Cross-posted from Roger Pielke Jr.'s Blog

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading "The Carbon Price Paradox" »

Cross-posted from LeadEnergy

Yet again, Thomas Friedman nails the clean energy race and fails on the policy strategy. His op-ed today, "Who's Sleeping Now?" (similar to our recent report, "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant") claims that carbon pricing is the solution to secure U.S. competitiveness in the global clean-tech industry:

"We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China's main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it... It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation."

By calling for the passage of the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA) -- without mentioning a single area for improvement -- Friedman implies it is strong enough to compete with Asia and drive the U.S. transition to clean energy, when in fact the bill would (1) establish a very modest price on carbon due to numerous cost-containment mechanisms like international offsets; (2) invest an order of magnitude less in clean energy technology development than a large and ever-growing number of experts say is necessary -- including dozens of Nobel Laureates, America's top research universities, Google, Brookings Institution, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, military veterans, and others; and (3) establish a renewable electricity standard that would not ensure any increase in U.S. renewable energy deployment beyond already conservative business-as-usual projections (see here for comprehensive analysis of ACESA).

That may be acceptable to Thomas Friedman, but it is no way for the United States to lead the clean energy industry. For more on this ongoing debate, see my recent response to Friedman, "Earth to Thomas Friedman: Winning the 'Earth Race' Requires Federal Investment."

Cross-posted from Americans for Energy Leadership

In a major departure from conventional climate wisdom, Thomas Friedman argues in today's New York Times that the UNFCCC framework is broken and should be replaced by a global competition in the clean-tech industry, which he says the United States can and should lead. "Let the Earth Race begin," he declares, contrasting this with the long-dominant "Earth Day" strategy:

"This Copenhagen climate summit was based on the Earth Day strategy. It was not very impressive. This conference produced a series of limited, conditional, messy compromises, which it is not at all clear will get us any closer to mitigating climate change at the speed and scale we need...

Today, we need the Earth Race: who can be the first to invent the most clean technologies so men and women can live safely here on Earth... An Earth Race led by America -- built on markets, economic competition, national self-interest and strategic advantage -- is a much more self-sustaining way to reduce carbon emissions than a festival of voluntary, nonbinding commitments at a U.N. conference."

Friedman is right. The race to develop competitive clean-tech industries is the critical element with the potential to motivate enough development and deployment of clean technologies - far more than any potential "legally-binding" global emissions treaty, as we've seen with the failure of the Kyoto Protocol and the inability of the UNFCCC framework to produce a meaningful treaty at Copenhagen. The International Energy Agency estimates that $10.5 trillion of global investment in clean technology and energy efficiency is necessary over the next 20 years to stay below 450ppm - an unimaginable sum under any UNFCCC treaty.

Continue reading "Earth to Thomas Friedman: Winning the "Earth Race" Requires Federal Investment" »

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

December 12, 2010: Note that this report has been updated and released as "Where Good Technologies Come From, Case Studies in American Innovation."

In a report released in 2009, the Breakthrough Institute illuminates the stories behind the invention and diffusion of ten technologies that are everyday facets of our modern lives and offers a new look at government involvement in technological development.

The conventional wisdom on climate change -- from Thomas Friedman to the country's largest environmental organizations -- is that cap and trade regulation and carbon pricing is the best way to promote clean energy innovation. However, a growing number of experts, including Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, are challenging this assumption, recognizing the importance of direct, large-scale public investment to achieve developments in clean energy technology. The outcome of this debate and the correct emphasis on public investment and regulation may determine the course of U.S. and global climate policy.

Case Studies in American Innovation presents ten case studies showing that public investment and active government support has been one of the greatest forces behind the nation's technology development and economic growth. Indeed, public investment in the U.S. was largely responsible for railroads, airplanes, microchips, personal computers, and the birth of the Internet -- all of which drove long-term economic development. This evidence not only challenges conventional wisdom on climate policy, but also on national economic policy, which has been dominated for three decades by neoclassical economists.

Full Report: Download Here (PDF)

Excerpts from the report on our blog:

• Introduction to Case Studies in American Innovation
• From Kitty Hawk to Boeing Field: the Aviation Industry
• The Semiconductor Revolution: Microchips
• Silicon Valley Garage or Government Lab: Personal Computing
• Inheriting the Wind: Danish Wind Power
• Soaking Up the Sun: Solar Power in Germany and Japan

Continue reading "REPORT: Case Studies in American Innovation" »

Republicans deftly succeeded in calling greens and Democrats on their bluff that cap and trade won't cost anything, winning yesterday an 89 to 8 vote on a resolution stating that any climate legislation must not raise gasoline or electricity prices. The Senate vote is timed to coincide with yesterday's release of a climate bill "discussion draft" in the House (more on that bill from the Breakthrough Blog coming soon).

The implications of this vote are that just eight out of 100 senators believe, and have the courage of their convictions, to openly state that fossil fuel prices should rise to deal with climate change. That is to say, there are only eight senators who agree with Thomas Friedman, EDF, NRDC, David Leonhardt, AEI, and all the others who believe that the most important, and perhaps only thing we should do to combat climate change and drive clean energy innovation is to set a price on carbon.

Continue reading "Senate Says No to Pollution Pricing Paradigm" »

Andy Revkin did an incisive piece on the claims around climate tipping points in the Times on Sunday. It was nice to have the antidote to Tom Friedman's apocalyptic column on tipping points just pages away.

In 2006 a retired software executive insisted to me that we had only 10 years to do something dramatic about climate change (because that's what James Hansen had told him). When I gently suggested that 10 years was not a scientific number but rather an arbitrarily political one, the executive accused me of being anti-science. But the funny thing is that in January of this year Hansen told the Guardian that we have only four years left for the U.S. to act -- coincidentally, the same length of time in Obama's first term in office.

The assumption behind all of it is that throwing out these numbers -- four years, 10 years, 350 ppm, etc. -- will provide the public and policy makers with a sense of urgency that global warming as an issue currently lacks. But there's no evidence to back up that assumptions. If any correlation were to be drawn, it would likely be the opposite, that the increasingly apocalyptic tone of those seeking action on climate change has resulted in an increasing number of voters (according to Gallup) who believe that the threat of global warming is being exaggerated.

Continue reading "Are Greens Tipping the Debate Away from what Really Matters?" »

On October 4th, when Congress passed the bailout, they also passed the clean energy production tax credit and investment tax credit (known collectively as the PTC/ITC) as a sweetener to secure the necessary votes for the bailout. This was a boon for the clean energy industry and its advocates, as the credits had been left for dead just weeks previously.

Keith, a Breakthrough Generation intern, wrote about the importance of these tax credits when the bailout passed:

Continue reading "How has the Financial Crisis Affected the Clean Energy Industry?" »

"Finally, if Congress passes another stimulus package, it can't just be another round of $600 checks to go buy flat-screen TVs made in China. It has to also include bridges to somewhere -- targeted investments in scientific research, mass transit, domestic clean-tech manufacturing and energy efficiency that will make us a more productive and innovative society, one with more skills, more competitiveness, more productivity and better infrastructure to lead the next great industrial revolution: E.T. -- energy technology."

-Thomas Friedman

"[L]et's commit right now that any bailout profits will be invested in infrastructure -- smart transmission grids or mass transit -- for a green revolution."

-Thomas Friedman is making sense.

By Adam Solomon Zemel

The biggest new book of the fall is Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution, and How It Can Renew America. Here he is in a nutshell:

America is always at its most powerful and most influential when it is combining innovation and inspiration, wealth-building and dignity-building, the quest for big profits and the tackling of big problems. When we do just one, we are less than the sum of our parts. When we do both, we are greater than the sum of our parts--much greater.

I applaud Friedman's grand, inspiring rhetoric, but am disturbed that he has fallen back on the failed policy agenda of green groups.

Continue reading "Rhetoric and Reality in Friedman's "Hot, Flat and Crowded"" »