Over at the National Journal's Energy forum, my Breakthrough Institute colleague Alex Trembath and I have a new submission to their ongoing discussion asking "How Can Washington Green America's Economy?" Here's the full text...
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.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
National Journal: Surviving the Coming Clean Tech Crash
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Say No to 'No Nukes' Revival
My colleague Sara Mansur & I have an op ed in today's San Francisco Chronicle, issuing a stern rebuttal to the revival of the "No Nukes" concerts this Sunday at Shoreline in Mountain View, CA.
The world has changed since the original five-night concert series in 1979. An anti-nuclear position may have made good sense then, but is no longer tenable today.
Graham Nash and the MUSE cadre of septuagenerian rockers appear woefully ignorant of the real intergenerational threat faced in the 21st century -- climate change -- and the implications that a 'No Nukes' world would have for public health and the environment.
You can find the print edition in today's Chronicle and an extended edition online here.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Webinar - Fukushima and Nuclear Power: Can we live without it?
Live Webcast June 29, 3 PM ET / 12 PM PT
Following the earthquake and tsunamis that tragically impacted Japan in March, the unfolding crisis at the Fukushima nuclear power plant has captured public attention for months. Energy experts are now questioning the long term impact of the Fukushima disaster on nuclear policy, international power generation, and the global carbon picture:
Join The Energy Collective's latest webcast as we seek answers to these questions and discuss nuclear power's role in our energy future. Register here today.
Matthew Wald is a Reporter for the Washington Bureau at The New York Times, covering environmental and energy issues, as well as transportation, aviation and highway safety. Having joined The Times in October 1976 as a news clerk in the newspaper’s Washington bureau, Wald held positions at the New York metropolitan desk, the State Capitol in Hartford, and as a national correspondent, covering a variety of areas including housing and nuclear power, before joining the Washington bureau in September 1996. Wald has covered the Fukushima crisis extensively in the New York Times.
Edward Kee is a VP at NERA Economic Consulting and a specialist in the electricity industry with experience in nuclear power, electricity markets, restructuring, regulation, private power, and related issues. For more than 20 years, he has provided testimony as an expert witness on a range of electricity industry issues in state and federal courts, before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and before other legal and regulatory bodies in the US and around the world. Mr. Kee also provides strategic advice to companies and governments on issues related to the nuclear and electricity industries. Mr. Kee holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BS in Systems Engineering from the US Naval Academy.
Jesse Jenkins is Director of Energy and Climate Policy at theBreakthrough Institute, and is one of the country's leading energy and climate policy analysts and advocates. He is the co-author with Devon Swezey of the "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" report on global clean energy competitiveness strategies, and is currently working on an update to the report. Jesse has written for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Yale Environment 360, Grist.org, and HuffingtonPost.com, and his published works on energy policy have been cited by many more. He is founder and chief editor of WattHead - Energy News and Commentary and a featured writer at the Energy Collective.
Marc Gunther is a veteran journalist, speaker, writer and consultant whose focus is business and sustainability. Marc is a contributing editor at FORTUNE magazine, a senior writer atGreenbiz.com, and a lead blogger at The Energy Collective. He's also a husband and father, a lover of the outdoors and a marathon runner. Marc is the author or co-author of four books, including Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism is Transforming American Business. He's a graduate of Yale who lives in Bethesda, MD.
Thursday, March 03, 2011
The Fierce Urgency of Now: Notes from the ARPA-E Summit
by Matthew Hourihan and Matthew Stepp, Policy Analysts for the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation
There are times when the nation’s political leadership in Washington is perfectly in sync with the realities of the day, and there are times when much of that leadership is out to lunch. Exhibit A: the current energy debate. Even as global demand and instability threatens to challenge affordable supply, and as overseas states are investing heavily in clean technology, many of the nation’s leaders are contemplating gutting domestic investment in clean energy.
Amid this context, enter the 2011 ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit, a gathering of some of the best and brightest in clean energy innovation intended to showcase often-astounding advances in energy technology. The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy – one of the single most important agencies in the federal innovation portfolio – has recently been fighting for its budgetary life, surviving a recent push to de-fund the program, and still facing significant uncertainty over future appropriations. Yet few programs are doing what ARPA-E is doing: supporting cutting-edge energy research in the private and academic sectors in search of revolutionary game-changers to fundamentally alter our energy landscape.
ARPA-E was modeled after DARPA – the cutting-edge Defense Department research agency – to be an agile, dynamic innovation engine at the recommendation of the National Academies. It’s early yet (the agency’s research programs are multiyear endeavors), but if just a handful pay off, the potential upside is enormous. Already, certain awardees are leveraging public funding to entice private investment at a 4-to-1 ratio. Agency Director Arun Majumdar summed up the program’s mission on the first day: “What ARPA-e does best is identify the opportunities and create the competition. And eventually, the market will pick the winners.” (video)
Even given its relative youth and small size, the agency has attracted plaudits for its ability, as when CO Sen. Mark Udall remarked of ARPA-E at the summit, “You're a model of efficiency. That’s government at its best.” On top of this well-earned reputation, multiple expert recommendations have said ARPA-E is critical to American cleantech competitiveness and urged a boost to its original $400 million budget. And last year Congress saw fit to reauthorize the agency for three more years in the America COMPETES Act, albeit at lower levels than has been recommended.
Nevertheless, some leaders want to zero out the agency, and even those who nominally support it remain unwilling to invest adequately. AK Sen. Lisa Murkowski acknowledged as much, warning that “Many programs are never funded at their authorized levels, let alone higher. At what level Congress will support funding for ARPA-E remains uncertain.”
Suffice to say, we hope those leaders out to lunch will finish up soon and get back to investing in the future.
The Future on Display
Congressional disconnect notwithstanding, what the conference made clear is that there is enormous vitality behind the movement towards energy innovation. This is partly due to the urgency of the cleantech competitiveness challenge. As Energy Secretary Stephen Chu put it, “Clean energy is a race and the train is leaving the station.” Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was more colorful, but still spot on, ending his sterling keynote address with a reference to his past role as Conan the Barbarian that got plenty of laughs: “I’ve made a lot of action movies in the past, so I know about action. And you are the true people of action. Conan [the Barbarian] was asked, 'What is best in life?' He answered, 'To crush your enemies, see them driven before you and to hear the lamentations of the women.' Now, my views have evolved since. But my point is that Conan was not big on philosophy or navel-gazing. He was big on action, just like you.”
And that vitality is there for good reason: the energy technology sector—from private entrepreneurs and investors to scientists and engineers in university labs—is brimming with, well, energy, in the form of radical and frequently eye popping ideas for advanced low-carbon energy technology. Dozens of these experimental projects – many of which are supported by ARPA-E – were on display at the technology showcase, a sampling of which can be found here (with photos here). In the midst of a burgeoning trillion-dollar market, many of these technologies could yield massive returns on investment – assuming, of course, adequate and appropriate policy support is there to accelerate their development.
The discussion covered much more ground than can be summarized here, but there were a few key themes that rose to the surface through the summit.
DOD Wants Effective Cleantech
Top Navy official John Quinn told the summit his superiors need to “be bold” on energy innovation. Partnering with ARPA-E is a good start: Navy Secretary Ray Mabus made news by announcing a pair of energy storage projects in partnership with ARPA-E. Many have made the connection between overseas fossil fuels and national security risks, but Mabus also made clear during his speech that clean energy also represents an opportunity: to make a more agile and efficient fighting force free of dangerous supply convoys, as well as to reduce the need to defend the global oil pipeline. Solar-powered rucksacks save marine patrols from having to carry 700 pounds of extra weight. And alternative fueled ships like the USS Makin Island could save hundreds of millions of dollars in costs. Contrast this with Mabus’ observation that every $1 increase in the price of oil costs the Navy $31 million (and keep in mind, world crude has increased by $30 over the past year). These are resources to purchase, transport, and protect that could be used elsewhere.
As for the naysayers who argue that an effective fighting force can’t rely on petroleum alternatives, Mabus pointed out that they’ve been there every time the Navy transitioned to new energy sources, from wind to coal to oil, but “every time it’s lead to a better navy.”
IT and Power Electronics Have a Big Role to Play
Whether through the use of supercomputers to develop more efficient wind turbine blades or the development of innovative software to develop new and better chemical energy solutions, IT was a common theme throughout the summit and stamped on nearly every project.
For example, CREE Inc. – an ARPA-E supported business – is developing the necessary technology to seamlessly integrate grid-capacity clean energy and rapidly charge electric cars on-grid. Their idea seeks to create an efficient, intelligent substation, replacing traditional transformers, to manage the stream of energy coming from clean sources to consumers. These new transformers would be drastically smaller and much less costly, and act as an IT middle man – allowing bidirectional flow of energy (consumers both producing and consuming clean energy) as well as efficiently managing the often time-inconsistent flow from clean generators through a smarter grid (which would of course be mitigated by advanced storage eventually).
Another showcased example is Arkansas Power Electronics International (APEI). Consumers will require plug-in vehicles to rapidly charge, just like gasoline power vehicles can be quickly refueled. But with greater penetration of PHEVs, rapid charging could quickly strain or overload the grid and local infrastructure. APEI showcased advances in small, modular power conversion technologies utilizing silicon-carbide semiconductors that promise high-temperature operation, meaning they would allow for high power densities conducted by rapid-charge PHEVs. And because this technology is modular and significantly smaller than typical high power density converters, their cost is greatly reduced.
Manufacturing Needs to Be Here
Many economists shrug off the need to maintain a viable manufacturing base. But this is of course mistaken thinking, as the message came through loud and clear from the manufacturing-oriented panel. As Siemens Chairman Peter Solmssen pointed out, “Innovation includes R&D, and the 'D' part in particular is important to a competitive manufacturing sector.”
What also was clear is that government has an important role to play in boosting that sector, through a comprehensive approach: stable market creation for scaleup, targeted R&D support, incentives for investment, and a coherent strategy to tie it all together. Business Roundtable President and former Michigan Governor John Engler highlighted the importance of making the R&D credit permanent and in continuing to foster productive programs like NIST’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership.
Wednesday, March 02, 2011
Climate Challenge Hinges on Fueling China with Clean and Cheap Energy
This column originally published at the Breakthrough Institute blog
I've said it before and I'll say it again: when it comes to the global climate challenge, as goes China, so goes the world.
Driving that aphorism home, co2scorecard.org, a not-for-profit project that closely tracks global greenhouse gas emissions, now reports that China's CO2 emissions increased by 906 million tons in 2009 -- the second largest annual increase for any country in recorded history. China's soaring emissions were enough to completely offset the drop in emissions wrought by the economic havoc plaguing much of the Western world (see graphic below).
China's unprecedented surge in CO2
Over the last decade, China's annual emissions of climate destabilizing CO2 jumped by 5 billion tons per year. According to Shakeb Afsah, President and CEO of co2scorecard.org, that's "the highest [increase in annual CO2 output] for a single country in recorded history, representing an average annual emissions increase of almost 12%--more than four times the rate observed [for China] the previous decade."
To put this unprecedented 5 billion ton increase in annual CO2 emissions in context, Mr Afsah and colleague Kendyl Salcito note that during the 14-year long post-war boom period of 1959-1973, during which U.S. CO2 emissions rose each year, America's annual output of CO2 jumped by only 2 billion tons.
This new analysis comes on the heels of the latest International Energy Agency's World Energy Outlook, which projects China's soaring demand will single-handedly account for 36% of all global energy demand growth over the next 25 years. According to the global energy watchdog group, China's energy use will rise 75% between 2008 and 2035, raising the nation's share of global energy use to 22 percent, up from 17 percent today.
Sliding backwards?
Despite a much-publicized national climate policy centrally focused on driving down the CO2 intensity of the Chinese economy through greater industrial and power plant efficiency, the amount of carbon emitted per unit of economic output in China slid backwards during four of the last ten years. In 2009, after four years of steady progress, the carbon intensity of China's economy took a big step backwards, regressing to 1999 levels, according to co2scorecard.org (see graphic below)
That factoid means there's more going on here than just simple economic growth driving emissions growth. China's macroeconomic policies are actually driving the carbon intensity of the nation's economy backwards, working at cross-purposes with the central government's avowed climate strategy.
The analysts at co2scorecard.org point the finger at China's promotion of an export-oriented manufacturing economy, including the nation's increasingly controversial currency policies.
Since joining the World Trade Organization in 2001, China has built up a manufacturing juggernaut that has taken over global supply chains for some of the world's most energy intensive industrial processes, including cement, steel, glass and chemicals production, turning predominately to carbon-intensive coal to fuel this economic engine. That was a recipe for both soaring economic output and carbon emissions alike.
The recent impact of the global recession has only exacerbated China's outsized role in global emissions. According to co2scorecard.com:
Through the global recession, China's depressed exchange rate protected its energy intensive industries, serving as a subsidy for export-oriented manufacturing industries (Wolf 2009). Other countries that would have grown their industrial sectors couldn't compete against China's deflated prices. So China has ended up with a lion's share of industrial production within its economic pie, subjecting itself to a sub-optimally large share of CO2 emissions and other industrial pollution.
China's carbon commitments: ambitious or lackadaisical?
To meet a targeted 40-45% reduction in carbon intensity by 2020, announced in November 2009 as China's pledge at global climate negotiations in Copenhagen that year, China's central government has recently forced the closure of inefficient factories and power plants, enforced planned blackouts, and launched other seemingly heavy handed steps to reduce the energy intensity of the national economy.
Despite these high-profile measures, analysts including Breakthrough Senior Fellow Roger Pielke Jr., have repeatedly warned that China's seemingly ambitious climate target really just amounts to continuing on a course of business-as-usual -- which would mean another decade of unprecedented emissions growth.
Messieurs Afsah and Salcito note that this latest evidence adds credence to such concerns. "Though impressive on paper," China's carbon intensity pledge "represents the status quo," the duo writes.
Between 2005 and 2008 China's average annual CO2 intensity reduction rate was 4.35%, according to co2scorecard.org's analysis. Simply continuing that BAU rate would see China's emissions shrink 45% in around 13 years - by 2018, or two years ahead of their pledged goal.
"Maintaining the 4.35% reduction rate would not require any additional effort on China's part," Afsah and Salcito write. But hitting their goal in 2020 instead of 2018 would mean China could even slack off a bit, requiring just a 3.9% annual reduction.
"China is not just setting itself up for a business-as-usual carbon intensity reduction plan; it has committed to a lazier plan, allowing its emissions to continue increasing for an extended period of time," write Afsah and Salcito (see graphic above).
A recipe for rebound?
Worse yet, China's primary focus on improving industrial energy efficiency as the key to meeting carbon intensity goals is almost perfectly designed to trigger rebounds in energy demand that erode or even negate climate gains from such measures.
As noted in Breakthrough Institute's February report, "Energy Emergence: Rebound and Backfire as Emergent Phenomena," energy efficiency measures lower the effective price of the services derived from fuel consumption -- heating, cooling, transportation, industrial processes, etc. -- thus triggering a rebound in demand for those services (see a FAQ on rebound effects here).
These "rebound effects" are likely to be particularly pronounced in both industrial sectors and in developing nations, like China, where demand for goods and services, including energy services, is far more elastic (responsive to changes in price), and where industrial productivity improvements are key drivers of economic growth. For every step forward taken through efficiency, rebounds in energy demand take China -- and the world -- one or more steps backwards away from climate mitigation goals.
Thus, increased efficiency, particularly in China's industrial sectors, will drive greater economic growth and energy use. The net effect: total CO2 emissions are likely to keep soaring, even as China meets its lackadaisical carbon intensity goals.
Breaking China's carbon dependence
Is there any way then to really break the link between China's soaring economic output and soaring emissions?
Pursuing China's current path of unambitious carbon intensity goals -- principally met with industrial efficiency efforts likely to trigger serious rebounds in energy demand -- looks like a recipe for continued disaster.
And while co2scorecard.org's Afsah and Salcito note that a halt to China's currency depreciation efforts and other economic policies designed to spur an exports and industrial manufacturing-fueled growth strategy would cool both emissions and economic growth rates, this analyst considers it unlikely that China will assent to policies that drive down carbon by simply slowing economic growth.
That leaves only one other real option then: de-link economic growth from carbon emissions by fueling China -- and the world -- with clean, affordable, and massively scalable energy technologies.
Unfortunately, the menu of technologies that meet all three of those criteria -- clean (e.g. zero or very low-carbon), cheap (e.g. relatively affordable compared to conventional fossil fuels), and massively scalable -- is still quite limited. Cleaner energy alternatives must continue to improve in price, performance, or both, to meet a 'China-sized' appetite for energy.
China, America, Europe and the rest of the world must rapidly accelerate the pace of improvement in a whole suite of clean energy technologies, from nuclear and solar alike to plug-in hybrid vehicles, energy storage, and advanced biofuels. And a whole set of next-generation energy technologies must cross the Valley of Death from laboratory to commercialization in the coming decades
On this point, a cadre of energy experts including analysts at the IEA, U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, dozens of Nobel Laureates, high-profile American business leaders, and leading think tanks, are all united: we must make clean energy cheap, and fast.
China is already on a roaring path towards single-handedly swamping any hopes of climate stability, and success is far from assured.
The only thing that is certain is that the clock is ticking, and there's no time to waste in developing clean, cheap, scalable energy technologies to fuel both China and the world. The entire climate challenge hinges on our ability to do just that.
As the writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben is fond of saying, "You can't negotiate with the planet."
Bill's right of course. But as TIME magazine environmental correspondent Bryan Walsh observes, "it turns out you can't negotiate with the human desire for growth and development either--not in any political system on this planet. We need policies that provide us with the energy for both--or we may end up with neither."
Jesse Jenkins is the Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute Read more!
Friday, February 18, 2011
President Obama's Budget Would Invest in Energy Innovation
President Obama released his fiscal year 2012 budget proposal this morning, a solid endorsement of the necessity to increase public investment in energy innovation amidst proposals to indiscriminately cut discretionary spending across all federal programs. The President's budget proposal builds off of the innovation-centered economic growth strategy presented in the State of the Union Address last month and the White House Innovation Report released two weeks ago.
On the energy investment front, the budget proposal aims to increase the DOE's budget by 11.8 percent over FY2010's current appropriation levels, or $3.1 billion dollars, a comparatively small increase in an overall budget proposal of $3.7 trillion that proposes reducing the projected deficit by roughly $110 billion per year for the next ten years.
This budget increase is a vital step towards meeting the scale of the energy innovation challenge long-underlined by the Breakthrough Institute and by a general consensus of leading energy innovation experts, think tanks, and policymakers.
However, not all of these increases lie with funding for energy innovation. Using the Energy Innovation Tracker, a tool that compiles federal energy-innovation funding across nine federal agencies for the years 2009-2011, inclusive of ARRA, we've broken out investments in energy innovation (defined in the tracker as Basic Science, RD&D, and Education investments) from general energy investments in measures such as deployment, facility construction, and program management.
To do so, we've calculated the share of total budgets for each of these programs in FY2010 dedicated to energy innovation spending, and have assumed, for discussion's sake, that an equal proportion of each proposed FY2012 program budget is intended for energy innovation spending. The FY2010 budget is used rather than FY2011 budget request, as federal agencies are currently operating with a continuing resolution under FY2010 budget levels. The summary table for a selection of these energy innovation measures is presented below. Please note that these are ballpark figures. For a more extensive discussion of the methodology behind these assumptions, see the bullets at the end of this post.
Selected DOE Program Energy Innovation Budgets, FY2010 and Estimated Proposed FY2012 ($ millions)
(click to enlarge)
In addition to these budgetary increases:
These elements of President Obama's proposed budget are key moves towards the larger energy innovation system reform advocated for by several leading innovation scholars in "Post-Partisan Power", and in "Jumpstarting a Clean Energy Revolution with a National Institutes of Energy" a 2009 report published by the Breakthrough Institute and Third Way.
With these proposed investments across the energy innovation cycle, from research in breakthrough technologies to investments in advanced manufacturing and demonstration of later-stage technologies, the proposal recognizes that public investments in energy innovation are not just critical to the nation's energy future, but also to securing the country's economic prosperity. The proposal adds to a growing chorus of voices on both sides of the political spectrum that recognize that smart, targeted investments, rather than sweeping spending cuts, can be used to spark innovation and overcome the fiscal deficit.
The President's proposed budget is an important first step towards meeting this country's energy innovation imperative. Now, it remains to be seen if the budget proposal is largely symbolic, or if the President is fully committed to making this case to the American public and to winning over conservative policymakers and fiscal hawks who have been reluctant to embrace an innovation-focused strategy for fiscal responsibility and economic renewal.
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*Calculations for share of proposed FY12 budget devoted to energy innovation for the Office of Fossil Energy differed from calculations used for other offices, as the Administration stated throughout the proposed budget its goal of phasing out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies. Thus, it was assumed that the proportion of budget devoted to energy innovation would have increased in the FY12 proposed budget, and this share was calculated by summing: the changes listed in the FY12 proposed budget for the Carbon Capture & Power Systems Programs, the Advanced Energy Systems Programs, and a portion of the FY10 energy innovation budget that was assumed to be unchanged from lack of indication otherwise. o In the vehicle technology realm, the Administration proposes an 93% increase in the DOE EERE's Vehicle Technologies budget to $588 million to advance R&D for innovative transportation technologies. With an 80% dedicated to energy innovation funding in FY2010, we can assume that almost $486 million will be spent on energy innovation related projects in the Vehicle Technologies program through the proposed budget.
o Amidst growing interest in the Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology, the FY 2011 DOE budget request was the first to propose a project specifically geared towards supporting RD&D of SMR technologies, a $39 million project through the Reactor Concepts RD&D program. Obama's budget proposes a $125 million budget for the Reactor Concepts R&D program, which will reportedly include R&D on advanced SMR designs.
Friday, February 04, 2011
Webinar: China and Energy - Innovation, Competitiveness, and Meeting Soaring Demand
On Monday, I appeared on an hour-long webinar hosted by theEnergyCollective.com on China and Energy, diving into questions of energy innovation, competitiveness, and the challenge of meeting China's soaring demand.
Carolyn Bartholomew, a commissioner on the US-China Economic Security and Review Commission joined myself and moderator Marc Gunther to dive into the issues at stake.
We discussed how China can be both the world leader in clean and dirty energy, simultaneously leading the world in the production of clean energy technologies and global contributions to climate-destabilizing carbon dioxide and coal consumption; the economic stakes of the global clean energy race and China's rising prowess in clean tech innovation and production; and the huge scale of energy demand in the rapidly developing nation.
You can give a listen here.
See also: "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant" report on global clean tech competitiveness
A Clean Energy Competitiveness Strategy for America
Full Breakthrough Institute archives on Clean Energy Competitiveness Read more!
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Energy in China: Innovation, Competition, and Meeting Soaring Demand
Live Webinar Jan. 31, 1 PM ET / 10 AM PT
According to a 2010 International Energy Agency report, Chinese energy consumption has doubled over the past decade, and will soar 75 percent by 2035, accounting for more than a third of total global consumption growth. To date, the largest portion of this demand has been met by burning coal, raising serious concerns about CO2 emissions and the battle against climate change, but China has also begun to aggressively invest in alternative energy.
In light of this, The Energy Collective's latest webinar seeks to explore how China may rise to the challenge of meeting its rising energy demand while fighting climate change, and how those efforts will impact energy markets and technology in the rest of the world.
The webinar will explore:
- Innovation: Will China will be able to move down the innovation learning curve and successfully design new technologies, or continue to manufacture Western-designed technologies? Is there evidence this is happening?
- Competition: Will China's policies and investments in alternative energy put on-par competition out of reach for the U.S., or is there hope the U.S. and EU will keep pace?
- Coal and Energy Demand: What role will coal inevitably continue to play to meet steep energy demand increase projections for China? Can Carbon Capture & Sequestration help limit increases in coal-generated emissions?
Featuring:
Gardiner Hill is the Senior Advisor on CCS Technology, Regulations and Policy for BP Alternative Energy. He is responsible for developing strategies and advising on all matters related to carbon capture and storage across the portfolio of the BP group of companies. Hill has been involved heavily in the research and development of Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR) and in 2000, Hill joined BP’s central Group Technology function and project managed the CO2 Capture Project, the first international joint industry scheme of its kind. Hill sits on the board of a range of associations and special projects including; Chairman for the Carbon Capture and Storage Industry Association, Chairman for the CO2 Carbon Capture Project, and Vice Chairman of the Zero Emissions Power Technology Platform in Europe. Marc Gunther is a veteran journalist, speaker, writer and consultant whose focus is business and sustainability. Marc is a contributing editor at FORTUNE magazine, a senior writer at Greenbiz.com, a lead blogger at The Energy Collective. He's also a husband and father, a lover of the outdoors and a marathon runner. Marc is the author or co-author of four books, including Faith and Fortune: How Compassionate Capitalism is Transforming American Business. He's a graduate of Yale who lives in Bethesda, MD. Jesse Jenkins is Director of Energy and Climate Policy at the Breakthrough Institute, and is one of the country's leading energy and climate policy analysts and advocates. Jesse has written for publications including the San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Yale Environment 360, Grist.org, and HuffingtonPost.com, and his published works on energy policy have been cited by many more. He is founder and chief editor of WattHead - Energy News and Commentary and a featured wr iter at the Energy Collective.Register today and spread the word on Twitter and Facebook using http://bit.ly/EnergyChina Read more!
Monday, January 10, 2011
Economists Moving Beyond Carbon Pricing
Over at the Economist, Ryan Avent notes that economists are beginning to move beyond a simple reliance on carbon pricing as the sine qua non of climate policy:
The typical baseline economist response to the problem of global warming is a very simple and straightforward one. Climate change is a negative externality, and the carbon emissions that generate it are easily targetable. The clear thing to do, then, is to place a tax on carbon emissions which will lead economic actors to internalise the cost of the warming they create with their decisions. This will discourage carbon-intensive activities and contribute to the development of clean alternative, reducing emissions and climate change.Avent writes that while many economists continue to advocate carbon pricing -- even if they recognize that such policies, when implemented in real world political systems, are inadequate on their own terms -- a growing body of researchers are putting their focus elsewhere: "the potential role of positive policies--measures that encourage, rather than constrain, activities."
Easy enough. Unfortunately, this strategy quickly runs into difficulty. One big problem is political. It's very difficult to convince people to accept higher energy costs, and it's very difficult to coordinate policy across countries, which is necessary to ensure that the policy works correctly. But there are also economic challenges. ... Economies are good at finding substitutes for key technologies, but it does take some time. And so because the world has waited so long to act, it now seems that the disaster-avoiding carbon tax path may itself be too economically damaging. So what's an economist to advocate?
The authors of one recent paper on this subject presented at a great session on climate policy in Denver. "The environment and directed technical change", begins by arguing that the carbon externality isn't the only relevant externality in the mix. There is another important dynamic in which technological innovation draws on previous research, and so firms are more likely to continue on established innovation trajectories than to start new ones. Put simply: if most firms have been researching and building coal technologies in recent decades, they're much more likely to keep on working with coal than they are to switch to, say, solar. ...This isn't the only obstacle to clean energy innovation and a rapid and economic transition to a clean energy system. While economists risk stretching the term 'externality' beyond recognition in attempts to incorporate each of these obstacles into their neo-classical economic worldview, more and more economists have identified 'spill-over risks,' 'network failures,' 'incumbent infrastructure lock-in,' and many barriers to clean energy innovation and adoption.
What that means is that clean energy research will lag, even in the presence of a carbon tax. And the optimal policy response then is to subsidise clean technology research. Even a temporary subsidy will do; because of the innovation externality, the clean innovation trajectory will run on its own once established.
(For a good summary of these barriers, see the discussion, "Barriers to Widespread Clean Energy Adoption and the Public Investment Imperative" in our Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant report, or this excellent paper from energy economist and analyst Karsten Neuhoff,)
After a thorough accounting of each of these challenges, a carbon price looks much less like the holy grail of climate action and more like just one tool to help overcome one (of the many) barriers to a clean economy -- and a tool plagued by political difficulty at that...
As Avent concludes:
At any rate, economics is clearly moving beyond the carbon-tax-alone position on climate change, which is a good thing. If the world is to reduce emissions, it needs technologies that are both green and cheap enough to be attractive to economically-stressed countries and people. And a carbon tax alone may not generate the necessary innovation.Read more!
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
What A Difference a Few Years Makes: GOPers Flee from Greener Past
Here's an intriguing story to kick off the new year with a little retrospection...
Flash back to 2008, and nearly all of the top GOP contenders for a 2012 presidential run were taking global warming pretty seriously and offering real, if measured, endorsements of Congressional or state action to curb pollution and GHGs.
On the campaign stump, in books, speeches and nationally-televised commercials, aspiring GOP White House candidates such as Tim Pawlenty, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney have warned in recent years about the threats from climate change and pledged to limit greenhouse gases. Some have even committed the ultimate sin, endorsing the controversial cap-and-trade concept that was eventually branded “cap and tax.”Back in 2008, Newt Gingrich took to a couch next to the Right's current-day arch-nemesis, Nancy Pelosi, to endorse Congressional climate action in an ad sponsored by Al Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection.
And as Politico notes, even Sarah Palin has flip flopped on the issue:
Just days after McCain picked her as his running mate, Palin told ABC News she believes human activities "certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change" and that "we’ve got to do something about it, and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution."Politico's Darren Samuelsohn calls it the McCain effect, with John McCain's prominent endorsement of cap and trade legislation making it safe for GOPers to talk about climate.
"I think McCain is moving in a responsible direction," then-House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) told E&E News in May 2008. "Clearly the issue of climate change is on the minds of a lot of people. Humans clearly contribute to this. It just really depends on what kind of a cap-and-trade system, what kind of safety valves are in there."
Flash forward just a few years and each of these prominent GOPers are likely running for an excuse, a mea culpa, or another way to distance themselves from green records that are now liabilities with a Republican base strongly influenced by the Tea Party movement.
So what happened? Was it simply the polarizing direction of the cap and trade debate? The shift in the economic winds? The rise of the Tea Party? The inherent politics of a proposal centered on making our current base of energy sources more expensive, rather than making the cleaner alternatives cheaper?
Whatever the constellation of causes, the change is quite stark. Looking ahead to 2011 and beyond, can we build a new and enduring consensus around an innovation-centered approach to energy reform, building a clean economy, and responsibly reducing pollution? And can we make it sustained enough to avoid the factors that turned the endorsements of prominent GOP leaders into liabilities just a few years later?
We welcome thoughts from our readers... Read more!
Monday, December 06, 2010
Energy Innovation 2010: Rethinking Energy Innovation
Leading think tanks sponsor day-long conference rethinking energy innovation in the United States: getting to scale, making clean energy cheap, securing American leadership.
After two years of often-tumultuous debate in Congress, the national debate over energy and climate change policy has now been altered: cap and trade policy efforts have run aground in Congress, perhaps fatally, and Republicans are ascendant, reshaping the national political landscape. Meanwhile, with economic recovery the top priority for the public and policymakers alike, America’s clean tech competitors are surging ahead, raising the stakes for energy policy.
Against this backdrop, support is growing on both right and left for new national investments in energy innovation that can help address some of the most urgent imperatives of our time – renewing the economy, improving energy security and public health, and overcoming key environmental challenges.
A growing chorus of voices thus counsels a renewed national commitment to develop breakthrough energy technologies – and to the reform of America’s energy innovation system itself.
In recent months, energy experts have advised policymakers to: take a page from the nation’s long history of successful military research and procurement; build on the success of agricultural research stations and the National Institutes of Health by establishing new innovation institutes and clusters nationwide; promote the right mix of both competition and collaboration to spur innovation and productive knowledge spillover; reform energy subsidies to reward innovation; and restructure business taxes to promote investment in the building blocks of an innovation economy.
On December 15th, a group of America’s leading policy think tanks will host a day-long conference in Washington D.C. to rethink energy innovation.
Energy Innovation 2010, held at the National Press Club, will bring together leading experts from government, think tanks, academia, and business to ask hard questions about how energy innovation efforts can be brought to scale, how the innovation system must be restructured and reformed, and how to renew the kind of active partnerships between the public and private sectors that were responsible for so much of America’s prior technological innovation and economic strength.
The free, day-long conference is sponsored by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation and the Breakthrough Institute, with the American Enterprise Institute, Third Way, Clean Air Task Force, Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes, Securing America’s Future Energy, and the Brookings Institution. The conference organizers are pleased to welcome TheEnergyCollective.com and Yale Environment 360 as media sponsors for the event.
Registration for Energy Innovation 2010 is free, but required in advance as space is limited, so register now.
Head here to find more information, see the full conference agenda and register today.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Educating the Energy Generation: Workforce Needs in Renewable, Nuclear Power Sectors
By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute
Today, the race for dominance in clean energy technology sectors pits the United States against the greatest international competition for a key emerging technology field than in any era since the Cold War race to lead in aerospace, computing, communications, and IT fields.
Remaining competitive in the fast-growing, 21st century clean energy sectors will demand the same world-class talent and highly-trained workforce that helped the United States lead the world in the high-tech sectors of the 20th century.
As we wrote in "Post-Partisan Power," a road map for a limited and direct national energy innovation strategy recently released by Breakthrough Institute and scholars at the Brookings Institution and American Enterprise Institute:
The United States cannot hope to rise to this global challenge or confront pressing energy innovation imperatives without a new national investment to train and inspire the next generation of intrepid American scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Today, the United States ranks just 29th out of 109 countries in the percentage of 24-year-olds with a math or science degree.47 Only 15 percent of undergraduate degrees in the United States are earned in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) fields compared with 64 percent in Japan and 52 percent in China. Even South Korea -- a nation with a population one-sixth the size of the United States -- graduates more engineers annually.A recent blog post from nuclear engineer Rod Adams at theEnergyCollective.com points us to some new figures that can help fill in the details for the workforce needs of the nuclear power sector.
The situation is particularly dire in energy technology, with roughly half of the U.S. energy industry workforce expected to retire over the next decade. Meanwhile, demand for workers in the renewable electricity industry is expected to more than triple from 127,000 in 2006 to more than 400,000 in 2018. The anticipated, large-scale ramp-up of the U.S. nuclear power industry would similarly require the industry to hire tens of thousands of new nuclear engineers and related positions annually. Yet today, from elementary school through post-doctorate programs, students and educators lack the resources to develop new curricula and educational programs, receive key training, or expand research opportunities to meet this national challenge.
Over the next five years, 38 percent of the current nuclear industry work force employed at the nation's 104 operating plant will be eligible for retirement, leaving a shortfall of more than 25,000 skilled workers. In addition, each new nuclear plant will create up to 2,400 temporary and highly-paid positions over the five-year construction period and 400-to-800 new permanent careers.The workforce training and competitiveness challenges are clear. But the United States has overcome such challenges in the past.
After the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the United States swiftly enacted the National Defense Education Act of 1958, leveling national investments totaling $7.2 billion over four years (in today's dollars), to support K-12 science, technology, engineering, and mathematics education, establish university programs in computer science, aerospace, and other new fields across the nation, and train the generation of innovators and entrepreneurs that led the IT Revolution.
In "Post-Partisan Power," we propose a comparatively modest, yet equally critical national commitment of roughly $500 million annually for energy education to support K-12 curriculum and teacher training, energy education scholarships, post- doctoral fellowships, and graduate research grants. This proposal builds on an earlier call from the Breakthrough Institute for a National Energy Education Act.
You can find more detailed recommendations for energy education and workforce training investments in the full "Post-Partisan Power" report available here (pdf).
See also:
- "Post-Partisan Power" - Report Overview - How a Limited and Direct Approach to Energy Innovation Can Deliver Clean Cheap Energy, Economic Productivity, and National Prosperity
- Calling for a new National Energy Education Act - Breakthrough Institute policy summary (July 2008)
- "Realizing his vision" - energy education op ed in Baltimore Sun, July 30, 2008, by Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins
- "An Energy Plan We Can Believe In" - energy education op ed in San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 2008, by Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins
- "Will America Lose the Clean Energy Race" - energy education and competitiveness op ed in San Francisco Chronicle, July 27, 2009, by Teryn Norris and Jesse Jenkins
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Phasing out Fossil Fuel Subsidies Will Help, But Only Innovation Can Make Clean Energy Cheap
By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute
Over at theEnergyCollective.com, Tyler Hamilton dives into the International Energy Agency's newly released forecast of global energy trends (exec sum here [pdf]) focusing on the disparity in global subsidies for renewables and fossil fuels:
The International Energy Agency put out its annual World Energy Outlook today and urges strong and sustained government support for the deployment of renewable energy. The agency pegs 2009 subsidies for renewables at $57 billion and calls for that to increase to $205 billion by 2035. "The share of modern renewable energy sources, including sustainable hydro, wind, solar, geothermal, modern biomass and marine energy, in global primary energy use triples between 2008 and 2035 and their combined share of total primary energy demand increases from 7 per cent to 14 per cent," according to the agency. Fossil fuel subsidies stood at $312 billion in 2009 and the agency urged that they be eliminated to accelerate the transition to renewables.I applaud the IEA's call for major public investments in clean energy RD&D and deployment and certainly support the agency's calls to phase out fossil fuel subsidies -- excepting where doing so would expand the already deplorable share of the global population (about 2.4 billion) locked in energy poverty.
But while Hamilton and others focus on the disparity between total subsidies for fossil energy and renewables, the IEA figures are actually a stark reminder of the major price gap that persists between mature fossil energy sources and newer, costlier clean energy alternatives.
If renewables account for a 7% share of global energy energy demand, and receive $57 billion in subsidies, that's $8.14 billion for each percentage share of global demand.
In contrast, fossil fuels supply about 83% of the global energy mix (nuclear accounts for the remaining 6%, according to the IEA) and receive $312 billion in subsidies according to the IEA, for $3.76 billion per percentage share of global energy supplied.
In other words renewables receive more than double the subsidy rate per unit of energy supplied as fossil fuels.
When you consider that hydropower and biomass, which rarely require or receive subsidy, account for the vast share of global renewable energy production, the relative subsidy rate for wind, solar and other renewables per unit of energy produced is much higher.
Most renewable energy technologies are still relatively immature, emerging energy sources, facing off against entrenched, mature fossil competitors whose core technologies are many decades if not centuries old (burning coal in a boiler to make steam? That's so 19th century!). We should fully expect any emerging energy alternative to require market support policies to find a foothold in the energy market and have time to scale up and come down in price.
Yet, with the IEA forecasting that virtually all (93%) of energy demand growth over the next 25 years will come from developing nations that can ill afford massive energy subsidies, the reminders are everywhere: clean energy cannot scale to meet global energy needs if it requires ongoing, high subsidy rates.
This is why I always come back to the urgent need to make clean energy cheap, in real, unsubsidized terms.
While ending fossil energy subsidies will help level the playing field for cleaner alternatives and initial market support is needed for emerging energy alternatives, only real innovation to drive down price and improve performance for a full suite of clean energy technologies can ensure that a meaningful share of global energy demand can be supplied by low-carbon alternatives to fossil fuels. Read more!
China Energy Use to Soar, Driving Demand for Coal, Oil & Clean Energy Alike
China's demand for energy will soar 75% by 2035, according to the latest world energy forecast from the International Energy Agency (IEA), released Tuesday. The growing economic aspirations of 1.3 billion Chinese, who today use just one-third the amount of energy consumed by an average European or North American, will put pressure on global energy markets, driving demand for both clean and dirty energy alike.
Oil prices will rise to $113 per barrel (in constant 2009 dollars) by 2035, as oil producers struggle to keep pace with soaring global demand, according the IEA, the world's global energy watchdog, based in Paris.
Oil markets will remain tight through much of this period, the agency expects, writing that "short‐term price volatility is likely to remain high."
Much of the pressure on global energy markets will come from China, which will account for more than one-third of all global energy demand growth over the next 25 years, according to the IEA.
“Chinese energy demand will grow by such huge terms it will put pressure on the global energy markets in terms of oil, coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas,” said Faith Birol, the IEA's chief economist, speaking to the New York Times.
Read the full post exclusively at theEnergyCollective.com
Monday, November 08, 2010
United States, Australia Partner to Make Solar Energy Cheap
By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute
The United States and Australia have inked a new partnership to pursue joint solar energy research designed to make solar energy cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports:
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the announcement in Melbourne on Sunday, with the Australian government set to commit up to $50 million towards the program.Secretary Clinton also pledged a $500,000 grant from the U.S. State Department to support a global survey to identify opportunities to reuse carbon dioxide emitted by power plant and industrial processes, headed up by the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute, a recently established research center co-funded by the Australian government.
Ms Gillard said the aim was to make solar power as cheap as conventional energy sources.
"One of the greatest barriers to a broader commercial take up of solar power is its cost and that is specifically what this joint research initiative will address," Ms Gillard told reporters.
"The joint project with the United States is part of an aggressive effort to bring the sales price of solar technology down by two to four times."
Ms Clinton said the program aimed to make solar power competitive with conventional energy sources by 2015.
The price had dropped by 50 per cent in the past three years but there was more work to be done, she said.
"Under this initiative our two governments will share both the costs and the benefits of research and development which will speed up innovation," she said.
Solar Powerhouse? Solar irradiation in Australia is among the highest in the world, as this color-coded map from NASA illustrates (darker red areas have the most incoming solar energy). Source: The Age/Reuters
Australia, with perhaps the greatest solar energy potential in the world, has an obvious interest in pursuing affordable, scalable solar power solutions, and has also maintained several long-standing solar research efforts. Can the two new partners accelerate efforts to make solar energy cheap? Read more!
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Should We Borrow from the Future to Pay for Clean Energy Innovation Today?
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute
Here's an interesting argument from our friends across the pond at the UK-focused Political Climate blog, making the case that despite rising deficit concerns and austerity measures in the UK and elsewhere, borrowing from the future may still actually be an appropriate way to pay for clean energy innovation today:
Against this background, it may sound mad to argue for more public borrowing in order to pay for investments in low carbon technologies and infrastructure, but that is what I am going to do in this post.Political Climate's team makes the point that long-term government financing rather than bank loans is the right way to do this kind of borrowing, with fifty-year terms for government bonds that can be paid back over time by (now richer) future generations.
Let's start with the rationale. ... The starting point is that in advanced economies successive generations tend to get better off over time. For example, at the depths of the 1930s depression Keynes observed that despite the general gloom, he was confident that 100 years in the future, people might be eight times better off in real terms. And indeed average GDP per capita in the UK is now already about 5 times what it was in the 1930s. By extension, we would normally expect future generations to be better off than us in GDP terms.
... [Furthermore, if] we in this generation mitigate climate change, we will allow future generations to have a higher standard of living than they would have if we did nothing. We are very slowly beginning to do this, with policies being introduced to encourage us to invest less in conventional capital (e.g. fossil fuel power stations) and more in investments that effectively maintain natural capital (like renewable energy).
At the moment we are paying for these more expensive investments through reduced consumption, in the form of higher energy bills. If instead we were to borrow a certain amount of money from future generations (who will have to repay through their taxes) and use this money to pay the extra cost of renewables, carbon capture and storage and so on, then the theory says it should be possible to make both our generation and future generations better off. ...
Here in the United States, we financed much of the electrification, irrigation, and development of the American West (and the Tennessee Valley in the southeast) through precisely this kind of long-term government-backed borrowing. The hydroelectric dams and reservoirs, power lines and irrigation systems, clean and affordable energy, productive farms, and burgeoning new cities that resulted from these debt-financed investments paid off many times over, making generations living today far better off than if this debt hadn't been incurred.
A similar case could be made for innovation investments as well, since the benefits of new, innovative products and technologies -- be it better clean energy technologies or pharmaceutical drugs -- will accrue most to those living in future times, who can harvest the rewards of today's investment in research and innovation.
This also brings to mind the old idea of a capital budget for nation governments...
Thought provoking piece at least. What do you think, dear reader? Despite rising national debts, would national governments be wise to borrow today to fund investments in infrastructure, clean energy, and innovation to be enjoyed by -- and paid back by -- a richer, more well-off generation tomorrow? Read more!
Saturday, October 16, 2010
The Oregon Governor’s Race: Laying Groundwork for Progress on Clean Energy
In one of the tightest governor’s race in the country, two very different candidates for the highest state-level elected office in Oregon. One, Democrat John Kitzhaber, is a former Oregon governor who wants to build up the state’s green economy, protect public health and wildlife habitat, and continue Oregon’s leadership role in the fight against global warming. Meanwhile Republican Chris Dudley—a basketball player with no political experience—opposes regulating carbon, is open to offshore oil drilling along Oregon’s coasts, and isn’t sure whether global warming is caused by human activity. The choice for Oregon couldn’t be starker.
A few months ago during primary season, I wrote about some of the major energy and environmental challenges Oregon’s next governor will have to take on. Since that time the candidate widely regarded as most progressive on environmental issues, former Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, has been eliminated from the race. Bradbury lost the Democratic primary to John Kitzhaber, and I won’t pretend that wasn’t a disappointment to me personally. But here’s why I’m still excited to cast my ballot in a couple weeks:
John Kitzhaber, who’s been endorsed by the Sierra Club and the Oregon League of Conservation Voters, is a very green candidate. It just happens that in the primary, he was up against someone with even better energy and climate plans. Kitzhaber’s green credentials were outshone by Bradbury’s in the primary—but running against almost anyone else (or in anyplace other than Oregon), Kitzhaber would have been the clear environmental choice. This is certainly the case now that it’s come down to a race between Kitzhaber and Dudley.
Chris Dudley has gotten as far as he has in the governor’s race mainly by outspending Kitzhaber. When an early poll showed Dudley doing better than expected in the polls, big business poured money into his campaign. Dudley apparently feels secure enough with his monetary advantage that he agreed to only one in-person gubernatorial debate, showing he’s more interested in being seen as a smiling five-second presence on TV than in actually digging into issues and concerns Oregonians care about.
Dudley has repeatedly failed to respond to media inquiries about his environmental views, but what has emerged is extremely worrying. So far we know Dudley wants to weaken clean water rules, increase logging in Oregon’s forests, and backtrack on the state’s ambitious climate and clean energy goals. When asked during the one-and-only debate with Kitzhaber if he believes humans are over-heating the planet, Dudley said he wasn’t sure.
A win for Chris Dudley would be a disaster for environmental progress in Oregon. A win for John Kitzhaber means Oregon will be able to continue its leadership role on climate and clean energy issues. The latest polls show Dudley and Kitzhaber virtually tied in the governor’s race, so youth voters could make all the difference in deciding the outcome. Now is a historic moment for youth voters in Oregon: this year we’ll be the ones deciding one of the most important environmental elections in the country. Be sure to turn your ballot in when it comes in the mail.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Italian Mafia Busted Laundering Money Through Clean Energy Projects
Who's cashing in on profitable clean energy markets? Goldman Sachs, China, and now ... the Italian Mafia!
Reuters reports that Italian police seized $1.9 billion in Mafia-linked assets -- reportedly the biggest seizure of mob assets ever -- "in an operation revealing that the crime group was trying to "go green" by laundering money through alternative energy companies."
Investigators said the assets included more than 40 companies, hundreds of parcels of land, buildings, factories, bank accounts, stocks, fast cars and luxury yachts.Read more!
Most of the seized assets were located in Sicily, home of the Cosa Nostra, and in southern Calabria, home of its sister crime organization, the 'Ndrangheta.
At the center of the investigation was Sicilian businessman Vito Nicastri, 54, a man known as the "Lord of the Wind" because of his vast holdings in alternative energy concerns, mostly wind farms.
Interior Minister Roberto Maroni called the operation "the largest seizure ever made" against the Mafia.
General Antonio Girone, head of the national anti-Mafia agency DIA, said Nicastri was linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, believed to be Mafia's current "boss of bosses."
Investigators said Nicastri's companies ran numerous wind farms as well as factories that produced solar energy panels.
"It's no surprise that the Sicilian Mafia was infiltrating profitable areas like wind and solar energy," Palermo magistrate Francesco Messineo told a news conference. ...
Senator Costantino Garraffa, a member of the parliamentary anti-Mafia committee, said the Mafia was trying to break into the "new economy," of alternative energy as it sought out virgin ventures to launder money from drugs and other rackets.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Does November GOP Win Spell the End for Clean Energy Progress? Maybe Not
By Jesse Jenkins, originally at the Breakthrough Institute
According to most electoral prognosticators, Republicans are poised to win major victories in the upcoming November midterm elections, with control of both the House and Senate within their reach. That should spell the end for climate and clean energy legislation, according to many observers, at least for the next Congressional cycle.
But what if it doesn't? Over at SolveClimate, Elizabeth McGowan takes a fresh look at what a GOP win in November could mean for clean energy progress, noting that split control in Washington could actually improve chances for bipartisan energy legislation.
New dynamics in a Washington under divided rule
With one party in control of the White House and both legislative branches, it's far too easy for priority issues to become politically polarized -- so the argument goes. The majority party lacks significant incentive to reach out to the minority party from the beginning to craft solidly bipartisan bills. Meanwhile the minority party can simply become 'the Party of No,' attempting to block any of the majority party's legislative priorities while riding electoral angst at a "broken Washington" back into power in the next Congressional cycle.
With the White House in the hands of one party and the House, Senate, or both under the other party's control, the dynamic can be quite different, according to Capitol Hill observers.
McGowan quotes Paul Bledsoe, a strategist at the Bipartisan Policy Center's National Commission of Energy Policy with a long resume of inside-the-beltway experience:When one party has a supermajority, Bledsoe pointed out, those in charge tend to write legislation without consulting the minority. That can make it virtually impossible to "sell" complex and significant mechanisms such as cap and trade--which now appears to be dead on arrival.
Moving beyond cap and trade could yield bipartisan clean energy progress
Even Republicans who once supported cap and trade approach as valid now dismiss it as an unacceptable tax.
"Traditionally, energy is not a partisan but a geographically focused issue," Bledsoe said, adding that the 2005 and 2007 energy bills passed with bipartisan support, the former in a Republican Senate and the latter in a Democratic Senate. ...
"A strange dynamic can develop when the balance of power is narrower," he said, adding that polarization along party lines can dissipate. "I think senators will feel a greater sense of urgency to initiate legislation together. I see senators of goodwill coming together to create bipartisan approaches."
According to Josh Freed, director of the clean energy program at the moderate Democratic DC think tank Third Way, a bipartisan clean energy strategy -- one that moves beyond the failed cap and trade debate toward a renewed public-private partnership aimed at developing and marketing improved clean energy technologies -- is ripe for passage in a Washington under split rule.
Freed spoke with SolveClimate's McGowan, saying:Some sort of climate and energy legislation will eventually emerge but first, the public and private sectors need to cooperate to invent, demonstrate, deploy and market the green batteries, plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, advanced nuclear power, renewables and other technologies that are actually competitive with fossil fuels.
Building a new bipartisan consensus for clean energy progress may take some time, but according to Freed, the effort can begin in the next Congress and external pressures may keep the heat on Congress to act sooner rather than later:
"As a country, we seem to have lost our way on that model," Freed said, adding that it propelled the success of the airline industry, the Internet and the biotechnology sector. "How do we go about turning that around?"
Congress needs to champion this push with thoughtful, comprehensive and bipartisan legislation, Freed explained, but the American public, business leaders, universities, entrepreneurs, large companies and the financial sector have to act in tandem. "This is going to take longer than a campaign. It's much like the health care debate in 1993," Freed said, adding that the need for reform was obvious but the mechanism being deployed all those years ago collapsed under its own weight. "It took 17 years to rebuild that coalition. With energy, we don't have the time to wait 17 years but we need to learn those lessons."
Beware the Tea Party
Politicians and everybody else involved have to realize that America is playing catch-up because its dawdling has ceded much of the clean technology market to China, South Korea, Spain, Denmark, the Netherlands and Germany.
"This has to be an issue that resonates in Minnesota, Tennessee and Ohio as much as it does in Oregon, Washington and Connecticut," Freed said.
While there are many strong motivations for bipartisan legislation to clean up, secure, and modernize the U.S. energy system while developing competitive U.S. clean energy industries, progress may ultimately depend on what kind of Republican party takes office in November.
According to Jim DiPeso, vice president of the Michigan-based non-profit Republicans for Environmental Protection, the radicalizing influence of the surging Tea Party movement may torpedo chances for clean energy legislation in the coming Congress. As DiPeso tells SolveClimate:"All bets are off because those [Tea Party] newcomers will have different ideas about what priorities should be tackled. ... Then, you're looking at gridlock."
His wish is that President Obama, [House Minority Leader John] Boehner and [Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell will be "smart" enough to mollify dissenters and follow President Clinton's lead of the mid-1990s by collaborating on a centrist agenda. ...
[DiPeso] and [Bipartisan Policy Center's] Bledsoe echo one another with their comments about why partisan bickering and backing on the climate front can be so detrimental.
"It's a huge mistake for climate activists to become partisan," Bledsoe emphasized. ...
"You can blame both sides for the polarization but it doesn't matter who is to blame. We need to fix it and that's the only way forward."
