FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 28, 2010
Contact: Teryn Norris
Phone: 510-593-3716
Email: norris -at- leadenergy.org
WASHINGTON, DC, APRIL 2010 -- A group of more than 100 university and college student government presidents submitted a letter (PDF download) today urging Congress to launch a national program for clean energy science and engineering education. The presidents – representing more than one million American students –warned Congress that advanced energy education is critical for U.S. leadership in the global clean energy industry.
“The United States is rapidly falling behind in the burgeoning clean energy industry – especially in comparison to China – and our educational system and workforce is not prepared to compete,” declared the 107 presidents, including dozens of the country’s top universities. “American students are ready and willing to rise to this national challenge, and we need the federal government to support our education and training.”
The letter, organized by Americans for Energy Leadership and the Associated Students of Stanford University, calls on Congress to support the RE-ENERGYSE (“Regaining our Energy Science & Engineering Edge”) proposal, which would invest tens of millions of dollars annually in energy science and engineering education programs at universities, technical and community colleges, and K-12 schools. It was originally proposed by President Obama in April 2009 and is currently under consideration in Congress as part of the Department of Energy's 2011 budget request.
“RE-ENERGYSE represents the nation’s first comprehensive federal program to support clean energy education programs and train thousands of new energy scientists and engineers,” wrote the presidents. “We believe it is a critical step toward creating new energy industries and jobs while regaining American leadership in the global clean energy industry, which promises to be one of the largest new growth sectors.” RE-ENERGYSE was rejected by Congress last year, despite support from dozens of universities and professional associations.
Teryn Norris, Director of Americans for Energy Leadership, said the letter represents an overwhelming demonstration of support from the country’s young leaders. “The next generation of American leaders has delivered a unified message, and members of Congress should listen: the United States is failing to compete in a critical industry, and catching up requires a national strategy for advanced energy education.” Norris pointed to the report he recently co-authored with the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant,” as documenting the challenges facing the U.S. clean energy sector.
“Federal investment in advanced energy education, including RE-ENERGYSE, will more than pay for itself,” said David Gobaud, President of the Associated Students of Stanford University for the 2009-2010 academic year. “These are long-term investments in our future. Higher education is a foundation for competitiveness and growth, and the clean-tech industry is one of our generation’s greatest opportunities. We can lead this industry by investing in the next generation of clean energy innovators, and Congress must take action.”
The letter observed that the government has started to address the need for “green-collar” technician training, such as jobs related to building retrofits and renewable energy installation, but the government “has not implemented a higher education strategy to keep the U.S. at the leading edge of energy science, technology, and entrepreneurship.” A recent report by IEEE on the energy workforce concluded, “We need more electrical engineers to solve industry challenges, and … to keep the nation’s electric power reliable, secure, safe, and competitive. Meeting these needs requires long-term investment now.”
Foreign countries are producing substantially larger portions of scientists, engineers, and researchers that will benefit their clean energy industries. According to the National Science Board, science and engineering make up only about one-third of U.S. bachelor’s degrees, compared to 63 percent in Japan, 53 percent in China, and 51 percent in Singapore. “The U.S. ranks behind other major nations in making the transitions required to educate students for emerging energy trades, research efforts, and other professions to support the future energy technology mix,” states the Department of Energy's RE-ENERGYSE proposal.
Economic studies have found that federal investment in higher education produces a high rate of return in GDP growth and long-term tax revenue. According to a report by the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, the return on investment produced by the post-war G.I. Bill totaled above 400 percent over the course of 35 years. Most economists believe that technological innovation drove the majority of U.S. economic growth in the 20th century.
“This letter and RE-ENERGYSE are only the beginning,” said Norris, also a Senior Advisor at Breakthrough Institute and public policy student at Stanford University. “We will continue working with young leaders to develop proposals to advance American energy innovation, including a national education program on par with the post-Sputnik National Defense Education Act, and an increase in the federal energy R&D budget to the level of the National Institutes of Health. We look forward to working with members of Congress in the months ahead.”
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Download a PDF version of this press release
Additional resources:
RE-ENERGYSE 2-page summary, FY2011 Proposal
President Obama Announces RE-ENERGYSE at National Academy of Sciences
“Press Release: Over 100 Groups Urge Congress to Support Obama’s Energy Education Initiative"
Breakthrough Institute, 07/22/09
"Winning the Clean Energy Race: A New Strategy for American Leadership"
Teryn Norris and Devon Swezey, The Huffington Post, Nov. 2009
"Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant: Asian Nations Set to Dominate Clean Energy Race by Out-Investing the United States"
Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, Nov. 2009
For more information and media coverage, see here:
http://leadenergy.org/reenergyse/resources/
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Over 100 Student Body Presidents Urge Congress to Support Energy Education
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Racing for Clean-Tech Jobs: Why America Needs an Energy Education Strategy
Originally published by Clean Edge
In the aftermath of the Great Recession, the United States faces serious questions about the future of its economy and jobs market. Where will the good jobs of the future come from, how do we prepare the American workforce, and what is our strategy to maintain economic leadership in an increasingly competitive world?
A growing consensus suggests that clean tech will be one of our generation's largest growth sectors. The global clean-tech market is expected to surpass $1 trillion in value within the next few years, and a perfect storm of factors - from the inevitability of a carbon-constrained world, to skyrocketing global energy demand, to long-term oil price hikes - will drive global demand for clean-energy technologies.
That is why the national debate about global clean-tech competitiveness is so important, sparked by the rapid entry of China and other nations. My colleagues and I recently contributed to the discussion with "Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant," a large report providing the first comprehensive analysis of competitive positions among the U.S. and key Asian challengers. In order to compete, we found, "U.S. energy policy must include large, direct and coordinated investments in clean-technology R&D, manufacturing, deployment, and infrastructure."
But even if the United States adopts a real industrial policy for clean energy, there is little evidence that our workforce is skilled enough to compete. Unfortunately, according to the Department of Energy, "The U.S. ranks behind other major nations in making the transitions required to educate students for emerging energy trades, research efforts and other professions to support the future energy technology mix."
A competitive energy workforce requires much more than technicians and building retrofitters. Scientists, engineers, high-tech entrepreneurs, and advanced manufacturers will play a critical role, just as they have in strategic sectors like infotech, aerospace, and biotech. The federal government has started to address the need for green technician and efficiency retrofit training, such as with the Green Jobs Act, but it has not implemented an education strategy to keep the U.S. at the leading edge of energy science, technology, and entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately, the majority of our colleges and universities lack degree programs focused on energy, and the U.S. power engineering education system is on the decline. Over the next five years, 45 percent of electric utility engineers will be eligible for retirement, along with 40 percent of key power engineering faculty at U.S. universities, according to a report by IEEE. "Engineering workforce shortages are already occurring," the report concludes. "We need more electrical engineers to solve industry challenges, and to build the 21st century electric power grid... Meeting these needs requires long-term investment now."
Meanwhile, other countries are producing a substantially larger portion of scientists, engineers, and researchers that will benefit their clean-tech industries. Science and engineering make up only about one-third of U.S. bachelor's degrees, compared to 63 percent in Japan, 53 percent in China and 51 percent in Singapore, and the number of Chinese researchers is now on par with the United States (though some have pointed out that the quality of these graduates and researchers is not always comparable). "Over time," stated a recent report by the National Science Board, "the United States has fallen from one of the top countries in terms of its ratio of natural science and engineering degrees to the college-age population to near the bottom of the 23 countries for which data are available."
The energy workforce deficit and STEM education gap will substantially limit the nation's ability to lead the clean-tech industry and accelerate clean energy development. As Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman put it, "If you had to explain America's economic success with one word, that word would be 'education.'" In order to succeed in the clean-tech industry, the U.S. must develop an energy education strategy to develop tens of thousands of advanced energy scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs, as well as technicians.
Recognizing these trends, several experts have called for federal programs to develop our advanced energy workforce. In April 2009, President Obama took up these recommendations by announcing the first nationwide initiative to inspire and train young Americans "to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation -- the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy."
The proposal, called RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our Energy Science and Engineering Edge), is part of the administration's 2011 budget request, which will be considered by Congress in the months ahead. With oversight from the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, it would educate thousands of clean-energy scientists and engineers, beginning with $74 million for energy-related programs at universities, community and technical colleges and K-12 schools, with the largest component focusing on higher education.
RE-ENERGYSE is an important step toward creating a competitive U.S. clean-energy workforce - that is why thousands of students and dozens of professional associations want it to succeed, and that is why Congress should fund it at the full budget request. Beyond RE-ENERGYSE, the federal government should work to expand these programs into a clean-energy education strategy on par with the National Defense Education Act of 1958, which helped reposition the U.S. in the space race and achieve revolutions in information technology.
The global clean-energy race represents one of the greatest challenges for American leadership in a generation, and now is a critical moment. If we do not immediately implement a national strategy for energy leadership - including smart investments to educate the energy generation - we will miss a historic economic opportunity. American students are willing to rise to this national challenge, and we need the support of our government to succeed.
Teryn Norris is Director of Americans for Energy Leadership, Senior Advisor at the Breakthrough Institute, and a Public Policy student at Stanford University.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Think You Know What a 'Green Job' Is? Think Again
Dr. Kelly spoke to an audience of Stanford University students Monday about the steps necessary to educate "the Energy Generation," warning that it will take a generation of the nation's best and brightest, working in dozens of diverse fields, to truly build a clean and prosperous American economy:
So what is a green job? Well green jobs are architects and engineers that build buildings, design buildings that operate at extremely low energy use. They are people that design, manufacture, and install devices in buildings ranging from high-tech windows to lighting to sensors and controls and electronics. It means looking at radically new industrial processes which simply replace previous kinds of industrial manufacturing with sophisticated bionumetics and nanotech approaches, to cutting down the material intensity and energy intensity of production, this is the kind of thing you need to do to stay competitive in the modern world."The bad news," Dr. Kelly said, is that America's competitors in Asia and Europe are surging ahead to develop competitive clean energy industries and investing in a highly-trained and technically competent workforce:
If you look at what the nation's transportation system is going to look like, Henry Ford looks like he's toast, it's going to be replaced with an entirely new generation of either extremely high efficiency fuel powered vehicles, electric vehicles, perhaps even hydrogen fuel cells - the people that make and maintain these are going to be operating in a different world that's an enormously sophisticated operation.
If you're looking at where power comes from, of course you have the entire range of science and engineering involved, you mentioned we're relying on geologists to tell us how to get geothermal energy, getting very sophisticate semiconductor manufacturers involved in the production of solar cells and CSP, if you look at biologically based fuels and materials, some of the most sophisticated biological processing techniques.
So this is an enormous range of skills, but apart from the technical skills you also need people who really understand the economics of finance... behavioral economics, people who understand policy, all of these qualify as green jobs and it touches I think almost every academic discipline.
The good news is that if we do this right we're generating a lot of new interesting jobs, not just for sophisticated designers but for people who are manufacturing and operating these.
"If you're looking at how the U.S. fairs competitively, we have far from the most highly trained workforce. In fact we're the only country in the top 20 OECD countries where... the average high school graduation rate is going down. We're static in university degrees and other countries are bypassing us, and they're getting degrees increasingly in the sophisticated subjects we need to move forward, both in energy and rebuilding our economy.While attention has been paid in recent years to funding new training programs for 'green collar' technicians, building trades, and manufacturing positions, the federal government has only just begun to put resources towards training and empowering the wide variety of cutting-edge innovators, engineers, and entrepreneurs needed to stay competitive in the 21st century clean energy race.
So we're facing this tremendous dilemma, where we have these opportunities to rebuild the economy around sophisticated technology that's clean, but the ability to turn out people who are able to actually take advantage of these opportunities is declining. It's something we're incredibly concerned about.
"The kind of things that you need to do make an economy that is clean and reducing its fossil fuel consumption is precisely the same thing you need to do to make the economy productive and competitive internationally, which means constantly transforming itself around new technology," Dr. Kelly said. "If you look at the kind of technologies we’re talking about, it goes touch virtually every part of the economy."
With Asian and European competitors pulling farther and farther ahead in competitive clean technology sectors, the economic stakes of these investments are high.
"There's little doubt we're in a race for our lives to maintain our productivity and competitive edge to keep high tech manufacturing here in the U.S." Dr. Kelly declared.
In 2007, Congress passed the Green Jobs Act which authorized $125 million in annual funding to develop training programs for workers in a variety of renewable energy and energy efficiency industries. The program was first funded with a $500 million chunk of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus bill), and further funds were allocated in the climate bills now struggling to secure passage in Congress.
While the Green Jobs Act has advanced technical training programs at the nation's community colleges and technical schools, funding to inspire and empower students at four-year institutions to enter a wide range of careers crucial to competition in the clean energy sector has languished in Congress.
In 2009, President Obama's FY2010 budget included a new Department of Energy and National Science Foundation-run program called RE-ENERGYSE, the nation's first program aimed at strengthening America's position in clean energy education. Despite the urgent need for such a program, Congressional appropriators rejected the $125 million funding request.
The Administration hasn't relented, however, and RE-ENERGYSE is back in the new FY2011 budget request now on its way to Congress. The $74 million program would be the first small but critical step to re-energize a new generation of scientists, innovators, and entrepreneurs ready to tackle the United States' energy and competitiveness challenges (see this fact sheet for more [pdf]).
Ultimately, however, greater funding will be necessary to help the next generation of intrepid American innovators rise to the nation's clean energy challenges.
"In 1958, right after the Soviet Union launch Sputnik, the U.S. federal government authorized the National Defense Education Act, which invested billions of dollars over several years to try and regain our competitive edge in general science and engineering, and more specifically in the space race," said Teryn Norris, the moderator of the panel, adviser at the Breakthrough Institute, and director of Americans for Energy Leadership, a student-led initiative campaigning across the country for investments in clean energy education and innovation.
With American facing a new race to dominate the high-tech fields of the 21st century, the federal government will ultimately need to secure investments on the scale of the National Defense Education Act to keep the nation's competitive edge.
Dr. Kelly and Mr. Norris were joined on the panel by Dr. Lynn Orr, director of the Stanford Precourt Energy Institute and Camron Gorguinpour, director of Scientists and Engineers for America. You can watch a video of the panel here.
Originally posted at the Breakthrough Institute Read more!
Friday, February 12, 2010
Wisconsin: Focus on energy education
By Danny Sptizberg and Stephen Collins
Earlier this week, fellow Daily Cardinal opinion writer Anthony Cefali posed a question: “How do we [in American education] inspire our science program to shoot for the moon, or at least our own modern equivalent?” Well, we think we have an answer.
Look no further than clean energy. Some are calling it the biggest market opportunity in history. Experts of all stripes have repeatedly stated that the nation that wins the clean-energy race will be the nation that leads the 21st century economy. Discovering and implementing cheap, clean and reliable energy technologies is our generation’s final frontier.
But, as Cefali asked, how do we get there? President Obama has proposed doing so by increasing funding for energy education and training through a program called RE-ENERGYSE (short for REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge). More than 100 organizations, including the University of Wisconsin-Madison, signed a letter last summer urging Congress to support the program, which would augment energy education in universities, training schools, community colleges and even K-12 teacher education. It’s easy to see why: UW-Madison professor and energy policy expert Greg Nemet said that he thinks “maybe the biggest opportunity is to take advantage of the fact that we have tens of thousands of students here who could potentially be working on [creating a clean energy economy].” However, Congress ignored last summer’s call to action by rejecting Obama’s $115 million budget request for RE-ENERGYSE.
Despite Congress’ lack of support for energy education and training, hope is not lost for Wisconsin. The Wisconsin State Legislature is currently considering a bill dubbed the Clean Energy Jobs Act (CEJA). CEJA rolls out a policy to ramp up renewables to provide 25 percent of Wisconsin’s electricity by 2025. This policy, known as a Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS), makes sense. The RPS ensures a stable, long-term market for renewable energy, thus creating market opportunities and driving investment in wind and other low-carbon technologies. Investment in turn makes clean energy cheaper and lowers utility bills. Perhaps more important, the state’s Economic and Policy Staff has estimated CEJA would create more than 15,000 jobs. In addition to more jobs, the bill provides an opportunity to develop smarter students and a stronger workforce.
Why add a provision to the bill to increase funding for energy education and training? Because the RPS alone will not create the low-carbon energy system Wisconsin needs. The Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming recommended that Wisconsin implement “substantial increases in federal and state research and development (R&D) for greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction technologies.” R&D is particularly crucial to figuring out ways to modernize the electricity grid, store wind and solar power and invent breakthrough technologies. CEJA could support R&D by giving UW-Madison—recently ranked among the top 10 universities for cleantech—and other Wisconsin institutions the funds to advance our energy system. To sustain the R&D of clean energy, CEJA must also invest in Wisconsin’s students. At a recent town hall, President Obama said: “We’re not going to be able to ramp up solar and wind to suddenly replace every other energy source ... [W]e’ve got to look at how to make existing technologies and options better.” To meet our clean energy goals over the next century, Wisconsin will need a new, well-educated generation of researchers.
To meet the short-term objectives laid out by the CEJA, Wisconsin must also invest in its current workforce. Along the lines of the proposals laid out by the Governor’s Task Force on Global Warming, we propose that CEJA directly fund the training of Wisconsinites to create knowledgeable workers who can construct Wisconsin’s clean energy economy over the coming years.
We realize that with Wisconsin currently short on cash, it may be fiscally difficult to add an additional program to CEJA. If adding our proposal to CEJA does indeed prove politically impossible, we recommend incorporating it in the next state budget. Now or in the near future, Wisconsin needs to increase energy education. Gaining a competitive edge in clean energy requires not only opening markets with policies like a RPS, but taking advantage of those markets by creating talented researchers and a skilled workforce.
As the saying goes, if you teach a man to fish, he will build a clean energy future. If we fail to invest in today’s students, we will miss a critical opportunity and give other countries a head start in the global clean energy race. This is our chance to lead the generation of a low-carbon economy.
Stephen Collins and Danny Spitzberg are pursuing master’s degrees in public affairs and environmental studies, respectively. Please send all responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
(This article was originally published in the Daily Cardinal)
Tuesday, February 09, 2010
Educating the Energy Generation
Originally published by The Stanford Daily
Last week, the Obama administration introduced a proposal that every college student in the country should know about. It represents the nation’s first comprehensive federal program for clean energy education, and it is a critical step toward regaining American leadership in one of the most important industries of our time.
Over the past two years, a growing numbers of experts have called for federal programs to develop the country’s clean energy workforce. In April 2009, President Obama took up these calls by announcing the first nationwide initiative to inspire and train young Americans “to tackle the single most important challenge of their generation — the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.”
The proposal, called RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our Energy Science and Engineering Edge), is part of the administration’s 2011 budget request, which will be considered by Congress in the months ahead. With oversight by the Department of Energy and National Science Foundation, it would educate thousands of clean energy scientists and engineers, beginning with $74 million for energy-related programs at universities, community and technical colleges and K-12 schools.
“In order to make the leap in global energy technology leadership, the U.S. must also make the leap in energy education,” states the Department of Energy’s proposal (PDF). “This effort will help universities and community colleges develop cutting edge programs, with redesigned and new curricula to produce tens of thousands of other highly skilled U.S. workers who can sustain American excellence in clean energy in industry, trades, academia, the federal government and National Laboratories.”
The U.S. is falling behind in the rapidly growing clean energy industry, and our educational system and workforce is not prepared to compete. The U.S. energy industry expects that half its employees will retire over the next decade, and while Stanford has significant programs in the area, the majority of our colleges and universities lack degree programs focused on energy. Americans students earned only 11 percent of the world’s 4 million science and engineering bachelor’s degrees in 2006, compared to 21 percent in China and 19 percent in the European Union. These degrees are only about one-third of U.S. bachelor’s degrees, compared to 63 percent in Japan, 53 percent in China and 51 percent in Singapore.
Fortunately, the U.S. has a history of catching up in strategic industries, and federal investment in education is a core strategy. Fifty years ago, immediately after the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the United States mobilized to lead the space race and regain our scientific and technological competitiveness. The National Defense Education Act of 1958, for example, trained thousands of young scientists and engineers who helped put a man on the moon and develop the technologies that catapulted our world into the Information Age.
In 2008, my colleagues and I at the Breakthrough Institute proposed a National Energy Education Act, modeled after this legislation for the clean energy sector. RE-ENERGYSE is a significant step toward such a full-scale program. The federal government has started to address the need for green technician training, but it has not implemented a higher education strategy to keep the U.S. at the leading edge of energy science, technology and innovation. According to the Department of Energy, “The U.S. ranks behind other major nations in making the transitions required to educate students for emerging energy trades, research efforts and other professions to support the future energy technology mix.”
That is why an alliance of student and youth-led groups, including groups at Stanford University, is launching the ReEnergyse Campaign to mobilize and empower young people to advance this proposal through Congress in 2010. In the current political climate, RE-ENERGYSE needs a strong base of support to pass Congress, and as the primary stakeholders in the program, young people can be particularly influential in organizing a coalition of supporters and directly voicing their concerns to members of Congress.
This national campaign, coordinated by Americans for Energy Leadership, will feature a variety of activities, including a student government presidents sign-on letter organized by Stanford’s David Gobaud, a RE-ENERGYSE lobby day in DC, meetings and public events with members of Congress, op-eds in newspapers and online outlets, research reports and articles about energy education programs, video and photo petitioning and more. Through smart organizing and advocacy, young people can be the driving force to achieve this program.
The global clean energy race represents one of the greatest challenges and opportunities for American leadership in a generation, and now is a critical moment. If we do not immediately implement a national strategy for energy leadership — including smart investments to educate the energy generation — we will miss a historic opportunity to strengthen our economy, create new jobs, improve our energy security and lead the world in confronting climate change. The choice should be clear.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
RE-ENERGYSE America: Obama’s proposal for clean-energy education
Cross-posted from LeadEnergy.org
In a promising development for aspiring clean energy scientists, engineers, and technicians, the Obama administration’s 2011 budget request includes a proposal for the nation’s first comprehensive federal education initiative focused on the clean energy sector, called RE-ENERGYSE (Regaining our Energy Science and Engineering Edge).
The initiative was originally proposed by President Obama in his April 2009 speech to the National Academy of Sciences, which he said would inspire and train young Americans to “tackle the single most important challenge of their generation — the need to develop cheap, abundant, clean energy and accelerate the transition to a low carbon economy.”
If appropriated by Congress, RE-ENERGYSE will be coordinated by the Department of Energy (DOE) and National Science Foundation (NSF), beginning with an initial investment of $74 million in clean energy-related education at universities, community and technical colleges, and K-12 schools. This will include a new $50 million program within DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy (see full proposal), a $5 million program in DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy (see full proposal), and a $19 million program within NSF (see overview and fact sheet). A summary of each program is included below. DOE's well-known Solar Decathlon is also proposed to become part of RE-ENERGYSE in FY2011.
This proposal comes after Congress rejected the original RE-ENERGYSE proposal in the administration’s FY2010 budget request, despite support from over 100 universities, professional associations, and student groups. The administration was forced to reduce its request from $115 million to $74 million -- an unfortunate reduction, especially given the nation’s lagging position in STEM education and the global clean-tech industry -- but the program is a very important step toward a full federal clean energy education initiative. Despite the current budgetary environment, the administration sees RE-ENERGYSE as a significant priority for supporting the nation’s clean energy transition and improving U.S. competitiveness in this sector. As the Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy wrote in its proposal:
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
CS Monitor: China Aims to "Leapfrog" U.S. in Clean Energy Race
Originally Posted at The Breakthrough Institute
Imagining China as a giant green frog seems a little ridiculous, but, as Peter Ford of the Christian Science Monitor reported last week in a piece entitled "China's Green Leap Forward," China's intent to "leapfrog" the United States in the clean energy race is far from ridiculous - it may soon be a reality.
While the U.S. languidly inches forward in clean energy RD&D, China's burgeoning clean and renewable energy industries are growing at an unprecedented pace for a developing nation. Much more than a response to the suffocating pollution clogging the airways of its major cities, the explosion of clean energy technology is part of a national strategy to dominate the industry. As Ford succinctly puts it:
China price" and "China speed" are poised to snatch the lion's share of the next multitrillion-dollar global industry - energy technology... Indeed, China is pushing ahead on renewable technologies with the fervor of a new space race.
Indeed, China is approaching clean energy with a "space race" mind-set, however, the U.S. has yet to adopt the same sense of urgency. As Americans wait for a Senate decision on the significantly weakened American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454), which will invest just $1 billion per year in clean energy R&D and $10 billion for clean energy investments broadly defined, China has already implemented a suite of clean energy policies beginning with the Renewable Energy Law of 2006.
By supporting the growing wind sector with subsidies, tariffs, and an obligatory renewable energy requirement for power companies, China now expects wind manufacturing to grow from 8GW in 2007 to between 12GW and 20GW by 2010. In comparison, the U.S. manufactured just 2.4 GW of wind turbines in 2007 despite having the largest wind market in the world.
While China is already the world's leading solar manufacturer and is preparing to launch the first mass-produced electric car, as Ford points out, the story of "clean coal" (i.e. carbon capture and storage technology, CCS) may be the best portent of the future of China's clean energy competitiveness. Neither the U.S. nor China will easily bump coal from their energy mixes in the near future. Since China and the U.S. glean 80% and 50% of their electricity from coal generation (respectively), both will need innovations in CCS technology to mitigate their dirty fuel usage.
Despite America's thirty-year head start in clean coal R&D, there is surprisingly significant uncertainty as to who will dominate the CCS market. Under ACES, $1 billion would be allocated to CCS demonstration and another $2.4 billion would be provided for deployment, improving the outlook for the more experienced U.S. Still, after watching the U.S. Futuregen project become mired in cost and political obstructions, China started the Greengen initiative, which is predicted to be the "most efficient and cleanest coal-fired power station every built." According to Chinese officials, it should begin operating at the end of 2010.
In the story, Zhang Hongmei, the director for technology strategy and development at China's largest privately owned clean energy provider, ENN, astutely assesses the CCS hold-up in the U.S.:
In America, some people say there is no such thing as clean coal. It is very controversial. Here [China] it's not a question of debate or lobbying. It's a question of doing something.
Ford reiterates a question Breakthrough's Jesse Jenkins and Teryn Norris recently asked in an op-ed in the San Francisco Chronicle - will American lose the clean-energy race? - and, if China wins, what are the implications for the rest of the world?
In order to stay abreast of the China and the other Asian tigers in the clean energy race, Breakthrough has repeatedly called for increased investment in clean energy deployment, R&D, and manufacturing. Furthermore, Breakthrough is currently advocating for RE-ENERGYSE, President Obama's energy education program that was recently dropped from FY2010 appropriations budget. A science and math initiative that encompasses K-12, undergraduate, and graduate education, the program is designed to usher in a clean energy workforce prepared to compete in the global clean energy industry.
Both nations are fully cognizant of the economic advantages of clean energy dominance and the urgency of the clean energy race is more salient than ever as demand for "green jobs" dominates news headlines.
As President Obama, Breakthrough and others (see here and here)have cautioned, without a strong, comprehensive effort by the U.S. to expand its clean energy industry on a global scale, China's looming shadow, frog-shaped or otherwise, will be perfectly positioned to eclipse the U.S. as the world's next economic powerhouse.
Click here to see Breakthrough's complete coverage of the clean energy race... Read more!
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Secretary of Energy: Breakthroughs Essential to Fully Meet Nation’s Energy Challenges
Today, the U.S. Department of Energy announced $377 million in funding to establish 46 Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) pursuing potentially path-breaking basic and translational research at the cutting-edge of clean energy innovation. Of this funding, $277 comes from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA, otherwise known as the stimulus package) and $100 million comes from the DOE’s FY2009 budget. The funding will be sustained over the next five years, with the DOE committing $100 million of its budget to the research centers each year.
“Meeting the challenge to reduce our dependence on imported oil and curtail greenhouse gas emissions will require significant scientific advances,” said Energy Secretary Steven Chu as he announced the new funding for EFRCs. “These centers will mobilize the enormous talents and skills of our nation’s scientific workforce in pursuit of the breakthroughs that are essential to expand the use of clean and renewable energy.”
The majority of EFRCs are based in universities, with several harnessing the skills and resources of the national laboratories, and just three awarded to non-profit organizations and private corporations. Over the course of the program, these centers will employ over 1,800 people in research into four primary realms: Renewable and Carbon-Neutral Energy (including Solar Energy Utilization, Advanced Nuclear Energy Systems, Biofuels, and Geological Sequestration of CO2); Energy Efficiency (Clean and Efficient Combustion, Solid State Lighting, Superconductivity); Energy Storage (Hydrogen Research, Electrical Energy Storage); and Crosscutting Science (Catalysis, Materials under Extreme Environments).
A few examples of the research this funding will support include (full list here):
To be sure, this funding should be celebrated – this research is crucial to developing the scientific foundation for breakthrough energy technologies. It is a great (small) step. But the time has long since come to fully invest in our nation’s innovators and the cutting-edge research essential to both improve today’s clean energy technologies and to achieve breakthroughs that pave the way for the transformational energy technologies of tomorrow. Both forms of support are necessary to make clean energy cheap.
Unfortunately, total U.S. spending on energy research, development and deployment is in a sorry state. I noted yesterday that the entire budget for ARPA-e (a newly funded government agency centered on high-risk, high-reward energy research) is less than talk show personality Rush Limbaugh’s latest contract. In total the U.S. government spent about $4 billion on energy research in 2007 (the same as the Navy’s phone bill that year by the way). That figure is thankfully up somewhat, with this new infusion of innovation investment in the stimulus and President Obama’s FY 2009 budget, but still just barely tops $5 billion. In contrast, the United States spends over $30 billion annually to pursue cures to deadly diseases and improve human health through the National Institutes of Health – evidence of the scale of a true national innovation priority.
While spending on energy research is expected to be higher this year than in recent years (in large part due to the stimulus), we need a sustained commitment to clean energy that reflects the scale of our mounting energy and climate challenge. The Waxman-Markey climate and energy bill, currently promoted as the next driver of a clean energy economy, would invest only about $1.2 billion annually in energy research and development and roughly $10 billion in the clean energy sector as a whole – less than 0.1 percent of U.S. GDP. In contrast, South Korea is investing a full 2 percent of its GDP in clean technologies, and China is planning to invest $44-66 billion annually to build their own modern clean energy industries and infrastructure. We must inspire and empower our nation’s youth to become the next generation of energy innovators by fully funding President Obama’s RE-ENERGYSE initiative, and we must build and expand upon this new funding for Energy Frontier Research Centers as just the first launching pad into the next frontiers of clean energy deployment.
Cross-posted at The Breakthrough Institute
Wednesday, July 08, 2009
House Committee Cuts Funding for Obama's Energy Education Initiative
By Devon Swezey, Breakthrough Fellow
Cross-posted from Breakthrough Institute
President Obama's national energy education program designed to create a generation of clean energy innovators has been cut from $115 to $7 million by a House subcommittee. The cuts could mean that fewer than 100 scholarships, not 1,500 scholarships, will be available annually.
Energy analysts say that one of the key barriers to developing clean energy technologies that can compete with fossil fuels is the lack of scholarships both for young scientists to do basic research and for engineers seeking to apply discoveries in the real world.
The Administration's energy education program, called RE-ENERGYSE (REgaining our ENERGY Science and Engineering Edge), would have resulted in "the development of leading edge undergraduate and graduate programs and between 5,000 and 8,500 highly educated scientists, engineers, and other professionals to enter the clean energy field by 2015; and approximately 10,000 to 17,000 professionals by 2020," according to the Department of Energy (DOE). The initiative, which would be jointly supported by DOE and the National Science Foundation, was modeled after the Breakthrough Institute's National Energy Education Act proposal and would have been the largest federal initiative to focus exclusively on clean energy education.
President Obama announced the initiative as a way to "inspire the next generation of clean energy innovators", similar to the way that the launch of Sputnik and the space race inspired young people to pursue careers in science and engineering in the 1950s and 60s. In 1958, the government passed the National Defense Education Act (NDEA), which provided billions of dollars over 4 years to train a new generation of scientists to help America compete with the Soviet Union in scientific and technical fields. But in recent years, the number of science and technology professionals has been declining as a share of the labor force, a development that has education experts worried.
The cut to the President's energy education initiative comes as recent reports have expressed concern about the state of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education in the United States. A number of recent studies show that the United States lags behind many of its economic competitors, particularly in higher education. According to a report by the National Academy of Sciences, in 2004 only 15% of American undergraduates received their degrees in natural science or engineering, while in China a full 50% of students received their undergraduate degrees in those subjects. American students are trailing their foreign counterparts in post-graduate STEM education as well; in 2004, 56% of engineering PhDs in the United States were awarded to foreign-born students.
Experts also worry that the lack of investment in STEM education will hamper America's ability to be a leader in an increasingly competitive global economy, particularly in the development of clean energy technologies. In recent weeks, a number of Asian countries have announced massive increases in clean energy investment. China recently announced it would invest $440-$660 billion over 10 years in renewable energy. South Korea has also committed $85 billion over five years--a full 2 percent of its GDP--for "green" investment. In August, China, Japan, and South Korea will meet to discuss ways they can work together on clean energy technology, according to Time Magazine.
By comparison, the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), which recently passed in the House, provides $6-12 billion in annual investments in clean energy. A recent EPA analysis projects that the bill would actually result in less renewable energy deployment in 2020 than would exist without the bill.
In a letter urging a Senate appropriations subcommittee to restore funding for the RE-ENERGYSE program, Debra Stewart, the President of the Council of Graduate Schools, wrote that investing in human capital today was necessary for the U.S. to succeed in creating the clean and renewable energy resources of tomorrow.
"These investments in graduate education would invigorate research in "green" technologies and prepare the workforce necessary for the 21st century global economy", she wrote.
The full Senate Appropriations Committee will take up the DOE 2010 budget request tomorrow, when they will decide how much funding will be allocated to the RE-ENERGYSE program. Any differences will then be resolved in conference between the two chambers and approved before being sent to the President for his signature. Read more!
