each spotlight the interview here and here, respectively.
Seemingly inspired by the death of cap and trade, over at the Daily Dish Andrew Sullivan has tied together two interesting threads of conversation -- "Waiting on Innovation" and "Why Not?" -- that deal with the issues of energy innovation and energy taxes.
Highlighted in "Why Not?" the Economist's Ryan Avent is on to something when he suggests a $5 per barrel petroleum tax since it could generate about $40 billion in revenue annually. But to suggest, as Avent does, that the tax should rise by $5 each year with the objective of forcing consumers to drive less or purchase more fuel-efficient cars is a strategy that risks falling into the same political trap that ultimately ensnared cap and trade.
India recently released the first guidelines for the rapidly-developing nation's ambitious National Solar Mission that outline how the program plans to successfully deploy 20,000 MW of grid-tied solar power within the next 12 years. That goal, which would see the equivalent of 13% of the India's entire current electricity generation come from solar panels by 2022, presents a formidable challenge, one that India seeks to address with proactive public policy.
"The objective of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission (JNNSM) under the brand 'Solar India' is to establish India as a global leader in solar energy, by creating the policy conditions for its diffusion across the country as quickly as possible. The Mission has set a target of 20,000MW and stipulates implementation and achievement of the target in 3 phases (first phase upto 2012-13, second phase from 2013 to 2017 and the third phase from 2017 to 2022) for various components, including grid connected solar power.
The successful implementation of the JNNSM requires the identification of resources to overcome the financial, investment, technology, institutional and other related barriers which confront solar power development in India. The penetration of solar power, therefore, requires substantial support. The policy framework of the Mission will facilitate the process of achieving grid parity by 2022.
In order to facilitate grid connected solar power generation in the first phase, a mechanism of "bundling" relatively expensive solar power with power from the unallocated quota of the Government of India (Ministry of Power) generated at NTPC coal based stations, which is relatively cheaper, has been proposed by the Mission. This "bundled power" would be sold to the Distribution Utilities at the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) determined prices."
Update (Jul 16, 2010): Expanding on a Washington Post op-ed, Vinod Khosla delineates his argument "about the deficiencies of an isolated cap-and-trade or carbon-pricing bill," and joins the climate technology consensus. Khosla writes, "If we want to make a significant difference, we need to get on the path to reducing carbon worldwide by 80 percent now by focusing on what I call "carbon reduction capacity building" -- in other words, we need to develop radical carbon-reduction technologies. A utility cap (or a carbon price) won't build capacity -- it will just increase our utility costs and decrease our manufacturing competitiveness without any increase in our technological competitiveness. On the other hand, although a policy that promotes capacity building will increase research investments in the short term, it will likely decrease overall electricity costs in the medium to long run (through the magic of competition, technology and regulatory certainty), while simultaneously reducing carbon. Disruptive technologies require investment; they don't come from the status quo."
Update (Jul 14, 2010): Other observers have reached similar conclusions about the faltering pollution paradigm. Walter Russell Mead and Clive Crook weigh in on "The Big Green Lie" but can't agree on what it is. Mead argues that it is "that the green movement is a source of coherent or responsible counsel about what to do" while Crook argues that "it's the diminished credibility of the claim that we have a problem in the first place." But both agree that cap and trade and the effort to establish a global carbon pollution regime are dead. Meanwhile, Newsweek's Stefan Theil observes that "the whole concept of radical, top-down global targets is coming under scrutiny" and suggests that the "new climate realism" will "look at other options beyond the current set of targets" and "include a broader mix of policies" including "a shift of subsidies into research and development" and "greater efforts to adapt society to a warmer climate."
Update (Jul 10, 2010): See Andrew Pendleton and Matthew Lockwood of the UK-based IPPR think tank response to Alex Evans' contention that real action on climate will only occur after a major global warming disaster. "There is simply no reason to believe that a climate shock big enough to bring about major changes in thinking will come along before we reach a tipping point (how would we know?)" they write. "Climate change is by its nature long-term and insidious, more like a frog in a warming pot than a sudden Anschluss."
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation to make clean energy cheap. The new framework begins from the understanding that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. But hard and important questions are being asked of the new investment-and-innovation paradigm. How is it different from just increasing subsidies for clean energy? How can we be sure it will reduce emissions? What role should carbon pricing play? Here Breakthrough Institute answers frequently asked questions of the climate technology paradigm and responds to challenges raised by Alex Evans on the left and Robert Michaels on the right, among others, who have taken aim at Breakthrough's and Bill Gates' proposals, respectively.
By Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger
The twenty-year effort to create a single global pollution framework to reduce carbon emissions is in a state of collapse. Europe's Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has not reduced emissions and is quickly fading as the central effort to decarbonize European economies. The UN process is becoming a forum for nations to compare and coordinate national policies and measures, not create or enforce a binding global treaty. And it is now clear that, if energy legislation passes the U.S. Senate, it will not create an economy-wide cap-and-trade system, nor will it increase the deployment of clean energy.
Meanwhile, a new climate policy consensus is emerging, one which prioritizes direct investment in technology innovation. This consensus begins with the recognition that the root cause of the failure of the pollution paradigm was the technology and price gap between fossil fuels and their alternatives. No nation -- not even the wealthiest in Europe -- is willing to price carbon enough to cover the difference. Until the technology gap is closed, little will be done to accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Update (6/30/10):Andrew Revkin highlighted the ITIF report today on his blog, Dot Earth, noting that "the report is a healthy challenge to anyone, including me, with ingrained views on how to propel an "energy quest." Breakthrough has consistently worked to debunk many of the myths highlighted in ITIF's report. For additional reading, click the links in the list below.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation has released a new report dismantling the top ten myths in the climate change debate, including the claim that "we have all the technologies we need" and that carbon prices are enough to drive a transition to a clean energy economy. The full report is well worth the read, but here's a summary from ITIF:
The debate on policy responses to climate change is fueled by myths ranging from assumptions that high carbon taxes will alter behavior significantly to overconfidence that green energy is poised to restore our economic prosperity overnight. What's more, many analysts are glossing over the complexity and possible unfairness of cap-and-trade and underestimating just how big a dent we have to make in our greenhouse gas production. What is missing is an understanding that innovation in the energy sector is essential to the transformation in how we produce and consume energy that we want and need. ITIF dismantles the top ten myths in this debate in a new report.
In part 2, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Siddhartha Shome expounds on the scientific and anti-scientific basis of environmentalism, explaining the role of morality in the effort to mitigate climate change.
GE Food for Thought On climate, Greens point to the science, but on GE crops, many find science unconvincing.
By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Siddhartha Shome
The Scientific Basis of Environmentalism
Modern American environmentalism was born in 1962 with the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Carson was a scientist and much of the book is a scientific argument about the harmful effects of chemical pesticides.
The book is replete with scientific data, quotes from scientists, and scientific reasoning. In fact, the entire concluding chapter is an impassioned plea to adopt new biology based breakthrough technologies to replace chemical pesticides.
A truly extraordinary variety of alternatives to the chemical control of insects is available. Some are already in use and have achieved brilliant success. Others are in the stage of laboratory testing. Still others are little more than ideas in the minds of imaginative scientists, waiting for the opportunity to put them to the test. All have this in common: they are biological solutions, based on understanding of the living organisms they seek to control, and of the whole fabric of life to which these organisms belong. Specialists representing various areas of the vast field of biology are contributing - entomologists, pathologists, geneticists, physiologists, biochemists, ecologists - all pouring their knowledge and their creative inspirations into the formation of a new science of biotic controls.
Carson characterized chemical pesticides of the time as "Neanderthal" technologies, belonging to the "stone age of science". Clearly, the implication was not that we should replace chemical pesticides with even more ancient Jurassic-era technologies, but rather that we supplant them with advanced biology-based breakthrough technologies that are more environmentally friendly.
Update: As Alexis Madrigal points out at WIRED, it's great to see the list of "heavy hitters" on the American Energy Innovation Council embrace a technology innovation agenda like the one Breakthrough has been working to advance. Let's hope this welcome show of support will be followed up by a serious commitment of financial resources.
An op-ed from Microsoft's Bill Gates and DuPont's Chad Holliday gives voice to the private sector's support for public investment in clean energy because energy, as Breakthrough has long argued, "requires a public commitment."
Gates and Holliday lay out three reasons why the private sector can't make this investment on its own:
What makes energy different from, say, electronics? Three things.
First, there are profound public interests in having more energy options. Our national security, economic health and environment are at issue. These are not primary motivations for private-sector investments, but they merit a public commitment.
Second, the nature of the energy business requires a public commitment. A new generation of television technology might cost $10 million to develop. Because those TVs can be built on existing assembly lines, that risk-reward calculus makes business sense. But a new electric power source can cost several billion dollars to develop and still carry the risk of failure. That investment does not compute for most companies.
Third, the turnover in our power system is very slow. Power plants last 50 years or more, and they are very cheap to run once built, meaning there is little market for new models.
It is understandable, then, why private-sector investments in clean energy technology are so small. Yet, while it may make sense for individual companies to make these choices, accepting the status quo would condemn our country to very bad options.
The Copenhagen climate talks may have been a symbolic success according to some, but the Accord won't mitigate climate change and the forthcoming Kerry/Graham/Lieberman climate bill will not lead to technology innovation. These failures, notes Michael Lind in a new white paper, show the collapse of the climate paradigm and the need to redefine our approach to climate change in terms of technology
The climate negotiations in Copenhagen resulted in a 193-nation agreement that included 154 policy commitments -- "the highest number of new government initiatives ever recorded . . . in a four-month period," according to Deutsche Bank -- but do they really matter?
In the months since the frenetic, and at times, apoplectic UNFCCC meeting, two conflicting views have emerged.
A report released earlier this month by Deutsche Bank (DB) presented analysis like those from Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and the Center for American Progress (CAP) showing the talks were "no failure."
Two new posts for Earth Day argue that we need to move from nature protection to tech innovation. Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are in Slate and Mother Jones arguing that the focus on technology transfer as part of a global climate agreement is a distraction: clean tech IP has already been rapidly transferred to China -- soon it will be transferred back here.
Nuclear power might just be energy's version of the phoenix -- rising from the metaphoric ashes to play a key role in the solution to climate change.
That's the gist of a Wall Street Journal feature that points out that as climate concerns rise a number of environmentalists are rethinking their position on the viability of nuclear power, including Gaia Theorist James Lovelock and Whole Earth Catalogue pioneer, Stewart Brand. Quoting Breakthrough co-founder and Chairman, Ted Nordhaus, WSJ explains why it's becoming increasingly hard for environmentalists to be anti-nuclear power:
"If you're an environmentalist and you're arguing that catastrophic climate change is a serious problem that we have to deal with, it's increasingly hard to say that we're worried about nuclear power because of what's going to happen to nuclear waste buried inside of a mountain for 10,000 years," says Ted Nordhaus, chairman of the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif., think tank...
"I'm much more optimistic about these next-generation designs," Mr. Nordhaus says. "If we're going to get serious about a new nuclear strategy, it's going to be with these smaller nuclear designs."
Joe Romm debates skeptics and Fox News hosts. Why won't he debate Roger Pielke, Jr., a non-skeptic, liberal, and prominent climate disaster loss researcher?
The last few months have been rough for Joe Romm. Forced to spin Copenhagen as a success, climategate as a skeptics' conspiracy, and cap and trade legislation as world-changing, Romm has started making increasingly wild accusations against working journalists and academics.
A telling moment came last week after Revkin wrote on the Times blog Dot Earth, that one test of the IPCC's credibility is whether it will choose Pielke to co-author the next IPCC report on climate change and natural disasters. Revkin noted that Pielke has one of the longest, if not the longest, list of peer-reviewed publications on the matter.
Declaring "Good Riddance to Copenhagen," Newsweek's Sharon Begley writes: "The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of." Is this another cogent call for a new Climate Realpolitik?
That sound you'll hear in 2010 is a can being kicked down the road. Again. In the wake of the failure of the international negotiations in Copenhagen to reach a legally binding treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, you'll hear a lot of talk about how the world has two good chances in the new year to achieve what it failed to do at Copenhagen. Don't believe it. ...
The best chance of reining in emissions of greenhouse gases and avoiding dangerous climate change is to stamp a big green R.I.P. over the sprawling United Nations process that the Copenhagen talks were part of.
That's because developed countries are no more likely to work out their differences with developing countries before those 2010 meetings than they did before Copenhagen. Must China, India, and Brazil agree to legally binding, verifiable cuts in their carbon-dioxide emissions? How much will rich countries ante up to help poorer ones segue to noncarbon renewable-energy sources and adapt to rising seas, droughts, dwindling water supplies, and crop failures? Will countries have to accept international monitoring of their emissions, which drives China crazy? Rather than repeating the Copenhagen charade in 2010, then, it's time for creative destruction.
Accept that the 192 nations roped together by the U.N. will not agree on a meaningful climate treaty next year either. Drop the pretense that every country matters equally. Instead, set up bilateral talks and a "club" of the countries that do matter: a mere dozen account for almost all greenhouse emissions.
Sounds like another cogent call for a new Climate Realpolitik actually capable of bending the course of global emissions downwards and putting the world on a clean development path.
Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown joined Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute today to unveil a new report calling for both the creation of a "National Institutes of Energy" and a dramatic increase in federal funding for energy research and development to jumpstart a clean energy revolution.
Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and leading DC-based think tank Third Way are the latest political figures to issue a call for significantly increased public investment to catalyze clean energy innovation. The Ohio Senator and the moderate progressive think tank joined the Breakthrough Institute today to unveil a new report calling for both the creation of a "National Institutes of Energy" and a dramatic increase in federal funding for energy research and development. The report, titled Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy, argues that these two measures are necessary to make clean energy cheap and get America running on clean energy.
"Clean energy is the future of our nation, but it can also create jobs now - in Ohio and across the Midwest," Senator Sherrod Brown said. "Done right, increased research and development of new clean energy technologies will drive innovation and reduce our dependence on foreign energy. Already in Ohio entrepreneurs and workers are leading the way."
"Our nation has a history of rising to meet pressing challenges by investing the resources necessary to overcome them," said Jesse Jenkins, Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute and one of the report's authors. "Now, America must dramatically increase our investment in clean energy research and development and employ new and effective models to put that money to work. Clean, cheap energy technologies are needed to revitalize our economy, secure the nation's energy independence, and avert the risks of climate change," Jenkins added.
Modeled after the National Institutes of Health, a New National Institutes of Energy (NIE) would be designed to most effectively channel R&D funding toward the development of new, low-cost commercial clean energy technologies. The NIE would function as a nationwide network of regionally based, commercially focused, and coordinated innovation institutes. Alongside other effective research institutions, the new NIE would critically strengthen the nation's energy innovation capacity.
The report also calls for a sustained increase of $15 billion in annual federal energy R&D funding, consistent with President Barack Obama's proposals. This would result in a total annual R&D budget of roughly $20 billion per year. The purpose of both the R&D increase and the establishment of a new NIE is to close what the authors call "the clean energy price gap" - the difference between the current low price of carbon-intensive energy production like coal and the comparatively higher price of today's non- or low- carbon emitting technologies.
"Getting America running on clean energy is the defining challenge - and opportunity - of our time," said Josh Freed, a co-author of the paper who runs Third Way's Clean Energy Initiative. "Establishing a National Institutes of Energy and fully funding R&D will drive the research that will lead to the next generation of clean technologies. These not only will fight global warming, they will allow the United States to be the energy leader in a carbon-constrained world."
"Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy," a policy memo co-authored by the Breakthrough Institute's Director of Climate and Energy Policy, Jesse Jenkins, and Third Way's Joshua Freed and Avi Zevin, is a joint effort by both think tanks to jumpstart American energy research and development.
In September 2009, Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Congressman Rush Holt (D-NJ) joined the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way to release the report and issue a call for significantly increased public investment to catalyze clean energy innovation.
You can watch the video of the release event below or click here.
The memo calls for a national commitment to energy innovation that includes direct support for the research and development of new and existing clean technologies and creates a structure for energy research, modeled on the National Institutes of Health, capable of coordinating large scale R&D efforts.
The memo acknowledges that the U.S. faces a "defining challenge" in its effort to transition to clean energy. Based on historical evidence of national commitments made to confront significant challenges, the authors suggest two key components of a national effort to address the clean energy challenge in the United States.
1) Increase federal investment in energy R&D by $15 billion per year: In line with President Obama's 2009 budget request, the scale of investment for comparable national priorities, and the recommendations of innovation experts, the authors propose a sustained $15 billion per year increase in federal clean energy R&D to approximately $20 billion per year. This level of funding is necessary to both create new breakthrough technologies and drive improvements to existing technology, enabling the production of clean energy at significantly higher efficiencies and lower costs.
2) Create a National Institutes of Energy: Modeled on the National Institutes of Health, a new National Institutes of Energy (NIE) would effectively apply R&D funding to the development of new, low-cost commercial clean energy technologies. The NIE would function as a nationwide network of regionally based, commercially focused, and coordinated innovation institutes. Alongside other effective federal energy R&D agencies, an NIE would critically strengthen the U.S. clean energy innovation system.
Bjorn Lomborg wants to make clean energy cheap. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand that making clean energy cheap is about far more than R&D.
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.
"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.
The more things change, the more things stay the same: Senator Arlen Specter announced today he would be switching party allegiance and running for re-election as a Democrat in 2010. Unfortunately, the new "D" next to his name is unlikely to change the policy positions of this free-thinking Senator from Pennsylvania - especially when it comes to climate legislation.
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 astuteobservers, 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.
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."
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 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."
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."
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.
Today's ClimateWire has a story about the debate over the costs of cap and trade:
From the halls of Congress to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, experts and politicians are hoisting conflicting numbers describing the cost of a cap on greenhouse gases, with amounts from $3,100 to $324 to zero being touted as the annual hit on households. As Congress returns this week, it will find a cloud of numerical discrepancies hovering over climate change legislation.
This is a great example of the consequences of how issues are framed in political debate. If the framing is "costs" of cap and trade legislation, the Republicans will win the political debate, regardless of whose numbers turn out to be right. Of course, the reality is that cap and trade can be designed in any way you'd like with high or low (or zero) costs. But remember that the theoretical basis of cap and trade is that energy prices will increase, so low or zero cost increases will have low or zero effect on emisisons.
The political point is that if the debate hinges on costs, Republicans have the upper hand because if Democrats respond with claims of low or zero costs, and if this turns out to be untrue, then such claims will become a political liability. But if the claims of low costs turn out to be true, they will gut the policy from the standpoint of emissions reductions, and thus become a political liability.
Bottom line: Democrats cannot win the cap and trade debate if the issue is framed as costs to American households.
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.
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.
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):
written by David Douglas and cross-posted from Near Walden
Roger Pielke Jr. has an outstanding post titled US Mitigation Math where he shows the general sources and sinks of US energy and resulting GHG emissions. He also throws out some reduction scenarios and concludes that they cannot come close to meeting an emissions reductions goal of 14% below 2005 levels by 2020.
So he closes with a challenge: "... present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020."
Since I'm living in a hypothetical world, I'm going to take a couple of liberties. First, I'm going to assume that I've either got access to all of the money on the first day of 2012, or I can get the average amount of $80B/year for a long time to come. Second, I'm going to ignore the physical and temporal realities of implementing my solutions - in my world I've got the full support of the nation and they'll do everything they can to implement these ideas. Finally, I'm going to conveniently ignore the emissions required to implement these solutions.
Solution 1: Buy Lots of Prius's
In this scenario I'm going to buy 25.6M Prius cars at an estimated 45MPG and replace 25.6M gas guzzlers at an average of 15MPG. At 12K miles/year each, we'll save 533 gallons of gas per car per year, and at about 20 pounds of CO2 per gallon, that's about 4.8 metric tons of CO2 per car per year. Grand total savings: 122MMt/year, or a 2% savings from 5991 MMt.
"I challenge readers to present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020."
The mathematics of United States carbon dioxide emissions are not actually that complicated. The figure below from the U.S. Energy Information Agency shows that the 5,991 million metric tonnes (MMt) of carbon dioxide emitted by the U.S. came from 3 sources: coal, natural gas, and petroleum (see three inputs in the upper left of the graph).
Each of these fossil fuels, plus renewables and nuclear power make up the total energy consumption in the United States. Energy consumption is measured using a unit call a "quad" which means a quadrillion BTUs (British Thermal Units). In 2007 the United States used 101.4 quads of energy (data). This amount of energy can be broken down by source as follows.
The 15.2 quads of energy from nuclear and renewable sources resulted in negligible carbon dioxide emissions. The amount of carbon dioxide emitted due to each quad of fossil fuel energy depends upon the source, as their carbon intensities differ. For the analysis that follows I use the following values, distilled from the EIA information provided here in .xls.
Coal = 94 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Natural Gas = 53 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Petroleum = 65 MMt Carbon Dioxide per Quad
Thus, to calculate total U.S. carbon dioxide emissions simply requires multiplying quads of energy by carbon dioxide per quad and summing across the three fuels. This simple math results in the following:
This total compares quite well with the total of 5,991 MMt carbon dioxide reported for 2007 by EIA (see figure above). We can use this information to ask some straightforward questions about how an emissions reduction target of 14% below 2005 levels (5,095 MMt carbon dioxide) might be reached by 2020.
We can do a bit of hypothetical "stress testing" of these numbers, by asking, in theory, what sort of actions might lead to reaching the emissions reductions target. Before we do this, we do need to make a guess as to 2020 US energy consumption. The EIA projects that energy consumption will grow at a rate of 0.5% per year (calculated from information here). Because GDP growth is expected to be higher than this rate, it already builds in an assumption of gains in energy efficiency. But let's use the EIA estimate, which suggests that US energy consumption in 2020 will be 108.6 quads, of which 21 quads will come from renewables plus nuclear energy, representing a growth of about 40% on top of 2007 values. This leaves 87.2 quads to be produced by fossil fuels.
Here are a few examples of the effects of different hypothetical strategies:
1) What would happen if all coal consumption were to be replaced with natural gas?
Answer: In 2020 total emissions would be 5,110 MMt carbon dioxide, very close to the 2020 target.
2) By how much would renewables plus nuclear have to displace coal to reach the target?
Answer: The target could be reached if coal consumption were reduced by about 42%, and the displaced 9.2 quads of energy were replaced by renewables plus nuclear, implying more than doubling of renewable plus nuclear energy supply, to comprise 30% of all energy consumption.
If renewables alone (i.e., non-nuclear) are to carry the weight of displacing coal, then they would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 4.7 over 2007 values. If growth in renewable energy supply is restricted to solar and wind only, then these sources would have to increase their role in consumption by a factor of 80 (that is, e-i-g-h-t-y). The reason for this big difference is that biomass and geothermal provided about 6.4 quads of energy in 2007, whereas wind and solar only 0.4 quads. The Obama Administration's goal of doubling wind, solar, and biofuels production within 3 years may indeed be a worthwhile policy, but it is not consistent with a goal of displacing sufficient coal to reach the 14% 2020 target using wind and solar (and while biofuels have their own complexities as a policy issue, they are not really a substitute for coal in any case).
3) By how much would energy consumption have to be reduced to meet the target assuming no changes in the energy consumption mix?
Answer: Energy consumption would have to be about 85.5 quads in 2020, about equal to 1992 values when the US economy was 35% smaller than in 2007.
Some Comments on the Stress Tests
First, number (1) above is really not desirable if the goal of mitigation policy is ultimately a reduction in emission of 80% or more. The reason for this is that while natural gas is less carbon intensive than goal, it is still carbon intensive. Locking in a large natural gas infrastructure is not compatible with large emissions reductions. Consider that in the hypothetical case that all US fossil fuel needs were to be met by natural gas, then 2007 carbon dioxide emission would have been 5,375 MMt, less than observed in 2007, but not consistent with any low stabilization target.
Second, number (2) is theoretically promising but practically daunting. The following is worth repeating -- for wind and solar to displace enough coal to reach the 14% target by 2020 would require that it increase by a factor of 80 in absolute terms from 2007 production. President Obama's policy of a tripling in wind and solar energy supply in the next three years would leave a need for another increase by a factor of about 25 over the next 8 years if wind and solar are to displace sufficent coal to meet the target.
Third, with respect to number (3), while there is a lot of potential to exploit in increasing energy efficiency, to reach the 14% would require a reduction of US energy use by about 2 quads per year for the next decade. Assuming that policy makers and citizens want economic growth to resume, this is a Herculean task. If you factor in that the EIA estimates to 2020 already include a good bit of efficiency gain in the BAU scenario, the task could be even larger if these assumed gains do not occur or if economic growth happens at a faster rate than assumed.
In reality, of course, none of these "stress tests" would be applied alone; there would be a combination of all three approaches discussed above. However, I challenge readers to present a scenario combining decarbonization of the energy supply and efficiency gain that has a realistic chance of succeeding in meeting a 14% emissions reduction (below 2005) by 2020. I am not saying that it can't be done, but I am saying that I don't see how it can be done. The comments are open, have at it.
Setting an emissions target and timetable, allocating emissions permits, and then saying that the magic of the market will efficiently take care of the task is exactly the answer I'd expect if one doesn't have an answer. Markets can't make the impossible possible, and when they are used in such a manner, often have undesirable results.
This 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 New York Timesreports 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.
We must work hard to turn centrism from a refuge for misers and penny pinchers into a platform for those who believe in good returns on wise investments.
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.
Pelosi's remarks seem to point to a new frame for energy politics which is focused on driving technology innovation and deploying low-carbon technologies.
Yesterday, in an article in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's hometown paper, the San lFrancisco Chronicle, arguably the second-most-powerful person in the country made a significant break from carbon pricing orthodoxy in remarks she made on future cap-and-trade legislation.
"I believe we have to [pass a cap-and-trade bill] because we see that as a source of revenue," she said, noting that proposed cap-and-trade bills would raise billions of dollars by forcing major emitters to buy credits to release greenhouse gases. "Cap-and-trade is there for a reason. You cap and you trade so you can pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables."
This description of the reasons for enacting a cap-and-trade scheme is a remarkable--and laudable--shift in climate legislation discourse. Speaker Pelosi's remarks show an increased understanding of the importance of technology investment in reducing carbon emissions and securing energy independence.
If lawmakers who care about climate change want to achieve anything meaningful politically this year, they must ask themselves one fundamental question: will it pass the Recovery Test?
According to Talking Points Memo, GOP lawmakers are already laying the groundwork for efforts to delay climate legislation that could be introduced into Congress in 2009. As the GOP's strategy becomes clearer, so to do certain fundamental political truths likely to rule Washington politics for the coming year and beyond.
According to TPM, Republicans are laying seeds of dissent and dissatisfaction regarding Obama's new senior aide for energy and the environment, former Clinton-era EPA head Carol Browner:
"By holding up Jackson and Sutley [Obama's nominees for EPA chief and head of the Council on Environmental Quality], Senate Republicans are doing more than just signaling their discontent that they won't get to question and vote on Browner -- although Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) suggests to the Times that Browner be called in for a "quasi-confirmation" hearing. They're previewing their strategy to knock down the climate regulation bill that Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA), environment committee chairman, will release later this year.
Here's how it might look: After Boxer's climate bill emerges, Republicans would immediately protest the involvement of Browner, a White House adviser who was never fully vetted by the Senate."
As if you needed another sign of the political challenges facing a climate strategy centered around dramatically increasing the price of fossil fuels, here you have Dr. Chu, who understands the urgency of the climate challenge better than just about anyone, apparently recognizing that increasing energy prices during a recession just isn't going to happen.
Confirmations were held today for Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu, Nobel laureate and director of Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL). Chu, a clean energy expert, is well known for turning the Berkeley Lab into a center of clean energy and efficiency innovation, forging the Berkeley Lab-British Petroleum partnership, sitting on the Copenhagen Climate Council, and winning a Nobel Prize in physics in 1997.
Suffice it to say that Chu has a deep and nuanced grasp of the many variables and drivers that contribute to global warming and he understands the scale of the challenge as well as anyone. As an administrator at LBNL, Dr. Chu worked to secure increased funding for research in clean energy and efficiency. And as an academic, Chu was able to speak candidly--and in fact, quite bluntly--about energy and climate issues.
Not any more! Dr. Chu has arrived inside the Beltway now, and already his tone is changing...
With the election of Barack Obama, we are entering a new period of progressive governance in America, but not necessarily a new era of progressivism. Progressivism in this country is still defined by its opposition to conservatism. Opposition is easy. All a movement in opposition must do is deflate the reigning movement's intellectual principles and debunk that movement's narrative. All you have to do is criticize.
But now, as Barack Obama assumes the presidency, the time has come for progressives to create. We must build our own intellectual principles and or own defining narrative. This is the only way for a new progressivism to be born out of this political moment. We must build an identity that is more than "non-conservative."
Barack Obama campaigned with one of the most progressive health care plans America has seen in decades. But before he moves forward, he must recognize the technological and political barriers to making America a healthier nation.
As Barack Obama takes his place in the oval office, he will be working with the political mandate of an electoral landslide to work towards implementing the pragmatic progressive agenda that he set forth in his campaign. His bold push to expand health care coverage will be among the most scrutinized projects he embarks upon. Throughout the campaign and in the debates he consistently touted his plan to create a public health insurance plan available to every American, creating a large insurance pool that would help keep prices low, in turn making it more appealing to uninsured Americans. He also claimed that the plan would pay for itself by reducing the need for inefficient emergency care.
But are his policy goals realistic? And perhaps more importantly, would America be healthier if more Americans had health insurance (or better access to health care)?
This is the second post in a continuing series delving into Barack Obama's opportunity to capture this political moment and provide a direction for energy policy and economic growth in the 21st century.Part 1 is here.
As Barack Obama assumes the mantle of President-elect of the United
States of America, we are witnessing an historic realignment of the
American political landscape. With the election of our nation's first
African-American president, record voter turnout, and a dramatically
redrawn electoral map, it seems that anything is possible now.
However, while Obama clearly has a new mandate to lead our nation,
electoral mandates are fickle and even this one could fade in time.
President-elect Obama has just 76 days to prepare for his inauguration.
Then the real work of governing will begin, and what Obama decides to
do in his first 100 days will either cement or erase the wave of
popular support the President-elect rides today.
His job won't be easy. On January 20th, President-elect Obama will
inherit the White House along with a plethora of pressing challenges
all competing for his attention. There will be no time for baby steps,
and President Obama must show bold and effective leadership right out
of the gate. Furthermore, while the economic crisis will remain his top
concern in the short-run, Obama cannot afford to ignore longer-term
challenges and must develop synergistic solutions that can tackle
multiple problems at once.
Thankfully, Barack Obama has stated that building a new energy
economy will be his top priority upon assuming office. If he fully
integrates this effort with his shorter-term economic stimulus plans,
Obama could effectively tackle several priorities - economy recovery,
energy security, and global warming - simultaneously. And getting this
job done right could cement Obama's electoral mandate and pave the way
for a truly transcendent presidency.
The financial crisis has caused many economists to reconsider their ideas regarding financial markets and the economy. Megan McArdle at the Atlantic puts it best:
"Economists all over the ideological spectrum are rethinking the lessons we thought we had learned from the Great Depression and the Japanese experience. As it unfolds, we will no doubt be seriously rethinking our model of the relationship between the financial markets and the real economy."
The Environmental Protection Agency 
