Welcome, readers of the Wall Street Journal and the Albuquerque Journal...
Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal on the problem facing many governments today, of how to spark and continue along the path towards a clean energy economy. The reality, Shellenberger says, is that you'll never induce the birth of a new energy economy by taxing the old into obsolescence:
Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger is quoted in today's Wall Street Journal on the problem facing many governments today, of how to spark and continue along the path towards a clean energy economy. The reality, Shellenberger says, is that you'll never induce the birth of a new energy economy by taxing the old into obsolescence:
"I think the reality is that we are not going to get beyond a fossil-fuel economy, and I don't think we are going to impose big costs on the fossil-fuel economy either in the U.S. or in foreign developing countries like China, until the alternatives become a lot cheaper. I think while it is conceivable to have a carbon tax in the U.S., it will never be high enough to make fossil fuels as expensive as clean energy technologies are today."
Nordhaus in the Albuquerque Journal
John Fleck, of the Albuquerque Journal, profiled Breakthrough Institute Chairmen Ted Nordhaus in a column entitled, "A Third View on Climate Change." He describes Nordhaus as "the liberal environmentalist that some liberal environmentalists love to hate," alluding to the criticism Nordhaus, along with Breakthrough President Michael Shellenberger, leveled on the efficacy of the environmental movement first in their landmark essay, "The Death of Environmentalism," and then in their book, "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility."
Fleck writes:
But he [Nordhaus] thinks the core strategy offered by conventional environmentalism -- emissions caps, putting a higher price on carbon-based energy like coal and gasoline to raise the cost of its use and spur a switch to alternatives -- is a failed approach and a distraction from the actions needed to deal with the problem.
The notion that governments will voluntarily jack up energy prices today to benefit future generations seems like a nonstarter to Nordhaus. The fact that the public, faced with government imposition of rising energy costs, will suddenly find reasons to question the underlying science of climate change is exactly what the 44-year-old pollster and political activist says we should expect...
Discourse over climate change and energy in this country has devolved into a ritualized political argument unmoored from the underlying issues, Nordhaus argues.
Greens, he said, think they are battling anti-science Neanderthals and fossil fuel-funded climate change skeptics. Skeptics, he said, think they are fighting a hoax being perpetrated in the name of black helicopter-driven government control.
It is identity politics. "They're really fighting over their identities," he said. "They're not fighting about actually doing anything."
The pair, as Fleck notes, have sought to override that debate by advocating a solution to climate change that has proven to be publicly popular:
Chief among their ideas is that the best way to deal with climate change is government investment in clean energy technology. While polls show waning public support in the United States for action on climate change, Nordhaus noted that clean energy remains tremendously popular.
The key, he said, is to make clean energy economically viable, so there is no need to negotiate the political minefield associated with using taxes or caps to raise the cost of dirty energy. "We're not really going to tackle any of these issues until this stuff is cheaper than coal," Nordhaus said."
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Shellenberger and Nordhaus have made this case in a number of publications. "The End of Magical Climate Thinking", which originally appeared in the journal Foreign Policy, explores the demise of the (perhaps slightly misappropriated) hope that many progressives vested in the figure of Barack Obama's coming to the White House, the belief that the transition to a new carbon economy, and thereby a new era, was already underway and its arrival was all but guaranteed to be swift and painless.
Also check out the formative white-paper: "Fast, Clean & Cheap: Cutting Global Warming's Gordian Knot, first published in Harvard Law & Policy Review (Jan 2008), which explores the idea that societies will never rid themselves of incumbent energy sources so long as the alternatives are less reliable and more expensive.
The clean tech sector has been booming in recent years, but can that rate of rapid growth sustain itself? In their most recent critical analysis, given as a keynote speech at the Cleantech Group's Feb 2010 Conference in San Francisco, Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that it cannot. "Storm Clouds on the Clean Tech Horizon?" continues to press the point that subsidies will not solve the crisis alone. For clean tech to really take off and gain a majority of the market share, radical innovation is the key.
Beyond "Buy American": The U.S. Needs a Clean Energy Strategy
The introduction of "Buy American" legislation in the Senate in response to reports that more than three quarters of funds from a clean energy stimulus program went to foreign companies might be good politics. Unfortunately it will do nothing to solve the root of the problem, which is that for 30 years Congress has done little to support the development of domestic clean energy industries.
The introduction of "Buy American" legislation in the Senate in response to a report that more than three quarters of funds from a clean energy stimulus program went to foreign companies is understandable and probably good politics. Unfortunately it will do nothing to solve the root of the problem, which is that for 30 years Congress has done little to support the development of domestic clean energy industries. Given the decades-long absence of a national clean energy strategy in the United States, the fact that foreign companies are benefiting most from the stimulus grant program should come as no surprise.
The U.S. has always lacked a proactive, consistent clean energy technology strategy that provided support for clean tech companies through each stage of the technology value chain, from R&D and innovation, to manufacturing and commercial deployment at scale.
Instead, U.S. clean energy policy has historically been characterized by a disjointed collection of loosely associated, often inconsistent incentives. One example is the wind energy production tax credit (PTC), a demand incentive that has routinely been at perpetual risk of expiration, and actually lapsed on three separate occasions over the last decade. With the real possibility that the policy-driven demand for wind turbines would dry up in any given year, companies were understandably wary of investing in large manufacturing facilities in the United States.
While the United States was once a pioneer in developing and commercializing clean energy technologies, from solar cells to nuclear power, we now lag behind our competitors in Asia and Europe in the production of virtually all clean technologies.
This week, U.S. clean tech news is almost as dramatic as the buzz surrounding the 2010 Academy Awards. And while the outcome of intensifying competition has more serious implications in the clean tech sector, like any motion picture worthy of a nomination, there's a very distinct underlying theme to the clean tech drama unfolding: the U.S. needs a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness.
As Joan Fitzgerald suggested in a lengthy American Prospect piece in December, "America's failure to have a coherent, national industrial policy," has dire consequences for long-term economic competitiveness.
That's part of the reason the Department of Energy (DOE) held its inaugural ARPA-E Innovation Summit in Washington D.C. earlier this week, which amassed about 1,700 scientists, engineers, policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs to discuss the details of a national competitiveness strategy.
Clean tech has been booming, with 25, 30, even 40 percent growth in recent years. Can it last? It cannot. A new Breakthrough analysis and PowerPoint presentation shows storm clouds on the horizon. More subsidies for solar and wind won't do the trick. Radical innovation is the key. The goal? Radical cost reductions so clean energy is as cheap -- or cheaper than -- coal.
The double digit growth of clean tech industries like solar and wind can't last, and climate legislation in Congress won't continue the momentum, according to a new Breakthrough Institute analysis made for a keynote speech at the Cleantech Group's February 2010 conference in San Francisco.
The rapid growth of renewable energy over the last few years will be difficult to maintain politically as solar and wind achieve a larger share of the energy market. If the U.S. were to maintain its production tax credit (PTC) subsidy for wind power to become 20 percent of America's energy generation, the cost would be $20 billion per year. Moreover, existing transmission is rapidly meeting capacity, which will push wind and solar into sites with higher load management, storage, and transmission costs.
Climate legislation currently being considered in Congress would do little to help the clean tech industry. Cap and trade legislation that passed the House would provide a .8 - 1.5 cent/kwh subsidy to renewables in contrast to the current 2.1 cent/kwh subsidy from the PTC, the 2 - 4 cents/kwh subsidy the Chinese government provides to wind, the 36 - 51 cents/kwh the Germans provide to solar, and the 11 - 17 cents/kwh the Chinese provide to solar.
Innovating to Zero: Gates Wants Clean, Cheap Energy Fast
Despite the philanthropic focus of his foundation, Bill Gates confided to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week that if he could have one wish granted he wouldn't ask for "vaccines or seeds," he'd ask for clean, cheap energy, and fast.
Update: You can view Bill Gates' TED speech below or by clicking here.
Bill Gates wants clean, cheap energy more than he wants to pick the next 50 years worth of presidents, even more than he wants a miracle vaccine. At least that's how he ranked his number one wish while describing climate change as the world's greatest challenge to a rapt audience at the TED conference last week.
Just weeks after lending his voice to a growing "innovation consensus" by writing on his blog, Gates Notes, that innovation, not just insulation, must be the focus if we are serious about "getting to zero," Gates' TED speech expanded on what we need to get there:
"We need energy miracles. The microprocessor and internet are miracles. This is a case where we have to drive and get the miracle in a short timeline."
Gates emphasized the need for an energy miracle portfolio that includes carbon capture and storage and nuclear as well as wind and solar. According to CNN's coverage of the conference (the video is not posted yet), Gates showed particular interest in the potential for nuclear waste reprocessing as a source of clean, cheap energy.
Two months ago, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of activists gathered in Copenhagen to craft a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Green groups put on a spectacle - yes, Greenpeace even docked two of its famous boats nearby to "help in pushing the delegates" - and some observers declared it a make or break event in global climate history.
Today, there is strikingly little to show for the whole affair, momentum has slowed to a crawl and hardly anyone is discussing the aftermath. For good reason: the Copenhagen Accord is basically a voluntary agreement with obscure objectives, and its impact will be negligible. Michael Cutajar, the former chairman of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation group, said that "Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities... Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to two degrees?"
What went wrong at Copenhagen? As I recently argued on BBC World View, the outcome was primarily the result of a flawed UNFCCC process and policy framework. The first and most obvious problem was imagining that 192 countries - some of which represent thousands of times more people than others - could produce a meaningful climate mitigation treaty. The UNFCCC process is kind of like the U.S. Senate (today one of the most dysfunctional national legislative bodies in the world) but at least four times as complicated.
Penny Wise and Pound Foolish: Why Obama's Symbolic Spending Freeze May Grow the Deficit
A largely-symbolic freeze on domestic spending is the wrong route to trim the deficit. Along with real entitlement reform and winding down the wars, smart government investments in broad-based economic growth must be the keystone of a three-part strategy to truly balance the federal budget. Take energy as a case in point, where investments now to catalyze competitive clean energy technologies and industries will pay big economic dividends down the line.
With rising anxiety about mounting federal deficits, President Obama declared a freeze on all non-defense discretionary spending in his latest budget proposal. Heavy on symbolism and light on impact, the Administration's proposal attacks all of the areas of the government least responsible for the inexorable increase in federal deficits, while potentially starving key parts of the discretionary budget critical to America's economic prosperity.
Let's be clear: ballooning deficits do pose a real long-term threat to the United States' economic security. Under current forecasts, the accumulated deficit could total $20 trillion by 2020. That could hobble Uncle Sam with interest payments on the federal debt nearly as large as the projected total for all domestic discretionary spending. Efforts clearly must be taken to avoid such an unsustainable - and risky - financial future.
That said, curbing domestic spending is the wrong route to trim the deficit. The President's spending freeze applies to only a small fraction of the federal budget, while exempting both the mounting costs of two wars and the ever-rising bill for the nation's entitlement programs - Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
It's Not All Good: Why You Should Worry About the Clean Energy Race
China is leading the global race to make clean energy, yet some observers are denying that there is a race at all. They are wrong. Neglecting to acknowledge the economic stakes in the clean energy race and failing to develop a strategy to compete are the reasons why the United States finds itself behind today.
Over at Green Chip Stocks, clean tech market analyst Nick Hodges asks, "Who's Winning the Clean Tech Arms Race?" The answer shouldn't surprise you. Nick cites the deficiencies in U.S. clean energy policy in relative to China's policies as a major reason that "the global clean tech game will be dominated by Chinese players for the foreseeable future."
With Chinese manufacturers poised to dominate emerging clean tech markets, where are all those green jobs that the Democrats have promised? Many of them are going to China, writes SUNY history professor Judith Stein in a recent op-ed in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Stein writes that green job rhetoric won't create green jobs without a plan to invest in clean energy manufacturing here in the United States:
"Green jobs are surely needed. But green Democrats simply echo the Atari Democrats of the 1980s, who concluded that traditional manufacturing was disposable and high technology was the wave of the future. During this era, the young Barack Obama attempted - and failed - to find jobs for displaced steelworkers in Chicago."
Stein also writes that China's manufacturing prowess has implications for clean tech innovation as well, as I argue below: "Meanwhile, the Chinese government offers huge subsidies to encourage green-technology manufacturers in the United States to move their production to China. And when manufacturing leaves, research and development operations follow. That's how China attracted battery and fuel-cell research formerly conducted in America."
By Devon Swezey
In his State of the Union Speech, President Obama issued what is now a familiar refrain: "the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy." If there were still doubts about which nation has the edge they were put to rest days later by a bluntly titled front-page article in the New York Times, "China is Leading Global Race to Make Clean Energy."
Though the story is not new, the article is the latest indication of the alacrity with which China has emerged as a clean energy powerhouse in the span of just a few years. China now manufactures more solar cells than any nation in the world, and recently surpassed the United States as the largest market for wind turbines in 2009. According to "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a recent study by the Breakthrough Institute, China is also a world leader in advanced transportation technologies and batteries, is increasingly localizing the production of nuclear power plants, and has developed some of the world's most advanced CCS technology.
Despite the mounting evidence, many have dismissed the idea that the United States is competing in a "clean energy race" with China, or that it matters.
Some critics assert that characterizing the intense competition as a "race" obscures the climate benefits of greater clean energy deployment throughout the world and the "win-win" nature of a global clean energy economy. The New Republic's Brad Plumer embodies this "it's all good" line of reasoning, writing:
If China zooms ahead and figures out how to make really cheap wind turbines, that doesn't hurt anyone--it just makes the enormous task of cutting global carbon emissions that much easier.
Plumer's casual attitude towards the economic consequences of ceding clean tech manufacturing leadership to China is a slap in the face to U.S. Senators Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). The pair has been working hard to secure the new clean energy manufacturing jobs that can help revitalize the industrial heartland.
At Yale e360, environmental journalist Christina Larson similarly suggests that the United States has little to lose if China dominates emerging clean tech industries:
The United States will still gain many new green-collar jobs in installation and maintenance, which can only be locally based, as well as sales teams, conference planners, and other positions already arising to support the growing green-tech field.
Forget about the export-oriented, high-value added, high-wage clean energy manufacturing jobs of the future that Democrats have promised will jumpstart the ailing American economy; the clean energy conference organizing industry is now open for business.
The New America Foundation's Reihan Salam mocks the idea of a "clean technology race," arguing erroneously that the barriers to entry in clean energy are low and that any established competitive advantage will be "ephemeral."
He compares China's clean tech policies to Japan's policies of the 1980s, as if the Japanese government did not succeed in supporting the development of what are still world leading high technology industries in automobiles, electronics, and high value steel manufacturing. While Japan was investing in high-tech industries the United States was simultaneously accelerating the financialization of its economy, creating trillions of dollars of paper wealth that has largely vanished over the last two years.
Indeed, Salam admits that federal investment in technology has spawned entire new industries like aerospace and electronics, but takes pains to paint similar investments that can catalyze the development of new clean technologies as "disastrous."
Apparently our surging clean tech competitors in Asia and the EU didn't get the message.
San Jose Mercury Special Series: "The Cleantech Revolution"
A three-part series in the San Jose Mercury News highlights the enormous economic opportunity in the clean-tech sector and warns that the U.S. is quickly falling behind.
A special three-part series inlast week's San Jose Mercury News, entitled "The Cleantech Revolution,"highlighted the enormous economic opportunity in the clean-tech sector and warned that the U.S. is quickly falling behind while Asia seeks to gain global market dominance.
In its analysis of the clean technology market, the Mercury's rhetoric is grand and its data convincing. The first part of the series begins:
"Cleantech is poised to be the valley's third great wave of innovation -- not just the next big thing, but perhaps the biggest thing ever. Confronting the peril of greenhouse gases and climate change happens to be a multi-trillion-dollar business opportunity."
The numbers provided support this claim: U.S. yearly utility bills exceed $1 trillion annually and the global energy and transportation market is estimated at $7 trillion. The wind and solar industries -- valued at $80 billion in 2008 -- are projected to triple in 10 years and employ 2.6 million people. Smart-grid technology, according to Morgan Stanley, will grow to $100 billion by 2030 and Cisco Systems believes smart-grid communications infrastructure could be worth $20 billion in the next 5 years.
Jesse Jenkins joined ABC's Diane Sawyer on "The Conversation" via Skype today, to discuss clean technology competitiveness in the United States. In the interview, Jenkins emphasized the findings of the Breakthrough Institute/ITIF report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," explaining to Ms. Sawyer that a national strategy for clean tech competitiveness -- something China, Japan, and South Korea all have -- is the primary limiting factor for the U.S. in its effort to keep pace with rising clean tech tigers, as well as the E.U.
Making clean energy cheaper than coal through investments in game-changing innovation is the critical path to a low-carbon energy future, according to Bill Weihl, Google's "Green Energy Czar" and a Breakthrough Institute Senior Fellow. In today's New York Times Green Inc blog, Weihl answers a few questions about what it's like to be on the frontlines of the push for clean energy.
As a consumer of large quantities of energy -- used to run its ever growing data centers -- Google has a personal stake in the business of energy politics. It also has vast sums of revenue from its sponsored ad business, and the kind of creative culture that urges its engineers to think beyond the short-term, profit-centric model that too-often paralyzes large corporations.
Q: Google is obviously best-known as an Internet company. Why is Google involved with alternative energy in the first place?
A: I'd say there are two reasons. One is that we use a moderate amount of energy ourselves: we have a lot of servers, and we have 22,000 employees around the world with office buildings that consume a lot of energy. So we use energy and we care about the cost of that, we care about the environmental impact of it, and we care about the reliability of it. The other reason is that, starting with the founders and filtering down to many of our employees, people care about environmental issues.
$10.5 Trillion by 2030: the Number that Should be at the Heart of Copenhagen Climate Talks
Forget 80% by 2050 and 450ppm. Stop fixating on emissions reduction targets and timetables. As UN climate negotiations begin today in Copenhagen, there is only one number that deserves the world's attention: $10.5 trillion. That is the scale of shared investment that the International Energy Agency says is necessary over the next two decades to bring about a clean energy revolution and enable the global community to meet its climate goals. For years, climate activists and government leaders have continued to obsess about emissions reduction targets, while paying short shrift to the critical clean technology investments that we will need to get us there. If Copenhagen doesn't get us closer to closing the massive clean technology investment gap, it will have failed the global community.
Forget 80% by 2050 and 450ppm. Stop fixating on emissions reduction targets and timetables. As UN climate talks kick off in Copenhagen, Denmark, if you want a number to focus the world's attention on, try this one: $10.5 trillion.
That's the scale of additional investment required between now and 2030 to put the world's energy system on a lower-carbon path, according to the world energy watchdog, the International Energy Agency.
Without measurable progress that dramatically increases global investments in clean energy, we can forget stabilizing global temperatures or atmospheric carbon dioxide at any level. And as the IEA makes clear, the world's governments must lead the way in making massive public investments to rapidly develop and deploy an array of clean energy technologies capable of sustainably and affordably powering the planet.
So for those following the progress in Copenhagen, keep that sense of scale -- $10.5 trillion -- and just one phrase on your mind: Show me the money!
Enough With the Targets and Timetables
In the days leading up to the UN climate summit beginning today in Copenhagen, the focus has been on pronouncements from world leaders establishing various national targets to reduce or curb the growth of the carbon dioxide emissions principally driving global warming.
In July of this year, the world's 17 largest economies declared support for "an aspirational global goal" to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050. Then, the world watched in recent weeks as first the United States, then China and most recently Brazil and India put their emissions pledges on the table. Each would cut their emissions some amount by some date, with the developed countries outlining targets for absolute cuts to CO2 emissions and most developing countries, including China and India, announcing reductions in the carbon intensity of their economies (aka CO2 per GDP).
Nature: Technology-Led Policy Needed for Climate Success in Copenhagen and Beyond
A recent Nature article by Breakthrough Senior Fellow Christopher Green and co-author Isabel Galiana explains why a technology-led policy is the best way to achieve climate stabilization and transition to a future fueled by clean energy technology.
"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."
Foreign Manufacturers Compete for U.S. High-Speed Rail Cash
European and Asian high-speed rail manufacturers are courting U.S. government officials in hopes of securing contracts for some of the $8 billion dollars of federal stimulus funds ear-marked for domestic high-speed rail (HSR) projects. Notably absent from the list of companies vying for the cash are American companies. Without the development of a domestic high-speed rail manufacturing base, much of the HSR technology and expertise will continue to come from overseas, with many of the new jobs being created overseas as well.
European and Asian high-speed rail manufacturers are courting U.S. government officials in hopes of securing contracts for some of the $8 billion dollars of federal stimulus funds ear-marked for domestic high-speed rail (HSR) projects.
According to Greenwire, foreign manufacturers are hosting country visits for federal and state government officials to see their high-speed train technologies, as well as dropping not-so-subtle hints that they will build new domestic manufacturing facilities, or expand existing ones, if they are awarded contracts.
States are also feverishly competing for federal funds. According to NPR, forty states and the District of Columbia have already filed applications requesting more than $100 billion for high-speed rail projects. The most ambitious project is a proposed $40 billion, 800-mile HSR network in California spanning from Sacramento to San Diego. Although the Federal Railroad Administration has yet to award any of the $8 billion in government funds to any state or project, companies from Germany, France, Canada, Japan, and China are hoping that early efforts to charm government officials will pay off down the road.
Notably absent from those promoting their HSR technologies are American companies. That's because the United States ceded international leadership in the transportation technology in the 1960s, when Japan became the first nation to construct a national high-speed rail network.
"Attaining the 2 degree goal in the United States with existing technology will likely be very expensive. Doing so in the developing world with existing expensive technology is likely to be impossible. ...
While an emissions price is an absolute requirement for an efficient regulatory framework, it is likely not the sole requirement. Due to some imperfections in any market economy, price signals may be dampened or be short circuited. This is particularly true in the market for research and development, where it is well known that firms have incentives to under-invest in research and development (R&D) due to the fact they cannot capture all the returns to R&D--some of those returns spill over to others in the market that did not invest as much. In this case, the emissions price cannot fully motivate the R&D market and therefore a well-designed regulatory program will contain a role for government funding of R&D. ...
In addition to the economic rational for government support of R&D, there is a political case to be made. Spurring R&D and demonstration and deployment of financially risky technology investments may require an emissions price that is not politically viable (that is, it is too high to be politically acceptable). In this case, absent the market imperfections above, the price is simply too low to generate the needed investments and government must step in to support the required levels of from R&D and demonstration and deployment."
-Ray Kopp, Senior Fellow at Resources for the Future, in testimony before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Dec. 2, 2009.
Benchmarking clean-tech competitiveness: A new report by the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation provides the first comprehensive analysis of competitive positions among the U.S. and key Asian challengers in the global clean energy race.
The report examines the competitive position of each nation in core clean energy technologies, including solar, wind, and nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, advanced vehicles and batteries, and high-speed rail, as well as the government strategies each nation hopes will strengthen its position in the global clean technology sector. The report also offers recommendations for U.S. federal policymakers for regaining U.S. competitiveness.
EVENT: Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Major New Report on US vs. Asian Competitiveness in Clean Energy Technology
A new report by the Breakthrough Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," is the first to thoroughly benchmark clean energy competitiveness in four nations: China, Japan, South Korea and the United States. Join Breakthrough and ITIF principal staff in DC on Wed, November 18th @ 10:30AM for the release of this new report and a discussion of the reports findings.
A new report by the Breakthrough Institute and the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," is the first to thoroughly benchmark clean energy competitiveness in four nations: China, Japan, South Korea and the United States.
Developing better and cheaper clean energy technologies will be central to addressing climate change, securing U.S. energy independence, and creating new clean energy jobs. Increasingly, nations are seeking to gain competitive advantage in this rapidly growing, high-technology sector and the stakes for the United States are significant: will the United States largely be an importer of these clean technologies and lose the jobs related to them, or can America emerge as a global leader, driving exports and high-wage jobs?
The report analyzes clean energy investments and public policy support for research and innovation, manufacturing, and domestic demand, with a particular focus on six key technologies: wind, solar, nuclear, carbon capture and storage, hybrid and electric vehicles and advanced batteries, and high-speed rail.
Please join the Breakthrough Institute and ITIF for a discussion of the report's findings at a briefing hosted by the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on November 18th, 2009.
EVENT DETAILS
Date: Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Time: 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Location: Washington, D.C. - Senate Energy Committee Room, Dirksen Senate Office Building (SD-366)
Moderator and Presenter
Robert Atkinson (bio)
President, The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
I've also included the boost in FY2009 Department of Energy (DOE) R&D budgets provided by the economic stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. As Google's Dan Reicher warned the Senate on Wednesday: when these temporary stimulus funds dry up, the U.S. could fall of a "funding cliff" unless significantly larger allocations are made for clean energy R&D in Congressional legislation.
KPFA Radio: Former Sen. John Warner and Breakthrough's Jenkins Talk Climate Bill
Senator Warner, a rare Republican champion of climate action, found common ground with Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins on the need for much greater investment in clean energy technology in final Congressional climate legislation. Is this the sign of a possible bipartisan consensus on clean energy R&D funding?
Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins joined former Senator John Warner of Virginia on the KPFA Morning Show today to discuss Senate climate and energy legislation, the focus of hearings this week in the the Environment and Public Works Committee. (listen to the full interview below)
Senator Warner, a rare Republican champion of climate action, was the co-sponsor of the 2007 Lieberman-Warner "Climate Security Act." He retired in 2008 after thirty years in the Senate but remains an active advocate of Congressional climate legislation, and is working to convince his reluctant Republican former colleagues to embrace the climate and energy legislation authored by Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA).
Jenkins was honored to join the discussion with Senator Warner (who's spent more time in the Senate than Jenkins has on this warming planet). He was also pleased to find consensus with the veteran Republican on the need for final Senate climate legislation to include much greater investments to ensure U.S. innovators, entrepreneurs and businesses invent and commercialize clean energy technologies here in America.
Agreeing with the strong consensus of energy innovation experts, the former Senator said that the current Kerry-Boxer bill invested too little in clean energy R&D and did not provide enough proactive support for American firms commercializing, manufacturing and installing clean energy technologies, but he noted that final legislation is still taking shape. Hopefully his common-sense attitude on clean energy innovation and technology investment will prevail on Senate Republicans, who so far have resorted to threatening to boycott hearings on the Kerry-Boxer bill, rather than work constructively to ensure the bill includes more funding for American innovators and clean energy firms.
Senator Warner, the long-time Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former Secretary of the Navy, also highlighted the need to avert climate change in order to mitigate future conflicts and humanitarian crises that would sap the resources of the U.S. military. For more on the Senator's views on climate legislation, you can read his testimony before the Environment and Public Works Committee on earlier this week here.
Listen to the full interview here or using the player below. The segment starts at 1:08:00 into the Morning Show.
$15 billion. That is the figure at the heart of a growing consensus of energy innovation experts, all calling for dramatically larger U.S. investment in clean energy research and development. Writing at theEnergyCollective.com, Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins highlights mounting calls to address what Google Director of Climate Change and Energy Dan Reicher called "a serious energy R&D short-fall" in the current House and Senate climate bills. As Congress debates energy and climate change legislation, a chorus of voices including policy think tanks such as the Brookings Institution, Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute, as well as a collection of both the nation's top research universities and dozens of Nobel-prize winning scientists have joined leading businesses like Google to converge on a $15 billion increase in annual U.S. energy R&D budgets as a critical component of any final legislation.
Kerry-Boxer Climate Bill Allowance Allocation Breakdown
Like its House sibling, the Senate's Kerry-Boxer climate bill allocates the vast majority (64%) of the tens of billions annually in emissions allowances created by the bill's cap and trade program to shield energy consumers and industry from the impacts of carbon prices. Just 13% of the value of allowances in the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" are invested in clean energy technologies.
Late Friday night, Senator Barbara Boxer's Environment and Public Works Committee released a new draft of the Kerry-Boxer "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act" (S.1733), the first version of the legislation to detail how emissions allowances created by the bill will be divvied up. These allowances, which give polluters the right to emit greenhouse gases under the bill's cap and trade program, will be worth nearly a trillion dollars over the first ten years of the program alone.
Breakthrough Institute staff worked over the weekend to dig through the new legislation and get an accurate picture of the allowance allocation pie [see summary tables and graphics below and click here to download a comprehensive spreadsheet(*also in xls format) of allowance allocations in both Kerry-Boxer and the House Waxman-Markey/ACES bill. Note: updated after initial posting to convert EPA forecasts to 2009 constant dollars. Hat tip to Jason at 1Sky for catch].
Depending on the value of emissions allowances under the cap and trade program, an average of roughly $70 billion to $126 billion in emissions allowances will be created and distributed on each year under the first ten years of the bill's cap and trade program, 2012-2021.
Of that value, by far the largest share, roughly 64% of the total allowances, will be distributed for free to shield energy consumers and industry from the higher energy prices driven by the establishment of a price on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases under a cap and trade system. This includes both direct rebates to end consumers and low-income energy assistance, as well as free allocations to electric and natural gas utilities (aka "distribution companies"), which they are directed to use "on behalf of" their customers. It also includes direct transfers of billions of dollars in free allowances to various industries, ranging from the relatively defensible (11.3% of allowances to heavy industries vulnerable to international competition), to the pretty indefensible, (e.g. a windfall-profit generating allocation of over 3% of the allowances -- worth at least $2 billion annually -- to the "merchant" operators of conventional coal plants).
By contrast, only about 13% of the value of allowances will be invested in various clean energy technologies, including incentives for the deployment of carbon capture and storage technology (aka CCS, given 2.2% of permits on average each year), federal, state and local government funds to incentivize renewable energy and energy efficiency (6.4%), and investments in advanced clean vehicle technologies (1.7%).
Just 1.9% of the allowances are dedicated to critical clean energy research and development (R&D) efforts, which amounts to an investment of just about $1.4 billion annually under EPA-projected allowance prices (in 2009 constant dollars).
Overall, the "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act's" investments in clean energy technologies will total under $9.5 billion per year under allowance prices projected by the EPA.
Friday Factoids: So You Want To Spur a Clean Energy Revolution?
In summary: CO2 price from cap and trade = effective clean energy subsidy of $8-15/MWh. Current PTC is worth $20/MWh. Solar incentives typically top $400-500/MWh. Stimulus bill driving big investments with cash grant worth 30% of clean energy project costs. How again is the House-passed cap and trade program going to spur a clean energy revolution?
As President Obama challenges the U.S. to lead in the global clean energy race today, here's a quick comparison of methods that can drive clean energy deployment. Which do you think will be more effective...
Average CO2 prices under the cap and trade system that would be implemented by the House-passed Waxman-Markey bill are expected to be roughly $15 per ton average through 2020.
Ignoring for a moment free allocations that could undermine these permits, that will raise the price of coal-fired power plants and natural gas fired power plants against which clean energy must compete by roughly $15 per MWh and $8 per MWh respectively. A typical coal plant emits roughly 1 ton CO2 per MWh and a natural gas plant emits about 40% less.
The production tax credit that has driven the rapid expansion of the wind industry (when it isn't expiring every other year...) drives down the cost of wind power by roughly $20 per MWh.
Feed-in tariffs responsible for rapid growth of the solar industry in Germany lower the net cost of solar power by over 50 cents per kilowatt-hour,or $500 per MWh. In the U.S., an investment tax credit nocks off a full 30% of the cost of solar projects and state-level incentives offer even greater support in big solar states like California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The value of solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) supplied to solar energy generators in New Jersey has averaged well above $400 per MWh over the last few years.
This year and next, new wind, solar and other renewable energy projects can enjoy a cash grant in lieu of these tax credits worth 30% of the total cost of the projects, funded through the stimulus bill. That incentive is expected to drive up to $10 billion in grants supporting over $33 billion in clean energy projects.
In summary: CO2 price from cap and trade = effective clean energy subsidy of $8-15/MWh. Current PTC is worth $20/MWh. Solar incentives typically top $400-500/MWh. Stimulus bill driving big investments with cash grant worth 30% of clean energy project costs. How again is the House-passed cap and trade program going to spur a clean energy revolution?
Click to enlarge
*All figures in this post are approximate and meant for comparison purposes only.
National Institutes of Energy Needed to Fill Energy R&D Gap
While biomedical research receives nearly $60 billion in private investment and $30 billion in public investment through the National Institutes of Health, investment in energy R&D leaves a huge innovation gap. Private sector spending is less than $3 billion annually with the government contributing just $5 billion per year more. A National Institutes of Energy and massive increase in federal clean energy spending is needed to fill the energy innovation gap and jumpstart a clean energy revolution.
Friday factoids time: The U.S. biomedical and pharmaceutical industry invests between 10-20 percent of revenues in R&D and new product development, spending $58.8b on R&D in 2007. The U.S. government adds an additional $30 billion per year investment in biomedical R&D through the National Institutes of Health.
In contrast, the U.S. energy sector invests well below $3 billion annually in R&D in an industry with well over a trillion dollars in annual revenue. The energy sector's R&D spending as a percent of revenues - call that figure the industry's innovation intensity - is just 0.23%. That compares to a national average innovation intensity across all industries of 2.6%, or ten-times greater than the energy-sector's innovation intensity. And it pale sin comparison with the innovation intensity of leading technology and innovation-intensive sectors including biomedical technology (10-20%), information technology (10-15%), and semiconductors (16%).
This downright paltry private-sector energy innovation spending leaves a massive energy innovation gap that the U.S. government barely begins to fill, investing only about $5 billion annually in energy R&D. That's barely more than half the levels spent on public research to pursue clean and affordable energy alternatives during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The scale and urgency of our national energy challenges have clearly grown since then, yet the national commitment to energy innovation has moved in the wrong direction. Public R&D spending on health care ($30b) and defense ($80b) signal the scale of true national innovation priorities and begs the question: when will the U.S. get serious about investments in clean energy innovation? When we do, a new National Institutes of Energy and a major increase in federal energy R&D investments are needed to fill the energy innovation gap and spur a clean energy revolution.
Only Technology Policy, Not More Targets and Timetables, Can Save Copenhagen
With just weeks to go until climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger weigh-in on the Washington Post's Planet Panel to explain why technology policy, not timetables and targets, will lead to a global agreement in Copenhagen
"Copenhagen climate talks are in trouble," say Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger in their new piece for the Washington Post's "Planet Panel", and the solution is to desert "unenforceable emissions targets and timetables," in favor of a new framework built on "technology investment, innovation, and deployment."
You can read an excerpt from the piece below or access the full article here.
Here's the problem in a nutshell. The world will roughly double its consumption of energy by 2050. Reducing emissions by half of today's levels before then will require inventing and deploying low-carbon sources of power that are far cheaper than today's alternatives. That's because no nation will implement pollution controls that raise the price of fossil fuel energy by very much -- certainly not enough for clean power sources to become cost-competitive.
Just as no government will make fossil fuels as expensive as today's low-carbon power sources, no private investors will make the large (multi-billion) investments needed to accelerate energy technology innovation. Only governments can do this. Happily, they have a long track record supporting private sector innovation through R&D and procurement. Examples include agricultural crops, radios, jet airplanes, microchips, computers, the Internet, solar panels, wind turbines, nuclear plants and pharmaceutical drugs.
A new treaty focused on technology investment, innovation, and deployment should include rather than exclude China and other large developing nations. China is already poised to massively out-spend -- and out-compete -- the U.S. in investments in everything from solar panels to nuclear reactors to electric cars.
No treaty can work that is against the economic self-interest of nations. Economic development through new technology has the potential to bring them together. After World War II, the European Coal and Steel Partnership did just that. Through coal and steel the continent was rebuilt, in part with U.S. investments. That partnership was so successful that it is today simply known as the European Union.
It is the creation of the EU -- not national air pollution laws -- that should be the basis for a new agreement in Copenhagen.
Clean Energy Centers Growing Worldwide, Not in U.S.
Clean energy technology hubs seem to be sprouting up all over the globe - except in the United States - and business leaders are pointing to massive public investment as the missing link preventing the U.S. from leading the clean energy race
Clean energy technology hubs are rapidly developing all over the world, except in the United States. Business leaders who met at the Reuters Global Climate and Alternative Energy Summit acknowledged that massive government investment has created vibrant clean energy markets in countries around the world, but unfortunately the U.S. has not taken part in this trend. As The Business Insider reports, Google Green Energy Czar, Bill Weihl noted:
"Other countries, China being one of the major examples, are investing very heavily in this space across the whole innovation pipeline...from shower to power, from the idea in the shower to generating the power (in a) commercial scale enterprise."
Just yesterday, the China Greentech Initiative released a report describing how large-scale government investment is driving a clean energy market that could be worth upwards of US$1 trillion annually.
While China is home to some of the fastest growing clean energy centers, particular in the solar industry, Denmark, Japan, South Korea, India, North Africa, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi are all directly investing in creating domestic clean energy hubs.
A National Institutes of Energy: The Clean Energy Revolution Needs R&D
On September 17, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will hold an event where they will discuss the findings of a new BTI/Third Way paper calling for an increase in investment in clean energy R&D and the creation of a new National Institutes of Energy in order to create a clean and prosperous energy economy.
The Breakthrough Institute and Third Way have prepared a new report detailing how the United States can jumpstart a clean energy revolution through investing in research and development and creating a National Institutes of Energy (akin to the NIH) to spur the development of innovative clean energy technologies.
Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) will be holding a forum detailing the findings of Third Way and the Breakthrough Institute's new paper and describing how a focused program of innovation will help make promising clean energy technologies a reality and create a clean and prosperous energy economy.
Please see the event details below. We hope you can join us for this exciting event!
Event:
A National Institutes of Energy: The Clean Energy Revolution Needs R&D
Date:
Thursday, September 17th
Time:
10:00 - 11:00 am
Coffee will be served
Location:
Dirksen Senate Office Building
SD-G-11
Washington, DC 20002
Please RSVP to rsvp@thirdway.org and indicate this event or reply to this email If you have any questions, please contact Jen Pengelly at 202-775-3768 ext. 214 or jpengelly@thirdway.org.
ABOUT THIRD WAY: Third Way is the leading think tank of the moderate wing of the progressive movement. We work with elected officials, candidates, and advocates to develop and advance the next generation of moderate policy ideas. For more information about Third Way please visit www.thirdway.org.
ABOUT THE BREAKTHROUGH INSTITUTE: The Breakthrough Institute is one of America's leading think tanks developing climate and energy policy solutions. Since 2002 Breakthrough has been a pioneering advocate of an innovation-centered approach to the nation's energy and climate challenges, calling for major federal investments to make clean and low-carbon energy technologies cheap and abundant, strengthen America's economic competitiveness and energy security, and slow global warming. For more information, please visit www.thebreakthrough.org
"Slime" Could Be Latest Weapon in Climate Fight Arsenal
A recent report, released by geo-engineering experts at the UK's Institution of Mechanical Engineering, highlights the viability of geo-engineered technologies, such as algae coated buildings, as a stop-gap solution for rising carbon emissions and imminent climate change
No - this is not an obscure Ghostbusters reference. According to the Financial Times, geo-engineering experts at the UK-based Institution of Mechanical Engineering (IME) have deemed "slime-covered buildings", along with artificial trees and reflective buildings, viable options for removing carbon from the atmosphere.
Although "slime" is a slightly hyperbolic reference to strips of carbon-consuming algae, a recent report by IME says the substance can be installed via bio-reactors on building walls to absorb carbon from the air. Before it decomposes (and really gets slimy) the algae is collected and either decarbonized or reprocessed as fuel. While "slime" carbon capture is still in the planning stages, it is an extremely attractive geo-engineering option because its waste could be used as a biofuel and it would require no additional land to deploy.
The report, entitled "Geo-engineering: Giving us Time to Act," is intended to advance acceptance of geo-engineering as a potential climate change mitigator and proposes a 75-100 year roadmap for countering climate that includes geo-engineering as part, not all, of the solution. According to the IME:
Geo-engineering is not an encompassing solution to global warming. It is however, another potential component in our approach to climate change that could prove the world with extra time to decarbonise the global economy, a task which has yet to begin in earnest.
Much of the resistance to geo-engineering innovations - such as faux-trees that capture carbon more effectively than the real thing - is based on the fear that these technologies will replace clean energy technology as the preferred solution to reducing carbon intensity. The report emphasizes, however, that geo-engineering is not the so-called silver bullet solution, it's a stop-gap measure that will help manage the world's carbon overstock while clean energy is being developed and deployed.
US Must Not Blow Its Chance as Foreign Investments Bring Wind Jobs Ashore
Thanks to US stimulus funding to nurture strong domestic clean energy markets, European wind giant Vestas is bringing money and jobs into the US as it opens more factories within American borders. But the US must follow the stimulus with sustained, substantial investments in clean tech development and deployment in order to avoid losing future foreign investments--and manufacturing jobs--to China.
It's strange to hear of "insourcing"--the transfer of manufacturing jobs into the United States instead of out--but that's exactly what's happening with Denmark's wind giant Vestas, according to a New York Times article yesterday.
According to the report, a combination of global recession and domestic stimulus spending on clean energy is adding up to a boon for the American clean energy manufacturing industry.
In Europe, Vestas has seen several nations slow down their rates of added wind capacity, and flagging government support combined with financial difficulties has impeded the construction of new projects. By contrast, the United States built 8,500 megawatts of wind capacity in 2008 to Britain's 500, and demand for turbine technology is high. So for opportunities in a more robust wind market, Vestas has begun to look across the Atlantic.
Indian Prime Minister Says India Must Invest in Clean Energy Technology
India's progress on building a domestic clean energy economy through investment represents a strategy that could also serve as a new approach to international climate policy. Unfortunately, Western nations that stall climate negotiations with their insistence on setting carbon caps continue to miss the world's best chance at forging a global agreement.
In New Delhi today, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that India must invest in both new and existing clean energy technologies in order to develop sustainably over the coming decades. This comes as the latest indication of India's progress on building a domestic clean energy economy through investment--a strategy that could also serve as a new approach to international climate policy. Unfortunately, Western nations that stall climate negotiations with their insistence on setting carbon caps continue to miss the world's best chance at forging a global agreement.
New Report Recommends Technology Deployment Targets to Decarbonize Industry
US and EU climate negotiators keep pushing for an international treaty based on hard emissions caps, yet developing nations like China and India keep refusing to adopt them. A report by the Center for Clean Air Policy says it's time for a new framework: achieving direct decarbonization by setting targets for the deployment of clean energy technologies.
Here's the current climate stalemate: While US and EU negotiators keep pushing for an international treaty based on cutting emissions, developing nations like China and India keep refusing to adopt hard emissions caps. But according to a new report by the Center for Clean Air Policy, those emission caps are too hard to measure and monitor in developing nations, anyway. Instead, the report concludes, developing countries should adopt a new approach to increase efficiency in their most energy-intensive industries by setting measurable clean energy technology targets.
Dan Klein of CCAP, a co-author of the report, explained:
"To be able to say we're going to improve our emissions intensity by 5 percent, that's a nice concept. But to be able to actually do that means ... you have the ability to measure industrywide what you're doing now and what you're doing after."
On the other hand, "It's not such a difficult thing to count the number of plants that have a certain technology," Klein said.
UN Climate Chief: Global Community Needs to Invest $300b Annually in Climate Fight
A fair share of the global climate investments called for the UNFCC Secretariat would imply a commitment of $75-99 billion annually from the United States. The Waxman-Markey climate bill leaves us far short of that mark. Will that picture change before the Copenhagen climate negotiations this December?
The global community should be investing $300 billion annually to combat global warming, according to UN climate chief Yvo de Boer (pictured). De Boer, the Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention of Climate Change, says the world needs to be spending $100 billion annually to help vulnerable communities adapt to the impacts of climate change, and another $200 billion each year to shift the global energy mix away from fossil fuels.
"The world will need a phenomenal amount of money to change its energy supply from fossil fuels to cleaner sources and to adapt to climate change," de Boer said Friday.
Recently, Senator Sherrod Brown refused to accept a climate bill that would simply send both emissions and U.S. manufacturing jobs overseas - inaccurately earning him a label as a "threat" to the passage of federal energy and climate legislation. This week, the Ohio Democrat formally introduced legislation to strengthen America's efforts to both cut emissions and build a prosperous clean energy economy: the Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technology (IMPACT) Act of 2009.
"We can revive American manufacturing through investments in clean energy," Brown said. "This bill will help our manufacturers retool, put our auto suppliers back to work, and produce clean energy technologies."
The bill would create a two-year, $30 billion revolving loan fund to help small and medium-sized American manufacturers to improve the manufacturing process and increase their production of clean energy parts and systems. The IMPACT Act would also directly invest $1.5 billion over five years to help guide manufacturers into clean energy markets and streamline their implementation of new manufacturing technologies and methods through the Manufacturing Extension Program, a division of the Department of Commerce's National Institute of Standards and Technology.
In a recent speech at Harvard, energy secretary Steven Chu again supported an agenda to make the US a leading clean energy innovator. But Congress continues to reject strategic policies that would make this a reality.
In a speech yesterday at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, energy secretary Steven Chu again repeated his declaration that nothing less than a technological "revolution" is necessary to meet America's energy challenge and to ensure the US position as a leading global economic power.
Speaking alongside Congressman Ed Markey, Chu told his audience that future US prosperity depends upon widely deploying renewable energy, developing carbon capture and storage capabilities, and increasing energy efficiency--but most importantly, it depends upon becoming a leading innovator in clean energy technologies.
Chu minced no words when he described this critical juncture for the US in the
global clean energy industry:
"We're faced with the following choices: We can become the leader of a new industrial revolution and lay the foundation of our future economic prosperity ... or we can hope the price of oil will go back to $30 a barrel, deny climate change is happening and let other countries take the lead in energy innovation."
Two new studies published last month -- one by the Office of Tony Blair and the Climate Group, the other by the Global Climate Network and Center for American Progress (CAP) -- strongly advocate a climate policy strategy based on direct government investment in energy technology development and deployment.
The studies independently reach conclusions similar to the Breakthrough Institute's and are yet another indication of "The Emerging Climate Consensus," which recognizes the limits of carbon pricing and advocates major increases in federal funding to deploy low-carbon energy technologies and drive down their costs through direct public investment in RD&D (research, development, and demonstration), deployment, and supporting infrastructure.
"Governments should adopt a strategic top-down approach to ensure that critical technologies arrive on time and provide investment in disruptive options to allow radical transformation in the future... The reality is that carbon pricing does not address many other market failures along the innovation chain."
The study argues that direct public support is crucial to develop and deploy new technologies: "Market failures along the innovation chain require public spending to drive technologies down their cost curve to a point where the carbon price can take over and accelerate their deployment." Echoing the Breakthrough Institute, International Energy Agency, and Energy Secretary Steven Chu (and defying critics like Joseph Romm), the report once again concludes that energy technologies must undergo major developments to meet emission reduction targets:
"Although we have the technologies we need through to 2020, new technologies -- many available but not yet commercially proven -- will be needed to meet the more challenging long-term goals. Therefore, at the same time as we deploy existing solutions, we must invest in future options."
Despite President Obama's call for an energy revolution, it is up to Congress to provide funding. The Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-e) made a recent call for research proposals into "high-risk, high-payoff transformational energy-related R&D," for projects that "(1) translate scientific discoveries and cutting-edge inventions into technological innovations and (2) accelerate transformational technological advances in areas that industry by itself is not likely to undertake because of high technical or financial risk."
Over 3,500 research teams submitted proposals for a slice of the available $150 million. As a result, over 98% of applicants we "discouraged" from submitting a full application.
Sure, some of the applications were "undoubtedly unrealistic, fundamentally flawed, written in crayon, or the like," as Andrew Revkin aptly noted at Dot Earth. But with 98% of all proposals rejected, there's got to be another explanation for the high rejection rate as well. Surely at least 5%, 10%, maybe even one third of these proposals are worth further consideration. Remember: this round of project proposals was simply to get into the next round of consideration where ARPA-e program managers would being the real project grant selection process. No, the reason so many proposals were rejected has more to do with the fact that there is simply not nearly enough money to fund all the good, potentially game-changing clean energy ideas out there.
This problem is not unique to this ARPA-e or this round of research proposals. It is a chronic symptom of this country's (under)commitment to clean energy.
Revkin: Will Obama Invest $150 Billion in R&D Alone?
President Obama has repeatedly promised America $150 billion in clean energy spending over ten years--but, if and when that money materializes, what precisely has it been promised for?
In a post
today on DotEarth, Andy Revkin raises an excellent question: President Obama
has repeatedly promised America $150 billion in clean energy spending over ten
years--but, if and when that money materializes, what precisely has it been
promised for?
As Breakthrough has observed,
the language of Obama's promise has varied over time. During the campaign,
he pledged $150 billion to help "build a clean energy future." At that point,
Obama suggested the money would go toward a variety of green improvements
ranging from development and deployment to new grid and infrastructure.
But as Revkin notes, the White House web site
now states more narrowly that the Obama administration will: "Invest $150 billion over 10 years in energy research
and development to transition to a clean
energy economy."
Breakthrough Institute believes the clean energy race demands a vigorous federal investment of at least $30-50 billion per year in clean energy. In contrast, Romm ardently supports weaker legislation that would invest just $10 billion per year, less than one quarter of China's planned investments. That may be acceptable to Joe Romm -- but it is no way to win the clean energy race.
Romm asserted that our op-ed "attacks" President Obama and Democratic leaders, when in fact it calls on Congress to support Obama's RE-ENERGYSE energy education program
and urges greater public investment in clean energy to compete with
Asian challengers. Yet Romm never mentioned the central focus of the
op-ed -- RE-ENERGYSE and our efforts to rally support behind it,
including a recent sign-on letter with over 100 organizations
-- and instead criticized us for what he called "willfully misleading
nonsense" about Asian countries' planned investments in clean energy.
Romm also criticized us for asserting that Congress must strengthen
the Waxman-Markey bill with greater investments in clean energy to
compete with Asian challengers and accelerate our transition to a clean
energy economy. Why? Because Romm apparently believes the Waxman-Markey
proposal -- which would invest only $10 billion per year in clean
energy and energy efficiency, less than 0.1% of U.S GDP -- is sufficient to win the clean energy
race. It is not.
"Waxman-Markey would complete America's transition to a clean energy economy, which started with the stimulus bill," reads the title of a prominently featured post
on Romm's website, a claim he has repeated multiple times.
"Waxman-Markey would generate more clean energy action than any piece
of legislation passed by any country in the history of the world!" exclaimed Romm in another recent post as part of his consistent and ongoing cheer-leading for the legislation.
With China, South Korea and Japan all moving aggressively to corner the burgeoning global clean energy market, Asian competitors may dominate the clean energy sector if Congress doesn't act now to strengthen the Waxman-Markey bill with much larger investments in our own clean energy economy and fully support President Obama's energy education initiative, Norris and Jenkins argue.
Monday's op-ed comes one year after Breakthrough proposed a similar National Energy Education Act, calling for an effort on par with the original National Defense Education Act of 1958, which invested billions each year to train and empower the young generation that won the space race and invented the technologies that catapulted the U.S. and the world into the Information Age.
Breakthrough Institute is planning to release a full report on the USA-Asia clean energy race within the next few weeks, so stay tuned.
As President Obama put it in his Congressional address in February:
"We know the country that harnesses the power of clean, renewable energy will lead the 21st century. And yet it is China that has launched the largest effort in history to make their economy energy efficient... New plug-in hybrids roll off our assembly lines, but they will run on batteries made in Korea. Well I do not accept a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow take root beyond our borders -- and I know you don't either. It is time for America to lead again."
President Obama is right. However, as Norris and Jenkins warn in today's op ed:
"If America does not take immediate action to bridge its energy education gap - and if we fail to make substantially larger investments in our own clean-energy economy - we will effectively cede the clean-energy race to Asia. A decade from now, we may still find the burgeoning clean-energy economy promised by Obama and Democratic leaders. It will simply be headquartered in China."
You can read the extended version of the op ed below...
A recent study at NYU's Stern School of Business analyzes the returns on government energy R&D investments and comes to the conclusion that geothermal and wind power could, for a relatively low price, become cheaper than fossil fuel electricity in a matter of years.
The study used a well-known method of analyzing technology cycles that predicts learning curves for emerging technologies. This "S-curve" heuristic guesses that the performance of new technologies, plotted against effort (i.e. total money invested) is shaped like an S.
Early in the life of the technology, improvements are gradual as the basic properties are worked out and an effective design is formed. Next comes a period of rapid growth as the now-stable technology captures "process innovations" and economies of scale. Finally, the rate of improvement slows as the technology becomes mature and improvements become hampered by the dominant structure of the technology and its industry - until the potential emergence of a new competing technology with its own S-curve.
Although such an analysis makes some major simplifications, these S-curve cycles are well-documented throughout history in technologies as diverse as disk drives, steam engines, semiconductors, and automobiles (to name a few).
With the S-curve model in hand, the authors of the report sought to determine the curves of some major alternative energy technologies in order to project how much investment is necessary to reduce the their marginal costs.
RE-ENERGYSE, a program aimed at 'REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge', was given $7 million by the House appropriations bill and $0 by the Senate Appropriations Committee, embarrassingly shy of $115 million requested in the President's FY2010 budget. The proposal was sent back to the DOE with a request to distinguish between current and potential future programmatic efforts (according to ScienceInsider). In other words, it was rejected.
Revkin asked the White House about the funding cut and Kenneth Baer at the Office of Management and Budget sent him this reply:
"The appropriations process is ongoing, and we look forward to working with Congress to make sure there is the needed funding to prepare our students for the jobs of the growing clean energy sector."
The sign-on letter will hopefully boost the Administration's efforts, as it summarizes the clear need for new energy education funding and demonstrates a broad constituency in supportive of such a program.
The Japanese government is embarking on a national mission to make solar energy as cheap as conventional sources of energy in real, unsubsidized terms.
Motivated in part by its loss of dominance in the solar energy
industry, Japan has recently announced a new national project for the
widespread deployment of solar PV technologies in order to drive the
price of solar energy toward that of conventional energy sources. In
short, Japan plans to make solar energy cheap.
In a speech laying out the his strategy for Japan to lead the world
in a "low carbon revolution", Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso announced
his vision for Japan to be "the number one solar power in the world."
He also recognized that the principle barrier to widespread adoption of
solar energy was its high price:
How do we become number one in the world in terms of solar power generation? In order to achieve this, we must put an end to the following vicious cycle: costs are high because of lack of demand, and demand remains stagnant due to high costs. Above all else, I think a strong political will to create 'demand through policies,' is necessary.
In order to cut this vicious cycle, Japan has proposed to make solar energy cheap through a combination of energy innovation and government policies to spur demand-a straightforward and effective approach to drive both economies of scale and potentially transformative innovation. Prime Minister Aso has set a goal of increasing installed solar capacity by 20 times its current level by 2020, and 40 times by 2030.
PRESS RELEASE: Over 100 Groups Urge Congress to Support Obama's Energy Education Initiative
A group of over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups joined the Breakthrough Institute yesterday in submitting a letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully support the Obama administration's RE-ENERGYSE initiative.
PRESS CONTACT:
Jesse Jenkins (510-550-8930 x465 or 503-333-1737)
jesse@thebreakthrough.org
Teryn Norris (510-550-8930 x464 or 510-593-3716)
teryn@thebreakthrough.org
A group of over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups joined the Breakthrough Institute Tuesday in submitting a letter urging the U.S. Senate to fully support the Obama administration's national energy education initiative. The initiative, named "RE-ENERGYSE" (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), would produce thousands of highly-skilled U.S. energy workers and develop new energy education programs at American universities and K-12 schools.
The Senate is poised to reject the proposal in its FY2010 Energy and Water Development Appropriations bill by cutting the RE-ENERGYSE program's funding to $0 from the $115 million requested in President Obama's FY2010 budget. Mr. Obama announced the initiative in a speech to the National Academy of Sciences in April, stating, "The nation that leads the world in 21st century clean energy will be the nation that leads in the 21st century global economy... [RE-ENERGYSE] will prepare a generation of Americans to meet this generational challenge."
According to the Department of Energy, the program would develop between 5,000 and 8,500 highly educated scientists, engineers, and other professionals to enter the clean energy field by 2015, which would rise to 10,000 -17,000 professionals by 2020. The Technical Training and K-12 Education subprogram would create between 200 to 300 community college and other training programs to prepare thousands of technically skilled workers for clean energy jobs.
The letter, which was distributed to every Senate office on Tuesday, urged lawmakers to fund RE-ENERGYSE at the full $115 million request. "America is in danger of losing its global competitiveness and the [global] clean energy race without substantial new investments in STEM education," wrote the signatories, which included 53 colleges and universities and dozens of student and youth groups. "RE-ENERGYSE... will train America's future energy workforce, accelerate our transition to a prosperous clean energy economy, and ensure that we lead the world's burgeoning clean technology industries."
40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing - Lessons for the Clean Energy Race
The 40th anniversary of the US moon landing highlights lessons for the emerging clean energy race. While there are key similarities and differences between the space race of the Cold War era and clean energy race of today, one thing is certain: the need for vigorous and sustained public investment to drive dramatic technological innovation.
This week marks the 40th anniversary of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, the event which made the US the first and only nation to accomplish one of the greatest technological feats in human history. While space-race aficionados will argue that US-Soviet competition continued beyond the 1969 moon landing, for the layperson, Armstrong's 'small step' marked the end of the space race.
In 2009, the United States faces a new global competition, one that will have far greater implications for the future of our nation and the world: the clean energy race
The dual challenges of climate change and increased economic competitiveness are driving nations to develop new energy technologies that harness earth's abundant renewable resources. This technology is increasingly viewed as central to our economic fortunes with renewable energy and other clean technologies poised to be the next big growth sector. On several occasions President Obama has acknowledged that:
'The nation that leads the world in creating new sources of clean energy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy.'
We've heard calls for a New Apollo project for renewable energy before, and I will not discuss the merits of such a scheme here. Instead, on this historic anniversary, I will compare the space race of the Cold War era and the clean energy race of today--both similarities and differences are apparent, and both offer insights into America's current standing in today's clean energy race.
President Obama has repeatedly pledged $150 billion to clean energy research and development, but with just $1 billion per year in R&D funding, the Waxman-Markey bill falls far short. Will Obama listen to 34 Nobel laureates urging him to keep his promise?
With this week's letter urging Obama to ensure "stable support" for a Clean Energy Technology Fund in the climate bill currently before the Senate, America's top scientists and energy experts signaled that the scientific community will hold Obama to his promise of investing $150 billion in clean energy research and development.
The names on the letter represent a virtual who's who of the upper echelons of the American scientific community, led by former Federation of American Scientists Board Chairman Burton Richter. Its supporters include Dan Reicher, director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, former special assistant to the Energy Secretary during the Clinton administration, and a former candidate for Energy Secretary under Obama.
These science and energy experts are insisting that the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) be strengthened from its current form, which would invest just one-fifteenth of the $15 billion per year Obama pledges for clean energy R&D in his current policy plans. "This is a serious deficiency," the letter warns.
Washington Post: Asia's Clean Tech Tigers Surging Ahead in Clean Energy Race
As Congress debates climate and energy legislation, Asia is moving rapidly to win the clean energy race. So warns a new article in the Washington Post that should serve as a wake-up call to America's leadership at the highest level.
Despite Obama's intentions to increase America's international competitiveness, the article reports that the amount and scale of investments in renewable energy programs coupled with ambitious renewable energy use targets are putting these Asian nations on pace to surpass programs set forth by both the U.S. economic stimulus package and the American Clean Energy and Security Act, the massive climate and energy bill recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives.
Citing Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins, the article warns:
"If the Waxman-Markey climate bill is the United States' entry into the clean energy race, we'll be left in the dust by Asia's clean-tech tigers," said Jesse Jenkins, director of energy and climate policy at the Breakthrough Institute, an Oakland, Calif.-based think tank that favors massive government spending to address global warming.
On the road to Copenhagen, international climate negotiations remain plagued by the same (intractable?) challenges they have faced for decades. Will negotiators and nations find a new framework that can break old impasses and pave the way for global cooperation before it's too late?
By Johanna Peace, Devon Swezey, and Leigh Ewbank, Breakthrough Fellows
It's official: India won't accept binding caps on its emissions of greenhouse gases. Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh made the case clear last Thursday:
"India will not accept any emission-reduction target--period," Ramesh said. "This is a non-negotiable stand."
India's announcement is the latest frustrating news for those following the efforts of climate negotiators as they struggle to eke out an international agreement by this December's UN summit in Copenhagen. It's frustrating because the fundamental dissonance between what developed countries demand and what developing countries are willing to give appears to be the single most intractable roadblock standing in the way of a successful treaty. In fact, this very problem has impeded progress on international climate negotiations for decades.
South Korea to Invest $85 billion in Green New Deal
Building on the $30b down payment made in their stimulus, South Korea plans to surge ahead in the clean energy race with a $85 billion, five year public investment in clean energy technology and innovation.
This week, South Korea has upped the ante for green public investment as it continues to make swift progress toward becoming a clean-tech economy. Already, a staggering 80% of South Korea's $38 billion stimulus package has been earmarked for green investments.
And today, the South Korean government announced that it will invest $85 billion more over 5 years to encourage the growth of green industries and technologies. That's more than doubling South Korea's recent promise to invest $40 billion over five years in a "Green New Deal," and the equivalent of 2% of the East Asian nation's total GDP. If the United States were to invest a comparable share of it's national wealth in clean energy technology, the sum would total over $275 billion annually.
China's massive public investments in wind and other renewable energy technologies are edging the rapidly developing nation into the lead in the global clean energy race.
By mid-July, China will begin construction of a massive wind farm project in the northwestern Gansu province, at a total cost of US $17.6 billion. It will be China's biggest wind power station yet; according to local Development and Reform Commission official Wu Shengxue, it will reach an installed capacity of 20 GW by 2020. Eventually, the wind power capacity of the area is projected to reach 40 GW.
This development is the latest in what has recently been a major push by the Chinese to expand renewable energy use. Soon, Chinese officials are expected to reveal a new renewable energy stimulus plan of US $44-$66 billion per year over ten years, which will focus much of its resources on wind power. Under the plan, China will be on track to reach 100 GW of wind power capacity by 2020--more than eight times its current level.
By contrast, the American Clean Energy and Security Act invests only $6-12 billion per year in clean energy. As for the US "green stimulus," it includes a one-time clean energy spending boost of $112 billion--just half of China's $221 billion stimulus investment in green initiatives. Here's a sense of scale: If US investments in clean energy were on par with the Chinese in terms of percent GDP, we'd be spending $140-210 billion per year.
Brookings Institution: Senate Must Strengthen Clean Energy Funding in ACES
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) needs a major makeover in the Senate to redress its critically insufficient provisions for funding clean energy R&D, according to Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) that passed by a margin of 219-212 in the House on Friday needs a major makeover in the Senate in order to redress its critically insufficient provisions for funding clean energy R&D, according to Mark Muro, policy director at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program.
In a Brookings article criticizing the climate bill, Muro argues:
"While a $20 to $30 billion a year R&D outlay would be optimal, Waxman-Markey would invest just 1.5 percent of the 40-year revenue stream of the cap-and-trade system in the R&D efforts of ARPA-E and the innovation hubs--which comes to just $1.4 billion a year or so at accepted permit price forecasts... The bottom line: Reps. Waxman and Markey did well to install several crucial innovation provisions in the House bill, but the political trades that were required to pass it have left far too little revenue behind for the most crucial use of cap-trade money--investments to catalyze a radically cleaner energy future."
Muro's points reaffirm Breakthrough Institute's analysis, which has shown how ACES invests far more cap and trade revenue in polluting industries and foreign offsets than it does in building new clean energy industries in the U.S.
Muro mentions that some ACES provisions -- such as the funding it would direct toward ARPA-E and the eight regional "Energy Innovation Hubs" it would establish -- constitute a modest start toward the kind of public investment that will promote the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies. Breakthrough Institute, too, has pointed to some of the same provisions as promising -- but only if they are adequately funded.
Climate Bill Analysis Part 16: EPA Projects Fewer Renewables Under Waxman Markey than Business As Usual
Waxman-Markey would reduce the amount of renewable energy deployed in the United States relative to business-as-usual, increase the amount of coal-fired electricity generation relative to 2005 levels, and provide no incentive for a move to cleaner cars, according to a new analysis by the U.S. EPA
The Waxman-Markey climate bill (AKA the American Clean Energy and Security Act) would reduce the amount of renewable energy deployed in the United States relative to business-as-usual, increase the amount of coal-fired electricity generation relative to 2005 levels, and provide no incentive for a move to cleaner cars, according to a new analysis by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
We certainly can't vouch for EPA's methodology or assumptions. However, with EPA's conclusions about the likely cost of the Waxman-Markey bill on U.S. Households and the broader economy being widely cited, the surprising and even counter-intuitive projections that underlie EPA's cost estimates are worth a close look. In this post we dig passed the EPA's executive summary to take a closer look at their modeling and projections.
The climate bill is now poised for a vote on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives as soon as Friday, following a deal struck late yesterday between the bill's champion and Energy Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-MN). Waxman agreed to further concessions to secure the support of agricultural interests and their Congressional champions, including agreeing to strip EPA of primary oversight over the domestic carbon offsets market, giving the US Department of Agriculture jurisdiction over these programs instead, provide additional free allowances for rural electric co-operatives, and place a moratorium on new EPA rules to strengthen the environmental integrity of biofuels like corn ethanol.
According to a new, as-yet-unpublished analysis from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), the combined efficiency and renewable electricity standard (CERES -- formerly RES) in the Waxman-Markey climate legislation will not increase renewable electricity generation and might actually reduce it.
UCS concludes:
"Bottom line: The Waxman-Markey RES does not ensure that any new renewable electricity will be developed beyond the renewables that are already projected to occur under the business as usual forecast by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)."
UCS created a high-deployment and a low-deployment scenario to predict the impact of the CERES provision in Waxman-Markey, as compared to the EIA's business-as-usual (BAU) baseline projections of renewable electricity generation. Under the high-deployment scenario, the Waxman-Markey CERES provision "would lead to slightly more renewable energy to be developed than business as usual" -- but only starting in 2020.
Climate Bill Analysis, Part 10: Smart Provisions Could Spur Clean Technology - If They Are Funded
Effective climate policy must include a proactive strategy to spur clean energy technology development and deployment. The Waxman-Markey climate bill contains several smart provisions that could be key components of an effective clean technology strategy -- but only if they are adequately funded.
Several of the bill's provisions aim to do that, but we conclude that most are currently either completely unfunded or critically underfunded. Here we take a look at three smart provisions in the ACES bill that could be key components of a proactive clean energy technology strategy -- but only if they are adequately funded.
Clean Energy Deployment Administration: this provision would establish a sort of public clean energy bank charged with creating an attractive investment environment for the widespread deployment of a suite of advanced clean energy technologies. Notable for being a deployment policy explicitly dedicated to advancing technology development goals, this provision also enjoys strong bipartisan support on both the House and Senate. However, ACES provides zero funding for this critical component of a proactive clean energy technology strategy. At least $16 billion in initial seed funding should be provided for CEDA, consistent with the Senate version of this provision.
Energy Innovation Institutes: largely consistent with the recommendations of the Brookings Institution, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way and others, ACES establishes new "Clean Energy Innovation Centers" at research universities, national labs and private research facilities, creating new cross-sector and multi-disciplinary hubs for applied research and development on clean energy technologies. However, these energy innovation institutes are critically underfunded, receiving less than $1 billion/year in funding from the bill's cap and trade allowance value. To bring federal energy R&D programs to a scale sufficient to address the urgent energy innovation imperative and address the needs of a $1.5 trillion annual industry, at least $15 billion in new annual funding should be dedicated to energy R&D, with a significant portion of this new funding dedicated to establishing a robust nationwide network of energy innovation institutes.
Carbon Capture and Sequestration Demonstration and Early Deployment Program: financed by a micro-carbon fee on all electricity sold in the United States, this program would dedicate $10 billion over the next ten years to promote the commercialization and large-scale demonstration of carbon capture and sequestration technologies for coal plants and other major point-source emitters of CO2. This program is a good example of the kind of direct public investment necessary to bring down capital and technology risk barriers and accelerate clean technology commercialization. But a much better-funded and technology neutral program that would provide competitively awarded funding for the demonstration of a whole suite of first-of-their-kind clean energy technologies is needed, and would be vastly superior to this technology-specific, industry-managed program.
We delve into each of these programs in more detail after the break...
Jeffrey Sachs Calls for Focus on Clean Tech, Not Emission Reduction Targets
Sachs echoes Breakthrough Institute's call for a new focus on accelerated clean technology development and deployment instead of emission reduction targets.
Jeffrey Sachs, in a recent interview with TreeHugger, echoed Breakthrough Institute's call to focus on accelerating the development and deployment of clean energy technology instead of setting emission reduction targets.
As TreeHugger notes: "Sachs's big point: The debate over cap-and-trade, the clamoring for a carbon tax, and the bickering over greenhouse gas targets are distracting from serious efforts at advancing technological and policy solutions."
Sachs states:
"What I want is more plan that says quantatively how do we achieve our targets. ...
If we say 50 percent by 2020, I want people to know what is a realistic way for that to be achieved. What does it mean in terms of the auto sector, what does it mean in terms of housing, what does it mean in terms of the power sector. ...
Simply setting a target will be setting us up for disappointment. And simply believing that cap-and-trade will be sufficient to accomplish these goals I think is a mistake. When you have major technologies that need to be tested, demonstrated, when you have land use that needs to be changed, when you need to develop a new kind of power grid, those will not be solved by cap-and-trade alone."
Sachs isn't alone, the TreeHugger article notes, citing Breakthrough Institute as one of the key proponents of a public investment-led strategy to spur the development and deployment of clean energy technologies:
He's Not Alone
The idea that technological R&D, not a cap-and-trade or carbon tax system, would be the best solution to lowering greenhouse gas emissions is one that environmental contrarians Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger recently put forward in an article for Yale Environment 360.
Targets mean nothing if we can't get there, and they argue that neither a market nor tax approach to pricing carbon will help us do that. "No government in the world so far has been willing to establish and sustain a high price on carbon," the economists write.
Instead, we need to use public spending to bring down the costs of clean energy technologies, they argue, a tactic that would not only make it easier to achieve lower emissions in the U.S., for instance, but in a developing country like China, where such technologies could be manufactured and tested.
Defending Big Government - Or Why We Can't Leave Energy Innovation to Markets
Although it may make the Wall Street Journal and Fortune magazine writers uncomfortable, the kinds of market failures that plague energy innovation, combined with a clear public imperative for transformative change, is a recipe demanding more active government engagement with innovation and industry, not less.
Marc Gunther, the excellent Fortune magazine and GreenBiz.com writer and fellow blogger at the Energy Collective, published a piece last week skeptical of the Obama Administration's new push to support the commercialization of advanced batteries in the United States and help accelerate the day when efficient plug-in hybrid electric vehicles are rolling off American assembly lines and parked in a driveway near you. At issue is $2.4 billion in new funding made available by the U.S. Department of Energy to support advanced battery commercialization and manufacturing.
Gunther quotes a Wall Street Journal article that shares his skepticism of this new funding, which will (in their words) "annoint" new technological and corporate "winners" -- something the Journal clearly sees as an unnecessary intrusion of government on free markets. Gunther agrees, writing:
"They've got a point, though, don't they? One unhappy result of all the bank bailouts of the fall is that $2.4 billion doesn't seem like much--hey, Citi alone has collected north of $45 billion, last time I checked--but a billion here, a billion there, and you're starting to talk real money. And if electric cars are going to be as big a business as a lot of people think, then why government investment should be needed at all? Particularly since we have a climate change bill making its way through Congress that will, at long last, if all goes well, put a price on carbon emissions--thereby giving low-carbon energy sources what they desperately need, which is a fighting chance to compete with fossil fuels on something resembling a level playing field. I thought the whole idea behind cap-and-trade (which I strongly favor) is to capture the externalized cost of global warming pollutants, and then let the market figure out how best to reduce greenhouse gas emissions: regulation that would have a light touch but a profound impact.
But no--with Waxman-Markey, CAFE standards, biofuels mandates, subsidies for "green jobs" and the like--the administration is giving us a belt and a couple of pairs of suspenders, too. Much as I admire Steven Chu, the energy secretary, do we really want to entrust him and his staff to decide which battery technologies are likely to succeed and which companies can most wisely spend that $2.4 billion?"
And as much as I respect Marc Gunther, I quickly took issue with this pretty classic set of objections to government involvement in technological development. I wrote this response, which Gunther dubbed "Defending Big Government," and was happy to post at his personal blog and at GreenBiz. It has now been syndicated at The Energy Collective and at Reuters as well. Here it is for Breakthrough readers:
Solar Advocacy Group Says Climate Bill Will Fail to Make Solar Energy Cheap
VoteSolar is "skeptical that current versions of either the RES or a carbon cap and trade policy will lead to significant solar deployment" and thinks it will fail to make solar energy cheap and abundant.
The solar energy advocacy organization VoteSolar issued a pretty clear verdict on whether or not the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act will effectively make solar energy cheap and abundant: "The accurate answer is nuanced, but the short answer is no."
Climate Bill Analysis, Part 7: Renewable Electricity Standard Severely Weakened; May Have Little to No Impact
New Breakthrough analysis concludes that the national renewable electricity standard (RES) established by the American Clean Energy and Security Act has been severely weakened since initially proposed; as it now stands, the RES may barely increase U.S. renewable electricity generation compared to business as usual projections.
Advocates of the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454, or "ACES" for short) argue that the bill is far more than just a climate bill. It's a comprehensive piece of clean energy, efficiency and climate legislation, and taken as a whole, they argue, it should be considered transformational -- even if the cap and trade portion of the bill may have been significantly weakened (see Breakthrough's detailed analysis of the ACES cap and trade program here).
The ACES bill does indeed include many provisions to set a new course for our nation's energy policy, including efficiency standards and regulations, authorization for new programs aimed at modernizing the nation's electricity infrastructure and paving the way for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles, and a national renewable electricity standard. Many of these will move America in the right direction.
But the question remains: will ACES really be transformational? And will it propel American quickly away from business as usual and towards the prosperous clean energy economy and dramatic emissions reductions we need?
Here we examine one of the other major provisions of the ACES bill, the national renewable electricity standard (RES) established by Title I of the bill. Unfortunately, our analysis concludes that the RES has been severely weakened since initially proposed in the discussion draft version of the ACES bill; as it now stands, the RES may barely increase U.S. renewable electricity generation compared to business as usual projections.
EIA: World Energy Use Will Rise 44% By 2030; Developing Nations Demand Abundant, Affordable Energy
Driven largely by strong economic growth in developing nations, world energy consumption will grow 44% between 2006 and 2030, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Developing nations will demand cheap, abundant energy. The question remains: will it be clean?
World marketed energy consumption is projected to grow by 44 percent between 2006 and 2030, driven by strong long-term economic growth in the developing nations of the world, according to the reference case projection from the International Energy Outlook 2009 (IEO2009) released today by the Energy Information Administration (EIA).
The current global economic downturn will dampen world energy demand in the near term, as manufacturing and consumer demand for goods and services slows. However, with economic recovery anticipated to begin within the next 12 to 24 months, most nations are expected to see energy consumption growth at rates anticipated prior to the recession. Total world energy use rises from 472 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) in 2006 to 552 quadrillion Btu in 2015 and then to 678 quadrillion Btu in 2030.
As Climate Bill Passes Tough Committee, Why Am I So Worried?
Momentum is now behind a serious effort to address climate change, and that itself is cause for celebration. However, knowing how much is at stake, we must also take a close look at whether or not the bill lives up to its promises. Unfortunately, after spending all last week digging through the 1,000 page ACES bill, I'm left worried, very worried. Find out why...
Late last Thursday night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee voted 33-25 to pass landmark legislation that promises to address our nation's urgent energy challenges and help avert potentially catastrophic climate change. The legislation, known as the American Clean Energy and Security Act (or ACES), also presents an unprecedented opportunity to renew our economy and position the United States at the forefront of a burgeoning global market for clean and affordable energy technology.
Momentum is now behind a serious effort to address climate change, and that itself is cause for celebration. The bill's champion's - notably Henry Waxman, Ed Markey and Jay Inslee and their dogged staff - deserve praise for bringing the bill through some pretty hostile territory in the Energy and Commerce Committee, and for their tireless efforts during the marathon sessions of the past week.
However, knowing how much is at stake, we must also take a close look at whether or not the bill lives up to its promises.
Secretary Chu: Climate Debate May Have "Over-Obssession" With Emissions Targets
Speaking in London, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday that climate policy debates may be "over-obsessed" with emissions reduction targets and timetables, echoing a long-standing Breakthrough Institute argument that we must focus more on effective mechanisms to drive technology transformation, energy modernization and emissions reductions, not haggle over long-term targets.
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Tuesday that the long-standing focus of climate policy on setting precise emissions reductions targets and timetables has led to an "over-obsession" with numbers, according to Reuters.
Reuters reports:
The comment came less than a week after a congressional panel
approved President Barack Obama's landmark draft bill on climate
change [see Breakthrough's analysis of the bill here], bringing it closer to debate in Congress.
"There was a great deal of discussion on the Kyoto targets, and I'm
not really sure which fraction of the countries that took part in that
actually met their targets," Chu, a Nobel laureate for physics, said at
a conference in London. "In terms of the targets, whether it's 17
percent or 20 or 25 percent, I think there's perhaps ... an
over-obsession on these percentages."
The technologies of the Industrial Revolution were invented in Britain because Britain was the only place where it was profitable to adopt them, argues Oxford scholar Robert Allen.
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.
Climate Bill Analysis, Part 2: Clean Energy R&D Investment May Be 30 Times Smaller than President Obama's Budget
Compared to President Obama's promises and the recommendations of a variety of energy experts alike, the ACES climate and clean energy bill's investments in clean energy are an order of magnitude too small.
[Updated 5/22/09: the ACES bill now includes a $10/ton price floor for auctioned pollution permits. The analysis below has been updated to reflect that change in the legislation]
Today, the House Energy and Commerce Committee began markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (ACES). The bill promises to cap and reduce carbon pollution, create clean energy jobs, and spur technology innovation. Unfortunately, as our analysis of the use of carbon pollution allowances in the ACES bill revealed, the bill is on course to invest very little of the hundreds of billions of dollars in value created by the bill's cap-and-trade program over the coming years towards those objectives.
Most of the allowance value (74 percent) created by the ACES cap and trade program is dedicated to blunting the impact of the carbon price established by the program on industries and consumers (and securing the critical swing votes on the committee representing these entrenched energy and industry interests). In contrast, just 12 percent of the allowance value is dedicated to clean energy investments, broadly defined.
At an average allowance price of $10 to $20 dollars per ton of CO2 between 2012-2025, that would amount to clean energy investments of just $6-12 billion per year, and just $490-980 million for clean energy R&D (see our full analysis of the allowance allocations in ACES for more).
President Obama has repeatedly promised to, "Invest $150 billion over ten years in energy research and development to transition to a clean energy economy" (from WhiteHouse.gov). The President's 2010 Budget Outline specifically dedicated $15 billion per year in new revenue generated by a cap and trade program to this purpose. Yet the bill before us, depending on the allowance value it establishes, would invest just one-fifteenth to one-thirtieth of the $15 billion President Obama has pledged -- and specifically requested from Congress. Furthermore, this new energy R&D spending may amount to just a ten percent increase in current federal energy R&D budgets.
Likewise, the total investments in a new clean energy economy, more broadly defined, are an order of magnitude smaller than proposals advanced by the Breakthrough Institute, Apollo Alliance and others have deemed necessary to drive clean energy innovation, create millions of new energy jobs, and jump-start a prosperous, clean energy economy.
Below the fold, you can see how the clean energy investments made by the ACES bill compare with what a range of proposals and current R&D funding levels...
The landmark Waxman-Markey 2009 American Clean Energy and Security Act was introduced in the House this afternoon (May 15, download PDF here), and the Breakthrough Institute has performed a preliminary analysis of how it would invest over $1 trillion in cap and trade revenue between 2012-2025. Our key findings for this period include (all numbers are approximate -- download spreadsheet here):
Polluting industries: 57.3% of allowances would be freely distributed to polluting industries, including 36.7% for the electricity sector, 12.3% for energy-intensive industries, 6.5% for local natural gas distribution companies, and 1.8% for oil refiners
Direct consumer protection: 16.5% of allowances would be used for direct consumer protection , including 15% for low and moderate-income families and 1.5% to benefit users of home heating oil and propane
Energy efficiency and clean energy technology: 12.2% of allowances would be used to fund energy efficiency and clean energy technology development and deployment
Adaptation and technology transfer: 4.7% of allowances would be used for domestic and global climate adaptation and technology transfer
Workforce development: 0.6% of allowances would be used to fund worker assistance and job training
Deficit reduction and other: 8.6% of allowances would be used to fund deficit reduction and other public purposes
How much money would these allocations translate into? That depends on the average price for each pollution allowance. The EPA's initial price estimate was $13-22 per allowance between 2015 and 2020, and has since revised that downward by at least 10% (to $12-20 per allowance) as the bill was weakened and additional offsets were permitted. We will assume here an average price of $15 per allowance. In that case, the allocation would look like this (click images to magnify):
Climate Bill Heading for Markup - Will it Invest in a Clean, Prosperous Energy Economy?
The American Clean Energy and Security Act is poised to give hundreds of billions of dollars in free pollution permits to the entrenched interests of the dirty energy past. Will climate advocates rally to ensure the value of the remaining permits is invested to create a clean, prosperous energy future?
As sweeping climate and clean energy legislation is readied for debate in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, detailsareemerging on the deals and compromises struck between the bill's architects, Congressmen Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Ed Markey (D-MA) and the group of reluctant swing members of the committee who hail largely from states reliant on coal and heavy industry.
The "breakthrough deal" struck between Waxman, Markey and the swing E&C Committee Dems will enable a full subcommittee markup of the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES) beginning Thursday and likely proceeding through next week (markup = votes on a series of amendments on the proposed bill followed vote to pass the bill out of (sub)committee). The deal apparently involves a series of concessions that either incrementally weaken the objectives of the bill or give free greenhouse gas pollution permits to utilities and heavy industry in order to blunt the impact of the proposed cap and trade program on these sectors of the economy.
Cap and Trade Worked for Acid Rain, Why Not for Climate Change?
Two graphics illustrate why pollution regulation like the cap and trade program that reduced acid rain-forming SO2 emissions at coal plants is not a real parallel for the global climate challenge.
One of the most often-repeated assumptions in the climate policy debate is that cap and trade, the preferred mechanism for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, worked for SO2 and acid rain, so it will work for GHGs. Sounds good. Until you take a second to think about the comparison.
Dealing with GHGs is a challenge of an order of magnitude greater scale and complexity. To see why, see the two graphics below:
First, here's a graphical representation of the Acid Rain cap and trade challenge:
Below the fold, you'll see a graphic representation of the global flow of greenhouse gas emissions, the challenge we have to deal with to avert potentially catastrophic climate change...
Bjorn Lomborg Wants to Make Clean Energy Cheap, Doesn't Know How
Bjorn Lomborg wants to make clean energy cheap. Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to understand that making clean energy cheap is about far more than R&D.
Bjorn Lomborg wants to make clean energy cheap. Unfortunately, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It doesn't seem to understand that making clean energy cheap is about much more than R&D.
"I love this thought--it comes from the Breakthrough Institute. Basically, the idea is that everyone seems to be trying to make fossil fuels so expensive that we won't use them. But that's never going to happen. So why don't we try to make green energy so cheap that everyone will want to use it?"
He then argues, "We should spend vastly more on research and development."
Lomborg get's that part right. As we've long argued, today's paltry investments in clean energy R&D -- from both public and private sectors alike -- is woefully inadequate to the energy innovation imperative we face today. With a broad expert consensus making the case and politicians from President Obama to Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) calling for more public investment in clean energy R&D, we seem to be approaching the political 'critical mass' necessary for real change on that front.
But for Lomborg, clean energy R&D is something you do instead of deploying clean energy technology available today, and that's where we part ways with "the Skeptical Environmentalist."
What Lomborg apparently doesn't understand is that efforts to truly "make green energy so cheap that everyone will want to use it" will necessarily involve major direct public investments to spur the rapid deployment of emerging clean energy technologies. Far from something that just occurs in the lab, the innovation process extends well beyond R&D.
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."
President Obama Promises New National Committment to Science and Innovation
The United States will restore its standing as the most innovative nation in the world, President Obama declared at a major speech on science, innovation, and education policy. He pledged an order of magnitude increase in federal energy R&D spending and promised to support a new generation of young scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs as they help overcome pressing innovation challenges, secure the nation's prosperity and restore our economic competitiveness.
The United States will restore its standing as the most innovative nation in the world, President Obama declared at a major speech on science, innovation, and education policy delivered today at the National Academies of Science in Washington D.C.
The President pledged to implement policies that will dramatically ramp up the United States' overall spending (both public and private) on innovation and R&D, bringing it up to three percent of the nation's total economic output (GDP). President Obama also declared that it was his goal to see the nation once again have the highest percentage of college graduates in the world by 2020.
The stimulus bill's $21.5 billion investment in science and technology was the largest investment in R&D in the nation's history, Obama said. He promised that his administration would build on these investments by continuing to expand budgets for key agencies funding science and research (DOE, NSF, NIST), making permanent the federal R&D tax credit to encourage private-sector investment in innovation, and launching a major increase in funding to support the transformative innovation necessary to overcome the nation's energy and climate challenges.
The President's speech was also laden with references to the critical role innovation plays in securing the nation's prosperity and economic competitiveness and said he was committed to expanding science and innovation funding, in spite of (and even because of) the current economic crisis:
"At such a difficult moment, there are those who say we cannot afford to invest in science. That support for research is somehow a luxury at a moment defined by necessities. I fundamentally disagree. Science is more essential for our prosperity, our security, our health, our environment, and our quality of life than it has ever been. And if there was ever a day that reminded us of our shared stake in science and research, it's today.
The Sherrod Brown Test: Finding Consensus on Climate Policy
If we want to pass policies that will truly catapult the United States into a clean and prosperous energy economy, slash global warming pollution, and make clean energy cheap and abundant, we need to pass the "Sherrod Brown Test."
For advocates of immediate and strong climate and clean energy legislation, there's one man we should all be paying close attention to: Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH).
Senator Brown has spoken eloquently on multiple occasions about the power of clean energy technologies to revitalize the hard-hit industrial communities of Ohio and other Heartland states. Just this week, the Ohio Senator penned an op ed in the Capitol Hill paper Roll Call declaring that the time is now to enact strong climate policy:
"If we care about the world in which we live and the generations that will follow us, then we must no longer dismiss the lethal risks global warming poses to our planet. We must craft an aggressive strategy to combat global warming, and we must do it now. ... Inaction is not an option."
Senator Brown is still on the fence, and as the old saying goes, 'the devil is truly in the details:' if the details of climate and clean energy legislation make it something Senator Brown can support and even champion, then there's a decent shot of seeing the remaining swing Senators jump on board, putting 60 votes within reach. On the other hand, if Senator Brown can't support the proposal because he's not convinced it's in the best interests of Ohio or the nation, then kiss hopes of climate action this year good bye.
It's simple: if we want to pass policies that will truly catapult the United States into a clean and prosperous energy economy, slash global warming pollution, and make clean energy cheap and abundant, we need to pass the "Sherrod Brown Test."
We have a post up at Salon today that criticizes cap and trade legislation in the House (Waxman-Markey). We argue that it cannot achieve the clean energy revolution we need. Compromises will no doubt be necessary to pass climate legislation in Congress, but as currently drafted, Waxman-Markey looks like it will make all the wrong compromises, allowing firms to buy dubious and sometimes phony carbon offsets rather than invest in clean energy, giving away billions of pollution allocations to incumbent energy interests for free, and committing a fraction of the funds needed for direct public investments in clean energy research, development, and deployment.
We propose an alternative cap and trade, which would explicitly cap the price of carbon dioxide pollution at roughly $10 per ton, rising over time, would auction all pollution allowances with no free giveaways and no offsetting, and would use the vast majority of the revenues, about $60 billion a year, to fund the accelerated development and deployment of clean energy technologies. We believe that such a solution would more rapidly achieve the technological innovations we need at a lower cost. It is also great politics, given strong public support for government investment in clean energy technology. This is the same position we have held since 2007, when we laid out this basic approach in Break Through and other writings.
Jesse, what exactly is investing public money in deployment of wind farms and PV arrays supposed to accomplish if you do it [along] with a carbon cap/trade? Its one thing to address market failures like a lack of research and transmission, but deploying extra carbon-reduction measures in sectors covered by the cap will not compel emissions reductions beyond what the cap mandates. What am I missing?
Below the fold, you'll find my reply, which articulates three reasons why clean energy investments are critical to climate objectives. We'll leave the part about how investing in a clean and prosperous energy economy is also a politically powerful proposition that strengthens the political appeal of climate policy for another day (check here if you're interested (pdf)).
Waxman: Carbon revenues should "by and large" be invested in clean technology
Congressman Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee says, "by and large," the revenues from climate and clean energy legislation should be reinvested in clean energy technologies; openly critiques President Obama's plan to return 80% of carbon revenues to taxpayers.
Congressman Henry Waxman says, "by and large," the revenues from climate and clean energy legislation should be reinvested in clean energy technologies, Bloomberg News reported Friday.
The statement is a marked improvement over Congressman Waxman's appearance on PBS' Tavis Smiley show last Monday, when he seemed to indicate that the primary driver of clean energy technology innovation and deployment would be the higher prices on dirty fuels set by proposed cap and trade legislation and made little mention of the critical role public investments in clean energy can and must play in accelerating the birth of a clean, prosperous energy economy.
Like Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's prior statements that cap and trade is designed to "pay for some of these investments in energy independence and renewables," Waxman's latest remarks could indicate a growing consensus among House leadership that carbon revenues should be primarily used to spur clean energy technologies and accelerate the transition to a clean, new energy economy.
Congressman Waxman, who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee set to draft climate and clean energy legislation over the coming weeks, was also openly critical of President Obama's proposal to send the bulk of revenues raised from a proposed cap and trade system back to taxpayers in the form of middle class tax cuts. Bloomberg quotes the Congressman as saying:
"I don't think that's the best use of it [carbon revenues]," Waxman said. "By and large" it should be spent on green technologies, he said, and part of it could be used to "help consumers with higher energy costs" and hard-hit industries, "especially coal."
The draft climate and clean energy bill circulated three weeks ago by Congressman Waxman and Congressman Edward Markey (D-MA) (who chairs the subcommittee taking the first crack at the bill beginning this week) made little commitment to the public investments necessary to spur clean energy innovation and accelerate the deployment of clean energy technologies. Waxman's statements last week indicate that commitment may be coming soon, as Markey and Waxman begin the real work of drawing up the climate and energy legislation they hope to send to the House floor by Memorial Day.
National Science Board Calls for New Commitment to Clean Energy Innovation
In a new draft report, the advisory board to the National Science Foundation calls on the government to "develop and lead a nationally coordinated research, development demonstration, deployment, and education (RD3E) strategy to advance a sustainable energy economy."
Much as the Breakthrough Institute has long advocated, the National Science Board calls for a major increase in federal funding to "[s]upport a range of sustainable energy alternatives, their enabling infrastructure, and their effective demonstration and deployment." The report calls for a ramp-up in clean energy "RD3E" activities - research, development, demonstration and deployment as well as education.
While it does not include a specific funding level recommendation, the National Science Board calls on the federal government to "support a national sustainable energy R&D program at a greatly increased and appropriate scale to meet sustainable energy technological and deployment challenges necessary to reduce energy intensity and carbon intensity in a timely manner."
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. Time to get serious about adaptation, geoengineering, air capture and transformational innovation.
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.
Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.
The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change. While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved. A continued focus on an unrealistic 2C rise, which the EU defines as dangerous, could even undermine essential efforts to adapt to inevitable higher temperature rises in the coming decades, they warned.
John Holdren has given his first interview since being confirmed as President Obama's science advisor. In it he suggests that the Obama Administration is ready to consider geoengineering via particulate injection into the upper atmosphere as well as air capture, citing new cost estimates. Here is an excerpt from the AP article:
John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed. One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.
"It's got to be looked at," he said. "We don't have the luxury of taking any approach off the table."
Secretary of Energy Steven Chu says "another myth is that we have all the technology we need to solve the energy problem, it's only a matter of political will."
"So, another myth is that we have all the technology we need to solve the energy problem, it's only a matter of political will. I think political will is absolutely necessary ... but we need new technologies to transform the [energy] landscape."
-Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, speaking (before his nomination) in summer 2008 at the National Clean Energy Summit convened by the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), and the Center for American Progress Action Fund (see video below).
Quote starts at 6 minute and 22 seconds into the video. Chu then goes on the speak about the potential for dramatic and transformational technological developments - aka "breakthroughs" - in energy technologies, including solar photovoltaics and biofuels.
ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm flat out ignores (some might say, denies) a wide body of expert consensus on energy innovation, including the positions of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.
Is it just me, or is ClimateProgress blogger Joseph Romm working hard to marginalize himself as he reinforces an increasingly nonsensical position on energy innovation?
Yet again, Romm has recycled his assertions that no new technological development (beyond very minor improvements to existing technologies) is necessary to tackle the massive global energy and climate challenge. He repeats his efforts to label those who call attention to the scale and urgency of our energy innovation challenge and advocate major investments in energy technology as "climate delayer-equivalents." And Romm does so at the exact same time as he plainly ignores -- one might say, denies -- the wide body of evidence and expert consensus that dramatic innovation to spur both incremental and transformative developments in a whole suite of clean energy technologies is critical if we hope to overcome the climate and energy challenge and preserve a prosperous global society.
Perhaps the most striking indication of how at odds Joe Romm's "breakthrough's are totally irrelevant" position is with expert consensus is this: it directly contradicts the public statements of Secretary of Energy Steven Chu (who Romm lavished praise on when he was selected by Obama).
Soaking Up the Sun: Solar Power in Germany and Japan
Japan and Germany, two somewhat unlikely nations, are now world leaders in solar energy installations and are home to booming domestic solar industries. The secret of their success: sustained public investments in both the development and deployment of solar energy technology. Each nation took a distinct path, and lessons can be learned form both.
A solar array installed along a highway near Freiburg, Germany. Japan and Germany, two somewhat unlikely nations, are now world leaders in solar energy installations and are home to booming domestic solar industries. The secret of their success: sustained public investments in both the development and deployment of solar energy technology. Each nation took a distinct path, and lessons can be learned from both.
Two distinct paths led two very different nations--Germany and Japan--to become global leaders in the production and installation of solar photovoltaic technology. Motivated variously by concerns over security, health, climate change and high energy prices, these nations are now home to robust and growing solar industries and solar panels can be found on hundreds of thousands of rooftops across these nations. However, differences in the public policies employed by each nation led to different results: Germany's solar industry is still dependent on subsidized power production costs, while Japan's investments to drive down the costs of solar energy have successfully created a domestic industry that has been independent of federal subsidies since 2005.
Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained public investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy. Today, a third of all wind turbines produced in the world are made by Danish firms, and wind power provides twenty percent of the nation's electricity.
Wind turbines, like those deployed across Denmark. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained public investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy. Today, a third of all wind turbines produced in the world are made by Danish firms, and wind power provides twenty percent of the nation's electricity.
At the mouth of Copenhagen harbor, twenty giant wind turbines, arranged in a graceful arc, turn in the coastal breeze. This is Middelgrunden, Denmark's first cooperative wind farm and a symbol of that tiny country's impressive wind energy industry. Middelgrunden's turbines, installed in the late 1990s, were designed by Danish engineers, built and installed by Danish technicians, and generate enough electricity to power 40,000 Danish homes. Perhaps most impressively, the project is owned by over 8,500 cooperative members who share the profits of clean energy generation.
Middelgrunden is a result of Denmark's long and successful collaboration between private industry, individual citizens and, most importantly, strong government support. Since 1979, the Danish government, through intelligent, sustained investment, has mobilized the nation in the development of next-generation wind energy, and the results have been impressive. Today, Danish firms account for one third of the global wind power market and have driven the creation of a booming multi-billion dollar industry. In Denmark alone, 6,300 wind turbines pump energy into the regional grid today, providing roughly twenty percent of the nation's electricity. Wind power accounts for some 25,000 Danish jobs, and in 2007, the industry exported 4.7 billion euros worth of energy technology. Without a doubt, government involvement in the wind sector enabled this Danish success story.
Silicon Valley Garage or Government Lab: Personal Computing
The story of the PC is usually a romantic tribute to the unrestrained genius of lone inventors tinkering in garage workshops. Yet history shows that the active support of the federal government, particularly the U.S. military and space programs, was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
An antique Apple II, one of the first commercial personal computers. The story of the PC is usually a romantic tribute to the unrestrained genius of lone inventors tinkering in garage workshops. Yet history shows that the active support of the federal government, particularly the U.S. military and space programs, was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
The legend of the personal computer (PC), as it's normally told, emphasizes individual brilliance and initiative. The origins of today's industry titans like Microsoft and Apple are surrounded by romantic images of college dropouts tinkering away in garage workshops. This story is one of independence, of genius allowed to run free and inventions flourishing in the open market. Of course, the government is conspicuously absent here; as Bill Gates has said, "the amazing thing is that all this happened without any government involvement."
The PC legend may be compelling, but like all legends, it has more to do with fiction than fact. While the role of individual innovators can hardly be understated, the active involvement of the federal government - especially the military - was critical to the rise of Silicon Valley. Indeed, today's personal computer embodies a decades-long collaboration between private innovators and an active government.
