Energetics

PV learning curves

2011-11-18T11:02:00.001-08:00

This, from Geoff Styles at Energy Outlook (nice to meet you in person yesterday, Geoff!), is an incredibly important and naively overlooked observation:

The problem is that the industry dynamic behind this trend didn't much resemble the pristine image that the term "experience curve" evokes, of diligent engineers relentlessly focused on continuous improvement. Without diminishing the contribution of a lot of smart people, a key driver was the tough competition for market share between silicon-based PV, which had to overcome a major bottleneck in the supply of its primary raw material, polysilicon--the price for which spiked and subsequently collapsed--and cheaper but less efficient thin-film PV technologies relying on entirely different chemistries such as cadmium telluride and copper, indium, gallium and selenium.

Keystone Round-up

2011-11-11T09:54:00.001-08:00

Yesterday the President announced that his decision on the Keystone XL Pipeline would be delayed until after 2012 (read: the election) and that a more thorough State Department review is called. for. The pipeline would open up Canadian tar sands for import and domestic consumption in the United States. Environmental organizations have been protesting this for months, via high-profile tactics that nonetheless received disproportionately low-profile attention in the media. Some really, really smart people weigh in:

Michael Levi at NYT:

For green groups, the shortest route to blocking fossil fuel development appears to be leveraging local opposition. Many will seek to turn this not only against the Canadian oil sands but against United States oil production and coal exports, too. At the same time, they will find themselves increasingly appealing to the federal government for help in overriding local opposition to wind farms, solar plants, long distance transmission lines and other critical pieces of zero-carbon infrastructure. These two endeavors will conflict.

Levi's point here is insightful. His chief criticism is that in order to block the pipeline and protect the climate, enviros had to triangulate with NIMBYs. The ends may justify the means, but will groups like 350.org and NRDC pay a price in credibility when combatting NIMBYism that just so happens to be targeted at clean energy projects? (See last year's round-up on Cape Wind.)

Levi expanded at his blog at Council of Foreign Relations:

Climate change won’t be addressed by rejecting a series of new projects – an effective approach will require positive change. I’m not referring to the endless debate over whether climate advocates need a “positive” message rather than a “negative” one. I’m just stating a simple fact: those who want serious action on climate change ultimately need to change the laws, and doing that will require sixty votes in the Senate and a majority in the House. Neither anti-Keystone style tactics nor the coalition assembled to oppose the pipeline will make that possible.

Bill McKibben at 350.org was quite celebratory, but I suspect Levi will be disappointed by his reaction:

In the meantime, since federal action will be in abeyance for a long stretch, we need to figure out how best to support our Canadian brothers and sisters, who are effectively battling against proposed pipelines west from the tar sands to the Pacific. And we need to broaden our work to take on all the forms of ‘extreme energy’ now coming to the fore: mountaintop removal coal mining, deepsea oil drilling, fracking for gas and oil. We’ll keep sending you updates; you keep letting us know what we need to do next.

Bryan Walsh weighed in at Time's Ecocentric blog, with a good round-up of coverage and some further cautionary optimism:

If the climate movement is going to make a real difference, it needs to mobilize the same level of popular and political passion towards developing renewable energy, spending more government money on energy research and development and passing climate legislation. This is hardly a secret—there were protests and campaigns for the climate bill in 2009 and 2010, and McKibben's own 350.org campaign is about a lot more than just stopping fossil fuel development. But I've rarely seen the sheer energy towards technocratic policies like cap-and-trade or renewable energy mandates that I've seen when visiting Americans who are vehemently opposed to hydrofracking, for example. Protests and passion may have helped stop the Keystone pipeline, but will it be enough to build a new energy economy?

Geoff Styles has a can't-miss look at the math of breaking our "addiction to oil" at his blog Energy Outlook:

Taking all these considerations into account it's not realistic to imagine that we could break our addiction to oil to any great extent for at least another decade. In the interim, we should certainly pursue all options that could alter the feasibility of such a shift in the years ahead, in a manner consistent with the fiscal constraints we face. I'm also not oblivious to what that implies for greenhouse gas emissions and climate change, though I would point out that our use of oil in transportation is neither the worst emissions offender, nor the easiest high-emitting segment of the US energy economy to tackle in that time frame. In the meantime, we are committed by virtue of scale, infrastructure and fleet requirements to burn many billions of barrels of oil over the next few decades, from wherever they may come. In that light, the administration's decision on the Keystone XL pipeline could prove to be a costly misstep, no matter how much political pressure they were under to withhold approval.

If the #NoKXL victory paves the way towards less carbon infrastructure and more clean energy, sweet. If it paves the way towards uninhibited NIMBYism, then we'll be faced not only with a greater energy challenges but a lamentable shift in our ability as a society to build the future. Even if Keystone is a victory, it represents one victory of many thousands needed to secure a clean energy future. Keep truckin'.

Radical vs. Incremental

2011-11-10T15:18:00.001-08:00

Matt Hourihan at ITIF:

It’s true, incremental innovation can help drive new business models, address integration, and resolve other challenges in areas like solar. But it won’t create a step-change up to next-generation nano-based solar modules, when the current generation of panels hit their performance/cost barriers. Nuclear power plays a big role in the California scenario, but deploying more Generation III reactors won’t cause spent fuel recycling technology to spring forth. There are major limits to existing battery and biofuel technology as well, that won’t be solved by putting more electric vehicles on the road or ramping up production mandates. All of these challenges ultimately require the “radical” kind of innovation. Deployment to drive incremental innovation could have some benefits in some areas, and we should be cognizant of those benefits, but the mileage on these will vary.

Sandolow's Yale speech on innovation

2011-11-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Sandolow of DOE recently gave a speech at Yale on the government's role in technological innovation. He cited three case studies -- the Internet, shale gas, and Google -- whose origins were directed and sustained government investment. He also glossed over other key examples, like GPS and DNA mapping. He could also have mentioned the jet engine, the microchip, the cell phone, biotech, and the personal computer.

It's a speech worth reading in full. According to Sandolow, there are five key reasons why the government does -- and must -- invest in innovative technologies.

Government protects intellectual property, with patents and other tools.
The private sectors under-invests in fundamental research.
Innovation depends on an educated workforce, which is a job for governments.
Market failures stifle innovative technologies.
Government polices and standards can lay strong groundwork for innovation.

There's really no understating #4 on that list. The spillover effect, the Valleys of Death, market externalities, technological lock-in -- all these and more combine to present serious challenges to private sector investors and innovators.

With federal clean energy policy on the verge of collapse, it's encouraging to see Administration officials talking the Big Game -- innovation, cost reductions, and performance improvements. The federal government has and does initiate and drive blockbuster technological advances -- we need it to keep up the good work.

Accelerating rates of technology adoption

2011-10-10T16:48:00.000-07:00

Via Sonia Arrison at Volokh Conspiracy:

New technologies are almost always adopted by the rich first, but over time they eventually reach everyone, and the historical record shows that the distribution of new technology is speeding up, not slowing down.

For instance, it took forty-six years for one-quarter of the population to get electricity and thirty-five years for the telephone to get that far. It took only sixteen years, however, for one-quarter of American households to get a personal computer, thirteen years for a cell phone, and seven years for Internet access. A more vital example may be AIDS drugs which started off costing about $30,000 per patient per year 15 years ago. Now, better drugs are available and cost $100 per patient.

I got into a brief related discussion with @RL_Miller this morning on the diffusion of clean tech in developing countries. Global energy use is expected to at least double by 2050, and 90% of that growth will come from developing economies. The generation sources for that energy will make a bigger impact on emissions and climate than any other factor.

If developing economies are able to "leap-frog" grid-scale coal-fired power and go straight to clean energy generation, then we may avert climate catastrophe. However, that requires cheap and scalable clean tech, which we just don't have yet.

Fortunately, as Ms. Arrison notes, global rates for technological adoption are accelerating. Energy is complicated, of course, because the end-user buys energy services, not energy-generating technologies. But it's still encouraging to know that when a new, useful technology comes around, we're getting better at picking it up.

The iPhone and the Invisible Hand of Government

2011-10-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

This post was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

Following yesterday's announcement of the new iPhone 4S, tech bloggers this morning have been abuzz with the realization that the federal government played a strong role in the new smart phone's innovations. Siri, Apple's new voice-recognition software, is a project straight out of DARPA, the Defense Department's accomplished research agency. The new intelligent programming is just the latest addition to iPhone's many government-backed technology platforms.

Wired blogger Steven Levy tweeted about DOD's hand in Siri's development during the announcement yesterday, news that was quickly picked up by both the Wired national security blog and Adam Clarke Estes of the Atlantic's technology page. As Estes wrote,

Originally a part of the Personal Assistant that Learns (PAL) program from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), Siri started out as SRI International. The technology appealed to the DARPA for making everyday tasks more efficient as much as it did for combat tasks.

Of course, this isn't really groundbreaking news - as was documented in the Breakthrough Institute's 2010 report "Where Good Technologies Come From," the iPhone's major hardware and software innovations were only possible though initial government investment and procurement, often for military purposes.

Cellular technology is a byproduct of early government investment in radiotelephony and communications. The Internet originated out of DARPA-net, a military communications platform developed in the 60s and 70s. GPS was originally created and deployed by the military's NAVSTAR satellite program in the 1980s. The semiconductor and microchip industry would have been dead on arrival if not for the eager early customers at NASA and the Defense Department. Even the iPhone's multitouch technology was developed by researchers at the University of Delaware, a public institution, supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the CIA.

The iPhone is often perceived to be the symbol of private sector ingenuity, a token of entrepreneurial market innovation. It's true that revolutionary engineers and industrial designers at Apple deserve considerable credit for the creation of many blockbuster computing technologies, up to and especially the iPhone 4S. But these discrete technological advances would be wholly impossible without the innovation platforms enabled by direct and sustained government investment.

DOE Releases First Quadrennial Technology Review

2011-09-27T14:47:00.000-07:00

This post was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

Today the Department of Energy released the first Quadrennial Technology Review (QTR), a new report that recommends many of the same investment and competitiveness strategies presented by the Breakthrough Institute. Modeled after the Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review, the QTR was commissioned last year by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology and represents what Energy Secretary Steven Chu calls "the necessary first step of a multi-agency Quadrennial Energy Review that could dramatically improve the integration and effectiveness of the government's energy policy."

The QTR establishes six categories for modernizing and improving our energy portfolio:

Deploy Clean Electricity
Modernize the Grid
Increase Building and Industrial Efficiency
Deploy Alternative Hydrocarbon Fuels
Electrify the Vehicle Fleet
Increase Vehicle Efficiency

These are all sound strategies to address the three broad challenges imposed by our current energy systems: energy insecurity, environmental threats, and international competitiveness. The QTR makes it very clear that the DOE's first imperative for addressing these challenges will be to invest in technology and research:

The Department's core strength is its science and technology efforts, which have led to technology improvements and breakthroughs, and these efforts are the focus of this QTR report.
...
Underpinning that Nation's high-tech economy, both basic scientific and fundamental engineering research increase knowledge of nature and integrate that knowledge in ways directly useful for practical engineering applications. In the course of their work, researchers develop new tools and techniques to discover and measure previously inaccessible physical phenomena.

The goal of achieving technological breakthroughs to deliver clean, affordable, and abundant energy is clear.

The United States energy economy needs more than basic research, however. Fortunately, the QTR does not omit strategies for commercialization, maturation, and deployment of innovative clean energy technologies. As the report clarifies in its section on international competitiveness, "US economic competitiveness is a growing challenge in a world made even more competitive by developing countries striving to create sustainable economic growth and establish themselves as technology leaders."

As such, the report recommends advanced technology policy to address deployment, innovation, and manufacturing. These areas are much in line with the competitiveness strategy outlined in Breakthrough's reports "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" and "Post-Partisan Power," which have shown that the US needs a comprehensive and aggressive competitiveness policy in the face of increasing technology investment from China, Korea, Japan and other nations.

But there are also important elements missing from the QTR. While the report effectively covers the broad energy imperatives facing the United States, specific policies and funding mechanisms are glossed over. A multi-year technology policy from DOE will require flexibility, but some policy instruments will prove essential if the nation is to achieve any of the goals laid out in the report: Increasing federal funding for energy technology R&D, as recommended by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology last fall; creating a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA) to build public-private partnerships and bridge technologies from demonstration to full maturation; and reformed subsidy policies that prioritize innovation over deployment. Alternative and additional policy instruments are available, and including them in these discussions is important for building an ambitious and fruitful policy dialogue.

The QTR is an encouraging step, and as Secretary Chu writes, hopefully one on the road to a comprehensive Quadrennial Energy Review. As was proposed in the American Energy Innovation Council's recent report "Catalyzing American Ingenuity," a QER would "serve as a strategic technology and policy roadmap." The ability of the DOE and other federal agencies to drive substantial innovation and growth is increasingly apparent. Outlining and planning for a unified national energy policy will prove vital as we address economic growth, international competitiveness, and a changing climate.

To read DOE's full report on the Quadrennial Technology Review, click here (PDF).

The Submerged State

2011-09-22T20:00:00.000-07:00

I recently engaged in a discussion with David Zetland, a former economics professor of mine, on the value of public investment in technology (NB: I feel authorized to re-publish his and my comments because they were originally published on his public blog). It's worth noting that his blog, Aguanomics, is spectacular and I enjoy reading it every day.

Compelled by his assertion that the Solyndra case proved government investment is a failure, I pointed out that without government investment in technological innovation, we wouldn't have jet engines, cell phones, the Internet, any major forms of energy generation, and many other game-changing technologies as they exist today. He gave a thorough response, which I will summarize by pulling out this key quote:

Govt shouldn't take my $ to invest. Ever.

The whole exchange is available here. I was left to assume he was unaware of the DARPA investment that made the Internet possible, without which he could not have made that comment on his blog. He also uses Blogger, which is owned and operated by Google, whose founders benefitted from an NSF grant for the creation of their original algorithm. His rebuttal, that since the Defense Department didn't know that the Internet would be the result of their investment, doesn't really hold much water -- he is essentially saying that because they weren't planned, the huge (read: f'ing HUGE) benefits from this particular investment don't count.

What struck me most, however, was not his strange assertion that government should never invest money, but the fact that he seems to be in the majority. There is widespread unawareness of the role of the federal government plays in driving technological innovation and investment, an unawareness that is perhaps a contributing factor in the anger over Solyndra's failure. Several scholars have taken up the job of diagnosing this phenomenon.

In State of Innovation, a recent (an excellent) compilation of case studies, Fred Block and Matthew Keller demonstrate that "for many technologies, it has not been Adam Smith's invisible hand, but the hand of government has proven decisive in their development." They refer to the Hidden Developmental State, finding that "because these programs [DARPA, SBIR, etc.] contradict the market fundamentalist ideology that celebrates private enterprise and denigrates the public sector, they have remained largely unknown to the public." Throughout the rest of their book, Block, Keller, and their colleagues discuss the role of the state in the development of solar technology, biotech, nanotech, and microelectronics.

In a journal article (PDF) for "Perspectives on Politics," Suzanne Mettler discusses the political difficulties in restoring faith in a government polices which most people aren't aware of. "Such policies have shrouded the state's role, making it largely invisible to most ordinary citizens, even beneficiaries of existing policies." She proceeds to walk through a strategy for "reconstituting the Submerged State."

I've already mentioned Mariana Mazzucato's new pamphlet "The Entrepreneurial State" on this blog before, but it's well worth bringing up again. As she writes, "Many of the problems being faced today by the Obama administration are indeed due to the fact that US taxpayers are virtually unaware of how their taxes foster innovation and growth in the USA, and that corporations that have made money from innovations that has been supported by the government are neither returning a significant portion of the profits to the government nor investing in new innovation." Her work is particularly illuminating on the subject of DARPA, the SBIR, the pharmaceutical industry, patents, the and British innovation system (or lack thereof).

QOTD: Plumer on the key energy imperative

2011-09-20T16:30:00.000-07:00

From Brad Plumer at WaPo. Always good to remember the big picture:

The main, glaringly obvious fact about energy is that we need it, lots of it — and, ideally, we want it to be as cheap as possible, as clean as possible and as dependable as possible.

Global Energy Intensity on the Rise

2011-09-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

This post was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute blog.

New analysis from the WorldWatch Institute shows that energy intensity of the global economy has been on the rise for the past two years, reversing a decades-long trend of increasing energy efficiency. As computerized and digital services have paved the way towards technological innovations and the “knowledge economy,” global economic energy intensity has declined an average of 0.8 percent per year since 1981. However, since the economic crisis of 2008, the energy inputs required to produce the same level of economic output has been increasing, by 1.35 percent in 2010 alone.

Basic arithmetic tells us that increasing energy intensity equates to rising carbon emissions as long as carbon intensity of energy remains static. Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr. emphasizes this in his recent book The Climate Fix, in which he employs the “Kaya Identity” to prove his point:

Carbon emissions = GDP per capita x energy intensity x carbon intensity

In order to reduce global emissions, at least one of these variables will have to fall substantially: GDP, population, energy intensity, or carbon intensity. With limits to economic growth and population controls unlikely, and with energy intensity making a sudden rise in recent years, we are left with the imperative to reduce carbon intensity by deploying more clean energy technology.

As the WorldWatch report states, the energy intensity of the global economy is projected to decline in the long-term but continue its upward trend over the next several years. With the majority of economic growth coming from the developing world, where rising energy consumption will likely exploit the cheapest technologies available, it is essential that we bring clean tech to price parity with fossil fuels by investing in innovation.

--
*The Kaya Identity, more precisely:Carbon = [Population x GDP/Population] x [Total Energy Consumption/GDP] x [Carbon/Total Energy Consumption]

New reports on innovation and federal investment

2011-09-16T11:22:00.000-07:00

Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

The last few weeks have been pretty cool, if your definition of cool, like mine, involves a bevy of new reading materials extolling the benefits of public investment in technology innovation. Dig:

New report from the American Energy Innovation Council (already blogged about here and here), featuring the wisdom and research of Bill Gates, John Doerr, Jeff Immelt, and other titans of American industry. The report refutes the notion that deficits require paring back our investments in science and technology, and explicitly calls for increased federal funding for energy innovation as well as the creation of new public-private partnerships to bring clean energy technologies to commercial scale.
A World Resources Institute working paper called "Two Degrees of Innovation" by Letha Tawney, Francisco Almendra, Pablo Torres, and Lutz Weischer. The paper offers background of innovation systems, and suggests policy mechanisms that would fully realize the potential of the innovation engine in the pursuit of a clean energy economy. The report in particular examines the role of global value chains, innovation ecosystems, and policy support. Ms. Tawney and Mr. Torres blogged about the report here.
New report from the OECD called "Fostering Innovation for Green Growth." This new research expresses where the OECD expects innovation to come from (hint: less from a carbon price, more from energy and general scientific R&D). But as is becoming increasingly obvious to those studying the history, more is needed than public investment in R&D; technological innovation requires strategic policies to mature and commercialize emerging technologies, the mechanisms for which will often times be different across a portfolio of technologies.
One of the best reads out there on the history and primacy of innovation, "The Entrepreneurial State" is a new pamphlet out of Demos by Mariana Mazzucato. The guiding notion, thoroughly proven, is that states are not just vital in the fixing and regulating markets, but that governments actively foster and create them all the time. This has proven true in computing, biotechnology, aviation, nuclear energy, and now clean technology.

This is all especially relevant as 1) American federal policy support for clean tech is heading for a crash and 2) the Solyndra story keeps heating the airwaves with critics crying "failure" and "scandal." As the AEIC report points out, the DOE loan guarantee program (the source of the Solyndra loan) is one of the smartest and most successful federal programs in support of clean energy.

With austerity-mania sweeping the nation and federal clean energy programs about to collapse en masse, now is exactly the time to adopt a unified national energy strategy focused on innovation and strategic investment to bring clean tech to commercial scale unsubsidized. As Ms. Mazzucato puts it in "The Entrepreneurial State,"

In a policy environment where the frontiers of the state are now being deliberately rolled back, that process [of innovation] needs more than ever to be understood so that it can be successfully replicated. Otherwise we miss an opportunity to build greater prosperity in the future.

Business Industry Titans Call for Major Federal Investments in Energy Innovation

2011-09-14T17:01:00.000-07:00

By Alex Trembath and Devon Swezey. Originally published at the Breakthrough Institute. Cross-posted at Forbes and the Huffington Post.

Yesterday, the American Energy Innovation Council (AEIC)--composed of industry titans like Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Bank of America Chairman Chad Holliday, and leading venture capitalist John Doerr--released a follow-up to their 2010 report "A Business Plan for America's Energy Future." The new report, "Catalyzing American Ingenuity: The Role of Government in Energy Innovation," doubles down on the Council's earlier calls for increased and sustained public investment in clean energy technology, and offers new ideas about how greater energy innovation investment can be paid for in a new era of fiscal austerity.

In the wake of the high-profile bankruptcy of California solar company Solyndra, government critics are attacking federal investment in clean energy innovation, arguing that such decisions should be left to the "free market." But in their new report, these business leaders and entrepreneurs argue that government investment in energy innovation is key to realizing a clean energy future.

In addition to Gates, Holliday, and Doerr, the AEIC boasts membership from former Lockheed Martin CEO Norm Augustine, Xerox CEO Ursula Burns of Xerox, General Electric CEO Jeff Immelt, and Tim Solso, CEO of Cummins Inc. In the report, these executives highlight the tremendous impact that federal investment has had on technological innovation and economic growth throughout American history:

The federal government has played a central role in catalyzing and driving innovation and technology deployment throughout the history of the United States--often with strong results. This kind of support took a variety of forms. In the 19th century government scientists mapped out natural resource endowments and Army officers surveyed routes for railroads, including helping to plan and sometimes manage their construction. In the early and mid-20th century, programs such as rural electrification and massive public works projects, such as the construction of the Interstate Highway System, enhanced mobility and connectivity and directly or indirectly contributed to the development of new technologies and industries

...government efforts to develop guidance systems for the military played a role in the development of digital computers and microchips. Navy support for aviation technology led directly to Boeing's 707 -- one of the first major commercial jetliners. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) created a distributed network of computers called ARPANET, which laid the early foundation for the internet. The U.S. government played a direct and indispensable role in launching the commercial nuclear power industry.

Indeed, as the Breakthrough Institute has documented in "Where Good Technologies Come From," the federal government has made key investments in most of the technologies we take for granted, including the personal computer, the Internet, the jet engine, GPS, cell phones, the biotechnology industry, and countless blockbuster pharmaceutical advances. Today, as the AEIC report makes clear, such investment is urgently needed to catalyze breakthrough innovation in clean energy technologies in order to make them cheaper, more reliable, and therefore more widely adopted around the world.

Critics tend to ignore this history, claiming that innovation is the solely the domain of the private sector. Following Solyndra's bankruptcy, these critics have insisted that "the government should not play venture capitalist." AEIC member John Doerr, perhaps the nation's most well known venture capitalist, sees things differently. Doerr writes, "America must embrace risks in innovation and invest heavily in R&D to create a full pipeline of good ideas." Echoing what we wrote after Solynda closed its doors, the report recommends that federal energy innovation investment "focus more on overall program success than on individual project success and emphasize the value in calculated risks."

In addition to issuing a robust defense of federal investment in energy innovation, the AEIC report also presents smart suggestions for strengthening some energy technology programs and reforming others. They support the federal energy loan guarantee program (which is under increasing scrutiny after Solyndra's bankruptcy), and call for boosting the budget of ARPA-E, the government's innovative, high-risk energy research agency, to $1 billion annually from around $200 million today. They also support a new Clean Energy Deployment Administration to aid the commercialization of first-of-their-kind innovations and mobilize significant private-sector capital in scaling up advanced energy technologies.

The Council also urges reform of the inefficient process by which the government conducts national energy policy, warning that "uncertain annual appropriations, short-term tax credits, and one-time spending injections are all unsuited to creating the sustained, predictable funding stream needed to bolster the country's innovative infrastructure." Moreover, as Breakthrough wrote recently in the National Journal, many of the federal programs supporting clean energy industries are set to expire in the next few years, which will likely precipitate a crash in the industry.

In order to avoid the perpetual boom-bust cycle in clean energy, the US government must increase the kinds of energy innovation investments outlined in the AEIC report. These investments must be rationalized around driving innovation and cost declines to make clean energy cost-competitive without subsidy.

Given the tight fiscal environment, the Council recommends a number of revenue streams that could fund innovation investment without adding to the budget deficit, including revenues from domestic oil and gas production, redirecting existing energy subsidies for mature industries, or small fees on electricity usage.

Ultimately, however, these leading business executives make a forceful case that America's current "budget dilemma," as they call it, is no reason to delay in boosting funding for energy innovation. "Supporting innovation," they write, "is an investment, not a cost." Indeed, given the country's economic malaise, there is no better time to make growth-enhancing investments that could catalyze a new era of American economic leadership in a key global industry. Critics of government investment in energy innovation would do well to listen to these titans of industry, and to heed their recommendations.To read the full AEIC report, click here (PDF).

QOTD: AEIC on energy innovation

2011-09-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

This from the a new report by the American Energy Innovation Council, comprised of Bill Gates, Jeff Immelt, John Doerr, Norm Augustine, Ursula Burns, Charles O. Holliday, and Tim Solso:

If the U.S. fails to invent new technologies and create new markets and new jobs that will drive the transformation and revitalization of the $5 trillion global energy industry, we will have lost an opportunity to lead in what is arguably the largest and most pervasive technology sector in the world. However, if the U.S. successfully innovates in clean energy, the country stands to reap enormous benefits.

Download the report, "Catalyzing American Ingenuity: The Role of Government in Energy Innovation" (PDF).

UPDATE [2:30pm 9/14/2011]: This from an interview with John Doerr, one of the members of the American Energy Innovation Council (via VentureBeat):

“We shouldn’t kid ourselves about the lone entrepreneur in the garage creating an industry,” he said. “We have this myth that the IT industry got started on its own — no, there was federal funding, just like what we need for clean technology.”

Worth remembering that John Doerr is a partner at Kleiner Perkins, one of the leading venture capital firms in the nation. Also relevant is an article by Mark Muro and Jonathan Rockwell of the Brookings Institution, published yesterday in the New Republic, that compared clean tech to the IT industry.

American Jobs Act

2011-09-12T11:01:00.000-07:00

Much will be said in the coming days of President Obama's American Jobs Act, which in one form or another will very likely be the keystone policy of his re-election campaign. Whether via its victory of defeat, Obama will almost certainly campaign on its proposals and job creation ambitions.

As the National Journal's Amy Harder pointed out during the Presiden't speech, the word "energy" did not appear once in the 4000-word speech Obama gave to a joint session of Congress last week (although his slideshow did include a picture of high-speed rail). This is in contrast to this year's State of the Union, in which he omitted the words "climate change" but hit the energy innovation narrative pretty hard. Indeed, in February the President called for the elimination of federal oil subsidies to pay for a smarter, expanded clean tech policy strategy. Last week, he proposed eliminating those same subsidies in favor of extending tax credits for small businesses.

All was not lost on the energy front, however. As Energy Secretary Steven Chu pointed out on Friday, much of the investment enabled by Obama's proposed National Infrastructure Bank would be directed towards clean energy projects.

The national infrastructure bank would not only put Americans back to work, but continue to build off of the significant strides we’ve made in clean energy sector through our Recovery Act-funded Loan Program, which is set to expire on September 30th. In the past two years, the Loan Program has supported a robust, diverse portfolio of more than 40 projects that plan to employ more than 60,000 Americans and create tens of thousands of indirect jobs.

Here Secretary Chu invokes the DOE Loan Guarantee Program, recently criticized for its 2009 approval of a loan to California solar manufacturer Solyndra, which declared bankruptcy two weeks ago (laying off 1100 workers in the process). Perhaps Solyndra was the reason President Obama did not mention energy in his speech on job creation, but if the goal of a clean energy future is to be realized, policies and institutions with the financing capability of this National Infrastructure Bank will be essential.

Energy ≠ Power

2011-09-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

Bay Area locals may recognize this ad, which I found on BART. I thought it was hilarious, though you may not unless you share my appreciation for energy/power errors in your sense of humor.

I've taken better pictures in my life. The caption reads: "Power from the sun: 400,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilowatts per second." This of course makes no sense, as a kilowatt is a unit of power, which is basically a rate of energy transfer (a watt is 1 Joule per second, and a Joule is a unit of energy).

It is true that a tremendous amount of solar power is intercepted by the Earth, but we need to incorporate context and the appropriate units into our illustrations. In terms of solar power hitting Earth's land mass, the rough number is about 7000 TW, or 7,000,000,000,000 kW. Where these folks got their 4x10¹⁴ kW per second [sic] figure from I have no idea--it's possibly expressing a kWs (kilowatt-second) estimation, a.k.a. the amount of energy produced by a 1-kW power source over 1 second. Or it could by kWh (kilowatt-hours). I have no idea, but either way they're mislabeling their units, probably in the name of including a VERY BIG NUMBER in their illustration.

Without proper units or context, numbers are meaningless. In this case, the number is a lie.

See blogger Lee.org for a similar take on this silly ad.

Solyndra's Failure No Reason to Abandon Federal Energy Innovation Plicy

2011-09-02T18:43:00.000-07:00

This post was originally published at the Breakthrough Institute Blog, and was also picked up by the Forbes online business section.

By Jesse Jenkins, Devon Swezey, and Alex Trembath

Wednesday's news that the California solar cell manufacturer and DOE loan guarantee recipient Solyndra will be declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy has government critics grumbling about clean tech boondoggles and failed government programs. But Solyndra's failure, while unfortunate, is hardly an indictment of federal energy technology policy. Failure is to be expected with emerging, innovative companies, whether they are financed by the government or the private sector. The success of the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program (LGP) should thus be judged not by any one investment but by the performance of the entire portfolio.

Critics have seized on the news of Solyndra's bankruptcy to condemn the Department of Energy's Loan Guarantee Program, which provided a $535 million loan guarantee in 2009. The National Review's Greg Pollowitz writes that Solyndra's failure shows "why the government should not play venture capitalist." Yet the fact is that, when judged by its entire diverse portfolio of investments, the LGP has performed remarkably well. Indeed, with a capitalization of just $4 billion, DOE has committed or closed $37.8 billion in loan guarantees for 36 innovative clean energy projects. The Solyndra case represents less than 2% of total loan commitments made by DOE, and will be easily covered by a capitalization of eight to ten times larger than any ultimate losses expected following the bankruptcy proceedings.

The broad success story of the LGP shows why federal investment in clean energy is necessary to help early-stage clean energy technologies achieve scale and reach commercialization. The inherent uncertainty in investing in novel technologies, coupled with the high capital costs and long time horizons, prohibits most venture capital funds from investing in large-scale clean energy projects. Financing tools and direct investment from the federal government can help bridge this well-known "Commercialization Valley of Death," and the LGP is an effective way of doing that.

Instead of "picking winners and losers," as the program's critics allege, the program actually reduces risk for a suite of innovative clean energy technologies and allows venture capitalists and other private sector investors to invest in the best technology. Rather than picking winners, the LGP enables innovative companies to compete in the marketplace, allowing winners to emerge from competition. And while Solyndra is shutting its doors, companies like SunPower, First Solar, and Brightsource Energy, which also received loan guarantees and other support from the federal government, are industry leading success stories.

With perfect hindsight, it's all too easy to see why Solyndra proved to be a bad bet: the firm's central innovation, a thin film technology that avoided the use of silicon, proved to be far less important when refined silicon prices collapsed after Solyndra's founding; the remaining installation cost advantages provided by the company's cylindrical solar panels proved too small, and Solyndra was unable to capture the manufacturing cost reductions that have helped other U.S. thin film companies, like First Solar, thrive despite low silicon prices. Perhaps most importantly, intense pressure from heavily subsidized Chinese manufacturers is driving a surprisingly competitive solar market, forcing Solyndra to get costs down faster than the start-up firm could achieve.

It is possible that these fatal factors could have been avoided by better vetting from DOE, or that removed from the pressures of a fast-paced stimulus environment, DOE may not have made this bad bet. But to assert, as numerous conservative commentators have been quick to do, that Solyndra's failure is proof positive of the government's supposed inability to "pick winners" is patently absurd. After all, Solyndra received repeated rounds of investment to the tune of $1.1 billion from some of the private sector's biggest stars, including Richard Branson, the WalMart family, and leading venture capital firms like U.S. Venture Partners and RockPort Capital. Venture capitalists and the U.S. government both placed a bet, Solyndra's entrepreneurs took a shot, and unfortunately for all, they missed. Such is to be expected in the high-risk but high-reward world of early-stage technology ventures. In addition, the loan commitment places the government in a senior position in the result of a bankruptcy, ensuring that DOE will get paid out before the VCs and other investors.

Critics who think the government has no place in supporting technology innovation have a tenuous grasp of U.S. economic history. In fact, the government has a long and successful history in helping America's intrepid entrepreneurs succeed in new high-risk, high-reward technology sectors. As we wrote in "Where Good Technologies Come From," the government has played a key role, either as an early investor or a demanding customer, in the development of virtually every advanced technology we take for granted today, from aviation to biotechnology, to computers and the Internet, microchips, and now clean energy. Indeed, without a visionary government investing in key strategic industries, world-leading companies like Google, Genentech and Boeing would not exist.

The United States was able to be the world's technology leader in these fields because of its forward-looking investments, as well as a relative dearth of competition from economic rivals. In today's clean energy market, however, competition is fierce. U.S. companies compete with low-cost Chinese manufacturers who benefit from generous state subsidies and a robust and comprehensive set of policies to encourage solar manufacturing. Indeed, in 2010 the China Development Bank provided more than $30 billion in loans to Chinese solar manufacturers. China's large clean energy investments have helped reduce the price of solar cells by 42% in just the last nine months, which was one factor in Solyndra's inability to compete.

While the United States may not be able to afford the scale of support for clean energy that China can, it can compete by focusing on what it has always done best: innovation. In the solar industry, the long-term goal must be to drive innovation so that solar can be cost-competitive without subsidy. Fortunately, the Department of Energy recognizes this imperative and has embarked on a new effort--the SunShot initiative--geared toward dramatically lowering the cost of solar PV. The SunShot initiative focuses on bringing down costs by pursuing innovations in four particular areas, including solar cell technology, power electronics that optimize the performance of installations, improvements in manufacturing processes, and installation and system design.

The Sunshot initiative and other key technology innovation programs like the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E), embody the kind of smart innovation policy that holds the promise of fundamentally transforming the economy and ushering in a new era of U.S. technology leadership.

In the face of intense competition in the clean energy sector, America faces two choices. We can abandon our entrepreneurs and innovators in this new strategic growth sector, or we can redouble our efforts to invest in energy innovation, support clean energy entrepreneurs and help American firms compete and ultimately prevail in the global clean energy race. If we walk away now, America will lose out on one of the greatest economic opportunities of the 21st century.

Solyndra Round-up

2011-09-02T08:53:00.001-07:00

News that California solar company Solyndra will be declaring Chapter 11 bankruptcy has sent waves through the energy blogosphere, not least because the company was an early recipient of a DOE loan guarantee and because President Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu both touted Solyndra as a success story in US innovation policy.

TIME Magazine's Dan Grunwald: Solyndra’s version did have certain advantages, particularly ease of installation. And according to the Energy Department, the company sold more than 1,000 installations in 20 countries, increasing its sales revenue 2,000% in three years. But they couldn’t keep up with the competition on cost.

Joe Stephens and Carol D. Leonnig at WaPo: GAO auditors fear that similar defaults could happen with other projects, possibly including the other four that it found weren’t properly vetted. The GAO last year uncovered the department’s rush to provide Solyndra its loan — less than 60 days after Chu was sworn in to the fledgling administration — without completing required reviews.

Arno Harris at the Energy Collective: Bottom line, I'm sad to see Solyndra fail and feel immense sympathy for the 1,100 employees who are now out of work. But in the bigger picture, Solyndra's failure underscores just how successful the PV industry has been at cost reduction--and highlights the risks when governments try to pick winners and losers in highly competitive markets.

Slate's Andrew Leonard: So what's really happened here is that half-hearted industrial policy lost out to the real deal. Because if Solyndra's failure is taken as proof that the U.S. government can't pick winners, doesn't that mean that China's success proves the exact opposite?

Mike Traugher at Mercury News: Solyndra also reportedly received more than $1 billion in venture capital over the past five years from firms including Redpoint Ventures and U.S. Venture Partners. Other reported investors included Virgin Group entrepreneur Richard Branson and the Walton family, heirs to the Walmart fortune.

UPDATE (9/6/2011 at 10:05am):

Michael Grunwald at TIME: The operation was successful, but the patient died. Politically, it’s probably an impossible case to make. But that doesn’t mean it’s wrong.

Bloomberg Analysis: Solyndra said it failed because it couldn’t compete with foreign manufacturers funded by their governments. Those factories produced an oversupply of panels at low prices and offered buyers lengthy payment terms. Demand for Solyndra’s panels also fell as European governments reduced incentives for buying solar energy, said W.G. Stover, chief financial officer, in a filing today.

QOTD: Biden on Federal Tech Investment

2011-08-31T09:53:00.000-07:00

Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at yesterday's National Clean Energy Summit in Las Vegas (via National Journal):

Biden equated investing in clean energy as the economy struggles to investing in technology and crucial infrastructure during a war.

“Had we listened to those voices in 1774, private enterprise and the government would not have collaborated to build the rifles with interchangeable parts that we needed to win the Revolutionary War,” Biden said. “If President Lincoln had listened to those voices during the Civil War, he wouldn’t have paid private railroad companies $16,000 for every 40 miles of track on the Transcontinental Railroad they laid down. And if President Eisenhower listened to those voices in ’57, he would never have invested $25 million in a program called ARPA ... which eventually created the Internet.... President Obama and I are not going to listen to those voices, and I hope to God you aren’t, either.”

It's as if he pulled directly from the pages of "Where Good Technologies Come From," a report by my colleagues at the Breakthrough Institute.

National Journal: Surviving the Coming Clean Tech Crash

2011-08-17T14:59:00.000-07:00

This post was co-authored by Jesse Jenkins and originally published at The National Journal in their discussion "How Can Washington Green America's Economy?" Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

Before discussing the best way to green the economy, it’s important to note that the U.S. economy has been greening steadily over the past three years. Buoyed by the policies established and extended by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the largest federal investment in clean tech in American history, the clean energy industry has experienced precipitous growth, as documented by Mark Muro and colleagues at the Brookings Metro program in their recent "Sizing the Clean Economy" report.

Unfortunately, the path of progress may be coming to an end. Our research shows that over 70% of the federal policies and funding support for clean energy that has catalyzed the recent growth of the industry is expected to lapse in the next three years, or has already expired. And make no mistake—clean energy is an industry dependent on government subsidy: tax credits, depreciation and other subsidies compose one third or more of the total after-tax value of most solar, wind or other renewable energy projects, for example. So while ARRA provided a “down payment” on a green economy, as these public investments fade away, we are now more likely to witness a clean tech crash than a clean tech revolution.

As the current programs supporting clean energy, like the Production Tax Credit (PTC) and Section 1603 Treasury Grants, approach their expiration, there are a number of steps the federal government can and must take to avert an impending industry crash.

The first would be to get serious about the long-term energy innovation challenge. Until clean energy becomes cheap and cost competitive without subsidy, the pace of clean energy growth will remain constrained and the markets will face continual risk of industry busts if subsidy and policy support changes. We must treat energy innovation with the same priority we afford other national innovation quests, such as the Apollo or Manhattan Projects or the quest to cure cancer. We must invest far more -- eventually on the order of $15 billion annually -- and far more wisely -- restructuring America's energy innovation system and supporting effective new policy models such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs), and new public-private regional innovation consortia.

Second, Congress can establish a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA). CEDA would act as a public investment bank whose mission is to help leverage private-sector investment to bring emerging, innovative clean technologies to commercial maturity. CEDA would bridge the commercialization “Valley of Death” and provide a viable and predictable development path for technologies from the laboratory to grid-scale deployment. The Congressional Budget Office calculates that the agency would cost just $1.1 billion over the next four years. While leveraging billions more in private sector investment, the public bank would return profits from investments and financial products to the fund, making CEDA self-sustaining over time.

Another needed policy change is to reform the current clean energy deployment subsidy regime for maturing energy technologies, which today is comprised of a hodgepodge of tax credits like the PTC and the Investment Tax Credit, depreciation benefits and grants that primarily incentivize firms to deploy more of the same, current-generation technology. Instead, we need a smarter new deployment mechanism that is disciplined and designed to drive technology innovation to decrease the unsubsidized cost of clean energy so that it can be competitive without perpetual subsidy. Such a policy could augment a national renewable or clean energy standard (RES/CES) with a set of technology tiers based on technology maturity, which would provide the incentive for utilities to adopt and deploy clean energy technologies across a range of maturities, and demand continual cost reductions from technology firms over time. One way to augment this smart deployment policy would be with a small price on carbon, wires fee on electricity, or oil import fee, which instead of returning a dividend to consumers would generate dedicated revenues for a federal energy R&D fund to help support the continual innovation needed to get clean tech costs down to parity with fossil competitors.

The fate of many ARRA policies remains uncertain, and the unpredictable political machinations of the “supercongress” and ongoing deficit debate in Washington bring yet more volatility to the clean tech policy debate. Nobody expects a second down payment on the green economy on the scale of the last several years. But as current subsidy support runs out, Washington must support the industry by investing more and differently in clean energy innovation to maintain America’s position in the global clean tech race and avoid an ongoing cycle of clean tech boom-and-bust in the future.

Why do Malthusians ignore the Sun?

2011-08-16T15:26:00.001-07:00

[UPDATED 6/17 2:50pm] This article at the Energy Collective on "plastic trees" got me thinking about something that doesn't come up too often here at Energetics, though it should: geoengineering. From the article:

The idea employs biomimicry by deploying small-scale units of “trees” to soak up more CO2 than real trees, wherever you might need them. “You can remove CO2 anywhere you want, and it can deal with emissions from anywhere else on the planet,” said Allen Wright, a scientist at the Lenfest Center. “There’s no real major discovery or invention that has to happen that would prevent us from deploying that technology tomorrow.”

I was reminded of Nate Lewis' work at Caltech, where scientists are researching applications for artificial photosynthesis through DoE's Energy Innovation Hub program. This is to say nothing of cloud-seeding, stratospheric sulfur injections, space-based mirrors, or other tricks we might deploy in the future to regulate our climatic effects.

Basically, humans are testing out a diverse array of technologies that will allow us to tap into energetic fluxes with more precision and control than ever before. Instead of (more likely, in addition to) mitigating fossil fuel combustion, we could literally suck the carbon from the atmosphere. Instead of relying on autotrophic photosynthesis to convert solar energy into useful organic matter, we could produce technologies that do so much more efficiently.

In short, the sun is the answer to all our problems. Popular solutions like solar panels, scaled biomass and wind turbines already tap into and tinker around with solar fluxes. Long-sighted research like artificial photosynthesis and plastic trees aim to do the same thing.

Modern-day Malthusians like to play the apocalypse card, noting that the Earth is finite and that economic growth on a bounded planet cannot continue infinitely. They're right. But they're also assuming humans can't expand the boundaries. Humans currently use on the order of 15 TW of power, which is a lot, until you consider the 6000 TW of solar power that hit the Earth's surface (on average). Most of this is refracted back into outer space, with some IR radiation trapped in the atmosphere by greenhouse gases. If we generate all human power with solar energy, we'd go a long way towards increasing resource security and access. If we could increase solar energy generation by just one order of magnitude, we'd really have energy that's too cheap to meter.

Technology has for centuries extended humankind's prosperity and wealth (good examples being the internal combustion engine, artificial nitrogen fixation, telecom and biotech, and the Green Revolution). Malthusians are right in that we live on a planet with bounded natural resources, but they assume that the machines that convert our most abundant fuel source are the most efficient (i.e., that plants are the best way to convert solar energy into useful energy).

We have nowhere near the technological efficiencies, capabilities, or scale to achieve this right now. But as a thought experiment, it's possible from an engineering perspective to imagine a future in which we expand planetary boundaries by improving on nature's energy conversion mechanisms.

UPDATE: My colleague Jeff Kessler forwarded me two pretty awesome articles from UCSD that break down the math on, respectively, energy use growth and economic growth (the first being a historically decent proxy for the second). Those posts are available here and here.

If I may be so bold as to summarize them in a sentence: there are thermodynamic and resource limits to infinite growth in economies and energy use; maintaining pace for 200+ years will result in over-consumption and ecological catastrophe. I don't disagree that the Earth (more appropriately, the solar system) is a bounded system. However, I believe a combination of decoupling, population stabilization, energy generation portfolio diversification and solar concentration, and perhaps inter-planetary colonization (we're talking about centuries from now, remember) can combine to avert ecological over-drafting. In the mean time, we should not worry about these thermodynamic limits and aim for "steady-state" economic coasting, certainly not when we are nowhere near those limits at present and half the world's population lives on less than $2/day. Perhaps when we approach the thermodynamic limits discussed in the UCSD articles, we can begin to discuss the design of a steady state economy. But in the midst of economic crisis and widespread poverty, now is not the time.

Economic growth and technological innovation remain the answers to Malthusianism, if employed timely and appropriately.

Growing Wind Power: Energy Collective Webinar

2011-08-10T11:21:00.001-07:00

I just got off the line from the Growing Wind Power webinar, hosted by The Energy Collective and sponsored by Siemens. It was moderated by Jesse Jenkins, the Director of Energy and Climate Policy and the Breakthrough Institute. The participants were:

Peter Kelly of the American Wind Energy Association
Ellen Crivella of GL Garrad Hassan
Earl Walker of Siemens Energy

More info on the participants is available here. I just wanted to note a few quick things that the panelists brought up about the wind industry.

One, we can get to 20% wind by 2030, as per DOE's goals. Wind electricity supplied about 3% of electricity capacity in the United States last year, but at the pace the industry is currently growing we're on track to exceed 20% within the next twenty years.

Two, our wind needs will be met by a combination of onshore and offshore generation. Offshore has the advantage of accessing often much more bountiful wind resources, and can often be located near dense coastal urban areas. On the downside, it's more expensive -- consensus from the panel was the offshore projects can be twice as expensive as onshore installations. There are also spatial and distribution elements to consider. A considerable amount of the United States lives far from the coasts, and even where good transmission infrastructure is employed, it might make more sense to capitalize on less remote onshore production or other energy technologies**. As such, panelists agreed that the relative contribution of offshore wind production is likely to be less in the United States than in smaller European nations like Spain and Denmark.

Three, there seems to be a love-hate relationship with the Production Tax Credit for wind (PTC) and other tax incentives. On the one hand, the industry (proxy: the panelists) agree that current wind technology and installations cannot survive without the support of federal subsidies. Witness the drop off in wind projects in 2010 before the PTC was extended to 2012. On the other hand, there is ample desire for more diverse pools of cheap capital, and it is understood that if wind energy is going to be a viable element in America's energy portfolio, it needs to beat the grid unsubsidized.

The webinar was a great discussion of the interlocking arenas in the wind industry, from engineering to policy to finance. Check out #TEClive on Twitter for coverage.

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*This discussion reminded me of the ecological concept of edge effects, which is the idea that the larger area an ecosystem occupies, the less vulnerable its area is to invasion on its edges. I suppose the lesson here is that the United States, when viewed as an ecosystem (which it is), is large, diverse, and resilient. That's comforting to me.

Non-Sequitur Friday Rants: Planet of the Apes

2011-08-05T13:50:00.000-07:00

Authors Note: In a new series on Energetics, I will post short weekly Friday rants on topics that have very little to do with energy, mostly out of pure whimsy and/or cultural frustration. Please enjoy :)

The Issue: "The Rise of the Planet of the Apes"

The Rant: Inspired by Bryan Walsh's TIME post this morning "Why the Apes Aren't Going to Rise," I finally put thought to keyboard on my take on the new Planet of the Apes reboot. #SpoilerAlert

I'd just like to point out that, in the original mythology, the process by which apes eventually conquered humans was much more dynamic and feasible.

In the original mythology, a virus wiped out all cats and dogs on the planet and apes were adopted as replacement domesticated pets. Apes, of course, proved more useful than cats and dogs, and gradually evolved into a kind of pet-servant class of animal. Through this developmental force they became more intelligent and verbal, and eventually developed the sentient desire for freedom. Some humans were sympathetic--most were not. An underground revolution among the apes emerged, and a tactical strategy was executed that eventually earned apes the role of dominant species on the earth.

The two things preventing apes from taking over humankind are 1) numbers and 2) intelligence. The new movie deals with the second, coming up with a MacGuffin technology that makes the apes as smart as humans. Walsh points out that the movie ignores the first limitation, i.e. that there's so very few apes.

The original movies dealt with both these limitations. The new movie decided to corrupt a cogent and satisfying mythology without demonstrating a literary usefulness, beyond aesthetic and visual effects, for its re-imaginging

Absurd Energetics: No isolated revolution or "silver bullet" technology will precipitate decarbonization on a global scale, just like a few hundred apes in San Francisco could not possibly #killallhumans.

Book Review: The God Species

2011-08-03T10:42:00.000-07:00

Originally published at The Breakthrough Institute Blog.

"We are as gods and have to get good at it." Mark Lynas quotes Stewart Brand here, using the mantra as a guiding metaphor for his new book The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. Echoing many of the chief criticisms the Breakthrough Institute has levied against traditional environmentalism, the book offers a new perspective on the ecological challenges that civilizations face, one couched in human dignity and prosperity.

Lynas, like Brand before him, identifies the defining characteristic of humankind in the Anthropocene: we exercise god-like influence on biogeochemical cycles, more so than any other species in the 4.3 billion-year history of the planet.

This is not a new concept by any stretch; the idea that the Holocene is over and we now inhabit the Anthropocene has been around for at least a decade, and environmentalists since long before that have been lamenting the dire and destructive invasion humans have executed on natural ecosystems. But what traditional eco-apocalyptic narratives see as hubris, Lynas emotes a certain pride over: we have conquered and colonized the planet in hitherto impossible ways, extracting tremendous prosperity, happiness, and recreation from the bounded resources Earth makes available. Our god-like influence over our surrounding ecosystems does not make us wicked invaders, but masters of our own, and our planet's, destiny.

This is not to say that Lynas is naïve, nor that he fails to recognize the thermodynamic and chemical limits to human activity. Indeed, the bulk of The God Species is dedicated to summary research, noting the many and often frightening ways humans have pushed towards or past the thresholds that, when respected, make Earth the only known livable planet in the Universe. His book is more or less a laundry list of planetary boundaries (the biodiversity boundary; the land use boundary; the nitrogen boundary; etc.).

But Lynas breaks from the template of the typical climate-focused tome: where others stick to recounting the many forms of human hubris and abuse, Lynas regularly notes the accomplishment and potential of human activity. He spends as much time speculating on solutions as he does dissecting the problems. In this way, he really is an optimist and proud member of the human race; he embraces the God Species concept, and asserts that we can use our designing influence intelligently. Lynas:

Central to the standard Green creed is the idea that playing God is dangerous. Hence the reflexive opposition to new technologies from splitting the atom to cloning cattle. My thesis is the reverse: playing God (in the sense of being intelligent designers) at a planetary level is essential if creation is not to be irreparably damaged or even destroyed by humans unwittingly deploying out newfound powers in disastrous ways.

Another dynamic feature of the book is Lynas's stream of tirades against anti-nuclear, anti-GMO, anti-geoengineering environmentalists. According to Lynas, the claim of many of these activists is that these measures to mitigate emissions are their own brand of hubris, and that we should not transition from one global enviro-catastrophe to another. Lynas regularly throws down the gauntlet at the feet of these groups, issuing that "[he] cannot readily accept that accidental planetary management is necessarily better than deliberate planetary management." We are already geoengineering the planet, according to Lynas, by mass interference with land-use patterns, diversion of the hydrological and nitrogen cycles, and the combustion of fossilized carbon. By demonizing our current occupation as geoengineers, we ignore the tools at our disposal for our future benefit. (Pictured: Author Mark Lynas.)

In general, Lynas's rational and optimistic approach to environmental challenges is refreshing and encouraging. His worldview accepts the constraints imposed by modern social-political-economic institutions and cultural beliefs (citing, for example, Roger Pielke Jr.'s "Iron Law" of climate politics). He regrets the high-profile environmental attempts to limit emissions and spread the green gospel, like lights-off "Earth Hour" and government-mandated birth control, which are ineffective, limit human ingenuity and happiness, and act as poor political organizing strategies. In this way, Lynas brings welcome discord to the environmental chorus.

I differed with Lynas in two of his main points. One was his regular insistence that 350 ppm is the necessary goal atmospheric goal for climate stabilization, which seems increasingly impossible. Second was his claim that, contrary to the traditional Green demands for cultural and behavioral changes, decarbonization will be "easier" since it is primarily a technical challenge with technical solutions.

In one sense I agree with Lynas. Green invocation of grassroots campaigns to affect social change, like civil rights or the Carson-era environmental movement, is hardly applicable to a challenge on the scale of global decarbonization. Energy's properties of ubiquity and non-substitutability make any value-centric agenda marginal at best. However, approaching decarbonization as a mostly technical challenge does not make it "easier." While there are parallels in past technological advances (see Breakthrough Report: "Case Studies in American Innovation"), no technical imperative has ever demanded such a full-scale and rapid advance that global climate change demands. The financial and institutional barriers to innovation and deployment are at least as important as the engineering hurtles, and that's after we get past the politics. Lynas's brief suggestions for these are a carbon price and binding international agreements, each of which has mostly lost its fervor in recent years.

As such, Lynas's discussion of a response to climate change is a tremendously valuable thought experiment in the ability of technology to displace and/or capture carbon emissions and promote more efficient and effective resource use. However, his omission of the political, financial, and institutional challenges to decarbonization undercuts his claims that the challenge will be "easier" than is traditionally represented. If anything, it will be more difficult. Indeed, green anti-corporate, anti-growth, anti-innovation rhetoric relies on a well-tested ideology. Alternatively, having never faced a challenge on the scale of climate change, there is no econo-socio-political template into which we can fix an agenda, which would combine capitalism, development, ecological pragmatism, social justice, and all brands of engineering. It will be very difficult to even create such an agenda, let alone implement its goals.

The God Species espouses many of the same ideals and motivations that can be found in the most astute recent literature on energy and environment, including Whole Earth Discipline by Steward Brand, The Climate Fix by Roger Pielke Jr., and the various works of the Breakthrough Institute. Many of the themes passed around the recent Breakthrough Dialogue (by none other than Brand and Pielke, among many), such as embracing modernism and hitting the reset button on climate politics, can be found vigorously occupying the subtext of Lynas's words. Adding his diagnosis to those who have already drawn lessons from environmentalism's failures, Lynas says the lesson is twofold:

First, guilt-tripping doesn't work as a campaign strategy. If you make people feel bad about what they do, you must give them a realistic and feasible alternative. Second, pragmatism beats purism. Every time.

Lynas may have been slightly overzealous in a few areas (carbon offsets, for instance; what if the local value of deforestation is greater than the "payments for ecosystem services" he recommends?). However, The God Species is well worth reading as a scientific summary of planetary boundaries, and as a refreshing point of view into how humankind will deal with the impending limitations. From the Haber-Bosch process to stratospheric injection of sulphates to the engineering tricks that have effectively closed the ozone hole, Lynas celebrates the increasingly firm grasp humanity has on natural cycles. What's needed is a higher respect for some of these, like climate change and biodiversity. If we are gods, then care for Creation comes with the territory. The God Species is an excellent roadmap for how that care might occur.

QOTD: Public investment

2011-07-29T10:07:00.000-07:00

Not explicitly energy-related, but this from Ethan Pollack speaks to the fallacy of federal legislators in accounting for federal investment (via Ezra Klein):

Cutting a dollar from the deficit by not repairing a road keeps you from passing one dollar of debt on to a future generation. But you are passing on a crumbling road. If you look at that using an accounting perspective that includes assets and liabilities, then by making a cut in the budget by not repairing a road, you’re not necessarily saving that money.

Local knowledge and energy poverty

2011-07-28T11:33:00.001-07:00

Cross-posted at the Breakthrough Generation Blog.

I just attended a presentation by Marlene Grundstrom, who works with the Stockholm Environment Institute on energy access and energy poverty.

Often left out of both discussions of climate change and global poverty, lack of access to clean, affordable energy turns out to be a key driver of both, and a considerable source of suffering and mortality in less-developed countries. To illustrate this, Ms. Grundstrom noted that indoor smoke inhalation kills more people every year (around 1.4 million people) than malaria does. Also, while the mortality incidence from AIDS and malaria are projected to decrease in coming years, deaths from indoor smoke inhalation are expected to rise.

One of her main points was that projects to expand energy access are more successful when they rely on local institutions and local knowledge. When a community has ownership over a project and can continue implementing it even after the donor or aid organization departs, the project has a higher chance of achieving its goals.

Ms. Grundstrom noted a case where women in Ethiopia rejected clean cookstoves in favor of traditional coal-burning stoves, because food cooked with clean cookstoves tasted differently. Here we see local knowledge as the dominant force in dealing with energy poverty, as opposed to thermodynamic or epidemiological concerns.

This idea reminded me of a couple things. One was the Catholic Social Teaching Principle of Subsidiarity. As Pope John Paul II summarized in his celebration of the centennial of Rerum Novarum,

A community of a higher order should not interfere with the life of a community of a lower order, taking over its functions.

Catholic Social Teaching in general recognizes the role that state and national governments have to play in providing public goods (infrastructure, access to resources, health care, etc.), but also notes that where possible, a community should own and operate the institutions and laws that govern its collective destiny.

I was also reminded of the work of Dan Kammen, a professor of mine at UC Berkeley and current Chief Technical Specialist of Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency at the World Bank, whose work on "mundane science" (PDF) jumped to mind.

In energy and development research, it appears as a disproportionate focus on advanced combustion systems, commercial fuels, and large centralized power facilities, even though more than 3 billion people rely on wood, charcoal, and other biomass fuels for the bulk of their energy needs.

Kammen's chief point is that the engineering focus on "cutting edge" research tends to overwhelm any efforts at addressing energy poverty, where solutions may be less envelope-pushing but just as, if not more, socially relevant. The bias against mundane science, as he calls it, is an impediment to real humanitarian and development action.

Why do I cite these two ideas? Because energy access does seem to receive a disproportionately small amount of attention in energy/climate discussion (see: this blog). However, it really is both a cause and a symptom of problems people are already hard at work dealing with around the world (addressing poverty/development in general and developing clean fuels and renewable technologies). One can imagine and observe other motivating principles from different sciences and faiths. Scientific, humanitarian, economic, and religious motivations can all point towards the goal of reducing energy poverty and expanding access to clean energy.

1.5 billion people worldwide lack any access to electricity*, and therefore rely on traditional biomass and dung for the primary energy source. A movement to drive down the cost of clean energy, so that industrial nations can replace their incumbent carbon infrastructure with renewables, is inextricably linked to closing the global energy gap and expanding energy access to the world's poor. Delivering the energy poor the means to control their own destiny through expanded access to clean and affordable electricity must be an explicit element in efforts towards decarbonization.

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*According to the UN, "electricity access" means 40Wh/day (4 hours of access to a 40W light bulb per day), which tells me that that 1.5 billion figure actually understates the problem.

Climate Pragmatism Coverage

2011-07-26T11:40:00.001-07:00

"Climate Pragmatism: Innovation, Resilience, and No Regrets," a new report* from the Hartwell Group, was released this morning. The report is based on the idea that the old paradigms for dealing with climate change -- global accords, abatement timetables, carbon pricing -- have either come up short or failed completely. Thus, a new pragmatic strategy must take hold, and the authors of "Climate Pragmatism" believe the have identified such a strategy. A pragmatic approach to dealing with the causes and effects of global climate change will rely on three general policy goals:

Energy Innovation
Climate Resilience
No-regrets Pollution Reduction

These three elements, often thought of as ancillary goals of what might be considered the more ambitious and sweeping paradigms that failed in the past, can add up to meaningful action on climate change, so say the authors**.

The report, available for only a few hours as of this posting, has already generated considerable coverage.

Bryan Walsh at TIME Magazine: "What's needed in this long hot season is an oblique approach to climate change, one that sidesteps the roadblocks by taking advantage of popular, no-regrets actions that are worth doing even if global warming wasn't real. It's not as simple or as elegant as one global deal — but it might actually work."
Teryn Norris at Americans for Energy Leadership: "Climate Pragmatism is an important and welcome contribution to the debate and will surely spark much-needed rethinking among energy and climate policy advocates."
Michael Levi at the Council on Foreign Relations: "I have nothing against doing the things that the Climate Pragmatism authors recommend. It may even be true that society can’t do much more. But if that’s the case, we need to admit the full implications, so that we can start preparing to deal with the consequences."
Walter Frick at the New England Clean Energy Council: "Yes, some policies will always be heavier lifts than others. But embracing pragmatism for the long-term means not only evaluating the “realm of the possible” in the short-term, but working to shape it over time."
Marc Gunther via his blog: "I’m not persuaded that we should talk less about the climate–because we really haven’t began to have an honest debate about global warming...It leads me to wonder whether the authors of this report have the problem exactly backward."

Will update as further coverage comes in...

Click here [PDF] to read the whole report.
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*Full disclosure: I am currently employed as a policy fellow at the Breakthrough Institute, one of the publishers of "Climate Pragmatism."
**The full list of authors can be found here.

Quote of the Day

2011-07-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

"Minimal energy would be that required to provide food, water, shelter, and access to medical care. Civilizations require more. People need to be educated; funds are needed for arts, humanities, sciences, and for recreation and entertainment. Life should be joyful, and music, dance, and the graphic arts don't come energy-free. If people have such limited energy available that they can only focus on teh bare necessities of life, they don't ahve time to think about who to vote for, how to organize and run a political campaign, go to town meetings, and so on--the things that we take for granted but are necessary for a democracy. Thus it also may be that democracies benefit from, or even require, more than the minimal energy required for the barest human survival."

- Daniel B. Botkin, Powering the Future: A Scientist's Guide to Energy Independence (2010)

Krugman Still Doesn't Get It

2011-07-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

By Alex Trembath and Devon Swezey. Originally published at the Breakthrough Institute Blog.

Yesterday, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman published a blog post repeating his insistence that a carbon price is the key (if not the only) incentive needed to unleash "the magic of the marketplace" and drive innovation in clean energy technology. It was reminiscent of the conventional wisdom of the climate community over the past decade, and reflective of Mr. Krugman's own typically neoclassical views on the economics of climate change. Unfortunately, Mr. Krugman (and most climate policy advocates) continues to get the story wrong on clean energy innovation.

In the spring of 2010, Krugman wrote a widely-read piece in the New York Times Magazine called "Building a Green Economy," which pondered why, if anti-environmentalists are so adamant in their free-market faith, do they not support a price on carbon dioxide emissions. A carbon price, in Krugman's estimation, would serve as a signal to the market, driving innovation in cleaner technologies to the point where they achieved price parity with fossil fuels.

Since publishing his original article, cap-and-trade has crashed and burned. The prospect of pricing carbon emissions in the United States is effectively zero for the foreseeable future, but Mr. Krugman is still pushing a carbon price as the key to unlocking a clean energy future. On his blog, he noted the successful innovation in fossil-burning energy technology over the past century, and suggested that the only thing standing in the way of renewables achieving the same innovation path is the lack of a carbon price.

"The point is that renewable energy like wind and solar has not gone through a comparable process of improvement -- yet -- because the incentives haven't been there. But once we get to the point where a carbon price makes these commercially viable, there's every reason to expect huge improvement over time through, yes, the magic of the marketplace."

But Mr. Krugman neglects the substantial obstacles to a large-scale shift to renewable energy technologies, stemming from technical challenges related to intermittency of electricity generation, energy storage, and materials constraints. Contrary to what Krugman implies in his article, fundamental scientific breakthroughs are required to fully replace our fossil fuel infrastructure with clean energy technologies, a view shared by Nobel physicist and current Secretary of Energy Steven Chu.

To his credit, Krugman acknowledges the need for new innovation in clean energy technology, a view that would place him outside of the mainstream climate advocate's mantra that "we have all the technology we need and lack only political will." Yet in expressing his zeal for a carbon price, Krugman ignores the actual history of technological innovation. As research from the Breakthrough Institute has shown, the emergence of key technologies has much more often been the product of directed and sustained government investment than the result of price signals. Breakthrough's report, "Where Good Technologies Come From," demonstrates that most game-changing technological developments--from interchangeable parts to railroads to jet engines to microchips to the iPhone, GPS and the Internet--resulted from direct federal investments in research, procurement, and deployment, often in active partnership with private industry.

Krugman falls victim to an ignorance of technological history and the relative roles for technological "push" policies, like research and development, and demand "pull" policies, like a carbon price. As Robert Atkinson and Matt Hourihan of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation explain in their report on carbon pricing, "truly disruptive innovation comes, not from price-based demand-pull, but from focused (and occasionally, not-so-focused) technology supply-push, in the form of research-driven technological development."

Indeed, if our goal is driving innovation in maturing clean energy technologies, a carbon price is not even the most effective demand-pull mechanism in our policy toolbox. To be sure, pricing carbon can increase demand for clean energy technologies, but it is not optimized to drive innovation in energy technologies. Krugman writes that aviation technology steadily improved through "experience and practical innovation," and that clean energy must do the same. But innovation in aviation and jet engines did not happen because the price of sea travel (the main substitute) increased. Rather, military procurement created a demanding customer relationship that constantly pushed the private sector to innovate and improve technology for military application.

Despite his enduring affection for a price on carbon emissions, there is no indication that Mr. Krugman's sensibilities would prevent him from embracing an energy agenda founded on government research and investment. Indeed, Krugman's New York Times colleague David Leonhardt has embraced a technology-first energy innovation agenda, recognizing that a carbon price will be more politically difficult and less effective in the absence of cheaper, more reliable clean energy technologies.

As the Breakthrough Institute has consistently advocated, there are multiple policies and institutions with great potential to drive investment and innovation in clean energy technology. Some, like the Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy, are already in existence (if underfunded). Others, like a Clean Energy Deployment Administration (CEDA), are not. Overcoming the challenges presented by market lock-in of fossil energy infrastructure, engineering challenges of clean energy technology, and climate change demands a broad suite of policies, of which a carbon price is only a small (and not even the most important) part.

Mr. Krugman is no technologist, by his own admission. In yesterday's blog post, he referred to the engineering of wind technology as "not my field of expertise, to say the least." But if a political economist as influential as Krugman is to continue weighing in on the energy technology challenge, it would be appropriate for him to develop a literacy in the history of technological innovation. Ever the champion of publicly funded health care, Krugman should have great affection for the government policies and institutions that can more effectively build a green economy.

After the failure of the carbon-price-centric American Power Act last summer, and with austerity measures increasingly dominating federal policy, the prospects for a carbon tax in the United States remain very low. Without one, the case for an energy innovation agenda not only remains, it has grown stronger.

Alex Trembath is a Breakthrough Generation Fellow and Devon Swezey is Project Director at the Breakthrough Institute.

Energetics Cliff Notes - Tuesday Edition

2011-07-12T12:02:00.000-07:00

Despite my recent obsession with Google+ coverage and Bay Area BART protests, I found time this week for energy news as well.

My colleagues and I are researching the coming clean tech crash, as subsidies and tax incentives for renewable energy technology expire. As Devon Swezey recently wrote in Forbes, "The global clean energy industry is set for a major crash. The reason is simple. Clean energy is still much more expensive and less reliable than coal or gas, and in an era of heightened budget austerity the subsidies required to make clean energy artificially cheaper are becoming unsustainable."

Australia, against all odds, has passed a carbon pricing scheme. Leigh Ewbank of Beyond Zero Emissions digs into the new policy, noting that a the CO2 price will require auxiliary policies to drive real innovation and deployment of clean energy technology.

A new report (PDF) from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation explains why ARPA-E is such a vital resource and should be fully-funded. "Cutting ARPA-E's budget would thwart future successes. A smaller budget would mean fewer projects, a more narrow range of risky projects, more hesitation to explore uncharted ares, and fewer opportunities to attract private sector investment."

Tomorrow (July 13) the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution is hosting (and webcasting) an event called "Sizing the Clean Economy: A National and Regional Green Jobs Assessment." The event signals the release of a new report on green jobs and a new database. Follow along on Twitter (#cleanecon) tomorrow morning.

I enjoyed this piece on energy storage technology at The Energy Collective. "The enthusiasm for grid-connected energy storage is well-founded. The inability to store electric energy on the grid is, in many respects, the technological limitation that defined the design of our national power grid in the early 20th Century and that continues to account for its basic architecture today. The ability to generate electricity, to store it economically in large quantities, and to use it at a later time, would be the most disruptive technology to emerge on the power grid in the past 100 years."

March of the Elites: Why Grassroots Organizing Can't Save the Climate

2011-07-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Originally published at Breakthrough Generation.

The campaign to avert cataclysmic climate change soldiers on. Despite an aggressive global economic crisis that unequivocally stole some wind from the sails of climate action, the movement lingers, organizing marches and rallies for the coming climate revolution. But action on the climate-energy front will not occur at the grassroots level. Instead, advocates should focus on identifying the appropriate elites, whose influence and inclinations offer a potential pathway to progress on energy and climate change.

The notion of eschewing grassroots organizing is unfamiliar to "causie" political movements, especially progressive ones. Progressive politics looks back with pride and conviction on its accomplishments in union organizing, suffrage and civil rights, and contemporary environmental victories like the creation of the EPA and the passing of the Clean Water and Air Acts. These achievements relied on building a critical mass of devoted and vocal support whose growing magnitude would reliably overwhelm public opinion and entrenched political opposition.

The movement to save the climate is unlikely to win with these tactics. In attempting to change the fact that the public doesn't care about climate change, the movement routinely forgets one important thing: the public doesn't care about climate change. Opinion polls indicate subsiding public concern over the future effects of climate change. A recent (and highly controversial) report by Matt Nisbett suggests that collective action and lobbying for the 2010 climate bill outgunned opponents from Big Coal and Big Oil, and the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act didn't even get a vote in the Senate. Gallup shows that the public concern about the environment ranks last in a field of fifteen different national issues, a metric that the economy unsurprisingly dominates. Even if more and more people were coming around to the opinion that climate change is a real and dangerous phenomenon (which they aren't), that increasing swath of the population still wouldn't care too much about it.

And the truth is, the public doesn't need to care that much about it. Energy and climate policy is primarily institutional, technical, and scientific. It is much less socio-cultural. This makes sense, too: energy is a largely invisible and homogeneous commodity that competes on price alone. The public will use energy in the most cost-effective way possible, so the most logistically simple way to mitigate climate change is to make clean energy cheaper than carbon fuels. This goal will be achieved by policymakers, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

The solution to the climate-energy crisis is akin to the Manhattan and Apollo Projects and the creation of the Internet. None of these made use of mass public support or mobilization--indeed, the Manhattan Project was done in secret. Yet all were technical challenges with a national mission, accomplished by elites and contracted largely by the federal government, and with gargantuan social effects. No grand infrastructure projects are sexy products of some outpouring of public demand, yet the creation of the Interstate Highway System was perhaps one of the most significant achievements in the story of American commerce. These projects were accomplished by elite American patriots. Somewhere out in the masses of my generation, a team of elites is waiting to meet each other and make clean energy cheap and ubiquitous.

The people standing around that team of elites, far greater in number, are not powerless. Effective climate policy will not be an all-out favoring of technocracy over democracy, but grassroots advocates need to understand the difference. Timetables and targets are even weaker technical plans than they are political strategies. A growing and vocal contingent in the developed world, dedicated to fixing the climate problem, means very little when 90% of new energy demand will come developing economies over the next century. Lifestyle choices--like consuming less, cycling to work, and switching out that 100-watt bulb--are infinitesimal compared to the challenge of decarbonizing fourteen terawatts of power. There are policies that can accomplish these ends: boosting research and development, driving technological innovation, subsidizing early-stage deployment, and empowering the next generation of scientists and engineers through education. But the grassroots section in this relay-campaign pretty much ends at advocacy, left to watch as elites carry the baton across the finish line.

The campaign to mitigate carbon emissions and revolutionize our global energy infrastructure will not be accomplished by the masses. It will not be accomplished by marches and emotive global demonstrations, even less so by eco-terrorism and violent disobedience. We will see this challenge defeated instead by a select group of elites: technicians and practitioners, experts and politicians. That's not a bad thing. As Aaron Sorkin says, elite is not a bad word; it's an aspirational one. How fortunate we would be if we could identify that team of patriots and elites who could lead us to a clean energy future.

The false choice in climate organizing

2011-07-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

Hm...

This question of how far to take the fight to stop global warming has haunted activists for years. But now that more conventional solutions, such as a global treaty to cut greenhouse-gas pollution, are dead, the issue is more pressing than ever. As the crisis grows, the temptation to turn up the volume with more dramatic and attention-grabbing protests will only increase. Climate activists often speculate about who will emerge as the Martin Luther King of the climate movement. But it may be equally relevant to ask who will emerge as the Malcolm X.

This from a brief piece in Rolling Stone that mentions, and never explicitly admonishes, "a little guerrilla warfare against Big Oil and Big Coal." Jeff Goodell, the author, goes on to present a false choice when it comes to climate politics. They can either be tame, a la 350.org's Day of Action and the 'march on Washington' variety, or they can be more subversive, a little less civilly disobedient. Goodell seems to admire the efforts taken by activists lately, who "cut through fences and get smacked around by cops in riot gear."

Why I must choose between two ineffective strategies--one legal, the other not-so-much--is beyond me. More on this soon, but the campaign to "change the composition of the atmosphere" (as Bill McKibben puts it) will not be accomplished by grassroots organizing and/or semi-violent protest. Instead, it will be accomplished by an elite team of policymakers, engineers, and entrepreneurs, who approach the technical challenges of climate change and decarbonization and effect technical solutions.

UPDATE (7/5): Mr. Goodell graciously responded to this post in a short exchange on Twitter, in which he asserted I had misread his piece. There is not a false choice between "tame" and "subversive" climate politics, Mr. Goodell clarified; rather, there is room for both. I wouldn't say I misread his piece so much as I perhaps didn't make myself perfectly clear in responding to it. I agree, climate activists do not have to choose one camp or the other. A strategy to promote action on climate change can embrace both the tame and the subversive, much like the XL pipeline protest organized by Bill McKibben and James Hansen, which aims for civility yet warns its participants they might spend a night in prison over (Mr. Goodell uses this same example).

My point is that neither tameness nor subversion are effective pathways to successful action on climate change and decarbonization, because they frame the challenge entirely wrong. Action on climate change will not be accomplished by grassroots organizing, as was action on civil rights or earlier environmental issues. Rather, it will be addressed by elites, whose expert understanding of the technical challenges of climate change are matched by a strong government mission to re-industrialize the energy sector. See my latest post for more.

Google can see the future

2011-06-29T10:52:00.000-07:00

Google, whose energy initiatives and investments have always impressed me, yesterday released an energy innovation analysis that uses a model they built with McKinsey to forecast global power production mixes by different energy technologies in 2030. The analysis is available in a report [PDF] and interactive website that allows users to consider different potential energy mixes. Their technology pathways depend largely on breakthroughs and policies, the various combinations of which result in varying degrees of clean energy deployed in the future (#NoDuh).

Teryn Norris at Americans for Energy Leadership lauded the analysis and Google's willingness to bring energy innovation to the spotlight.

[The] implication is loud and clear: U.S. policy should seek to unleash clean energy technology innovation as rapidly as possible...Google’s report is a much-welcomed addition to the debate that opens up a whole new lens for evaluating various energy policy proposals, and it offers a message that clean energy and climate advocates across the board would be wise to take seriously.

Walter Frick at the New England Clean Energy Council has another take on Google's release, emphasizing that policy is an absolutely essential addition to technological breakthroughs.

Technology has an extremely important role to play. But policy that incents the development and deployment of clean energy and discourages the use and further deployment of fossil energy is also essential.

It is very encouraging to see a major player like Google getting front and center in the global energy innovation effort.

The upcoming brawl over energy subsidies

2011-06-28T10:27:00.000-07:00

While Republicans hold the national debt increase hostage, Congress is deciding what to cut and what to gut (expansion or creation of new programs is largely off the table). Energy subsidies are already falling under the knife. Mark Muro at Brookings figures that if we're going to they're going after energy subsidies anyway, now is the time for real reform.

Defenders of oil and gas industry tax breaks are clearly finding it harder to maintain support for tax and other provisions for a mature, highly profitable industry whose incumbency essentially locks in U.S. economic vulnerability and energy dependency and inhibits the emergence of alternative energy sourcing . . . At the same time, though, legitimate questions are being raised about the nature and purpose of the major renewable energy subsidies and incentives.

The trouble with tying climate science to policy

2011-06-15T11:21:00.000-07:00

Some (not all) solar physicists are predicting a "solar lull," resulting in "a protracted downturn in the flow of [solar] energy to the Earth." Such a lull might produce slower accelerating GHG-forced warming, as less solar energy is refracted as IR radiation and trapped by the atmosphere. DotEarth has a good discussion of this still controversial decision, but I'd like to say two probably overly rudimentary things about it.

One, and this is probably excessively speculative, but I expect many climate activists would lament such a "solar lull," as their cause relies on sustained, notable, and predictable warming to advance a political message of whatever stripe (behavioral/lifestyle changes, climate treaties and government action, technological diffusion, etc.). This is silly. Relying on the coming apocalypse to advance your political action, and then lamenting when the apocalypse doesn't come, is actually a little shameful.

Two, even if I'm imagining the subset of climate activists who gleefully await cataclysmic climate events so that they can shout "I told you so!" to the deniers, there are still those who remain resistant to the idea of addressing the climate/energy problem. To them, decarbonization is directly tied to climate change (and not, or at least less so, to national security, economic growth, and political stability). Tying climate science and a political agenda together so closely works in such a way that, when conflicting science surfaces (as it often does), the motivation for action becomes muddied in an unnecessary way.

Even if this solar lull turns out to by an inaccurate prediction, my above reaction still works as a compelling thought experiment I think. Marginalizing climate science in the framing motive for action on decarbonization may seem to some activists like selling out or closeted denialism, but it seems increasingly clear empirically that tying climate science, a characteristically unstable and uncertain predictor, to this particular political agenda is at best only moderately helpful and at worst counterproductive.

The left-right climate trap

2011-06-09T15:11:00.001-07:00

Out of Australia, a solid and succinct evaluation of the political difficulties of climate action:

People on the left instinctively believe in communal action, the role of government and the efficacy of international agencies such as the UN. They were always going to believe in climate change; it's the sort of problem that can best be solved using the tools they most enjoy using.

The right tended to be sceptical about climate change from the start and for exactly the same reasons. It's the sort of problem that requires global, communal action, with governments setting rules. It is a problem that requires tools they instinctively dislike using.

Climate politics Down Under sound conspicuously similar to climate politics in the States...

HT to Environmental Economics.

Quote of the Day: Economy-wide Efficiency

2011-05-29T18:03:00.001-07:00

There's some conventional wisdom out there that the US economy has gotten considerably more energy efficient as a whole over the last few decades, with real GDP (US$) growing, while total energy consumption (quadrillion BTUs) fell. This story is often used as evidence against the prevalence of rebound, or the phenomenon through which consumption of a particular energy service increases as technology enables more efficient delivery of said service. If rebound is such a significant effect, skeptics refute, then why do we observe economic growth with decreasing energy consumption at the economy-wide level? Solar Feeds has one particularly strong explanation:

Now, there is a popular myth that has grown up in the past two decades the the US economy already transformed itself. This received wisdom holds that GDP rose while energy consumption per unit of GDP fell. That is certainly true in the narrow sense. But, not true in the broader sense. Here’s why: US domestic energy consumption which at one time was devoted to industrial production here in the US, is now simply offshored to Asia. The US economy still demands large units of energy which we simply import through manufactured goods. Worse, US GDP accounting still overweights consumption. This makes for a perverse, energy-accounting outcome: the more we offshore energy-consuming manufacturing to other countries, the more distorted our energy efficiency claims become, against GDP.

For more on the rebound effect, check out "Energy Emergence: Rebound and Backfire as Emergent Phenomena," (PDF), a report on the subject published by the Breakthrough Institute.

What Are We Missing? Day Three at WindPower 2011

2011-05-26T21:32:00.001-07:00

WindPower 2011 is finishing up today in Anaheim, but I had to cut loose early and get back to the Bay Area. My coverage of Sunday and Monday are available here at The Energy Collective. After being only slightly overwhelmed with the technology and brainpower surging through the convention show floor, I thought it worth reflecting on the elements of the wind power industry that were conspicuously absent.

There were a couple things I expected to see more of. Google, for instance, made only a brief appearance despite recent, frequent, and well-publicized investment in wind farms around the country. I was also surprised not to discover more attention paid to competition from natural gas; much hoopla was made of wind power being second only to natural gas in new installed capacity over the last five years, but with recent projections of the fossil fuel's cheapness crowding wind out of new project development, I wondered if the wind cheerleaders weren't skirting the issue just a little bit. Finally, though perhaps not surprising unfortunately, there were far fewer women at WindPower than men. Upwards of 75% of conference attendees every year are men, according to data compiled by AWEA, and this imbalance is representative of the wind industry at large. On the bright side, Women of Wind Energy (WoWE) was there to combat the trend.

Misrepresented though those they may have been, these elements were 100% more available (to me, at least) compared with some other, more noticeable absences. For better or for worse, these were the parts of the wind industry that, for whatever reason, didn't show up in Anaheim this week.

Climate Change

As I noted on Sunday, only passing reference was made to climate change and carbon emissions all week, and exactly zero programming was dedicated to anthropogenic global warming. I had expected this, as most of the exhibitors were technologists, mechanical engineers, and distributors, who are not in the business of scaring potential clients and partners into investing by decrying the coming climate-apocalypse. When climate change was mentioned, it was taken as granted—this was no denier's conference. But the seemingly intentional eschewing of a large discussion on global warming, in a setting whose ostensible purpose is to combat its effects, was interesting nonetheless.

Cap-and-Trade

This will become less and less surprising as the cap-less years go on, but it seemed notable that unlike many environmentalists and academics, the wind industry is entirely aware of the demise of cap-and-trade. This is not to say that most everybody there took every opportunity to scold the federal government for not doing more to benefit the wind power, and for doing too much to subsidize dirty energy. The Production Tax Credit (PTC) was the celebrity this weekend, with virtually every policy discussion I attended calling for its long-term extension after 2012. Wishing doesn't make it so, however, and folks at WindPower 2011 seem to feel that no amount of wishing will bring cap-and-trade back into the policy arena.

Innovation/R&D

Despite the enthusiastic refrain around government partnership with the wind industry, there was shockingly little attention paid to the role of government-funded R&D for energy technology innovation. Indeed, experts seemed generally pleased with the technological level wind power has achieved, noting its marginal-cost competitiveness with coal/natural gas and that a turbine today produces 15x as much energy as a 1990 turbine with the same nameplate capacity. These are not illegitimate accomplishments. But the the regular boasting of 41,000 MW of domestic capacity and celebration of providing electricity equivalent to ten nuclear power plants were contextless figures that ignored wind's chronic problems of intermittency, geographic/transmission difficulties, and its inability to provide baseload power. Breakthroughs will be needed to address these challenges, and experts agree that the R&D funding gap necessary to achieve those breakthroughs will come from governments, not private industry.

This column might make it sound like there was nothing to celebrate at WindPower 2011, or that I didn't encounter brilliant professionals doing outstanding work to deploy more wind technology to market. That is not the case. For a rosier picture of the conference, refer to my previous coverage. But it's worth reflecting on the shortcomings of our accomplishments, especially when we all come together on a convention room floor to make connections and share ideas.

Why We're Here: Day Two at WindPower 2011

2011-05-24T13:23:00.001-07:00

Picking up from where we left off yesterday, WindPower 2011 revved into gear early this morning in Anaheim, California. Kicking off the official start of this week's conference, the CEO of the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), Denise Bode, rode onto the main stage of the convention center arena on a custom motorcycle designed as an aesthetic homage to wind turbines. The hype around the bike is actually quite substantial, despite the fact that it runs on gasoline, one of the fossil fuels taking a regular beating here at WindPower.

Ms. Bode's address was enthusiastic and optimistic, backdropped by a slideshow that was equal parts wind turbines and American flags. She then invited Ted Turner onto the stage and treated us to a light and informal discussion of wind power and policy in the United States. Turner provided perhaps the broadest and most nuanced take on the American wind industry I've yet encountered this week, perhaps because he occupies exactly none of the specialized industry career paths gathered here. The conversation steered between politics and policy, technology and media, patriotism and commerce. And it got me wondering: what, exactly, is everybody doing here? How does this convention amplify the cross-sector relationships embodied by the wind industry?

I took to the showroom floor to find out. Not surprisingly, the booths predominantly feature component manufacturers, engineering and design firms, and wind technology distributors. Presentations and demonstrations abound. Siemens, for instance, hosted a well-publicized event in their prominent booth with Mary Fallin, the Republican governor of Oklahoma. Both parties were excited to announce a new project in Woodward, a testimony to the strong relationship between government and the wind industry. I chatted with Tim Holt, CEO of Siemens renewables services, who spoke to the value of local institutions when siting a project and how important it is for a project to be able to get a warehouse on the ground as fast as possible. This sense of industrial urgency is good news for people who don't want wind power projects to progress over Cape Wind timeframes.

But industry giants like Siemens and GE aren't the only ones populating the corridors here. Renewable energy publications like North American Wind Power Magazine come here to cover the seminars, summits and demonstrations. Paul McDonald, the Editor of a Vancouver-based magazine called enerG, told me about his focus on distinct and complete energy technology projects as a part of the larger narrative of policy, commerce and environment. There's a documentary film crew here working on a movie called "Wind of Change," a look at the wind industry in Texas (which, if it were a country, would have the sixth highest installed capacity in the world). And of course there's me, tweeting my way through the sometimes overwhelming spectacle of turbine technology.

Government is well represented here as well. Governor Fallin, of course, came all this way because she values the partnership with Siemens. Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Portland representative and long-time renewables advocate, gave a conference-wide address and headlined a press conference on a recent wind power story out of Sherman County. State government delegations dot the map of the convention floor, like the Iowa Department of Economic Development, who come to WindPower year after year to attract investment and learn about new technology and industry. The Department of Energy is here, as are multiple DOE-funded labs like NREL and Argonne National Laboratory.

Organizations and institutions that depend on the industry, and in turn have industry depend on them, happily share floor space at the convention center. David Plumpton of Ecology & Environment Consulting, a national firm with 28 American offices, told me about consulting operations that prioritize environment and then tackle engineering concerns. The Port of San Diego has representatives here, as do various community colleges and national trade organizations. The Canadian Wind Energy Association (CanWEA), for instance, comes here to nurture its relationship with American analog AWEA and develop new policy. I spoke to the director of the National Center for Atmospheric Research, a network of labs that have been refining weather prediction models for over fifty years, about how the wind industry reached out to them a few years ago when it became clear that better meteorological data was needed. As he put it, everyone here is working to "raise the tide for all" in the wind industry.

All told, it's a pretty cool group. Everyone is eager to tell you about their organization's achievements, but also about their relationships with other sectors and other member of the wind power community. Professionals here call it networking, but I like to think of it as interconnectedness. The growth of this vast web of industrialists, scientists, bureaucrats, journalists and developers makes me think of a world where that web reaches everyone, like the reach of ubiquitous fossil energy does now.

So that's who I encountered here today. Tune in tomorrow to find out what's missing at WindPower 2011, and what elements of the wind technology/policy arena I was surprised not to find.

Jobs and Manufacturing: Day One at WindPower 2011

2011-05-23T08:02:00.001-07:00

Originally published at The Energy Collective.

I'm in Anaheim, California this week covering the 11th annual WindPower conference, hosted yearly by the America Wind Energy Association (AWEA). WindPower 2011 lasts from May 22 to May 25, and I am coming off a long and didactic Day One. The expo is dominated by technologists and engineers, but as I have been reminded regularly throughout the day, the American wind industry is a diverse and eclectic bunch.

Larry Flowers, the deputy director of AWEA, began the this morning's Jobs Seminar by producing an ad-hoc list of thirty-two distinct careers represented in the wind energy field, and by the end of the session he had added seven more. This recurring theme became clearer as the seminars and summits progressed. Fully 60% of WindPower attendees fall into the category "Other," far outflanking their cookie-cutter peers of technicians, engineers, developers, and corporate officers. Even more significantly outnumbered are the lonely, but vital, soil ecologists, wetland biologists, construction workers, transportation experts, utility representatives, and policy professionals.

The expansiveness and complexity of the wind power industry is surely a desirable quality, and the various panelists and fellow attendees were eager to spin it that way. Interdisciplinary ventures mean multiplicative benefits, and the intersections encountered in wind allow great minds to come together in a way few other sectors do. But the short story? Jobs. With exponentially growing new installed annual capacity observed over the last decade, experts here jump at the chance to talk about the cross-sector effects that new clean power will have on employment. 75,000 jobs exist today because of national wind energy operations, and although that's down from the 2009 surge of 85,000 following a flush of stimulus-funded construction projects, analysts insist that 75,000 will be the bottom of the barrel starting this year. According to trade publication North American Windpower, new construction of generating capacity in Q2-2011 is twice what it was in 2009 and 2010.

That's primarily what fuels these people, and where their passion comes from. The common denominator among the scientists and the entrepreneurs and the financiers is their dedication to accelerating this guaranteed-growth industry, to fueling the nation's sorely needed drive for jobs and economic recovery. Climate change, meanwhile, is mostly a placeholder at WindPower. Over eight hours of conferencing and the umbrella topic of anthropogenic global warming was mentioned only a couple times, and even then only in passing. The image of a wind turbine may be a striking and inspiring symbol of the movement to rescue the climate, but to the people who design, make and sell them, turbines are a corporeal way of life (literally).

And that, perhaps, was the most inspiring notion of the day—that Americans can build their way to a renewed prosperity. As Steve Busch of Michigan's Energetx Composites put it, "Manufacturing's coming back to the United States of America." This may go against conventional economic wisdom, which tells us that the US has to get comfortable relying on services and finance for its economic growth. But WindPower devotees insist that America can produce durable goods again, at large scales and to great economic effect. The majority of domestic turbine towers, nacelles, and blades are manufactured in the United States, significantly in the American Southeast, where there are few wind resources and little installed capacity. What the US does import is mostly high-cost and European, making wind tech imports an attractive option for a robust domestic industry. Each of the over 8,000 components required for the construction of a wind turbine represent an opportunity to capitalize on technological supply chains and distributional benefits of a reinvigorated American manufacturing sector.

Total installed wind capacity in the US now exceeds 41,000 MW, and levels of new installed capacity have increased regularly over the last decade. Wind power's Achilles heel, of course, is intermittency and the difficulty of achieving base load power generation with the technology. But wind is competitive with fossils on a levelized $/kWh basis, and trails only natural gas in the amount of annual installed new capacity of cumulative energy generation. The wind is blowing, and the tech is growing.

The conference, meanwhile, has mirrored this growth. After a decade of yearly showings around the country, WindPower has become the best networking opportunity for wind power professionals in the US. From humble-ish beginnings in 2001, with a modest 1,000 attendees and 25 exhibitors, the conference now proudly boasts 20,000 visitors angling to get a look at over 1,100 exhibits. These exhibits span over 330,000 square feet of convention center and hotel ballroom floors, which various AWEA representatives tried to convince us was the equivalent of between nine and eighteen football fields (it's actually closer to seven). Nonetheless, the space is breathtaking and the technology impressive in more ways than one.

For more of my exploits, stay tuned on Twitter, and check back at the Energy Collective for additional coverage.

AWEA WindPower 2011

2011-05-22T08:50:00.001-07:00

I just received my press credentials for WindPower 2011, a wind energy conference hosted by the American Wind Energy Association. I'll be covering the event for The Energy Collective, a wonderful online blog syndicate that I've been associated with for a few months. I'm expecting to attend some pretty interesting events, including an in-depth seminar on wind power and a special announcement put on by Siemens and the office of the governor of Oklahoma. Interviews, coverage, and live-tweeting @energycollectiv. Stay tuned.

Quote of the Day

2011-05-20T08:55:00.001-07:00

Happy Friday to all the energetic people out there. Today's QOTD comes from Andrew Revkin at DotEarth.

In fact, in the broadest sense we have to embrace the characteristics, good and bad, that make humans such a rare thing — a species that has become a planet-scale force. Cyanobacteria also were a planet-scale force, oxygenating the atmosphere some two billion years ago. The difference is that cyanobacteria weren’t aware of their potency, while we are at least starting to absorb that reality.

Revkin's continuous dialogue on the global permeation of human activity and the interconnectedness of energy, climate and ecological systems is well worth following.

Bill Joy lecture

2011-05-06T09:40:00.001-07:00

I recently had the pleasure of attending* a special reception and Regents Lecture by Bill Joy, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, founding partner at venture firm KPCB, and Berkeley alum. At Kleiner Perkins, Joy is in charge of greentech investment, and his talk focused mostly on the technological challenges and opportunities of decarbonization.

He had a few overarching points.

One, there is tremendous need and potential for economic innovation in clean technologies, even as we approach physical limitations in how efficiently they can produce energy. These will be essential, as we need to buy down the cost of clean tech to the point where it "beats the grid unsubsidized."

Two, we need to be building things in America. Manufacturing will be a vital and economically invigorating component of the transition to clean energy, and missing out on that opportunity would be devastating to American competitiveness and economic health. Without manufacturing, says Joy, we will become overly dependent on a service economy, which will "run idle."

Three, government support is required for private ventures to "cross the chasm" that prevents the free market from achieving the energy technology goals we aspire to. Prompted by a question from the audience, Joy said his preferred government policy is loan guarantees, which have mostly been used in the past for projects with high upfront capital expenditures.

All in all, it was a cool lecture from a technological giant -- an encouraging addition in the campaign for decarbonization.

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*Thanks to Dee Dee Mendoza of the UC Berkeley Relations Group for the invite!

Three Misconceptions of Heritage Foundation's Energy Proposal

2011-05-05T10:02:00.000-07:00

I hope my readers aren't growing tired of hearing about it, but the Heritage Foundation recently released a Backgrounder report calling for a near dismantling of energy innovation programs at the Department of Energy, going as far as to suggest that "elimination of the entire department" might be called for. I took issue with this report right out of the gates. Subsequently, three organizations I proudly associate myself with (Breakthrough, ITIF, and AEL) released a counterpoint memo (PDF), systematically deconstructing Heritage's error-prone arguments.

A new rebuttal report that I co-authored was released yesterday and is available at ITIF. In it, we challenge the fundamental misconceptions and false assumptions adopted by the Heritage Foundation in their call for such dramatic cuts to DOE. We identify three chief misconceptions that lead Heritage to propose such dangerous and irrational cuts.

The proposal fails to meaningfully reduce the budget deficit now or in the future.
Heritage fails to understand where technological innovations come from.
The proposal ignores the immediacy and enormity of US energy challenges.

The DOE programs that Heritage recommends pruning or outright eliminating are key sectors for energy technology innovation, which will be key for American energy security, economic competitiveness, and fiscal health. The errors and misconceptions riddling the Heritage report bespeak the failure of neoliberal ideology to address the challenges presented by energy infrastructure and decarbonization.

Americans for Energy Leadership and the Breakthrough Institute each have excellent coverage of the new report.

Download the report, "All About the Fundamentals: Three Misconceptions of the Heritage Foundation's Deficit/Energy Proposal" here (PDF)

QOTD: Gavin Schmidt on tornadoes

2011-04-29T19:44:00.000-07:00

Climate scientists have been weighing in on the indeterminate culpability of anthropogenic carbon emissions on the tragic storms in the Southern United States. It is worth remembering that, while we can and should expect an increasing frequency of extreme weather events as climate change intensifies, we have yet to fully predict in advance or attribute in retrospect any direct 1:1 causality between emissions and discrete weather events. Climate scientist Gavin Schmidt puts it very well:

It is a truism to say that everything has been affected by climate change so far and therefore this latest outbreak must in some sense have been affected, but attribution is hard and the further down the chain the causality is supposed to go, the harder this is. For heat waves it is easier, for statistics on precipitation intensity it easier – there are multiple levels of good modelling, theory and observations to back it up. But we have much less to go on with tornadoes.

Counterpoint to Heritage on DOE cuts

2011-04-26T14:57:00.000-07:00

Last week, I reported briefly on a policy report released recently by the Heritage Foundation calling for what I believe to be drastic and dangerous cuts to the Department of Energy. Today, my colleagues and I produced an expanded and thorough response to Heritage (PDF), combating their claims that private enterprise can most effectively operate in the energy sector without much or any government support.

We argue that the Heritage report contains numerous inconsistencies and inaccuracies, such as:

Heritage cites several ventures as evidence of independent private sector efforts to develop next generation energy technologies that in fact each received public support.

The report wrongly suggests that DOE budget expenditures are prime targets for substantial deficit reduction.

The report uses out-of-context figures to exaggerate the relative magnitude of DOE’s budget.

The report is inconsistent in its support and understanding of the DOE’s role in enhancing energy security.

The report assumes a zero-sum competition between government and private investors rather than acknowledging the long and successful history of public-private partnerships.

Selective and prejudicial history is applied to suggest that government research has little to no commercial aim or value.

The report relies on the unfounded assumption that the private sector is, and should be, largely responsible for energy research, commerce, and infrastructure.

Heritage acknowledges the role of government in advancing a national interest not met by the private sector, yet claims that the government is not equipped to do so.

Heritage is inconsistent in applying their support or opposition to federal programs supporting clean energy innovation.

Heritage wrongly suggests that the private sector invests sufficiently in energy innovation.

The rebuttal has been published by ITIF, the Breakthrough Institute, and Americans for Energy Leadership. Check it out.

The more things change...

2011-04-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

...the more they stay the same. In the year since I started this blog, we've witnessed many substantial changes, events, and progressions on the energy/climate frontier. And yet, on the whole, it seems American policy hasn't evolved much at all. Three examples illustrate this frustrating truth*.

As you may have heard, this week is the one-year anniversary of the blowout at the BP's Macando well in the Gulf of Mexico. Described (accurately) as the worst environmental disaster in American history, the months-long fiasco spilled tens of millions of gallons, endangered local enterprise, public health, and demonstrated the terrifying and disproportionate disaster potential of our fossil fuel addiction. However, a year later, and Congress has yet to react to the Gulf catastrophe with any kind of legislation. Not only did we fail to come close to passing a cap-and-trade bill, but we couldn't even pass policy changes increasing the liability of oil companies in damages caused by accidents from $75 million to a more reasonable figure or widening the purview of regulators to oversee offshore oil drilling. For perhaps the most-reported non-nuclear energy accident in history, its legacy in American policy will apparently be shockingly empty.

Last April, energy and environmental advocates cheered the Interior Department's approval of Cape Wind, the nation's first offshore wind farm. The victory came after a decade-long battle (the project was first proposed in 2001) against NIMBYism and obstructionist tactics to block construction. This past week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement approved the project's construction plans. While technically good news, the Cape Wind saga demonstrates the unacceptable time frames with which we measure success in the Energy Quest, and as Alexis Madrigal pointed out, it is unclear how we will overcome these infrastructural challenges.

Finally, we return to cap-and-trade. As I mentioned, last summer witnessed the upsetting (but not super surprising) failure of the American Power Act, which was originally Senators Kerry and Lieberman's cap-and-trade legislation. Californians, on the other hand, celebrated the defeat of Proposition 23 in November, whose backers sought to block AB 32, the state's own cap-and-trade policy ... until a coalition of environmental groups, the Association of Irritated Residents, blocked AB 32 in court. Keep in mind that these environmental groups were instrumental in campaigning against Prop 23, and proceeded with an about-face to reject the environmental policy on the grounds that it would concentrate non-uniformly mixed pollutants like NOx and sulfur dioxides in socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods. Dave Roberts explains why this probably isn't true. From a big picture perspective, this example illustrates the difficulty of advancing energy and climate policy, even in California, "America's laboratory."

These and other distressing stalls and defeats show plainly that standard operating procedure in American energy policy is not working ~~quickly enough~~. Tackling the problems of our fossil fuel addiction, national recession, increasingly violent resource wars, and climate change will require a change in dynamics. The sooner we transition to a policy agenda based on technological innovation, workforce and STEM education, and cohesive infrastructural progress, the better.
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*Yes, I'm cherry-picking. Please, PLEASE give me examples of why I'm wrong!

Irrational cuts proposed to DOE

2011-04-20T10:11:00.000-07:00

The Heritage Foundation just released a report providing opportunity and rationalization for $6 billion in cuts to the Department of Energy (H/T Teryn Norris). Here's the abstract of the report, titled "Department of Energy Spending Cuts: A Guide to Trimming President Obama’s 2012 Budget Request."

Government spending has been spiraling upward in nearly all areas—and spending by most government agencies can, and should, be cut. President Obama recently submitted his 2012 budget request to Congress, providing fertile ground for spending cuts. One of the fastest-growing federal agencies, the Department of Energy (DOE), with its numerous research, development, and grant programs, offers many opportunities for savings. While there is an important role for DOE in energy security and environmental management, many DOE projects fall outside its mission, supporting everything from commercialization of technologies to non-critical research—which can be conducted, usually much more efficiently, by the private sector.

Three things.

One, and I'm sure there are plenty at the Heritage Foundation who would agree with me on this, but cutting $6 billion from the federal budget will have approximately zero effect on "Alleviating the huge debt burden that the government is placing on future generations," as the report calls for. When someone calls for deficit reduction without addressing Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and/or revenue increases, I instinctively ignore them. I realize these are program-specific cut recommendations, but the idea that cutting back on investing in our future will relieve the burden of our irresponsibility from future generations is more than a tad suspect to me.

Two, the report claims that "Energy production is a viable commercial enterprise, so the U.S. does not need a government agency dedicated to advancing this activity." This is simply incorrect. Few to no commercial scale energy production technologies would benefit from economies of scale and distribution without implicit and explicit government support. Coal and oil receive tens of billions of federal dollars in subsidies annually, and the continued deployment of energy production technology depends also on government insurance and liability policies, since material extraction, energy production and transmission are such high-risk enterprises. As Mark Hertsgaard reports in his account* of the 1950s budding nuclear power industry, "the industry ... preferred an arrangement whereby the government would help cover the costs of commercialization but still allow the corporations to control and profit from it."

Three, the report is founded upon the unsupported assertion that the private sector is the more effective laboratory for energy technologies. "Many government programs included in Presidents’ annual DOE budgets evolved from basic research and development to attempts at commercialization better left to the private sector." The report continues by questioning need for government funding or operations in R&D. On the contrary, publicly-funded research and development are essential factors in the advancement of energy technology. There are two key reasons for this. One is the so-called "Valley of Death" in technological development that exists between the basic research stage and the commercialization stage, in which risk, uncertainty and deployment challenges combine to dissuade private capital from advancing project. The second reason is the spillover effect; private enterprise will be less likely to finance energy technology R&D since they will be ultimately unable to capture the full benefits of production.

We obviously, but maybe not imminently, need to have a serious national discussion about the debt/deficit problems. But targeting relatively small federal programs, particularly ones like DOE technology innovation programs with a clear national mission and a big bang for their buck, is not the right way to go about it.
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*Nuclear Inc.:The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Power by Mark Hertsgaard. 1983. pp. 33.

Election Season or Investment Season?

2011-04-14T12:21:00.000-07:00

I'm reminded recently of Daffy Duck fighting with Bugs Bunny, the duck demanding that it's Rabbit-Hunting Season and Bugs refuting that it's Duck Season. In this cartoonish analogy, President Obama is both Bugs and Daffy, in a shouting match with himself. It's either Investment Season or Election Season. It apparently can't be both.

There's a reason Energetics' subline is "A blog on climate, energy and politics." As frustrating as it sometimes is, the pursuit and achievement of goals on the path towards decarbonization and a clean energy future depend heavily on the institutional intricacies set up by our political landscape. The political infrastructure in place establishes the ability of our nation to invest in our future. President Obama's speech at George Washington University yesterday illustrated this notion, and his stump speech that ostensibly kicked off his 2012 campaign was often inspiring in its liberalism and rhetorical embrace of innovation economics.

The America I know is generous and compassionate. It’s a land of opportunity and optimism. Yes, we take responsibility for ourselves, but we also take responsibility for each other; for the country we want and the future we share.
...
I will not sacrifice the core investments we need to grow and create jobs.

In place of "jobs," the President could have easily said "a national infrastructure renovation" or "a clean energy economy." All three are true, but the politics of the game will probably guarantee that jobs are the key focus of his speeches from now until at least November 2012.

Like Bugs vs. Daffy though, there is some trickery at play. The President is calling this moment Investment Season when it's shaping out to be anything but. The sweeping and not entirely insincere verbiage dedicated by the President to investing in a "future we want" is undercut by the recent budget debacle, where we see funds for innovation, science and research cut across the board. The Breakthrough Institute crunches the thoroughly uninspiring numbers, and while investments levels for FY2012 aren't quite as low as they would be if Congressional Republicans had their way, more often not the President and his allies came away on the losing end of the draw.

I believe the President would be better served by a more ambitious agenda, one that aims to significantly increase investments in our nation's transportation grid, energy infrastructure, education and technological robustness. Indeed, I wish Obama would act exactly like he said he would in his 2011 State of the Union address. Instead, we have conflicting messaging coming from his podium. "Invest in our future" is sidelined by "live within our means" and calls for the government to tighten its belt like millions of families across the country. Economists agree this is a red herring -- now is not the time to worry about the deficit, but instead a time to rebuild a nation whose citizens, infrastructure and resources will guide it out of debt in the future.

The President is going to win next year. But a victory without a bold agenda will ill-serve the needs of an American economy desperately crying for the investments it's been robbed of for decades. Obama need not fret whether it's Investment Season or Election Season. It's both. Investing in America's future is good politics, and Obama's characteristically hopeful and progressive political rhetoric needs a policy backbone that seriously invests in the future we want.

Energetics Cliff Notes - Wednesday Edition

2011-04-13T09:36:00.000-07:00

All your riveting climate/energy news in one convenient place.

Greentech Media recaps this weekend's Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference, featuring keynote speaker Steven Chu (see my Twitter timeline for overly detailed liveblogging).

Chu stuck around after the weekend to attend a bill signing by Jerry Brown at a SunPower manufacturing plant in Milpitas. The legislation will require California utilities to get 33% of their power (an increase from 20%) from alternative energy technologies by 2020.

Bill Weihl, Google's green energy czar and a founder of google.org's fan-favorite Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal, on a prototype mirror design that could cut the cost of large solar thermal plants in half.

Grist's Dave Roberts explains why environmentalists blocking CARB's implementation of AB 32 (featuring California's cap-and-trade program) are a little misguided.

This (long-ish) post by Barry Brook is one of the best reactions pieces I've seen to the Fukushima nuclear accident.

Big cuts are expected as the latest CR to fund the government unfolds -- high-speed rail is just one of the many unfortunate choices taking hits.

Energetics: Year Two

2011-04-08T20:33:00.000-07:00

I started this blog about one year ago (actually, Energetics had its inaugural post on March 22, 2010). Since then, I've posted 116 entries, averaging somewhere between 5-15 per month (with the exception of April 2010, which had 47 separate posts, a pace which I apparently could not sustain). Energetics has had, as of this writing, 3,851 pageviews, not including my own. The vast majority of those originate in the US, not surprisingly. Canada, Russia, South Korea and the Netherlands pitched in about 150 a piece last year (thanks!). My most viewed post was "Chunks: A(nother) New Approach to Energy Policy?"

This blog has brought me tremendous personal and professional satisfaction. I greatly enjoy writing for it, and I enjoy the conversations with friends and acquaintances about energy/climate issues and blogging in general. Energetics has given me a channel through which to focus my academic and professional research and advocacy, and I imagine my opinions and knowledge would be significantly weaker without it. Paired with my Twitter (@atrembath), it has also been an excellent venue to make connections with other bloggers and professionals interested and working in energy policy. As I wrote in my first post on Energetics, "The most efficient and productive utility for sites like Facebook and Twitter are, in my opinion, the new forms of media dissemination and filtration that they offer." This has proved more true than I could have predicted.

Since I started this blog, I have begun to post regularly at Americans for Energy Leadership, The Energy Collective, and WattHead - Energy News and Commentary. I can't imagine these doors would have been opened for me if not for Energetics. It's an honor and a joy to write for these publications, and I look forward to continuing in the future. Energetics will always be my personal home base, but I can't express how much I enjoy sharing the stage with the other exceptional bloggers who publish at those sites.

I can't overemphasize the value of my Twitter in promoting and complementing my blog. The degree to which I can share my content, and find content to share and discuss, via Twitter is enormous, and I don't expect I'll find a better combination of social networking tools to explore the energy policy arena. Google Reader, the RSS reader I use to aggregate over 60 choice blogs, is similarly indispensable.

I plan on continuing to blog at Energetics for the foreseeable future. I plan on enjoying it and discussing it with all of you. Thanks so much for reading this past year, and I look forward to the next!

Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference

2011-04-08T15:19:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, I'll be attending the 7th Berkeley-Stanford Cleantech Conference at PG&E Auditorium in San Francisco. The conference is billed as "BSCC: Sputnik 2.0? The Pursuit of Green Jobs in China and the U.S." The subtitle is referring to a warning from the Obama Administration that China has thrown down the gauntlet in the cleantech arena in a manner reminiscent of the Soviets upon launching the satellite Sputnik. President Obama made the comparison himself in this year's State of the Union, following Secretary Chu, who is keynoting the conference tomorrow. Panel discussions include "Clean Technologies: Job Creation or Destruction" and "What is the Role of Policy in Green Job Creation in the U.S. and China?" The latter is moderated by Teryn Norris, my colleague and founder of Americans for Energy Leadership.

I feel very fortunate (again) to be a student at UC Berkeley, which allows me to attend the conference at a considerable discount. For those interested, I'll be live-tweeting the event @atrembath. Should make for a very interesting day.

Polarizing environmentalism

2011-04-04T19:13:00.000-07:00

Observation via Robert Cruickshank at the California High-Speed Rail Blog:

There are two kinds of environmentalism out there. The older kind is a 20th century environmentalism that believes the automobile society is perfectly fine – the problem is when it encroaches on open space. This kind of environmentalist looks at you quizzically when you talk about carbon emissions or sustainable transportation, but gets very worked up about a proposal to convert open space to some kind of use. This kind of environmentalist is willing to oppose solar and wind power because of its effect on open space. They don’t ever really stop to consider the big picture, because they believe everything is just fine if we never build on open space ever again.

The newer kind of environmentalism is a 21st century environmentalism that understands the huge crisis we have placed our planet in because of our burning of fossil fuels. This kind of environmentalist knows that the status quo is killing species left and right – that even if we never built another thing on any existing open space, we’d still be fucked because we’re burning carbon like it’s going out of style (which it actually is). This kind of environmentalist knows that it’s worth trading some open space for sustainability, because it won’t do us or other species much good if we preserve open space and yet keep on burning carbon.

I tend to agree with Mr. Cruickshank, and am personally very excited for the opportunity to ride in style in HSR (as opposed to the 16 hours I spent on I-5 this past week). However, I always get a little skeptical when sentences begin "there are two kinds of [blank] out there." I for one enjoy open space and would not like to see the Grand Canyon or the forests near my house developed, but I also don't react "quizzically" when others talk about carbon emissions or sustainability. Indeed, readers of this blog will have to look hard to find a post about "open space," but I do still consider myself a conservationist.

And yet, I fall squarely into Mr. Cruickshank's second category of environmentalism as well, in that I grew concerned when NIMBYs stalled progress on Cape Wind in Nantucket, when a coalition of environmentalists sued to halt AB 32 in California, and when the German and Chinese governments pulled back on plans for advancing nuclear power generation. The non-trivial environmental challenges represented by alternative energy technologies must be weighed against the consequences of a sustained carbon economy, and anyone suspecting a negligible environmental impact by 21st century industrialism is fooling themselves.

So there is overlap in Mr. Cruickshank's simplistic analysis (i.e., me), and indeed, there are missing categories. I doubt very much, for instance, that many "open space" environmentalists would strongly identify with the Monkey Wrench Gang, Edward Abbey's fictional eco-terrorists, or their real-life counterparts. The point Mr. Cruickshank intends to transmit comes across perfectly well -- we should not block progress on environmental goals for the sake of small potatoes, NIMBYism or BANANA logic ("build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything"). But environmentalists of all stripes should stop short of polarizing each other. Disagreements may become far more bridgeable if opponents are friends, not enemies, and taking a complex system of overlapping and sometimes competing ideas and turning it into a two-sided coin weakens the debate, and it will weaken the outcomes.

Incidentally, Mr. Cruickshank argues that the welfare of desert ecosystems probably needs to take a backseat to the HSR train currently in the planning stage, because climate change is ultimately the larger threat to species and biomes. "Environmentalists need to keep perspective," he says, and I agree. But he needs to keep perspective as well (we all do). High-speed rail runs on electricity, and roughly 60% of California electricity comes from burning fossil fuels (46.5% natural gas, 15.5% coal in 2009). Almost all of the state's transportation sector is fueled by petroleum, so switching some vehicle miles from cars to the train would certainly be a step in the right direction. But HSR will be a stall at best in mitigating carbon emissions until alternative energy technology is competitive with the fossil fuels we need it to displace.

In the end, there are only two kinds of people in the world: people who believe the world can be divided cleanly into two groups, and people who don't.

All (climate) politics are local

2011-03-30T10:40:00.000-07:00

Roger Pielke Jr. has an interesting take on a point I've made many times at Energetics: that the justification for decarbonization is not advanced by more accurate or voluminous climate science, but by a campaign based on transitioning to a cleaner, safer, cheaper and more accesible energy economy.

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

Pielke here echoes the famous axiom "all politics are local." His thought experiment also calls to mind the debate over the terms "global warming" versus "climate change," both of which are accurate but the latter of which is vague enough to make the science harder refute with a particularly intense snow storm. The point is, all politics are local, and ecosystems are even more local*. Calculating the need for decarbonization as a function of global average surface temperature increases makes less sense than using more local, more intense and more observable climatic effects.

Of course, this discussion proves Pielke's larger point. Whether we call it "global warming" or "climate change," whether we're on track for 600 ppm CO₂ or 615, whether my locale experiences any noticeable climatic changes or not -- these questions do not affect my personal advocacy for decarbonization in the slightest.

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*Can I say "more local"? Get back to me wordsmiths.

Energetics Cliff Notes - Tuesday Edition

2011-03-29T11:52:00.000-07:00

Amid a still-ongoing nuclear accident and buoyant oil prices, The Hill reports that President Obama will "outline a plan for America's energy future" tomorrow (Wednesday). The focus is expected to be on transportation and clean vehicles.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty thinks his rationalization for flip-flopping on cap-and-trade is better than his rivals' in the race for the 2012 Republican nomination. Sure. Okay.

An interesting piece at TechCrunch on how high finance is stealing human capital from research, engineering, and entrepreneurialism. "Let’s save the world by keeping our engineers out of finance. We need them to, instead, develop new types of medical devices, renewable energy sources, and ways for sustaining the environment and purifying water, and to start companies that help America keep its innovative edge."

Andrew Revkin laments the hyperbole and fear-mongering that go hand-in-hand with the media's reporting on Fukushima.

Florida's rejection of $1.2 billion in high-speed rail funds may be good news for the Merced leg of California's planned HSR route (via California High Speed Rail Blog -- follow it!).

The German Green Party is taking over the state of Baden-Württemberg, ending a 58-year control by the Christian Democratic Union party. Roger Pielke Jr. wonders what will replace nuclear power in the state, which currently supplies "about half of its electricity" and which the Greens are expected to get rid of. (Answer? Coal. Woohoo.)

Americans for Energy Leadership provides an update on the state of the US solar industry. "Though the data can be analyzed and interpreted from numerous angles, overall the industry appeared to grow and expand substantially in 2009."

Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute was on NPR's Weekend Edition on Sunday, explaining that the incident at Fukushima will not likely alter the future for nukes in the US. Basically, we weren't exactly planning on building a lot of new reactors before, and the events in Japan aren't going to change that one way or the other.

Christine Hertzog on the asymmetric information problem between utilities and consumers RE smart meters. "People need to know the true financial and economic costs of power outages, and how different Smart Grid technologies reduce overall outage time and increase reliability metrics. In other words, what are the risks of not implementing these solutions."

Quote of the Day

2011-03-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

Dan Kammen of the World Bank and UC Berkeley (and who taught me ER100 at Cal) has a nice, quick piece up in The Atlantic today on small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). His analysis indicates that SMRs present multiple advantages that overcome some or many of the challenges typically presented by nuclear power, but that any forward momentum of a "nuclear renaissance" may have been irreparably slowed by the incident in Fukushima.

At this point the nuclear industry faces a range of issues; resilience of backup systems; waste management; cost; and public trust. While SMRs offer potentially attractive approaches to a number of design issues, many of the most pressing issues facing the nuclear industry today are not technological.

Nuclear Reaction Roundup: Experts Warn Against Dismissing Nuclear Power

2011-03-16T11:53:00.000-07:00

Originally published at Americans for Energy Leadership.

In the midst of the ongoing partial meltdown at Japan's Fukushima nuclear plant, energy experts across the spectrum are urging caution and patience in considering the implications for nuclear energy in the United States and internationally. In particular, many energy and climate change experts note that we should not so readily dismiss nuclear power as an option for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting rising global energy demand.

International Energy Agency chief Nobuo Tanaka:

"While I understand the public's fear, I am concerned given the important role of nuclear power. I encourage patience until more information is gathered for a full review so we can learn the lessons," he added... "The cost of fighting against global warming will increase, that is sure," he told Reuters. "I think it is very difficult (to fight global warming), even impossible, without using nuclear power."

Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC):

Nuclear power plants built in the areas usually thought of as earthquake zones, such as the California coastline, have a surprisingly low risk of damage from those earthquakes. Why? They built anticipating a major quake... The NRC, the federal agency responsible for nuclear power safety, says the odds are in the public's favor. "Operating nuclear power plants are safe," the NRC said when it reported the new risk estimates.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA):

Robert Engel, former IAEA inspector and Swiss nuclear engineer, told Reuters Sunday that a partial meltdown of a reactor “is not a disaster” and that he doubted a complete meltdown is possible. And the details of the current Japanese reactor crisis bear little similarity to the Soviet-era meltdown at Chernobyl, which came about through design flaws and human error before it spread a radioactive cloud across much of Europe and Asia 25 years ago.

Experts at the IAEA “aren’t planning for the next Chernobyl” says a mid-level Western diplomat familiar with how the organization works. “But nor do [they] think we are out of the woods yet. The reactors are still hot. But this situation has no relation to Chernobyl, even though I realize that in the popular lore, if you say ‘Chernobyl,’ it means 'catastrophic meltdown.'”

United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu:

“The president and the administration believe we have to be looking very, very closely at the events in Japan. We have to apply whatever lessons that can be and will be learned from what has happened and what is happening in Japan,” Chu explained. “Those lessons would then be applied to first look at our current existing fleet of reactors, to make sure that they can be used safely and… how as one proceeds forward, any lessons learned can be applied.”

Jason Grumet of the Bipartisan Policy Center (and former Obama energy advisor):

“It’s not possible to achieve a climate solution based on existing technology without a significant reliance on nuclear power,” said Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington and an energy and climate change adviser to the 2008 Obama campaign. “It’s early to reach many conclusions about what happened in Japan and the relevance of what happened to the United States. But the safety of nuclear power will certainly be high on the list of questions for the next several months.”

Joshua Freed of Third Way:

One shouldn’t minimize the dangers faced by the workers, but even something as catastrophic as the disaster in Japan might turn out to be a lot less catastrophic in terms of damage and loss of life than we fear right now. And you have to weigh that against the health, environmental impact and assorted other costs of the fossil fuels we rely on every day. And if, like most people, you think climate change is happening and poses a massive threat, you have to ask what options we have.

Here is some further analysis and commentary:

Greg Evans, professor the the University of Toronto:

“In the long scheme of things I don’t believe, in terms of health effects, that this is actually going to be a big part of the outcome of this earthquake,” said Greg Evans, a professor in the department of chemical engineering and applied chemistry at the University of Toronto. “Compared to the massive impact (in death and destruction) that the earthquake and tsunami have had, I don’t think that this is going to be a big contributor,” says Evans, who also heads the Southern Ontario Centre for Atmospheric Aerosol Research.

Lisbeth Gronlund of the Union of Concerned Scientists:

“This is not, and will not be, Chernobyl under any stretch of the imagination. That’s good news,” said Lisbeth Gronlund, a senior scientist and co-director of the Global Security Program at the Cambridge-based Union of Concerned Scientists. “There was no containment vessel in Chernobyl.”

Heather Timmons and Vikas Bajaj at New York Times:

With those two countries [China and India] driving the expansion — and countries from elsewhere in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East also embracing nuclear power in response to high fossil fuel prices and concerns about global warming — the world’s stock of 443 nuclear reactors could more than double in the next 15 years, according to the World Nuclear Association, an industry trade group.

Sara Mansur of the Breakthrough Institute:

Carbon dioxide emissions in Germany may increase by 4 percent annually in response to a moratorium on seven of the country's oldest nuclear power plants, as power generation is shifted from nuclear power, a zero carbon source, to the other carbon-intensive energy sources that currently make up the country's energy supply.

Nathan Temple of the American Nuclear Society:

The sad news for the nay Sayers is that reactors are safer than ever and US reactors are designed such that they shutdown when something goes wrong. Current reactor technology (these are the designs that are being licensed and built in the US and around the world) uses less equipment and less automation, focusing on passive systems. Passive is the key. New reactors do not need electricty to keep the shutdown core cool. Unlike the Japanese and current operating reactors which require offsite or emergency power to pump coolant water into the shutdown reactor.

David Kroodsma at Climate Central:

The bottom line is that a major earthquake would probably not result in a nuclear meltdown at the reactors on the above map [of the contiguous United States], but it could present significant engineering challenges. Quantifying the risks, and minimizing them as much as possible, is a key task for everyone involved in the nuclear energy industry.