Irrational cuts proposed to DOE

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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

• 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

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

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.