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

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

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

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

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?

[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

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

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

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

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

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.