Stabilizing the climate requires technology, public investment, and global economic development 24

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1. 

   sunflower Posted 8:13 am
   05 Oct 2007

   Interesting.Can you see the tiger hiding behind the potted palm?
   "...to think through what kinds of investments will need to be made, how they should be made, how they should be insulated from pork barrel politics and energy industry sabotage, and how much we need to spend."
   I studied the government's role in the innovation of inventions during the early 1970s.  It was determined then that new ideas fail for a number of reasons, and the main reason for more than 50% failure was initial seed capital failure.  Not much was known so a government  research program was crafted to collect data with a pilot program.  Energy was chosen, almost randomly, to limit the scope of the inventions test.  The Office of Energy Related Inventions (Nixon) was formed under the management of the DoC because it was widely thought that ERDA [DoE] was a revolving door with big energy and would block disruptive technology developments.
   I entered the program with a solar dish and Bernard Sater, the lead power systems engineer at NASA, entered with a high voltage and high intensity pv breakthrough.  We were among the 2% of all non-nuclear proposals that were approved for funding.  When the Reagan White House heard that new solar technology was about to receive funding that energy money was abruptly cut off and the program suspended.  Jack Anderson (a syndicated columnist circa. 40 million) wrote a widely reported story about our political sabotage.  His researchers found that the industrial return on the inventions program was several hundred fold, very unusual for a government program.  I got my $50,000 when I informed the Presidential Press Secretary about my plans to hold a news conference with a big solar dish on the Capital Mall.
   Recently, I was sitting at a solar industry round table sponsored and moderated by NREL.  One main issue was that government support and subsidy for renewable electricity became a slam dunk for wind.  Other competing technologies (HIPV) remained isolated in the cold.
   So the least developed, most isolated, and/or most disruptive energy inventions will likely be marginalized (or worse) from industry insiders and from political sabotage.  Nothing has changed since the 1970s and I expect more of the same.  Even President Carter lost control of institutional bias.  So how do we solve these conflicts of interest and make new public investment programs truly effective with the old fossils at the helm?

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2. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 11:35 am
   05 Oct 2007

   I'm confusedOn the one hand, N&S are calling for more r&d to get prices on renewable energy down to the point that the regulatory method (cap-and-trade,etc) works.  On the other hand, they point out that by purchasing large quantities of, say, solar panels, the price would come down -- but is that because the manufacturing processes would reach economies of scale, or because the technology would get better, because those are two different things.  If the former, then their arguments could be used to push for massive purchases and deployment of solar now, say on all government buildings.  In other words, we could use current technology, by their reasoning.
   The other question is, where would the money for these programs come from?  Apparently the focus on the military excludes cutting that biggest piece of pork, although I heard them being interviewed on KQED, where they said that we could use a peace dividend from the end of the war in Iraq, which implies  money from the military.  The problem with carbon taxes or price of carbon, as I read their analysis, is the the middle classes pay.  If the government pays, I think money should come from the wealthiest, not the middle classes.  So where does it come from?

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3. 

   Ted Nordhaus Posted 12:24 pm
   05 Oct 2007

   Put Down the Talking Points JoeHow many times can you cram the words Deniers, Delayers, Bush, Crichton, and Lomborg into a post, Joe? You'd do us all a favor if you'd put down the talking points and respond to the actual content of our post, which, through many thousands of words and four mostly unreadable posts you have failed to do. Mainstream energy science is pretty damned clear about the need for massive increases in public investment into clean energy research, development, and deployment. It is you, not we, whose views are outside the mainstream. It may be the case, as you have repeatedly asserted, with little evidence other than your own experience at DOE, that we "don't know what we're talking about." But if we don't know what we're talking about than neither do Stern, IPCC, or the many other reviews of the current state of energy technology and energy needs that we have repeatedly cited and you have repeatedly ignored in your attacks on us. Go ahead and make the case that those analyses are wrong. We are the last people to criticize heterodoxy.  But it is you not we who are coming out of left field on this. So please explain to us all why the energy experts and economists who we cite are wrong. You might even convince the good folks here that they are. But we'll thank you for not continuing to project your heterodoxy onto us.
   
   

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4. 

   Pangolin Posted 6:03 pm
   05 Oct 2007

   I call BS on these delayers.The raw facts are that energy efficient options are available NOW, as in today that applied to existing structures pay off well within the standard 30-year mortgage model.
   Here are a few of them:
   Zero Energy Homes: residential buildings that require a net-zero input from the grid.  To get to a building that requires no net energy use requires multiple factors which can be installed independently of each other.
   Geo-exchange HVAC systems provide significant savings over every other active heating/cooling system as well as providing free hot water. These systems have been installed in downtown Sacramento on row houses and apartment buildings all over Europe. They generally pay off their installation costs within ten years of installation. Since installation costs are fixed and energy costs can be expected to increase early payoff is pretty much a guarantee.
   Here are some nice case studies that show that you don't have to live in California to be off-grid or energy efficient. You can even reduce your energy profile if you are a brewery that manages to produce dang good beer in the most environmentally friendly manner possible for an operation of that size.
   Simply changing roofing materials can result in as much as a 75% reduction in heat load from your roof. In Florida and the Southwest this is a major factor in cooling loads from AC systems on coal burning power plants. This doesn't require any technological change at all, but merely a minor regulatory change. Outlaw asphalt roofing in areas with high cooling loads and millions of tons of GHG emissions are saved. Existing asphalt roofs have to be replaced regardless. More roofing material information.
   Straw Bale buildings use little energy other than that needed for lighting and appliances.  More here. You can wrap straw bales around an existing house if you extend the roof out to cover the addition.  
   Cob Houses are affordable and efficient in materials and energy use.  After all they're built of clay, sand and straw with the addition of small amount of wood for windows doors and roofing timbers. That means that there aren't so much GHG's produced in the transportation of materials.
   As everybody familiar with Gristmill knows eating locally and reducing your meat intake is also good for reducing greenhouse gases. With the use of pre-historic farming techniques such as Terra Preta we can harvest energy from agricultural waste AND reduce fertilizer requirements. This is significantly important because most nitrate fertilizers end up as NO2 gas which has a far more potent effect than CO2. It also permanently puts atmospheric carbon into the ground while reducing future emissions.
   Yep, we could also drive electric cars, take public transit, increase our use of rail transit, quit flying everywhere and add some sails to all those smog pumping container ships.  People would even be willing to accept a (gasp) revenue-neutral Carbon Tax that taxes those that pollute (the rich) and returns the revenue to those least able to pay for increased cost of goods and services (everybody else). If the well off don't want to pay carbon taxes they could simply reduce their purchases of high CO2 producing goods or services.
   Reduction of grid loads means that power generation by means of solar PV, solar-thermal/stirling systems, geothermal, wind and tidal power require less capacity build out to replace coal. Coal is the enemy of the planet. That is without a doubt.
   All of these solutions require small changes to zoning, building codes, financial systems or other regulatory systems. None of them require anything like the new technologies that we are supposed to wait for. I'm tired of waiting for the technological Easter Bunny to come. I want to see some solutions moving NOW. The authors proposing throwing money at research before installation of existing technological solutions should be considered delayers and deniers. They are effectively allies with the coal, oil and natural gas industries.
   
   Put the Carbon Back

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5. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 11:08 pm
   05 Oct 2007

   Pangolin --That was awesome.  Can you please put that comment on your website so that it can be easily accessed?  Also, if you put it there as an article, you can update it.  Thanks!

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6. 

   sunflower Posted 2:22 am
   06 Oct 2007

   Con fight at the OK CoralAs one who might benefit from the public investments promoted by N&S I must agree with the comments above.  Existing technologies can displace all existing coal power plants and waiting for new technology is not a reason for delay of new regulations.
   I cringe when environmentalists are attacked, and I wonder if this is to generate heat to sell books.  Or is it more sinister?   I am not an environmental activist though my neighbors may disagree.  I camp with environmentalists because they are more concerned about our collective futures than others who are often more focused on self-interests.  Anti-environmentalist solutions to global warming does not make any sense to me, a fundamental contradiction.
   Independent of all other actions and prejudices, it is time to do whatever it takes to regulate coal to extinction.  New technologies will fill the void organically.  My only complaint is that occasionally environmentalists embrace emerging energy technologies that won't pencil out.  N&S do exactly the same thing.

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7. 

   Ted Nordhaus Posted 2:31 am
   06 Oct 2007

   Criticism vs. CynicismWith the exception of CCS, which will require carbon prices well beyond what Congress is likely to establish (as noted in earlier posts, every cap and trade bill before the Congress, including Boxer/Sanders, has some form of safety valve built into it that will limit that actual price of carbon), every step you have listed above will result in modest, not deep reductions, in the neighborhood of 20 to 30%, not the 60 to 80% we need, and that's just in the US and other developed nations that establish such policies and only if they succeed wildly. It should be sobering to note that the EU, where most of these same policies have been established, along with a cap and trade system, has seen it's emissions go up since 2000, not down.   That's why all of the sources cited above call for major public investment now, not later and not as an afterthought or secondary priority. Why not acknowledge this reality Joe? And why don't you see doing so, and having a serious public technology policy as consistent with, indeed an asset to, any effort to establish needed regulatory policies? Because Bush and other conservatives have cynically suggested that the lack of low cost alternatives and the economic costs of pricing carbon at levels necessary to drive deep reductions are reasons not to cap carbon emissions? If as you say this has been the reason for delay and not say, the single minded obsession of environmentalists with defining their global warming and energy agenda around limiting pollution, then why would you not define your agenda such that it coopted those arguments rather than ignored them?
   I don't doubt that you have been advocating clean energy investment since before any of us were born Joe. But your posts make pretty clear that it is not a very high priority for you and a quick perusal of what the national environmental groups are actually advocating in Congress makes pretty clear that it is not a high priority for them either, no matter what they may say on their websites. Perhaps that is as it should be. But to suggest that any one with a divergent view who questions those priorities is essentially a global warming denier, or is trying to delay action to address global warming is outrageous and cynical.

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8. 

   nedruod Posted 3:41 am
   06 Oct 2007

   What we know how to do, and what we don'tFinally, the commodified nature of energy (one electron is as good as another) makes it difficult to develop initial commercial products that can command a higher price. While Apple enthusiasts lined up to shell out $600 for an iPhone, very few consumers are willing to pay two to three times more for clean energy.
   This argument states one and only one thing to me.  The necessity of carbon pricing.  How else can you replicate an initial higher price?  Is that not precisely what carbon pricing would do?
   Investment is important, but will never succeed alone.  If I had the choice of one, and only one policy, it would be carbon pricing.  It would work.  The only reason for continued debate is whether there is a mix of approaches that will work better.
   Once you set carbon pricing, attacking climate change becomes no different than every other economic issue.  Investment is important in clean technologies.  Investment has always been important in non-clean technologies too.  Our economic, policy and corporate infrastructure knows how to balance all of these factors from experience, assuming that the numbers they are working from represent a goal we actually want.

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9. 

   Jon Rynn Posted 4:30 am
   06 Oct 2007

   Nedruod, who pays? and Ted....Nedruod -- To me, much of the discussion boils down to "who pays?", and nobody is discussing it - well, almost, N&S point out that carbon pricing, based on current technologies, will hit the middle classes (and poor and poor nations) very hard.  They would pay.  OK, the next resposne to that criticism, I believe, is you make carbon taxes (or whatever) revenue-neutral, that is, you either reimburse(?) or lower other kinds of taxes.  But that doesn't solve the problem, I don't think, maybe you can explain: if carbon taxes replace income taxes exactly, there's no money left over for investment in either r&d or bulk purchasing, or anything else, unless you cut something else out of the budget -- and where would that be?  N&S seem to rule out the military.  Taxes on the superrich and corporations?  Am I missing something?  You can't just wave a hand and say "the market" will work it out, somebody is going to pay more money somewhere.  So it is not an economic problem, it's a political, or really, a power problem, who has the power to make others pay for more expensive carbon -- or to pay to build an entirely new energy/transportation infrastructure, which I think is preferable to either what N&S or Romm are saying.
   If Nordhaus is reading this -- Can you at least answer one question: would you advocate spending big bucks now on some existing technologies in order to ramp them up in production and bring the costs down as a result of economies of scale?  If the answer is yes, then I think you and Romm are much closer than the two of you seem to think.  If the answer is no, then I have to agree, at least partially, with Romm.  Thank you.

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10. 

    Ted Nordhaus Posted 7:44 am
    06 Oct 2007

    We support investment in current tech now.I'm not sure how many times we have to say this. We believe that major investment in existing clean energy technologies is a necessity. In some cases, such as efficiency, cleaner conventional energy sources like natural gas, and perhaps even wind, a carbon price will be sufficient to dramatically increase use and deployment of those technologies. Doing so has the potential to drive US emissions down probably 20 to 30% over the next several decades. This is a good thing, we support it, and we believe we should enact policies to achieve that objective NOW. This will require both cap and trade  legislation or some other mechanism to establish a price for carbon and things like efficiency standards. But to drive emissions down much further, you need to bring solar, CCS, and other technologies which presently exist but are no where close in terms of cost and performance to scale very quickly. Carbon pricing, at least any carbon price that is likely to be established and sustained politically and economically, will not be sufficient to drive widespread deployment of these technologies. Yes, you do need a carbon price in place such that when you bring the price down far enough there is market pull to drive the widespread commercialization of those technologies. But a carbon price in and of itself will not be sufficient. That is the point that we have made over and over again in these posts so I don't know how many more times and ways we can figure out how to say it.

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11. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 7:54 am
    06 Oct 2007

    Thanks Ted....although I think there should be governmental investment in current technologies, for example, put solar pv on all government buildings, now...sorry if I missed it, but it appears that you are saying that Joe's carbon pricing would bring that 20 to 30% reduction by spurring private investment -- but I'll assume you have also talked about direct public investment, a la Germany or Japan, in the government forking over the money to construct solar, etc.

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12. 

    Ted Nordhaus Posted 8:48 am
    06 Oct 2007

    correctyes that's correct. private sector is probably sufficient for efficiency, NG, and wind but not for PV, CCS, and not to make big gains in battery and other storage technologies.

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13. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 9:07 am
    06 Oct 2007

    well, alrighty then,it seems to me that there is plenty that you (Ted) and Romm could agree on in terms of actually crafting policy, thanks again.

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14. 

    Ted Nordhaus Posted 10:01 am
    06 Oct 2007

    Wish it were soPerhaps. But ask Joe how much public investment the big national enviro's he is defending have actually proposed. Ask him what legislation those groups are backing in Congress to establish the necessary public investment and to direct it toward the right investments. Ask him if any of the cap and trade legislation those groups are supporting would direct $30 billion, or even $15 billion annually toward those investments. Ask him what the plan of those groups is to safeguard those investments from pork barrel appropriation. That's where a serious public investment strategy begins, not with a few throw away lines at NRDC's or ED's websites. We see little evidence that the national enviro's are taking any of this very seriously. That's because they don't see it as particularly important.

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15. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 10:40 am
    06 Oct 2007

    I have been very frustrated......that none of the big enviro groups seems to take public transit seriously.  In fact, the only public figure I can find who does is James Howard Kunstler, who has a similar problem that you guys have, people never seem to register his alternatives and proposals.
    I have been continuously commenting on Romm's posts, and I will continue to do so, asking about and suggesting public investment as a policy tool -- so far to no response, but that's ok, I'll keep trying.

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16. 

    sunflower Posted 11:13 am
    06 Oct 2007

    And there's the rubRelying on the government to solve for global warming is too risky.  Send the funds to universities - to the generation that is actually in this fight for survival.

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17. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 12:20 pm
    06 Oct 2007

    The market isn't risky?!

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18. 

    sunflower Posted 12:45 pm
    06 Oct 2007

    Markets and governments are in bed together.I feel the reaction coming from the next generation, their passion and focus, their urgency.  Governments and markets are not reacting to reality, all very passive.  So use the fire burning at our universities.  No time to lose.

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19. 

    nedruod Posted 3:52 pm
    06 Oct 2007

    The argument is mostly over the first stepTed, we can only, as a group, support so much legislation at once.  We are bound to be asked to make compromises by the opposition or the undecideds.  So, knowing that, we have to decide, what is the first issue that receives top billing?
    Yes, you do need a carbon price in place such that when you bring the price down far enough there is market pull to drive the widespread commercialization of those technologies.
    Here you show a predisposition to the approach of inventing first, and then working on carbon pricing.  There is some logic, but there is much more logic toward the other approach.
    One argument that is hard to ignore is the political argument.  If carbon pricing is put in place, the big multinationals will have a reason to push the public R&D investment you're calling for.  Knowing that they need those technologies, they are vested in their creation.  Private companies invest in R&D in more ways than in private labs.
    But on the other side, what new motivation do those companies have to support carbon pricing after public R&D investment?  None really.  In fact they have even less reason than before.  Now they'll want to sell solar panels AND coal AND sequestration.  Or Hybrid Hummers.
    Technology innovation without controls can go both ways.  Every invention has multiple uses, and without some directing force, a great deal of the potential R&D will unleash will be wasted, misused or worse.
    You worry about stopping pork barrel R&D projects.  There are two ways to fix that.  The first is constant vigilance, activism, energy all directed at understanding, communicating, persuading and influencing each proposal to insure the pork is wiped out.  The second is to redefine what pork is, so that 80% of the pork is beneficial anyhow.  You can do both, but if I had a 20 year battle in front of me, I'd make sure the second was done first.  It also seems clear to me, that the second  has some chance of success, where as the first is a fight thousands of years old.

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20. 

    nedruod Posted 4:12 pm
    06 Oct 2007

    Jon - Who Pays?Jon, there are a lot of forces involved in who pays for anything.  I think asking that question in as part of a debate on carbon pricing a needless distraction.  The issue will come up surely, and all the necessary paybacks, pork, will happen.
    Ultimately what will happen is the people paying will be the people from each class who are the most wasteful.  Some poor will pay more, many will pay less.  Some middle class will pay more, many will pay less, etc.
    There is an element of fairness in that equation that goes beyond class, and I see it as exceptionally likely the greater fairness will afford some flexibility toward the marginal overall revenue necessary for public investment.

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21. 

    Jon Rynn Posted 2:11 am
    07 Oct 2007

    "Who pays" is always important,it's always one of the basic political questions.  But to be more concrete, the poor are already very energy efficient, because they don't consume as much as the rich.  Assuming you could design a revenue-neutral carbon tax system, I'm just saying that 1) there won't be room left over for public investment and 2) if people do the right thing and decrease carbon use, the governmental revenue will decrease and then somebody will have to get less money, and who will that be?  Unless you increase the carbon tax to make up for it, I don't know how that works.

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22. 

    nedruod Posted 5:17 pm
    09 Oct 2007

    What's the goal?Who pays is important.  Here's a lesson in politics, however.  If everything is important to you, you will accomplish nothing.  To accomplish something, you need to focus on that.  
    From here, do two things.  First, recognize areas that have natural synergies with secondary goals, and use the synergies to broaden the support base for your primary goal.
    Second, when there is no natural synergy, don't confound your task with complications.  Rather push in a singular direction and allow the pre-existing forces to push you left, right, up or down, and focus on moving yourself forward.

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