News Roundup on the American Energy Innovation Council

Crossposted from LeadEnergy.org

On June 10th, a group of the country's top business leaders including Bill Gates and Jeff Immelt launched a new initiative, the American Energy Innovation Council, calling for major new federal investments in clean energy technology research, development, and demonstration -- at least $16 billion annually, more than triple the current level.

Their report, "A Business Plan for America's Energy Future," was released a day after the Breakthrough Institute and Americans for Energy Leadership published a new policy brief on the Kerry-Lieberman American Power Act, "The Power to Compete," providing the most comprehensive assessment of the bill's energy innovation provisions to date. It finds that Kerry-Lieberman does not contain a comprehensive innovation strategy would only increase federal clean energy RD&D investment by as little as $2.2 billion per year.

Below is a roundup of news coverage on the American Energy Innovation Council to date:

New York Times, "A Call to Triple U.S. Spending on Energy Research," Jun. 9, 2010.

"Mr. Gates and his fellow executives are stepping forward at what may prove a pivotal moment in American energy policy. Oil continues to spew from a crippled well in the Gulf of Mexico, the Obama administration is pushing for a new approach to energy and climate policy and the Senate is about to embark on a debate on a set of conflicting proposals that pit not only Republicans against Democrats but different regions of the country against each other."

Washington Post, "Gates coming to White House to appeal for more energy research dollars," Jun. 9, 2010.

"The group is arguing that, while the United States spends $80 billion a year on military research and $30 billion a year on health research, it devotes between $2.8 billion and $4.8 billion on energy research, depending on how you count it...The emphasis on direct government spending reflects, in part, the group's realization that a climate bill isn't likely to pass Congress this year; there will be no national market for carbon emissions to push companies toward renewable energy. The group argues that the United States is falling behind other nations that spend more on their domestic energy companies."

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Make Poverty History: Make Clean Energy Cheap

“If you gave me only one wish for the next 50 years,” declared the world’s wealthiest man during last week’s TED 2010 conference, “I can pick who is president, I can pick a vaccine... or I can pick that [an energy technology] at half the cost with no CO2 emissions gets invented, this is the wish I would pick. This is the one with the greatest impact.”

Bill Gates is right. And he is not just talking about the impact on climate change, which does of course present a major threat. He is also talking about one of the most critical global imperatives to make poverty history: making clean energy cheap.

“If you could pick just one thing to lower the price of to reduce poverty, by far you would pick energy,” said Gates in his introduction. Gates should know as well as any development expert, since the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – the world’s largest transparent private foundation – has invested billions of dollars in extreme poverty alleviation since 1994.

Nearly 1.6 billion of our fellow human beings have no access to electricity, and around 2.4 billion people – over one third of global population – meet their basic cooking and heating needs by burning biomass, such as wood, crop waste, and dung. “Without access to modern, commercial energy, poor countries can be trapped in a vicious circle of poverty, social instability and underdevelopment,” concludes the International Energy Agency.

The direct health consequences of using primitive solid fuels like biomass and coal are severe. According to the World Health Organization, solid fuel use causes 1.6 million excess deaths per year globally, especially among women and children -- the fourth largest risk factor in developing countries after malnutrition, waterborne disease, and unsafe sex, and the second greatest environmental cause of disease overall.

These numbers are staggering. Energy poverty is an extreme and dangerous condition, and its elimination must be one of the highest development priorities for the 21st century. Nobody on this planet should be forced to burn dung to feed their family and heat their home, and access to modern energy sources should be considered a basic human right.

The implication is that energy technology innovation today should be considered one of the world’s most important social and economic justice movements. The growing movement to make clean energy cheap, and to deliver that energy globally, has the potential to alleviate as much human suffering and injustice as some of the largest, concerted social movements in history.

Of course, driving down the price of clean energy technologies is also essential for reducing global carbon emissions. Until the price gap between low-carbon and high-carbon energy is bridged, poor and rich nations alike will continue relying upon coal and other fossil fuels to power their development. This would virtually assure climate destabilization.

The task is clear: to eliminate energy poverty and avoid climate catastrophe, we must unleash our forces of innovation – namely, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs – to develop a portfolio of truly scalable clean energy technologies, bring these technologies to market, and ensure they are affordable enough to deploy throughout the world.

If you gave me only one wish, then, it would be for the United States to launch a major public-private project to make clean energy cheap (or as Google puts it, "renewable energy cheaper than coal"). This requires the development of a comprehensive, strategic roadmap for technology development and deployment, including the identification of specific technical hurdles and the various financial and human resources needed to overcome them. It will then require large-scale public-private investment in each stage of the energy innovation pipeline – from basic research and development, to applied R&D, demonstration, direct deployment, infrastructure, and education – eventually on the scale of $50-80 billion per year of federal investment.

The clean energy investments in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act were an important first step. Congress should take the next step today with a bipartisan plan to increase the federal energy R&D budget to $15-30 billion per year, on par with the National Institutes of Health, and to develop a comprehensive federal energy education program. If these investments are funded by a modest carbon price, then all the better, but we can no longer make energy technology policy dependent on the carbon pricing agenda. Clean energy innovation is an economic, national security, and human development imperative, and these public investments should be made with or without cap and trade.

The United States was a driving force behind the worldwide expansion of prosperity and security in the 20th century. Today, a new American project to make clean energy cheap can alleviate untold human suffering and injustice, develop the world’s strongest clean energy industry, and help save the world from climate destabilization. In short, it may be our generation's single greatest opportunity to advance global prosperity in the 21st century and secure the lives of future generations. As Bill Gates put it, “This is the one with the greatest impact.”

Teryn Norris is Director of Americans for Energy Leadership, Public Policy major at Stanford University, and Senior Advisor at the Breakthrough Institute.

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