Originally published by The Stanford Daily

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

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

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

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

(more…)

Originally published by The Stanford Daily

Two months ago, hundreds of world leaders and tens of thousands of activists gathered in Copenhagen to craft a new global treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol in 2012. Green groups put on a spectacle – yes, Greenpeace even docked two of its famous boats nearby to “help in pushing the delegates” – and some observers declared it a make or break event in global climate history.

Today, there is strikingly little to show for the whole affair, momentum has slowed to a crawl and hardly anyone is discussing the aftermath. For good reason: the Copenhagen Accord is basically a voluntary agreement with obscure objectives, and its impact will be negligible. Michael Cutajar, the former chairman of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiation group, said that “Beyond the lack of clarity in its drafting, its main weakness is the lack of ambition and identifying responsibilities… Who should do what, and when, in order to limit warming to two degrees?”

What went wrong at Copenhagen? As I recently argued on BBC World View, the outcome was primarily the result of a flawed UNFCCC process and policy framework. The first and most obvious problem was imagining that 192 countries – some of which represent thousands of times more people than others – could produce a meaningful climate mitigation treaty. The UNFCCC process is kind of like the U.S. Senate (today one of the most dysfunctional national legislative bodies in the world) but at least four times as complicated.

(more…)

“There is no reason why the United States should not compete vigorously for the high-tech, high-wage clean energy jobs that will result from the tremendous growth of the global clean energy industry,” argues Devon Swezey (Project Director at the Breakthrough Institute and fellow co-author of “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant“) in a column at Forbes Energy Source, “It’s Not All Good: Why You Should Worry About the Clean Energy Race.”  Swezey responds to critics who have argued that the United States shouldn’t worry about the growing clean energy race with Asia:

“Despite the mounting evidence, many have dismissed the idea that the United States is competing in a “clean energy race” with China, or that it matters. Some critics assert that characterizing the intense competition as a “race” obscures the climate benefits of greater clean energy deployment throughout the world and the “win-win” nature of a global clean energy economy.”

Swezey challenges these assertions one by one, making a strong case for a national strategy for clean energy competitiveness.  For more on this topic, also see our article in The Stanford Daily, “Winning the Clean Energy Race: A New Strategy for American Leadership.”

Two students at the University of Wisconsin Madison have an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, “Focus on energy education,” making the case for a new focus on clean energy education policy at the state level:

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… 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…

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 knowledge workers who can build Wisconsin’s clean energy economy over the coming years… Now or in the near future, Wisconsin and the U.S. need to increase energy education. Gaining a strong, competitive edge in clean energy requires more than 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 economy. 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.

See the full column here.  One of the co-authors, Danny Spitzberg, is a Breakthrough Generation Fellow.

Originally published by The Stanford Daily

Last week, the Obama administration introduced a proposal that every college student and educator 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.”

(more…)

Originally published by The Stanford Daily

One of the most powerful moments during last week’s State of the Union came when President Obama warned that while Washington stalls, other nations are moving quickly to dominate the global clean-energy industry.

“China is not waiting to revamp its economy,” Obama declared. “These nations aren’t playing for second place… They’re making serious investments in clean energy because they want those jobs. Well, I do not accept second place for the United States of America… The nation that leads the clean-energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.”

Obama is right, and as always, his words were eloquent. Now his administration must get to work and advance a real strategy for global energy leadership.

The current proposals under consideration in Congress are far too weak. China, Japan and South Korea are launching massive, comprehensive clean-energy projects, investing a combined total of around $500 billion over the next five years. In contrast, the House-passed American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA), combined with the 2009 economic recovery package, poises the U.S. government to invest only $172 billion in this industry over the next five years, according to a recent report I co-authored with the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation.

That is hardly an effective strategy for energy leadership, and advocates should be careful about labeling the House and Senate climate bills as comprehensive solutions for U.S. clean-tech competitiveness.

In July 2009, a group of 34 Nobel Laureates wrote a letter to President Obama decrying this lack of investment and urging his support for $15 billion per year in clean energy R&D. “We are concerned that [ACESA] provides less than one fifteenth of the amount you proposed for federal energy research, development, and demonstration programs,” they wrote. “This stable R&D spending is not a luxury. It is in fact necessary because rapid scientific and technical progress is crucial to achieving these goals, and to making the cost affordable.”

(more…)

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger make a compelling argument that the Obama administration began by correctly focusing on clean energy technology development, but unfortunately it “succumbed, like many others, to a sort of magical climate thinking that promised a painless and even prosperous transition to a low-carbon future with the tools already at hand.”  This “magical thinking,” they argue, goes like this:

In this view, energy efficiency pays for itself, solar and wind power are already nearly cost competitive with fossil fuels, and both can quickly and cheaply reduce emissions. This Pollyanna view of fossil fuel alternatives and efficiency, which makes going green seem cheap and easy — little more than the cost of “a postage stamp a day” — has provided the justification for green-policy advocacy that has overwhelmingly focused on pollution regulations and carbon pricing while ignoring serious investment in energy research and development…

In the aftermath of Copenhagen and the potential collapse of cap and trade negotiations in the United States, the faults of this magical climate strategy are clear:

The collapse of international climate negotiations in Copenhagen last month was just the latest evidence that efforts to regulate global pollution output cannot succeed. The Kyoto framework, which imagined that carbon pollution limits could be the primary driver of the complete transformation of the global energy economy, has irretrievably failed… [it] marks not just the end of the United Nations as the primary venue for global climate negotiations but also the abandonment of binding emissions-reduction targets and timetables as the primary vehicle for achieving emissions reductions. Targets will continue to be tossed around, either as aspirational goals or as loophole-riddled sops to appease greens. But the real international action on climate change and energy will involve bilateral and multilateral negotiations to develop and deploy clean energy technologies.

The solution is to focus on bridging the clean energy technology gap:

(more…)

Yet again, Thomas Friedman nails the clean energy race and fails on the policy strategy.  His op-ed today, “Who’s Sleeping Now?” (similar to our recent report, “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant“) claims that carbon pricing is the solution to secure U.S. competitiveness in the global clean-tech industry:

“We are either going to put in place a price on carbon and the right regulatory incentives to ensure that America is China’s main competitor/partner in the E.T. revolution, or we are going to gradually cede this industry to Beijing and the good jobs and energy security that would go with it… It is clear that if we, America, care about our energy security, economic strength and environmental quality we need to put in place a long-term carbon price that stimulates and rewards clean power innovation.”

By calling for the passage of the American Clean Energy & Security Act (ACESA) — without mentioning a single area for improvement — Friedman implies it is strong enough to compete with Asia and drive the U.S. transition to clean energy, when in fact the bill would (1) establish a very modest price on carbon due to numerous cost-containment mechanisms like international offsets; (2) invest an order of magnitude less in clean energy technology development than a large and ever-growing number of experts say is necessary — including dozens of Nobel Laureates, America’s top research universities, Google, Brookings Institution, Breakthrough Institute, Third Way, military veterans, and others; and (3) establish a renewable electricity standard that would not ensure any increase in U.S. renewable energy deployment beyond already conservative business-as-usual projections (see here for comprehensive analysis of ACESA).

That may be acceptable to Thomas Friedman, but it is no way for the United States to lead the clean energy industry.  For more on this ongoing debate, see my recent response to Friedman, “Earth to Thomas Friedman: Winning the ‘Earth Race’ Requires Federal Investment.”

By Teryn Norris & Devon Swezey

Originally published by The Stanford Review

You know the world is changing when the president’s first trip to Asia is defined by a new U.S. foreign policy dubbed “strategic reassurance” – convincing China that the United States has no intention of containing its growing power or endangering its foreign investments. As the New York Times put it, “When President Obama visits China for the first time on Sunday, he will, in many ways, be assuming the role of profligate spender coming to pay respects to his banker.”

You also know times are changing when China, the world’s greatest polluter, and other Asian nations are poised to dominate the burgeoning global clean-tech industry by out-investing the United States. That’s the conclusion of a large new report we co-authored called “Rising Tigers, Sleeping Giant,” released this week by the Breakthrough Institute and Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. The report is the first to thoroughly benchmark clean energy competitiveness in four nations – China, Japan, South Korea, and the United States – and finds the following:

“Asia’s rising ‘clean technology tigers’ – China, Japan, and South Korea – have already passed the United States in the production of virtually all clean energy technologies and over the next five years will out-invest the U.S. three-to-one in these sectors… While some U.S. firms will benefit from the establishment of joint ventures overseas, the jobs, tax revenues, and other benefits of clean tech growth will overwhelmingly accrue to Asian nations… Should the investment gap persist, the U.S. will import the overwhelming majority of clean energy technologies it deploys.”

What do these two changes have in common? They both reflect the accelerating shift of global power from America to Asia, caused in large part by the serious mismanagement of U.S. economic policy.

The Pacific power shift is not a new phenomenon, and the Obama administration is wise to seek stronger ties with the region. The U.S. should applaud Asia’s growth, which is partly an outcome of our own success at promoting economic liberalism and international development. This shift in power is not a zero-sum game, nor should it be: the U.S. and Asia should avoid trade wars at all costs, and we should seize opportunities for partnership on a range of issues, from climate change to nuclear proliferation.

But the growing pace of this power shift should be a cause of major concern for Americans, and it should raise serious questions about our economic policies at the highest level. While the U.S. economy has suffered greatly from a crisis produced by its own financial sector – losing millions of jobs, trillions in economic output, and demanding huge spending packages financed by borrowed money – China has shrugged off the global recession with high levels of growth and self-financed stimulus, all while purchasing billions of Treasury bills to fund a U.S. deficit that has reached historic highs.

Last November, addressing the nation on the evening of his election, President Obama declared that “a new era of American leadership is at hand.” And indeed, his new administration has taken significant steps to remake U.S. foreign policy. But unless the U.S. quickly improves its economic competitiveness, our global leadership will be severely damaged. What is demanded now is a major, coordinated national project to regain our economic competitiveness in strategic sectors while permanently correcting the imbalances that led to the Great Recession.

(more…)