As we collectively stepped back this past week for Thanksgiving, the prospects for real change in the United States’ energy policy – at least in the near term – look rather bleak. If the policymaking machine is at a roadblock, can technology save the day?

The host of Democratic lawmakers and (a few liberal Republicans) who championed the fight against global warming pollution in the past two years will find it hard to promote the same approaches in the post-election environment. And while climate negotiators from around the world will make some headway on international climate talks as they gather in Cancun next week, most experts agree that any progress will be limited.

In this context, it is disturbingly unclear how the United States will manage to meet its climate pledge in the next ten years. And it remains equally uncertain how countries across the world will manage to keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius. As it becomes increasingly clear that lawmaking and international negotiations won’t be enough to help us meet these goals, many have begun to look at technology as the answer.

In a forthcoming series of posts for Americans for Energy Leadership, I will explore the role that new technologies can play in helping us face the challenges – and opportunities – of our common energy future.

Throughout this series, I will attempt to share my own first-hand view as Ph.D. student in clean technology at M.I.T. of the state of emerging technologies in the innovation pipeline. Can technology solve the problem alone? How successful is the United States’ funding existing framework when it comes to fostering the energy inventions of the future? What is the best way for universities, start-ups and large companies to make headway in the clean tech field? And finally, to what extent can new technologies really help us achieve the objectives for energy security, climate change, environment and economic health that we’ve set for ourselves?

Stay tuned for a preview of some of the most promising and game-changing new solar cells, thermoelectric devices, solar fuels and other wild clean technologies that are coming out of laboratories in Cambridge and across the United States, and an in-depth look at the role that innovation policy, clean technology will play in our energy future.

(However, as previously noted by this blog, the Senate bill in its current form has far less federal investment in clean energy technology development and deployment than what many experts, and the White House, have called for.)

Some of the reasons Congressional action cannot wait? In addition to concerns about climate change (which only continue to mount in severity), the editorial cites issues of national competitiveness at stake:

• China is “moving aggressively to create jobs in the clean-energy industry. Beijing not only plans to generate 15 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, but hopes to become the world’s leading exporter of clean energy technologies. Five years ago, it had no presence at all in the wind manufacturing industry; today it has 70 manufacturers. It is rapidly becoming a world leader in solar power, with one-third of the world’s manufacturing capacity.”
• The U.S. faces a “question of credibility.” At COP15, the US pledged to “meet at least the House’s 17 percent target. Success in the Senate is essential to delivering on that pledge. Failure would undo many of the good things [Obama] achieved in Copenhagen, and it would give reluctant powers like China an excuse to duck their pledges.” [Not sure about this last sentence with regard to China, which agreed to a voluntary carbon intensity reduction unilaterally ... and they probably mean to keep it.]
• Finally, the editorial notes, “the ‘jobs argument’ should impress the Senate … The climate change bills pending in the Senate would not begin to bite for several years, when the recession should be over. The cost to households, according to the Congressional Budget Office, would be small. A good program would create more jobs than it cost.”

Unfortunately, things look a bit hazy, despite Harry Reid’s earlier announcement that the climate bill was on the agenda for March. The editorial worries that “many Democrats as well as Republicans seem willing to settle for what would be the third energy bill in five years—loans for nuclear power, mandates for renewable energy, new standards for energy efficiency. These are all useful steps. But the only sure way to unlock the  investments required to transform the way the country produces and delivers energy is to put a price on carbon.” (This presumably refers to investment from private capital markets and not government-sponsored programs or federal investment.)

A couple other relevant notes:

1) Tree Hugger asks: Could Scott Brown’s Victory Be Good for Clean Energy Reform?

2) As we saw at COP15, international action on climate often seems to hinge on U.S. domestic politics.

As Reuters AlertNet reports, “It’s hard to imagine an upset in one U.S. Senate race could derail plans for a new international climate change treaty.” But “the U.S. Democratic party’s loss of a long-held Senate seat in Massachusetts this week, to Republican Scott Brown, means getting key climate change legislation passed in the United States just got a lot harder. And without willingness by the U.S. — the world’s historically largest carbon emitter — to commit to ambitious cuts in emissions, few other nations will feel pressure to be ambitious in their own plans.”

Canada, for example, is concerned about the legislative stall in its southern neighbor and what it will mean for their own energy system.

There are real worries that a minority in the Senate – 41 people — can simply hold the entire world’s efforts hostage, either by preventing action at home by the world’s second-largest emitter (reduces incentives for others to act, makes agreement harder to reach by not living up to “common but differentiated responsibilities”) or simply refusing to allow the U.S. to take part in an international regime.

It should be noted that those 41 senators would not all be from the same political party, as support for climate action is coming from both sides of the aisle. John Kerry (D), Lindsey Graham (R), and Joe Lieberman (I) recently visited the White House to discuss a bipartisan climate bill, and a coalition may be in the works that will be able to pass it. (Boston Globe)