The Path to Decarbonization
Looks like there’s an important new voice in the climate change debate. As Roger Pielke Jr. notes, Bill Gates recently offered some refreshing thoughts on climate policy, starting with this:
Conservation and behavior change alone will not get us to the dramatically lower levels of Co2 emissions needed to make a real difference. We need to focus on developing innovative technologies that produce energy without generating any CO2 emissions at all.
To this end, Gates charts a new path for climate advocates who can’t get traction with doomsday scenarios and who now watch helplessly as chances for an international climate treaty grow dimmer by the day. Let’s stop focusing on halfway measures, Gates argues, and just cut to the chase:
If CO2 reduction is important, we need to make it clear to people what really matters ““ getting to zero.
With that kind of clarity, people will understand the need to get to zero and begin to grasp the scope and scale of innovation that is needed.
However all the talk about renewable portfolios, efficiency, and cap and trade tends to obscure the specific things that need to be done.
To achieve the kinds of innovations that will be required I think a distributed system of R&D with economic rewards for innovators and strong government encouragement is the key. There just isn’t enough work going on today to get us to where we need to go.
Some climate advocates are likely to counter that Gates presents a false dichotomy – innovation or effeciency. But Yael Borofsky over at the Breakthrough Institute blog has a convincing rejoinder:
They are ignoring the “energy crossroads” the United States is facing. As it becomes increasingly clear that cap and trade is not the policy to help us meet our climate change mitigation goals or our energy needs, Gates is not pushing for an either/or decision, he’s pushing for an honest prioritization.
Gates will have to keep pushing if he becomes seriously engaged in this debate, because energy innovation is not at the tip of the political or policy spear. In fact, there’s so much political and institutional investment in cap and trade at this point that I think one of two things has to happen before innovation becomes an “honest prioritization”:
1) There has to be fundamental mindset change in the influentials, such as Thomas Friedman and Paul Krugman. The horse they back is Joe Romm. So far, Romm’s approach (cap and trade, political horsetrading) has won over both Friedman and Krugman. (It’s the so-called “climate realist” approach.) But if the two influential columnists start to believe that Romm is leading them down a dead end, then maybe they rethink their positions and start listening more to Gates.
2) Peak oil happens soon, as in within a few years. If oil prices spike and Americans are again paying over 4 bucks a gallon for a gallon of gas, then political conditions might be right for an “honest prioritization” in energy policy.
Gates is making a crucial point, one that matters independently of the CO2 issue: Given the finitude of fossil fuels and voraciously growing demand for same, the US must commit itself to finding non-carbon based energy sources as soon as possible. Focusing on the goal of ZERO carbon emissions does concentrate the mind.
Keith,
On a certain level I’m sympathetic with Roger’s POV that we are understating the challenge of stabilization (at least in terms of how it’s communicated in the media). But I still don’t get how more clarity on that front changes our priorities (i.e. aggressive deployment of existing technologies + aggressive R&D on disruptive tech). Moreover, I’d suggest that we’d be just as likely to engender a sense of fatalism in the public if they understood how difficult it will be to avoid catastrophic impacts in 2-3 generations time.
What exactly do you think is meant by prioritization in the sense that Gates is implying? Is it that Obama shouldn’t waste any political capital on pushing C&T legislation and that he should instead focus on beefing up ARPA-E (oh wait he’s done that already). Why does it follow that a lack of progress on *international* C&T initiatives suggests a course correction on the concept of carbon pricing and focusing on instead on government R&D subsidies?
Oh and btw in the absense of carbon pricing if peak oil hits you’re just as likely to see coal-to-liquids technology and a greater shift to coal in electricity production (since the price of natural gas has historically been tied to the price of oil)…
Marlowe,
Let me start by addressing points at the bottom of your post and work up from there.
You are absolutely correct that calls for “clean coal” technology will come in response to any peak oil hitting. On that note, I should mention that we’ll probably see a reprise of the “drill, baby, drill” mantra. In fact, you can bet on it.
You also raise a good point about R & D going hand in hand with carbon pricing schemes. And yes, on some level that’s happening. So why should they be mutually exclusive? Well, I think there is something to be said about emphasis and also to how the larger debate is framed.
If the whole point, as Gates writes, is to avoid climate catastrophe by decarbonizng energy, well then let’s focus like a laser beam on that overriding objective. Do you think the innovation efforts underway now will lead to that?
Lastly, I’m not sure I agree with you that pivoting to an emphasis on innovation will lead to fatalism in the public. One could argue that a fair amount of fatalism already exists on the climate change issue, thanks to the incessant fear-mongering.
At any rate, people don’t think that energy needs to be decarbonized to avoid the worst of climate change at some indeterminate point in the future. They just think carbon emissions will have to be reduced. Now, based on what we know about the U.S. climate bill and the Copenhagen outcome, how confident are you that those reductions are going to happen in a timely and meaningful manner?
Hence my guess that there might soon be calls for a “reset” in climate policy that elevates investment in innovation above all else.
As usual, Keith, you put forward a poor analysis. There’s no reason a well-designed cap-and-trade program can’t be part of the solution, as could a carbon tax, implementing existing technologies or developing new ones. The problem is the lack of political will to do *anything* effective on the needed scale. Now, is it possible that a greater emphasis on developing new technologies combined with a recognition that emissions need to drop to near-zero in the relatively near future will help get things on the path? Maybe. Certainly Gates adding his voice would be a help. He (and his friend Buffett) can start by helping to pull the plug on the Canadian tar sands rather than helping prop them up.
Re Joe Romm, his point (which I agree with) is to get something passed by Congress soon, however weak, so that we can get some forward motion. As I’ve said before, the main immediate benefit of this strategy is that it would empower the administration to move forward with strong regulatory action (and related bi- and multilateral agreements to extend them internationally and immunize them against future repeal). The most important ball to keep our eyes on is finding ways for China and India in particular to substitute zero-carbon energy sources for their planned coal plant expansion. Doing so will certainly require some near-term innovation given that CCS is a non-starter.
Interesting post, Keith. It brings to the fore several interesting questions.
Why is Microsoft, one of the premier R & D corporations in the world, now pushing CO2 reduction, when no actual scientific evidence exists for catastrophic global warming?
Because they want to join the gang sucking at the public teat.
Why are Duke Energy and Florida P & L pushing for cap ‘n trade, when they are the largest coal utilities in the country, and when no actual scientific evidence exists for catastrophic global warming?
Because they want to join the gang sucking at the public teat.
On second thought, maybe the answers are so easy that the questions are less interesting than they at first seemed…
Steve,
You sound as if cap and trade is still going to get passed in the new U.S. political climate. If so, maybe you’re right and a weak bill be the linchpin for concerted action. Or maybe cap and trade will be revealed to be nothing more than an elaborate shell game, as this leading investigative reporter suggests in his current cover story for Harper’s magazine.
The thing that the Breakthrough Institute, Lord Monckton and the Pielkes ignore is that greenhouse gases are accumulative. Their analysis therefore is trash and their policy recommendations garbage. Romm is right, we have to start now
Nice grouping there, Eli.
You and Romm are certainly working from the same playbook.
Keith, you just don’t want to get it, do you? I wouldn’t especially distinguish between a weak bill and a shell game when it come to cap-and-trade (although note that there are non-cap-and-trade components that shouldn’t be ignored, and of course there’s no conflict between a technology-based approach and cap-and-trade). Do you imagine that if Joe Romm, Thomas Friedman, Paul Krugman and Bill Gates all suddenly began pushing together for a strong technology-based approach that Congress would pass something that could be described as other than weak? Dream on if so.
Shifting off of fossil fuels as quickly as possible has a sufficient basis in economic and national security grounds, and has for many years. To be credible, an analysis preferring technological innovation to any other approach to decarbonization has to explain why there’s been so little movement given those other long-standing concerns and why innovation (at a sufficient scale) would not encounter the same resistance. I’m still waiting.
[…] and other cap and trade advocates come up with as alternative policy paths. I’ve argued here that a true reset in climate policy will only come after some of the influentials start singing a […]