By Dr. Harry Saunders, Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow

Recent posts by the CO2 Scorecard group claim to have discredited the analysis on rebound effects in industrial sectors of the US economy presented in one of my recent papers--let me here call it "Saunders." The authors offer an analysis of their own said to "devastate" the results I have reported there. Herewith is my response.

The Stakes

It is worth reminding readers of the stakes here. The energy consumption forecasts relied on by the IPCC, the IEA and McKinsey ignore rebound effects, or--to be maximally generous--treat them very inadequately. To the extent ignoring rebound effects results in underestimates of future energy use, it means we have less time than is generally believed to devise climate change solutions. This is surely problematic, but no serious individual would dispute the contention that uncomfortable reality must always trump wishful thinking. I believe rebound effects are significant and quite large, and I believe the peer-reviewed literature, including my own extensive contributions to that literature, supports this view. Unfortunately.

And to be absolutely clear: energy efficiency is a good thing (for one thing increasing economic welfare) and must be aggressively pursued; this has always been my position. It's just that it may not deliver the large reductions in energy use many (including myself) would hope for.

Editors note: for more background and reading on rebound effects see...

• An introductory FAQ on rebound effects, (Breakthrough Institute).
  
• "Does energy efficiency lead to increased energy consumption?," by Jesse Jenkins and Harry Saunders, Making It (UN Industrial Development Organization).
  
• "Energy Emergence: Rebound and Backfire as Emergent Phenomena," a comprehensive literature review on rebound effects (Breakthrough Institute)

Problems with the CO2 Scorecard Analysis

In light of the above, the CO2 Scorecard posts on this subject (1 and 2) are disappointing and disheartening. But they require a response, even if only to defend the honor of my fellow scholars in this field. A complete dissection of the CO2 Scorecard analysis would make this post too long. Rebound analysis, done properly, is a highly technical undertaking. The approach here is to show a handful of the serious problems with the authors' analysis by way of listing five points, with links to an appendix containing the technical foundation for these points. Those interested in further evaluating this foundation can link to the technical discussion; those interested only in the claims made here can skip the full technicalities. Either way, as you will see, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the authors of the CO2 Scorecard analysis are guessing at what they hope are problems with the Saunders analysis but then have not bothered to check if their guesses are actually right...

Continue reading "CO2 Scorecard Misrepresents and Misunderstands Efficiency Rebound Research" »

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.

Click here to read a statement on the report from Breakthrough Founders Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus

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.

Continue reading "Climate Pragmatism: Innovation, Resilience and No Regrets" »

Cross-posted from Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog

Do Nations Compete for Jobs and Industry?
by Roger Pielke Jr.

The image above comes from The Economist and shows the share of profits in the mobile phone industry, with the growing bright blue wedge representing Apple taking a big bite out of Nokia's profits. The Economist writes:

UNTIL 2007 Europe appeared to have beaten Silicon Valley in mobile technology for good. Nokia, based in Finland, was the world's largest handset-maker--and raked in much of the profits. But everything changed when Apple introduced the iPhone in 2007, the first smartphone that deserved the name.

Obviously there are relative winners and losers in the marketplace, but apparently many economists don't think that countries are in competition for jobs or industry. Writing in the NY Times yesterday, Gerg Makiw dismisses the notion of countries in competition with one another, as suggested by President Obama in the State of the Union:

Achieving economic prosperity is not like winning a game, and guiding an economy is not like managing a sports team.

To see why, let's start with a basic economic transaction. You have a driveway covered in snow and would be willing to pay $40 to have it shoveled. The boy next door can do it in two hours, or he can spend that time playing on his Xbox, an activity he values at $20. The solution is obvious: You offer him $30 to shovel your drive, and he happily agrees.

The key here is that everyone gains from trade. By buying something for $30 that you value at $40, you get $10 of what economists call "consumer surplus." Similarly, your young neighbor gets $10 of "producer surplus," because he earns $30 of income by incurring only $20 of cost. Unlike a sports contest, which by necessity has a winner and a loser, a voluntary economic transaction between consenting consumers and producers typically benefits both parties.

This example is not as special as it might seem. The gains from trade would be much the same if your neighbor were manufacturing a good -- knitting you a scarf, for example -- rather than performing a service. And it would be much the same if, instead of living next door, he was several thousand miles away, say, in Shanghai.

Listening to the president, you might think that competition from China and other rapidly growing nations was one of the larger threats facing the United States. But the essence of economic exchange belies that description. Other nations are best viewed not as our competitors but as our trading partners. Partners are to be welcomed, not feared. As a general matter, their prosperity does not come at our expense.

Rob Atkinson of ITIF has a great post up which critiques such conventional wisdom among economists that nation's are not in competition for jobs and industry. Here is a lengthy excerpt from Rob's post:

Continue reading "Do Nations Compete for Jobs and Industry?" »

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

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.

This was even recognized by George W. Bush during his presidency:

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.

Continue reading "iPods and Federal Innovation Policy" »

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:

Continue reading "NPR: Pielke Jr. Explains Energy Policy Future After Cap and Trade" »

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

It is not clear how much support there is for such a proposal, but the EU Commission is to bring forward a proposal to ban most forms of carbon offsets:

European Union member states may oppose new rules on how far their factories and power plants can offset their carbon emissions, to be proposed by the European Commission, environment ministries told Reuters.

The EU executive is expected to propose in the next two weeks curbs or an outright ban from 2013 on the most common types of offsets.

Europe's emissions trading scheme caps planet-warming gases emitted by industry, but allows companies to offset emissions by paying for carbon cuts in developing countries, as a cheaper alternative to cutting their own.

Shutting the main supply of offsets could push up carbon prices, if agreed by a majority of member states at a meeting of Commission officials and environment ministers later this month.

Any such ban would represent a step towards a more transparent form of carbon pricing, along the lines of a straight up tax. Offsets are of course one reason why there is no such thing as a "cap" in cap and trade.

In an essay at YaleE360, Roger Pielke Jr., a Breakthrough Senior Fellow and author of the recently released book, "The Climate Fix," explains the "iron law of climate policy" and what it suggests about the way forward on national and international climate and energy policy.

Here's an excerpt from Pielke's essay:

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.

Continue reading "YaleE360: Pielke's "Iron Law" of Climate Policy " »

Update (3/31/11): A new review from Mark Sagoff in Issues in Science and Technology (not yet available online):

Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. has released his second book, "The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming," a timely, must-read discussion about why technology innovation will be the key to mitigating climate change.

Earlier this month, we posted early reviews of the book, but since then "The Climate Fix" has received more high acclaim. In addition to the reviews below, you'll find an excerpt from Pielke Jr.'s interview with the Houston Chronicle as well as details about upcoming book events and ways to get your hands on a copy.

Continue reading "The 411 on "The Climate Fix" by Roger Pielke Jr." »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The article has two very powerful quotes:

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

And:

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

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

If you want to focus on a single metric that tells you how fast an economy is decarbonizing (that is, reducing its ratio of carbon dioxide emissions to GDP) then you should focus on changes in the proportion of energy consumption from carbon neutral sources. For any nation to hit emissions reductions targets, and the world to hit low stabilization targets the simple mathematics indicate that annual decarbonization rates will have to exceed 5% in most national economies.

By the metric the UK is presently moving in the wrong direction, according to a story in the Guardian yesterday:

The UK has suffered a second fall in renewable energy production this year, raising concern about the more than £1bn support the industry receives each year from taxpayers.

The drop in electricity generated from wind, hydro and other clean sources in the first half of 2010 could also be a setback to the coalition government's promise that the UK could help lead a "third industrial revolution" and create a low-carbon economy.

The DECC today said lower than expected wind speeds and rainfall led to a 12% fall in renewable electricity generated between April and June, compared to the same period in 2009. This setback follows a smaller but still notable decline between January and March, again compared to last year.

With a sharp drop in output from nuclear power stations as well, greenhouse gas emissions from each unit of electricity generated will inevitably have risen, at a time when the UK has pledged to cut such pollution, and is pressing other countries to do the same.

The renewable energy figures are likely to prompt criticism of the government's energy policies from all sides. Supporters want ministers to increase funding for green industry so more wind farms are built, reducing the risk of seasonal set backs; critics will say the government should instead increase support for energy efficiency, nuclear power or cleaner forms of burning fossil fuels.

The changes in the UK energy mix suggest that the economy has become more carbon intensive as gas has increased at the expense of nuclear power:

The latest energy statistics for the second quarter of 2010 show total energy production in the UK was 9.2% lower than the same period last year, while final energy consumption was 1.8% higher. Among the different fuels, output from oil and coal fell, while only gas increased its output, by 7.1%. It was a similar picture for electricity alone: coal power stayed steady at about 23% of electricity supplied, nuclear output fell by 23% to 15.8%, and gas production rose by more than 10% to over half of all electricity.

It is not just the UK that is recarbonizing, but the US as well. What is remarkable is that these trends have been foreseeable for a while. Even so, the hold of magical solutions remains strong.

Breakthrough Senior Fellow Gregory Nemet has been awarded a $183,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue launch new policy research initiative, "Choosing a Portfolio of Technology Policies in an Uncertain World". The project, which will evaluate the effect of different technology policies on the economy and climate change, comes as a new consensus is emerging that the development of new clean energy technologies is crucial to mitigating climate change.

Nemet, along with a colleague from the University of Massachusetts, will study combinations of three policy options: government-funded R&D, demand-side subsidies, and carbon pricing.

'Addressing climate change without damaging the economy will require substantial investments in new knowledge to devise improvements to energy technologies,' Nemet says. 'Because knowledge produced in the laboratory and in commercial settings is notoriously difficult for private firms to control and exclusively profit from, many stakeholders argue government support is required. The models we develop can help improve the allocation of public funds and thus could have an important fiscal impact.'

Continue reading "Senior Fellow Wins Grant for Climate Focused Technology Policy" »

Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr.'s new book, The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming, will be hitting bookstores later this month but it's already available through a variety of vendors and is garnering top reviews.

From the Library Journal:

Pielke is unusual, as he neatly separates the science of climate change from the rhetoric, bringing the issue back to the realm of rational discussion ... Overall, an excellent primer for getting past the politically charged debate clouding the issues.

Continue reading "The Climate Fix: Pielke Jr.'s New Book Earns Praise" »

By Roger Pielke Jr., Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow. Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr's Blog.

In a perspective just out in Science commenting on a new paper (Davis et al.) that shows another way to explain the decarbonization challenge, Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow Marty Hoffert of NYU explains how the magnitude of the challenge of stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at a low level has been underestimated:

Pacala and Socolow (8) analyzed a scenario that envisioned stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 at 500 ppm within 50 years. They found that reaching that goal required the deployment of seven existing or nearly existing groups of technologies, such as more fuel-efficient vehicles, to remove seven "wedges" of predicted future emissions (the wedge image coming from the shape created by graphing each increment of avoided future emissions). Those seven wedges, each of which represents 25 gigatons of avoided carbon emissions by 2054, are cited by some as sufficient to "solve" climate change for 50 years (9).

Unfortunately, the original wedges approach greatly underestimates needed reductions. In part, that is because Pacala and Socolow built their scenario on a business as usual (BAU) emissions baseline based on assumptions that do not appear to be coming true. For instance, the scenario assumes that a shift in the mix of fossil fuels will reduce the amount of carbon released per unit of energy. This carbon-to-energy ratio did decline during prior shifts from coal to oil, and then from oil to natural gas. Now, however, the ratio is increasing as natural gas and oil approach peak production, coal production rises, and new coal-fired power plants are built in China, India, and the United States (10).

The enormous challenge of making the transition to carbon-neutral power sources becomes even clearer when emissions-reduction scenarios are based on arguably more realistic baselines, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's "frozen technology" scenario ( 11, 12). Capturing all alternate energy technologies, including those assumed within this BAU scenario, means that a total of ~18 of Pacala and Socolow's wedges would be needed to curb emissions (13) (see the figure). And to keep future warming below 2°C, even under the Davis et al. age-out scenario, an additional 7 wedges of emissions reductions would be needed-- for a total of 25 wedges (see the figure).

Continue reading "Science: Scale of the Climate Challenge Demands Committment to Technology Innovation" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s blog

The AP describes the continuing presence of coal power in the United States:

Utilities across the country are building dozens of old-style coal plants that will cement the industry's standing as the largest industrial source of climate-changing gases for years to come.

An Associated Press examination of U.S. Department of Energy records and information provided by utilities and trade groups shows that more than 30 traditional coal plants have been built since 2008 or are under construction.

The construction wave stretches from Arizona to Illinois and South Carolina to Washington, and comes despite growing public wariness over the high environmental and social costs of fossil fuels, demonstrated by tragic mine disasters in West Virginia, the Gulf oil spill and wars in the Middle East.

But like everything related to the energy and climate, it is useful to have a sense of proportion. So have a look at the figure above, which comes from a US DOE presentation earlier this year (PDF). The figure shows the coal power build rate - actual and planned -- for the US and China.

The red parts of the bars for 2008 and 2009 (and perhaps part of the yellow for 2010) are what the AP article is describing. The broader context are the blues and greens.

The first two chapters of Breakthrough Senior Fellow, Roger Pielke Jr.'s, new book, "The Climate Fix: What Scientists and Politicians Won't Tell You About Global Warming" is now available for free online. Details are below.

Amazon.com via its "Click to LOOK INSIDE" has the first two chapters of The Climate Fix (50 pages plus!) available for a free preview here. Have a look and let me know what you think!

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr's Blog.

Perhaps there are some signs that a technology-centered approach to decarbonization is gaining momentum. First, from the international negotiations:

U.S. companies are lobbying at UN climate talks in Bonn for incentives to spur technologies that could slow the pace of carbon emissions, abandoning a push to encourage a cap on gas emissions, a business lobby group said.

The U.S. Council for International Business, whose members include General Electric Co. and Coca-Cola Co., said rules to cap CO2 emissions are unlikely soon, Norine Kennedy, vice president of energy and environmental affairs, said in an interview today. Instead, they want incentives encouraging technologies they're promoting.

"The center of the action is technology," she said at the United Nations climate talks. "There's broad agreement that we won't get to the mitigation targets without technology."

Continue reading "A Turn to Technology" »

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr's Blog

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

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

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

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

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

In a recent Guardian op-ed, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Ulrich Beck argues that the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe should be inspiring far more than just a pointless blame game. Instead, he points out, "we need the celebrated innovative power of capital and the utopian enthusiasm of engineers," to revolutionize the way we use energy and make use of the most abundant sources of energy, such as solar power.

Beck writes:

Postwar prosperity in the west laid the foundation for environmental awareness. Now environmental awareness must provide the basis for prosperity in developing countries. These countries will adopt sustainable policies to the extent that the affluent countries invest in their development and adopt a new vision of prosperity and growth. China, India, Brazil and African countries will not agree to any approach that tries to limit their efforts to achieve economic parity - and rightly so.

But does the future lie with a global environmental policy based on carbon trading, which amounts to the global sale of indulgences for CO2 sins? Or will we have the courage to invent and realise a new age of solar energy in which prosperity is not an environmental sin, and when everything from cows to electric toothbrushes is blamed for contributing to CO2 emissions? "It is time to introduce clean forms of energy," Obama has said. If he can ring in an era that is truly Beyond Petroleum, Big Oil's Bastille will be doomed.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

The Indian government's decision to partially rescind subsidies for petroleum, diesel and kerosene, and the associated public reaction provides us with a natural policy experiment to see how the Indian public might respond to a high price on carbon (see the news report above for how that experiment turns out).

Continue reading "How Might Indians React to a $30/tonne Carbon Tax" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

It is old news for regular readers of this blog, but today's NYT has a thoughtful article on how China's emissions are surging and efforts to increase efficiency gains are foundering.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Continue reading "China's Not-So-Spontaneous Decarbonization" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Today, the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency released new data on estimated 2009 carbon dioxide emissions. Here is how the NEAA characterizes the findings in a press release:

Despite the continued economic crisis, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have remained constant in 2009, as strong increases in CO2 emissions from fast-growing developing countries, such as China and India, have completely nullified CO2 emission reductions in the industrialised world.

As readers here know (and as readers of The Climate Fix will learn), a focus on emissions is only part of what matters, as economic growth is an important driver of emissions growth. The variable that matters most for efforts to achieve targets for the stabilization of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of economic activity. A reduction in this ratio means that the economy has become more energy efficient and/or is transitioning toward carbon neutral energy generation. In other words, decarbonization is a measure of technological progress in energy use and supply.

So with the 2009 data in hand, how are we doing? Not good.

The graph at the top of this post shows the decarbonization of the global economy 1990 to 2009, with 1990 set to 1.0, using emission data from the NEAA and economic data from Angus Maddison (Note: 2009 GDP is estimated based on growth rate found in the IMF data). I also did the same analysis with economic data from the IMF, reaching the same conclusions. I prefer the Maddison data because it allows cross-country comparisons, and it is also the basis of the analyses in The Climate Fix. The data shows a pronounced slowdown in the rate of decarbonization of the global economy, exactly the opposite effect that climate policies are supposed to be having. This can be seen even more dramatically in the following chart, which shows the annual rate of decarbonization, with a trend line super-imposed in green.

This graph shows that the pace of decarbonization has slowed dramatically in recent decades, with important consequences for climate policies. Tom Wigley, Chris Green and I discussed this emerging trend in Nature in 2008 (PDF). To get a sense of what is needed to achieve low stabilization targets (the exact number does not matter, but say 450 ppm), the world would need to achieve annual rates of decarbonization of more than 5-6% for many decades.

The fact that emissions did not increase from 2008 to 2009 is not good news, nor is it a reflection of the positive effects of climate policies. The one-year stabilization occurred because of the dismal state of the economy in North America and Europe, a condition that policy makers are quickly trying to remedy. When economic growth resumes, so too will growth in emissions in these regions. Meanwhile, the world as a whole took a step backwards in terms of decarbonizing the global economy. The world is falling short in terms of energy technology innovation, with consequences that will reach much further than climate policies alone.

Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. and co-editor Roberta Klein of the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado released a new book documenting the role of the presidential science adviser as well as the reflections of previous advisors, including those who served under Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

The two editors co-authored an essay critically analyzing what has become a controversial presidential position. The book also contains an introduction authored by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz.

You can read a brief overview of the book as well as preview the table of contents here.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr's Blog

The graph above shows the proportion of global fossil fuel consumption that comes from coal, gas and oil. The data comes from the 2010 Statistical Review of World Energy from BP. Contrary to some claims, we are not nearly at the twilight of the coal industry. In fact, coal accounts for a greater share of global fossil fuel consumption than it has since 1969!

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr's Blog.

The Financial Times has a realistic and sobering article [subs. req'd] on the state on international climate negotiations:

Christiana Figueres startled delegates when she addressed the United Nations climate conference in Bonn last week: "I do not believe we will ever have a final agreement on climate change, certainly not in my lifetime," the Costa Rican diplomat told them. "If we ever have a final, conclusive, all-answering agreement, then we will have solved this problem. I don't think that's on the cards." Addressing the issue successfully would "require the sustained effort of those who will be here for the next 20, 30, 40 years".

Her words count, and not only because of her 15-year involvement in tackling global warming. Next month, Ms Figueres takes over from the Netherlands' Yvo de Boer as executive secretary of the UN's climate change secretariat, based in the former west German capital.

As Bonn's low, heavy skies pelted delegates with rain, much of the rest of the talk during the long sessions was of technical matters such as the measurement of greenhouse gases. But in quiet conversations in the corridors, in cafes over hurried coffees or while scurrying between thunderstorms, the deeper question some officials were asking was whether there was indeed any point in continuing with this type of negotiation, which had failed for 20 years. Could the UN climate talks be reformed - or were they just too broken to fix?

Continue reading "Realpolitik Goes Mainstream" »

To read Part 1 click here.

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.

According to Carson,

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.

Continue reading "Green VS. Green, Part 2" »

To read Part 2 click here.

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow Siddhartha Shome

Denmark Dispute Greens tout Denmark as a renewable mecca, but Sweden -- powered largely by hydro and nuclear -- has a far less carbon intense energy mix.

Here's a pop quiz. A, B, C, and D are four rich industrialized countries in Western Europe with similar living standards. Country A's carbon dioxide emissions stand at 9.24 tonnes per capita per year. The corresponding figures for countries B, C, and D are 5.81, 5.62, and 5.05 tonnes a year, respectively.

Can you guess which of these four countries has become the darling of the environmental movement, hailed as a model for a low carbon economy?

It is country A, Denmark -- even though its per capita CO2 emissions are almost twice as much as countries B (France), C (Switzerland), and D (Sweden).

Continue reading "Green VS. Green, Part 1" »

Originally posted at Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

[UPDATE: FT Energy Source is similarly over the top in their interpretation of the EIA report, writing: "The death of US coal, it seems, is marching on." With more than 45% share of US electricity generation, the death of US coal is hardly "marching on."]

Joe Romm is all excited that US energy-related emissions dropped by about 7% in 2009. However, the drop represents little more than a small, marginal change from historical trends in the relationship of emissions and the economy, as shown by the graph above.

Using data from the EIA and the BEA, the graph above [see graph after the jump] shows that the rate of decarbonization (the change in carbon dioxide emissions to GDP) of the US economy indeed did increase to above 4.5% in 2009, but that is only slightly above rates observed in a number of years in recent decades. To achieve aggressive emissions reductions targets for 2020 and 2050 as proposed in various US policy proposals would require annual rates of decarbonization of 5% or more, sustained over decades.

Continue reading "US Emissions Reductions: Business as Usual" »

Cross-posted from NearWalden

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas

We have compelling reasons to drive for clean, cheap energy, but we lack the technology to get there today. Threats of climate change, national competitiveness and energy security (OK, "clean, cheap, domestic energy") all contribute to the urgency of this innovation challenge. Given the scale of the challenge, coupled with the dire consequences of not succeeding, it is only natural that we'd look for reassurance and guidance from historical success stories of large-scale innovation.

Most frequently mentioned are the Apollo Project ("land a man on the moon by the end of the decade"), and the Manhattan Project ("develop nuclear weapons before our enemies"). They are attractive because they had urgent time tables, required outside-the-box innovation, and most importantly, as measured by their stated goals, were wildly successful. They provide some confidence that we (or maybe even just the President) need only to make the decision, and it will happen!

Continue reading "In Search of Energy Innovation Role Models" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Yesterday's column in the NYT by Thomas Friedman illustrates why efforts to put a price on carbon are not going to do much at all to stimulate energy technology innovation. Friedman writes:

After months of heroic negotiations, Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joseph Lieberman had forged a bipartisan climate/energy/jobs bill that, while far from perfect, would have, for the first time, put a long-term fixed price on carbon -- precisely the kind of price signal U.S. industry and consumers need to start really shifting the economy to clean-power innovations. . .

Without that price signal, you will never get sustained consumer demand for, or sustained private investment in, clean-power technologies. All you will get are hobbies. . .

I'd love to see the president come out, guns blazing with this message: "Yes, if we pass this energy legislation, a small price on carbon will likely show up on your gasoline or electricity bill. I'm not going to lie. But it is an investment that will pay off in so many ways. It will spur innovation in energy efficiency that will actually lower the total amount you pay for driving, heating or cooling. It will reduce carbon pollution in the air we breathe and make us healthier as a country. It will reduce the money we are sending to nations that crush democracy and promote intolerance. It will strengthen the dollar. It will make us more energy secure, environmentally secure and strategically secure. . . "

It is not clear what that "price on carbon" is in the legislation or how widely it would be applied, but for the purposes of discussion, let's just say that it starts at $15 per metric ton of carbon dioxide and is applied economy-wide.

Continue reading "The Carbon Price Paradox" »

Cross-posted from NearWalden

By Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas

Today, on the 40th Earth Day, we look back at where we've come from, but also look forward to where we'd like to go. And while, as Americans, we're compelled to look towards Washington and focus on what our politicians have done in past, and may or may not do in the future, on behalf of the environment, we also need to look at our innovation system and how we keep it healthy as well.

At any point in time we can point to past innovations as the root cause of our environmental issues, but we also have a history of being able to innovate better solutions once we understand these impacts. We've gotten lead out of paint, CFCs out of a variety of products, created increasingly efficient internal combustion engines, and on and on.

Continue reading "Earth Day Thoughts on American Innovation" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Last summer I noted that the Obama Administration gave the go-ahead for the building of a new pipeline to bring petroleum from Canadian oil sands to the United States. I am sure that I wasn't alone in wondering why they would do this at the same time that they were pushing to create a cap-and-trade program to put a price on carbon. I got the answer in today's FT in an article on investors who are seeking to increase disclosure from BP on tar sand development.

Continue reading "Carbon Price Won't Stop Oil Sands" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

Last week I discussed Paul Krugman's views of climate policy (here and here). I argued that he deemphasized the need for technological innovation, which I argue must be at the core of any successful approach to decarbonization of the economy. A few commenters argued rather strenuously that I got things wrong -- Krugman in fact prioritizes technological innovation.

In a post on his blog Krugman pretty much removes all doubt when he writes (emphasis added):

First, power generation has to be "decarbonized": solar, nuclear, wind, geothermal, and maybe some fossil fuels with carbon capture have to replace coal-fired plants. This is within the reach of current technologies.

Yes, you read that right. Krugman says that replacing coal-fired power is within the reach of current technologies. Krugman is absolutely correct in a mathematical sense. We could indeed replace all current coal fired generation in the United States with about 325 new nuclear power plants (1 GW) or about 300,000 new wind turbines (the big ones, 2.5 MW, setting aside minor issues like storage or grid integration). (Data from The Climate Fix) However, Krugman is completely wrong from anything resembling a practical sense.

Continue reading "Krugman Removes All Doubt" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke, Jr's Blog

The graph below is from the work of Max Boykoff, a friend and colleague from here at CU, and Maria Mansfield, University of Exeter. The graph shows a big drop off in media attention to climate change in the aftermath of the Copenhagen conference last December.

When I saw this graph it brought to mind a very similar graph of media attention from about 15 years ago, shown below from a paper that I did with Mickey Glantz in 1995 (on how to "sell" scientific programs to policy makers, PDF). Notice any similarities?

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke, Jr's Blog

I have been having an interesting debate with a few economists in a previous thread about Paul Krugman's views of climate policy. I read his latest piece as emphasizing energy conservation and de-emphasizing technology. A few economists write in the comments that my reading is "absurd." This matters of course because anyone who thinks that we can stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations at a low level via conservation while de-emphasizing technology just doesn't have a good grasp of the problem.

So I Googled around a bit to see what Krugman has said in the past. And guess what? He advocates energy conservation and de-emphasizes technology! Here are some of his earlier statements that are unambiguous on these matters and consistent with how I interpret his latest piece.

Continue reading "Does Paul Krugman Advocate Energy Conservation and Deemphasize Technology? Yes" »

Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. reviews four books on climate change for Nature and concludes that asserting the scientific high ground and demanding action on that premise won't make better climate policy--"admitting the limitations of science in compelling political agreements," he says, is the critical step towards that end.

"If science leads inexorably to particular political outcomes, then it would seem to favour autocratic forms of governance. The middle man -- the general public -- is easily ignored if heads of state need only hear the expert voice of science. Schneider worries that democracy finds it hard to deal with complex issues: if only the public understood the real risks, he explains, they would be "much more likely to send strong signals to their representatives". He bemoans a public debate that includes the participation of "special interests" and that is filtered through an inept media, a perspective echoed by Hansen."

Originally posted at Breakthrough Senior Fellow David Douglas's blog, Near Walden.

Bloom Energy's recent announcement of their fuel cell-based "energy server" drew lots of attention from the press, and for good reason. It set some nice marks for performance, and, if successful, will likely be the first of a new market category of energy products.

At Sun we looked at this technology a couple of years back. The use case was as the backup for a datacenter, and to switch to it as primary power when grid power was more expensive (e.g. mid-day in the summer during peak AC time). In this example the technology would enable us to change our view of backup power, from something we only use in emergencies to an energy insurance plan against rising costs. If I recall the only issue was the number of the units that would be required to support a MW or higher datacenter, but improvements in their technology have likely reduced this problem in the meantime.

Beyond work applications, I can't wait to see the home version of this technology, providing electricity and hot water from a single process. Hopefully the folks at Bloom or one of their competitors is working on a version for that!

But putting my nerdish desires aside, its useful to use this milestone to look at the environment in which the Bloom technology came into being. In this case there are two interesting aspects.

Continue reading "Energy Innovation: How Can We Keep It Blooming" »

The conventional wisdom among greens and liberals for the last 20 years has been that more climate science research would lead to political consensus but as Breakthrough Senior Fellow Dan Sarewitz points out, that hasn't happened. Now he argues in Slate that more climate science has made climate politics even more polarized:

"When people hold strongly conflicting values, interests, and beliefs, there is not much that science can do to compel action. Indeed, more research and more facts often make a conflict worse by providing support to competing sides in the debate, and by distracting decision-makers and the public from the underlying, political disagreement. In such cases each side will claim to have the scientific high ground."

The Breakthrough Institute is honored to announce its 2010 Breakthrough Senior Fellows. As leaders in the fields of sociology, science policy, energy, and technology, we are excited to welcome them to our unique team of multi-disciplinary experts and look forward to benefitting from their insight and collaboration on some of the most challenging issues of our time.

Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour is a founder of science and technology studies (STS) and was listed as the 10th most-cited intellectual in the humanities and social sciences by The Times Higher Education Guide. His 1979 "Laboratory Life" was a watershed ethnography of how science works in the real world. Latour studied scientists and found that subjective judgments that look unscientific to outsiders are central to the scientific enterprise. In his most famous work, "We Have Never Been Modern," Latour's argues that modernity is a kind of faith characterized by efforts to purify concepts like nature and science even as they become invariably mixed up in politics, society, religion, and tradition.

Continue reading "Leading Science and Technology Experts Named Breakthrough Senior Fellows, 2010 " »

What follows is an excerpt from Breakthrough Senior Fellow Jim Proctor's essay "Environment after nature: Time for a new vision¹," one of 16 essays examining the five central visions of biophysical and human nature in Envisioning Nature, Science, and Religion, which Proctor also edited.

Introduction

Recently I left an enviable faculty position of thirteen years, sold my house on the ocean, and became director of an environmental studies program at a small liberal arts school in the US Pacific Northwest. I say this, so that when I say what I will say next you will not ignore me as some rabid anti-environmentalist:

I am anti-environment.

At least in the sense that environment is generally understood today, a taken-for-granted notion underlying everything from environmentalism to "environmentology."² Somehow our notion of environment got wrapped up in our notion of nature, and with it came a whole host of conceptual binaries that effectively drive a wedge through any lasting resolution of environmental problems.

This is not a new argument; in fact, everything I cite to support my claim is someone else's idea, not mine.³ What is surprising is that so little of it has found its way into environmentalism. Thirtysomething years ago, around the time of the birth of the modern environmental movement, there was a great deal of low-hanging fruit to be picked, lots of obvious environmental problems that had pretty much been ignored up to then. Maybe this is why environmentalists didn't want to spend too much time forging new conceptual tools: nature was imperiled, in some cases people were imperiled as a result, and the imperative was action, not talk. Well, thirtysomething years later, it's no revelation that there are environmental problems; we've all tasted the low-hanging varietals. And, sadly, it's no secret that many have proven rather indigestible, while the higher-up fruit has been virtually impossible to reach, let alone digest. Maybe it's time to rethink--to paraphrase Neil Evernden--what exactly is this environment we struggle so hard to save.⁴

Continue reading "Environment after nature: Time for a new vision" »

Originally at Roger Pielke Jr's Blog

As the dust settles from the remarkable Copenhagen meeting observers are presenting vastly different messages about what has happened and what it means. Germany's Chancellor, Angela Merkel, warns that anyone who criticizes Copenhagen is simply trying to stop action from moving forward: "anyone who just badmouths Copenhagen now is engaging in the business of those who are applying the brakes rather than moving forward." However, efforts to shut down debate are not going to work, as people are engaged in the very useful exercise of sorting out the meaning of Copenhagen.

Here are a few examples from the United States on the left side of the political spectrum:

Continue reading "Roger Pielke Jr: Post-Copenhagen, More Questions Than Answers" »

Crossposted from Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Blog

Prospects for U.S. climate legislation hinge on a successful outcome at Copenhagen, says Senator John Kerry (D-MA):

If international climate change talks falter this week, chances for the United States approving its own carbon pollution-reduction plan will seriously erode, U.S. Senator John Kerry warned on Wednesday.

Meantime, negotiators in Copenhagen await leadership from the United States as the basis for an international agreement:

Everyone is waiting to see if President Obama will improve the offer from the US when he joins the conference on Friday. There is a widespread reluctance among other countries to make significant concessions until the country which has caused most of the problem takes more of its fair share of the burden of solving it.

But the United States won't go further than its legislative process will allow:

. . . the United States poured cold water on the notion that it would deepen its offer of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions, as outlined by President Barack Obama in the run-up to the conference.

"I am not anticipating any change in the mitigation commitment," US chief delegate Todd Stern told a press conference.

"Our commitment is tied to our anticipated legislation and there are elements in that legislation that could result in an overall target or an overall reduction amount that could actually be a fair amount higher.

"But we're not making a commitment to that right now because it's just uncertain and we don't want to promise something that we don't have."

Unless President Obama can spring a substantive surprise this week in Copenhagen, guess who is going to once again be the bad guy in the negotiations?

Crossposted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

In an earlier post I made the case that one needs to know only two things about the science of climate change to begin asking whether accelerating decarbonization of the economy might be worth doing:

• Carbon dioxide has an influence on the climate system.
• This influence might well be negative for things many people care about.

That is it. An actual decision to accelerate decarbonization and at what rate will depend on many other things, like costs and benefits of particular actions unrelated to climate and technological alternatives. In this post I am going to further explain my views, based on an interesting question posed in that earlier thread. What would my position be if it were to be shown, hypothetically, that the global average surface temperature was not warming at all, or in fact even cooling (over any relevant time period)? Would I then change my views on the importance of decarbonizing the global energy system?

And the answer is ... no!

My concern about the potential effects of human influences on the climate system are not a function of global average warming over a long-period of time or of predictions of continued warming into the future. A point that my father often makes, and I think that he is absolutely right, is that what matters are the effects of human influences on the climate system on human and ecological scales, not at the global scale. No one experiences global average temperature and it is very poorly correlated with things that we do care about in specific places at specific times.

Consider the following thought experiment. Divide the world up into 1,000 grid boxes of equal area. Now imagine that the temperature in each of 500 of those boxes goes up by 20 degrees while the temperature in the other 500 goes down by 20 degrees. The net global change is exactly zero (because I made it so). However, the impacts would be enormous. Let's further say that the changes prescribed in my thought experiment are the direct consequence of human activity. Would we want to address those changes? Or would we say, ho hum, it all averages out globally, so no problem? The answer is obvious and is not a function of what happens at some global average scale, but what happens at human and ecological scales.

In the real world, the effects of increasing carbon dioxide on human and ecological scales are well established, and they include a biogechemical effect on land ecosystems with subsequent effects on water and climate, as well as changes to the chemistry of the oceans. Is it possible that these effects are benign? Sure. Is it also possible that these effects have some negatives? Sure. These two factors alone would be sufficient for one to begin to ask questions about the worth of decarbonizing the global energy system. But greenhouse gas emissions also have a radiative effect that, in the real world, is thought to be a net warming, all else equal and over a global scale. However, if this effect were to be a net cooling, or even, no net effect at the global scale, it would not change my views about a need to consider decarbonizing the energy system one bit. There is an effect -- or effects to be more accurate -- and these effects could be negative.

Of course, not mentioned yet is that action to improve adaptation to climate doesn't depend at all on a human influence on the climate system, warming or cooling or whatever. Adaptation makes good sense regardless. So clearly my policy views on adaptation are largely insensitive to any issues related to global average temperature change.

The debate over climate change has many people on both sides of the issue wrapped up in discussing global average temperature trends. I understand this as it is an icon with great political symbolism. It has proved a convenient political battleground, but the reality is that it should matter little to the policy case for decarbonization. What matters is that there is a human effect on the climate system and it could be negative with respect to things people care about. That is enough to begin asking whether we want to think about accelerating decarbonization of the global economy.

To fully assess whether accelerated decarbonization makes sense would require us to ask, are there any other good reasons why accelerated decarbonization might make sense? And it turns out, there are many. And that discussion will have to await a further post.

Crossposted from Roger Pielke, Jr.'s Blog

This post makes the case for why the science is settled on climate change. Of course, interpreting this statement, which once had its own Wikipedia page, depends entirely upon what one means by "the science." Here I am going to define "the science" as that science of the global earth system which is necessary to open up the possibility that decision makers may wish to consider action on greenhouse gas emissions. Any decision on what action (if any), when, at what costs will result from many factors beyond climate science and different people who decide to act together will necessarily have vastly different views about the state of the science and its importance.

What is this settled science? Thomas Friedman gets it absolutely correct in his NYT column today (emphasis added):

This is not complicated. We know that our planet is enveloped in a blanket of greenhouse gases that keep the Earth at a comfortable temperature. As we pump more carbon-dioxide and other greenhouse gases into that blanket from cars, buildings, agriculture, forests and industry, more heat gets trapped.

What we don't know, because the climate system is so complex, is what other factors might over time compensate for that man-driven warming, or how rapidly temperatures might rise, melt more ice and raise sea levels. It's all a game of odds. We've never been here before. We just know two things: one, the CO2 we put into the atmosphere stays there for many years, so it is "irreversible" in real-time (barring some feat of geo-engineering); and two, that CO2 buildup has the potential to unleash "catastrophic" warming.

When I see a problem that has even a 1 percent probability of occurring and is "irreversible" and potentially "catastrophic," I buy insurance. That is what taking climate change seriously is all about.

Friedman is absolutely right about what we know and what we don't know. Debates over action get wrapped up around debates what we know and what we don't know, and these debates are unlikely to be settled any time soon, whether within the scientific community or among the broader public.

Continue reading "The Science is Settled" »

Updated 12/7/2009

"The fixation on near-term targets for reducing greenhouse-gas emissions at the climate meeting in Copenhagen has resulted in insufficient attention towards the technological means of achieving them."

So begins "Let the Global Technology Race Begin," an article in Nature by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explaining the need for a technology-led approach to mitigating climate change instead of the emissions reductions target approach that is the hallmark of conventional climate policy.

The authors' focus on a technology builds on the findings of a 2008 Nature article entitled, "Dangerous Assumptions," co-authored by Green, Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke, Jr., and Tom Wigley. They found that the IPCC had significantly underestimated the emissions reductions necessary to achieve climate stabilization and thus, had seriously underestimated the scale of the technology challenge, concluding:

"enormous advances in energy technology will be needed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at levels that are currently considered acceptable... In the end, there is no question whether technological innovation is necessary -- it is. The question is, to what degree should policy focus explicitly on motivating such innovation?"

Here, Green and Galiana answer this question. Their analysis shows:

"cumulative emissions consistent with minimizing the rise in global temperature (climate stabilization) can be achieved by investing US$100 billion a year for the rest of the century in global energy R&D, testing, demonstration, and infrastructure."

The two experts offer three suggestions for how a technology-led approach to policy would work to catalyze the research, development, and deployment of a steady stream of clean energy technologies:

1) Instead of emissions targets, governments would agree to "credible long-term global commitments to invest in energy R&D," technology and infrastructure financed by "a low carbon price of $5 per tonne of emitted carbon dioxide, which would raise almost $150 billion per year globally and $30 billion in the United States alone."

2) The carbon price would "send a forward pricing signal to deploy new or improved low-carbon technologies" by rising gradually over time "doubling, say, every 10 years."

"These would span the technology spectrum: basic R&D in breakthrough technologies, 'enabling' R&D that allows scale-up of existing technologies (such as utility-scale storage for intermittent solar and wind energy); testing and demonstration projects; end energy-related infrastructure, such as 'smart grid' that help to manage intermittent energy sources."

3) Dedicated trust funds should be created to isolate R&D monies from "political interference." These funds would be overseen "by independent committees drawn from the public and private sectors." Countries that do not engage in R&D could use their portion of the funds "to purchase successfully developed technologies from those that do participate [in R&D]."

Galiana and Green explain how a technology-led policy "inverts the usual relationship between carbon pricing and technology, whereby carbon pricing is naively expected to induce fundamental technological innovation."

Continue reading "Nature: Technology-Led Policy Needed for Climate Success in Copenhagen and Beyond" »

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke, JR.'s Blog

I raised this question in an earlier post, suggesting from international statistics that China's energy intensity has improved only by 7.4% since 2005, rather than larger figures more commonly referenced based on data from the Chinese government.

Now, Julian Wong from the Center for American Progress points us to an analysis that he published on his blog showing substantially similar figures using another set of data. With that data the analysis concludes that:

[China's] energy intensity drop for the three year period 2006-2008 is only 7.7%, not the 10% commonly reported.

Before pointing us to the guest post Julian tells us in the comments that:

China's goal is to reduce energy intensity (energy consumption per unit of GDP) by 20% of 2005 levels by 2010. According to its own reports, China has made steady progress in achieving that (it is now at -13.4% of 2005 levels), but because GDP has continued to grow by 8 to 10% over the last few years, absolute emissions have increased.. . the main implication of my point is that while China has done a lot, it will need to do more going forward.

I responded by encouraging Julian to share the broader context of China's "fuzzy math" with his readers over at CAP, it seems like an important part of the story that is too often left out of CAP analyses.

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

Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, knows a good negotiating position when he has one. So India now ups the pressure on the United States in order to ensure that India is not tagged as the global bad guy of climate policy. In the Guardian he refers to the Kerry-Boxer Bill in the Senate as not really up to the task:

"The bill that was with the Senate yesterday talks about a 20% cut on 2005 levels, which is really only a measly 5% reduction on 1990 levels," Ramesh told a US-Indian energy conference in Washington, put on by Yale University and The Energy and Resources Institute in Delhi.

He added that America and other developed countries had to commit to deep emissions cuts in the next decade - not by 2050 - if they wanted to see India and China take serious action to contain the rise in their future emissions, as their surging economies expand.

"If we are serious about climate change we should stop talking about 2050. I laugh when countries put up numbers for 2050," Ramesh said.

However, he was almost immediately rebuffed by Obama's climate change envoy, Todd Stern, who said that such a narrow focus on 2020 actions could wreck the prospects of reaching a deal at Copenhagen. "We can talk about that all the way to Copenhagen and for the next two or three years and get nothing done," Stern said. "We have to be practical."

India has categorically stated that they will not commit to limit emissions, and in that they have the support of the chairman of the "policy neutral" IPCC:

. . . Ramesh ruled out any possibility that India would agree to an absolute cap on emissions in the future. "N-O, No," he said. The position was endorsed by RK Pachauri, who heads the IPCC. "Obviously you are not going to ask a country that has 400 million people without a lightbulb in their homes to do the same as a country that has splurge of energy," he told the conference."

And if the US doesn't like it, then its just tough luck, as India has the upper hand here.

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

Nature asked Mike Hulme, Tony Juniper, Mark Lynas, Oliver Morton, Ron Oxburgh, Rajendra K. Pachauri, Roger Pielke, Jr., Andrew Revkin & Joseph Romm for a recommendation for a single book to read leading up to Copenhagen, and then to provide a capsule review of that book. You can see what resulted here and offer your own thoughts at the Nature Climate Feedback blog.

Cross-posted from Roger Pielke, Jr's Blog

Akihiro Sawa of the 21st Century Public Policy Institute, a think tank in Japan, has written an interesting paper on the new Japanese government's (the DPJ) proposed climate policies. The paper also has some interesting views on how the United States is viewed in Japan. The paper has just been translated into English as is available here in PDF.

Here is what Prof. Sawa says about Japan's policy, (note that "clear water" refers to Japan's Mamizu climate policy that I discuss in this paper in PDF):

The DPJ has forgotten (or perhaps, are not aware?) that many major developing countries appreciated Prime Minister Taro Aso‟s genuine "clear water" target of reducing 15% compared with 2005 levels (which would be achieved solely by domestic efforts, not employing overseas credits, or offsets), and that these countries have also criticized the EU for including offsets and other developed countries such as Australia for "cheating." Councilor Fukushima mentioned the possibility that "the 25% target may not be a "clear water" target." If this is true, Japan may have disappointed South Africa and Bangladesh, which were supportive of Japan‟s "clear water target" as a criterion proving the sincerity of its reduction efforts, and government authorities of China and India, which have been critical of the excessive use of offsets by developed economies. We would hope that a leader of government charged with severe international negotiations would be more prudent of what he says, as any statement he makes, even domestically, is bound to eventually reach all governments via their embassies.

Perhaps the DPJ's intention was to impress developing countries by setting out the 25% reduction initiative as a sign of Japan‟s enthusiasm towards large reductions. However, at the current global negotiation table, developing countries led by China and India are not ready to give up their demands for reductions in developed economies by 40-80％ - far beyond 25%. Although Councilor Fukuyama mentioned that reduction efforts are meaningless without the participation of China and India, saying that the government would "strongly urge" their involvement, it is hard to conceive that two countries which have maintained a hard-line stance so far in global negotiations, which are not always based on good intentions, would be so easily "urged" to assume a reduction target.

They are, however, very likely to escalate their demands, applauding Japan's competence - its unprecedented declaration of a high reduction target exceeding the capacity of all other countries and its positive outlook that the more stringent the target is, the more innovation is promoted, and hence a stronger economy. They would suggest that in order to accelerate economic recovery, Japan might seek an even higher target which would fulfill their demands of reductions by 40% or more. Would the DPJ be ready to accommodate such demands? Or, would they respond that 40% would be impossible even in their best efforts? If so, what makes 25% a viable figure, and 40%, not? If in turn, China and India should insist on a 40% reduction target as a nonnegotiable condition for their involvement, would the DPJ assent to the 40% reduction target alone, regardless of US and EU resistance? If not, the DPJ would leave developing countries in great despair.

The major problem with the 25% reduction initiative is that it was announced without any diplomatic strategies to convince developing countries to abandon their severe demands and has unnecessarily raised their expectations.

Continue reading "Pielke, Jr.: Akihiro Sawa on Japan's 25% Emissions Reduction Target" »

By Roger Pielke, Jr., Senior Fellow

Recently I've seen a number of claims made about China's plans to improve the energy intensity of its economy. Here are some examples:

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Considering the country already has reduced its economy's energy intensity by 20 percent over the past five years, the shift to carbon intensity with a meaningful goal attached "would be significant and impressive," says Reid Detchon, vice president for energy and climate at the United Nations Foundation in Washington.

From Climate Progress:

China appears to be making steady progress toward its goal of achieving a 20-percent reduction in energy intensity by 2010.

Yesterday, Chief UN climate diplomat Yvo de Boer even said of China's policies:

"This suite of policies [alluded to today at the UN] will take China to be the world leader on addressing climate change," he said. De Boer told reporters: "It will be quite ironic to hear that tomorrow expressed in a country (the United States) that is firmly convinced that China is doing nothing to address climate change."

Continue reading "Is China's Energy Intensity Story A Myth?" »

cross posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

The Guardian has an interesting, though somewhat speculative, article today about emerging U.S. plans to propose an alternative international climate policy architecture to that embodied in the Kyoto Protocol:

The dispute between the US and Europe is over the way national carbon reduction targets would be counted. Europe has been pushing to retain structures and systems set up under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on climate change. US negotiators have told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the Kyoto architecture and replace it with a system of its own design.

The issue is highly sensitive and European officials are reluctant to be seen to openly criticise the Obama administration, which they acknowledge has engaged with climate change in a way that President Bush refused to. But they fear the US move could sink efforts to agree a robust new treaty in Copenhagen.

The US distanced itself from Kyoto under President Bush because it made no demands on China, and the treaty remains political poison in Washington. European negotiators knew the US would be reluctant to embrace Kyoto, but they hoped they would be able to use it as a foundation for a new agreement.

If Kyoto is scrapped, it could take several years to negotiate a replacement framework, the source added, a delay that could strike a terminal blow at efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. "In Europe we want to build on Kyoto, but the US proposal would in effect kill it off. If we have to start from scratch then it all takes time. It could be 2015 or 2016 before something is in place, who knows."

Energy Secretary Steven Chu had these interesting remarks as well:

The goal for the climate conference in Copenhagen is to reach a deal that can actually be implemented, rather than agreeing on binding high targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions, US Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday in Vienna. The United Nations' International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is calling for countries to make firm commitments to reduce emissions that cause global warming by 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels.

"Let's not make that one particular time the be-all and end-all, and if it doesn't happen, oh, we are doomed," Chu told reporters in Vienna, where he was attending the International Atomic Energy Agency's annual general conference.

Expect more trial balloons, pronouncements of negotiating doom and confusing reports in the months ahead.

Originally posted at Prometheus

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

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

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

Geoengineering is the idea that we as humans can somehow "hack the planet" and to control (i.e. engineer) climate systems on a large-scale and counteract the potentially disastrous impacts of global climate change. Once considered the realm of kooks, crackpots and science fiction writers, the idea was given a recent push towards legitimacy when none other than John Holdren, the White House's science advisor, mentioned that no option, no matter how farfetched, is off the table as far as climate change was concerned.

Holdren later clarified that this was only his own personal opinion and not that of the current administration, but when Obama's science chief admits to considering something it does add a note of credibility to the argument.

Breakthrough Senior Fellow, Roger Pielke Jr., was recently asked by Seed magazine to throw in his own two cents on the issue. Along with four other writers, scientists and environmental advocates, Pielke had this to say:

Writing in Nature last December, Dan Sarewitz and Dick Nelson offer three criteria by which to distinguish "problems amenable to technological fixes from those that are not." Here I apply these criteria to the technology of geo-engineering the climate system, defined by the American Meteorological Society as an effort to "deliberately manipulate large-scale physical, chemical, or biological aspects of the climate system to counteract the climate effects of increasing greenhouse gas emissions." Examples of geo-engineering thus include injecting aerosols into the stratosphere or seeding the ocean with iron, but would not include capturing carbon dioxide from coal plants or the ambient air.

Geo-engineering falls well short of all three of the criteria that Sarewitz/Nelson present as guidelines for when to employ a technological fix."

(read Pielke's response in full here)

Continue reading "The (Dangerous?) Allure of Geo-engineering" »

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

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

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

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" »

Andy Revkin at the New York Times asked Al Gore's office for their comments on Gore's use of data from CRED in Belgium in recent versions of his talk to illustrate the impacts of human-caused climate change on disasters. In response, Gore's office has said that they will pull the slide, as it does not have a scientific foundation.

Kudos to Al Gore who has demonstrated a commitment to scientific accuracy in his presentation. However there are still some issues with their response. Here is how Gore's office responded to Revkin as related at Dot Earth (please visit their for embedded links):

Continue reading "Gore Pulls CRED Data From Talk" »

A few years ago, on this blog and at Climate Audit, there was a healthy discussion of a paper by Greg Holland and Peter Webster that claimed definitive attribution of hurricane activity to greenhouse gas emissions (PDF). Now a paper by Sim Aberson is out in the current issue of BAMS (PDF) which uses the Holland/Webster paper as a good example of how not to do statistics.

The Aberson paper is summarized as:

A cautionary tale in which previously published results are shown to be invalid due to the lack of statistical analyses in the original work.

Continue reading "Aberson on Holland/Webster" »

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 political consensus surrounding climate policy is collapsing. If you are not aware of this fact you will be very soon. The collapse is not due to the cold winter in places you may live or see on the news. It is not due to years without an increase in global temperature. It is not due to the overturning of the scientific consensus on the role of human activity in the global climate system.

It is due to the fact that policy makers and their political advisors (some trained as scientists) can no longer avoid the reality that targets for stabilization such as 450 ppm (or even less realistic targets) are simply not achievable with the approach to climate change that has been at the focus of policy for over a decade. Policies that are obviously fictional and fantasy are frequently subject to a rapid collapse.

The current shrillness that has been put on display by many politically-active climate scientists and the feeding-frenzy among their skeptical political opposition can be explained as a result of this looming collapse, though many will confuse the shrillness and feeding-frenzy as a cause of the collapse. Let me explain.

Continue reading "The Collapse of Climate Policy and the Sustainability of Climate Science" »

Here is a remarkable display of incoherence. According to a report commissioned by Greenpeace and discussed by The Christian Science Monitor, the economic stimulus package now under debate by the U.S. Congress will reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

What does the report mean by "reduce"? It means that some future emissions that might have occurred will be avoided. Emissions will therefore increase, just not as much as under some other scenario. The difference between that other scenario and the scenario implied by the stimulus package represents a "reduction" in emissions. Yes, you are reading that right.

Continue reading "Cutting Emissions While Increasing Them" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Obama vs. IPCC" »

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

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

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

Continue reading "Apparently Markets Allow Buying and Selling" »

Dalton Conley, Breakthrough Senior Fellow, sociology professor at NYU and author of the upcoming book "Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got from the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, BlackBerry Moms, and Economic Anxiety," sat down with Ted Nordhaus to answer some questions about social and economic inequality in America, and the impacts of the current recession on recent socioeconomic trends in the United States. Don't miss the chance to see Conley speak tomorrow, January 27th, at Berkeley Arts and Letters with Michael and Ted introducing.

Q&A:
Ted Nordhaus:
You have written extensively about the impacts of rising social and economic inequality on American culture and society. What would you identify as the key drivers of rising inequality?
Dalton Conley:
Wage inequality has increased for a variety of reasons, perhaps the most important being what economists call "skill-biased technological change" meaning that the new economy skews rewards heavily toward folks who have the most hi-end cognitive and emotional skills and credentials (i.e. educational degrees). But total inequality has increased also because of family dynamics: more and more families are two-earner households with high-earners marrying high-earners, thereby doubling (almost) household inequality.

Nordhaus:
Over the last few decades, up until the current recession, America has experienced both consistently high levels of economic growth and rising levels, by some accounts unprecedented levels, of economic inequality. How are those two phenomena related and do you think it is possible to have a high growth economy without rising levels of inequality?
Conley:
The rewards of growth have been typically unequally distributed in the U.S. For instance, the last time we experienced inequality levels equal to contemporary ones was 1929, right before the crash. So it remains to be seen what the impact of the current bear market will be. There are, however, examples abroad of societies that have managed to obtain standards of living similar to (or better than) ours without such extreme inequality. Northern Europe comes to mind.

Nordhaus:
What do you think the impact of the current recession will be on social inequality? Are we likely to see declining levels of inequality and if so, what impact would you expect that to have on Elsewhere U.S.A?
Conley:
I think inequality may lessen if the evaporation of all this abstract wealth holds fast. However, already public policy has been directed to restoring the old ways. Even if inequality declines, I still think folks will be haunted by economic anxiety. In good times we fear that others are doing better than us in relative terms. In bad times, we fear losing what we have in absolute terms.

Nordhaus:
You write more specifically about the ways in which rising inequality is self reinforcing. The more money affluent Americans make, the higher the opportunity costs of not working become. The resulting greater incentive for affluent Americans to work more, not less, then exacerbates income inequality all the more. Would you expect a recessionary economy in which income inequality was declining to result in a reversal of this dynamic? With the opportunity costs of family time and leisure declining, would you expect affluent Americans to take more time away from work and with their families? What impact might that have on Americans who work in the service sectors to which affluent Americans have in recent decades outsourced so much of their lives?
Conley:
I could see a potential upside of more folks living a slower lifestyle--cooking at home more and outsourcing less childcare and other aspects of what was once family life; this might be an upside of a tepid economy. However, the monkey wrench in all this is the fact that we are burdened with enormous household (and national) debt thanks to our recent consumption binge. So most of us--thanks to credit card bills or mortgages that exceed the value of our homes--don't have the option of working less and enjoying simpler pleasures we had forgotten about. We are going to be working for our interest payments and feeling perhaps even more pressure to earn.

Nordhaus:
You write a lot about the ways in which modern life, and particularly the market, has increasingly erased many of the old modernist dualities - work and leisure, public and private, market goods and public goods - mostly in the negative; but aren't there real benefits to many of these trends as well, in terms of the creation of all sorts of technologies and new personal/professional spaces that allow for greater flexibility and control over when, how, and where we work, play, shop, and lived?
Conley:
Definitely, but the skills we need to manage these are new. The ability to multi-task--i.e. attend to several streams of interactive data exchange while not losing any of those threads, is perhaps as important as perisistence, brains or other skills that are prized. I am not trying to be judgemental and make some nostalgic claim that things were "better" in the days of yore; rather, I am merely trying to describe a new social landscape that comes with plusses and minuses.

Nordhaus:
You also write about the rise of the intravidual - about the ways in which the collapse of so many of those dualities has led to a fracturing of the self. Is this really a new development? How is this different than Whitman's observation that we "contain multitudes" penned more than a century ago? Haven't we always contained multitudes and multiple selves?
Conley:
That may be the case. However, I think back then there was still a clear(er) division between front-stage (i.e. public persona) and back-stage (our private self). Today with Facebook updates (and so on), public cell phone conversations, and the blurring of home and work, this dichotomy has eroded, combining with other dynamics I describe in the book, to lead to a greater--perhaps--fragmentation of our consciousness, I argue.

Nordhaus:
How do the social safety net and the institutions necessary for its provision need to evolve to address America's increasingly complex social and economic arrangements?
Conley:
We have to face the fact that the social safety net devised in the 1930s (and even the 1960s amendments) were made in the context of a much less affluent society where household budgets were much more devoted to basic necessities. Today what we "need" is much greater (education, high quality health care, family care and so on) and often relative in nature (better schools -- better than what?). These are much more difficult to provide using the old-school social insurance model.

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About the book: