Breakthrough Energy and Climate Policy Director Testifies on Government Role for Energy Innovation
 In Senate testimony yesterday, Breakthrough Institute Energy and Climate Policy Director Jesse Jenkins urged lawmakers to adopt innovation-centered reforms that will drive advanced energy technologies to subsidy independence.
Appearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jenkins called for changes to national energy policy on two fronts.
Congress should first reform its suite of deployment subsidies to "better drive and reward innovation" so that clean tech segments can become cost-competitive with fossil fuels without subsidy "as soon as possible," Jenkins said.
Despite important recent gains in performance and cost reduction, most advanced energy market segments - also referred to as "clean tech" - remain dependent on federal policies. "That policy support is now poised to turn from boom to bust," Jenkins warned.
Continue reading "Mr. Jenkins Goes to Washington" »
In the same week that Japan mothballed its last reactor, South Korea began work on two new nuclear power stations
By Mark Lynas, author of The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. Originally published at the Guardian.
The traffic lights are still blinking in Odaka town, north-western Japan, but few cars pass through these deserted intersections. Frozen in time after being hit by the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and meltdowns in the nearby Fukushima Dai'ichi nuclear plant, tables are still laid in partially-collapsed restaurants and cars are stacked up against railings where they were deposited by the retreating wave. When I visited last week, a deathly silence reigned, the only noise the chirruping of frogs in uncultivated rice paddies on the edge of town, and the bleeping of my dosimeter.
Radiation readings in Odaka are well below anything that could be considered a health risk, but people are still not coming back. Indeed, the long shadow cast by Fukushima has extended over a much wider area than any scientific assessment of radiological hazard would argue is necessary. In Minamisoma, 20km north of the stricken reactor, a community centre above the town is decked out for indoor play because no one wants to let their children venture out of doors. The parents refuse to believe that radiation readings are low enough - barely above normal background, on my dosimeter - that their children's health would be improved by letting them play outside in the fresh air. Watching the kids cooped up in a big wooden hall, I could only conclude that unnecessary fear of radiation is just as much a hazard as the real thing.
Continue reading "While Japan turns away from nuclear power, South Korea sticks to its path" »
Government's Role in the Development of Hydraulic Fracturing in Shale
 The ongoing shale gas boom has expanded domestic energy production, pushed wholesale electricity prices to record lows, and accelerated the closure of America's aging coal plant fleet, lowering national power-sector carbon emissions. This revolution in natural gas -- unleashed by a flood of recently accessible shale gas reserves, once thought to be unrecoverable -- is the product of over 25 years of federal agencies and programs driving technology development in collaboration with private gas companies.
In a new fact sheet, we have compiled the long and impressive history of shale fracturing (or "fracking") development in the United States. Through a series of investigations and interviews with gas industry executives and federal researchers, we uncovered the path that shale fracking took towards full commercial maturity.
Click here to download the new Breakthrough Institute fact sheet, titled "Where the Shale Gas Revolution Came From: Government's Role in the Development of Hydraulic Fracturing in Shale."
The history of shale gas fracking in the United States was punctuated by the successive developments of massive hydraulic fracturing (MHF), microseismic imaging, horizontal drilling, and other key innovations that when combined made the once unreachable energy resource technically recoverable (see infographic below for details). Along each stage of the innovation pipeline -- from basic research to applied R&D to cost-sharing on demonstration projects to tax policy support for deployment -- public-private partnerships and federal investments helped push hydraulic fracturing in shale into full commercial competitiveness.
Today, next-generation advanced energy technologies -- including wind, solar, advanced batteries, nuclear power, and others -- face many of the same scaling and cost challenges that shale fracking faced in the 1970s and 1980s. But significant progress has been made, and if policymakers use the shale history as a model for a smart and efficient public clean tech investment portfolio, then policy support can accelerate clean tech's march towards subsidy independence and full commercial maturity.
Federal research agencies played a pivotal role in driving shale gas towards technical and commercial competitiveness, according to the former DOE researcher.
 Federal agencies played a leading role in the development of shale gas fracturing technologies, according to former head researcher Alex Crawley. Crawley, the former Program Manager at the federal Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA, a precursor to the Department of Energy), oversaw a significant portion of the federal research that went into the development of shale gas fracturing technologies. As a Breakthrough Institute investigation has uncovered, federal agencies like the Department of Energy and the National Energy Technology Laboratory led a sustained effort to adapt conventional hydraulic fracturing techniques to shales, where the geology is much more complex and difficult to tap.
Crawley discusses the contribution of diamond-studded drill bits, microseismic imaging, and other advanced gas extraction technologies that were the products of smart public-private research and commercialization efforts.
Click here for to download our history of the government's role in shale gas fracturing development.
The Breakthrough Institute: What was your role at the Department of Energy?
Alex Crawley: In '74 I moved to Washington for a development program within the Department of Interior. While I was there ERDA [the Energy Research and Development Administration, a precursor to the DOE] was formed. The Bureau of Mines was moved into ERDA and they offered me the job of program manager in the gas program.
From there I became the Associate Director of the DOE's National Petroleum Technology Office in Tulsa.
Continue reading "Interview with Alex Crawley, Former Program Director for the Energy Research and Development Administration" »
Calls for subsidy reform continue to generate healthy discourse.
 The findings and recommendations of our new report "Beyond Boom and Bust" continue to generate a healthy discussion.
The report, widely acclaimed and recently endorsed by the New York Times, is the feature of this week's Energy Experts forum at the National Journal. The forum, hosted by Journal reporter Amy Harder, posed the question "Boom and Bust: Renewable Energy's Future?" The report, which we co-authored with experts at the Brookings Institution and the World Resources Institute, has prompted a lively and diverse exchange, with insightful input coming from industry representatives, policy analysts, and government officials, including "Beyond Boom and Bust" co-authors Alex Trembath and Mark Muro, Pew Clean Energy Program Director Phyllis Cutino, and Department of Energy Loan Program Director Richard Kauffman.
Below we've pasted the contribution from Breakthrough energy and climate policy analyst Alex Trembath, who argues that the clean tech sector's recent successes combined with the looming subsidy cliff demand a reform of federal clean energy policy that prioritizes innovation, cost declines, and competitive markets.
Click here to view the entire National Journal Energy Experts Forum "Boom and Bust: Renewable Energy's Future?"
Continue reading "National Journal Highlights "Beyond Boom and Bust" in Weekly Forum" »
Coal use projected to rise 13.5 percent in 2012, while nuclear plants sit idle
Coal use will rise an estimated 13.5 percent in Germany this year, resulting in at least 14 million metric tons of additional carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, even as the nation continues to idle two-fifths of its nuclear power fleet.
The major reduction in European energy demand and industrial output caused by the global recession has led CO2 emissions to slide faster than the emissions reductions mandated by either the Emissions Trading Scheme or the EU's commitments under the Kyoto Protocol. Yet instead of accelerating emissions cuts, the ironic economics of the carbon trading system have justified a return to coal in Germany and elsewhere, as a glut of emissions permits drives down the cost of carbon pollution and makes coal highly profitable once again.
The odd logic of the emissions targets and timetables has even been used by German greens (and their defenders internationally) to justify trading zero carbon nuclear for greater coal combustion. Germany's decision last year to power down eight of its 17 nuclear reactors leaves idle enough zero carbon power to drive down the country's CO2 emissions another 21 percent from 2008 levels. Yet instead of sounding the alarm at this huge missed opportunity as the nation instead turns back towards coal, some German greens have gone so far as to claim Germany literally "has the right" to eschew nuclear in favor of much greater emissions levels than necessary.
So much for the extreme urgency of climate mitigation...
Continue reading "Germany Returns to Coal" »
Consensus Builds Around Energy Innovation Imperative
 In yet another sign of a growing consensus in support of energy policies that prioritize innovation, the New York Times on Sunday endorsed the recommendations of "Beyond Boom and Bust," a recent report by experts at the Breakthrough Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the World Resources Institute.
The Times urged Congress to reform federal energy subsidies to "reward lower costs and better performance" in order to drive low-carbon technologies towards unsubsidized cost competitiveness and end the cycle of boom and bust that threatens the vital clean tech sector.
"The idea is not to prop up clean tech industries forever. It is to get them to a point where they can stand on their own," the paper said. The Times called the report "a timely effort to attach real numbers to an increasingly politicized debate over energy subsidies."
Continue reading "Time to Move Beyond Clean Tech Boom and Bust: NYT" »
Recognizing the Goose that Lays the Golden Egg
The Breakthrough Institute has joined with a group of leading congressmen and public policy, business, and academic organizations to sponsor the new Golden Goose Award, which will "highlight the often unexpected or serendipitous nature of basic scientific research."
Recognizing that new scientific or technological advances can come from unexpected places, the award will honor federally funded researchers whose projects initially sounded odd or obscure but contributed to important breakthroughs.
Continue reading "Golden Goose Award to Honor 'Breakthrough' Government Research" »
Breakthrough Institute analysis documents relative costs of electricity from natural gas, solar, wind, and nuclear.
 The ongoing shale gas boom and the advent of low natural gas prices has pushed back the goal posts for clean energy technologies like wind, solar, and nuclear power, according to a new fact sheet released by the Breakthrough Institute. While significant progress has been made in low-carbon technologies in recent years, continued innovation and cost declines will be necessary for clean tech to become broadly competitive with natural gas on an unsubsidized basis.
As documented in a new and widely acclaimed report co-authored by experts at the Breakthrough Institute, the Brookings Institution, and the World Resources Institute, the impending collapse of federal support policies for clean tech present fierce challenges to the sector going forward. The report, "Beyond Boom and Bust," offers a platform for policy reform that would accelerate innovation and cost declines, pushing clean tech to broad competitiveness with conventional fossil energy technologies.
As we show in the new fact sheet, the challenges now posed by low-cost natural gas are particularly daunting for low-carbon power technologies. Efforts to reform federal clean tech subsidies must engage these challenges by supporting clean energy innovation and making unsubsidized cost parity for clean tech the top priority.
Click here to download the fact sheet "Gas Boom Poses Challenges for Renewables and Nuclear."
From a recent high of over $13 per mmBTU in 2008, natural gas prices have plummeted to under $2.50 per mmBTU. These cost declines have been paralleled by similar drops in prices for wind- and solar-generated electricity, but the improvements for clean tech have not yet achieved full cost-parity with natural gas.
Continue reading "Gas Boom Poses Challenges for Renewables and Nuclear" »
A critical look at "People and the Planet" report by the Royal Society
By Mark Lynas, author of The God Species: How the Planet Can Survive the Age of Humans. Originally published at "High Tides" weblogs.
The Royal Society - Britain's premier scientific institution - has just released a major report called People and the Planet, arguing that per capital resource consumption in the richest parts of the world needs to come down dramatically if the poorest 1.3 billion are to be lifted out of extreme poverty whilst protecting the Earth's environment from irreparable harm. (Do join Leo Hickman's debate on the Guardian site here, and my thanks to him for prompting this piece.)
I wouldn't argue with most of the data underpinning this report, but I do have problems with some of the assumptions. The first is that population growth is necessarily a bad thing, and that there is therefore a pressing need to reduce the rate of growth in developing countries. The report states early on:
"At a time when so many people remain impoverished and natural resources are becoming increasingly scarce, continued population growth is cause for concern."
Continue reading "The Royal Society Gets It Wrong on People and the Planet" »
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