The trouble with tying climate science to policy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

1. The proposal fails to meaningfully reduce the budget deficit now or in the future.
2. Heritage fails to understand where technological innovations come from.
   
3. 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)