Transitioning to a non-polluting energy menu and safe climate in a world of growing energy needs and persistently abundant fossil fuels is a tough task, whatever policy path you favor. And realistically, there will be no single policy path, as the flexible architecture of the Paris climate agreement reflects.
In the United States, for example, there are places where new nuclear plants have a chance, and places where solar and wind power can have a greatly increased role. In every country, in fact, with its own unique energy mix, the challenge posed by simple inertia in physical systems and in social, financial and legal structures, may be a bigger impediment to energy transformation than coal, oil and gas lobbyists and campaign contributors.
And the overriding issue is the challenging scale of limiting global warming as humanity’s growth spurt – in both population and resource appetites – plays out. The Paris agreement contains a huge “reality gap,” as I called it – its commitments apply only through 2030, but avoiding dangerous warming by 2100 will require mass deployment of “negative emissions” technologies (like burning biomass and storing the emitted CO2) at a scale far beyond what experts see as plausible.
I discussed these issues in a recent conversation on next steps on climate change and energy with Bill Gates, which you can read and watch at nytimes.com/opinion and, in more detail, on my Times blog, Dot Earth. He laid out why he focuses, as he did in Paris with the rollout of the “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” investment initiative, on filling public and private investment gaps in pursuit of “energy miracles.”
Gates is concerned that today’s technologies will not solve the “reality gap” in the Paris agreements. Worse, the focus on ramping up deployment of those technologies diverts attention from the critical need to greatly intensify spending on basic research and large-scale development of new energy technologies. That is the only way to create the breakthroughs required to cut emissions of greenhouse gases to near zero later in the century – or suck the gas out of the atmosphere at gigatons-a-year scale if emissions efforts falter.
“A little bit of the trap people get into is they think, okay if we’re meeting some 2030 goal, we must be on the way, because we just do more of what we did,” Gates said. “So you thought, oh what a great thing we just did. But in fact it doesn’t scale to the sort of near-zero that we need to achieve.”
- Energy research within the UNFCCC: a proposal to guard against ongoing climate deadlock; Climate Policy, 12 May, 2015. Barry W. Brook, Kingsley Edney, Rafaela Hillerbrand, Rasmus Karlsson & Jonathan Symons (DOI:10.1080/14693062.2015.1037820)
- Measuring a fair and ambitious climate agreement using cumulative emissions; Environmental Research Letters, 10, 2015. Glen P. Peters, Robbie M. Andrew, Susan Solomon and Pierre Friedlingstein (DOI:10.1088/1748-9326/10/10/105004)
- Panel’s Latest Warming Warning Misses Global Slumber Party on Energy Research; Dot Earth, 14 Nov., 2014.
While anyone involved in energy should support research and development (R&D), but somehow I believe we are not looking at the whole picture on the clean energy front. First, the… Read more »
Frankly, I’m a little disappointed in Bill Gates vision, particular energy storage. Replacing coal and the natural gas (i.e. the bridge fuel) with wind and solar seems like the clear… Read more »
Its a really interesting question. A few thoughts. First, increasing deployment of existing technologies in no way precludes R&D. It is often presented as a binary position but it really… Read more »
As others have pointed out, we have all the technologies we need to greatly lower emissions now. Waiting for new technologies is a recipe for disaster. The policy solution is… Read more »
I admire your spirit, Dan, as much as I admire that of Gates. But your view that pricing will drive investments in negative emissions technologies (and policies) on a scale… Read more »
Andy: It’s not wishful thinking. As I mentioned, Inventys has a new method to capture CO2, called “Low Pressure Thermal Swing,” that costs about $20/ton (that’s about $40/ton in the… Read more »
It might be politically ambitious to provide the kind of necessary price signals to drive both near term transition and long-term investment in next generation (or gap) technologies, but if… Read more »
While investment in enhancement of current renewable energy options and potential breakthrough technologies is salutary, we also need to get serious about putting a price on carbon that more realistically… Read more »
An easy one. I would focus on battery storage relative to deployment of existing energy technologies. Efficient battery storage makes the whole system work better (and at a much cheaper… Read more »
I have a “good news/bad news” type of response. First the good news: ” In addition to using technology to reduce GHG emissions, there are other tools, mainly financial, that could supplement… Read more »
Of the comments made here so far, I thought Specter’s were the most hard-nosed and realistic. That is not least because Specter recognizes the massive size, complexity, and inertia of… Read more »
Lewis: You quote Gates saying “Utilities are not there to spend money on global public goods, which is what CO2 reduction is.” He has it backwards. Utilities are causing long-term… Read more »
I am not alone in suspecting that Stern has a flawed understanding of markets and economics. Replacing market failure with policy failure is not progress. Internalizing externalities is an idea… Read more »
Lewis: You seem to be saying that if the externalities can be viewed differently by different people or groups we shouldn’t regulate them. In that case, I’m going to dump… Read more »
A radically new idea is needed for scalable clean energy. Biofuels, solar, and wind are not scalable and won’t be enough to keep the air conditioning on in the developing… Read more »
Wilmot: General Fusion based in Vancouver BC is working on hot fusion and is privately backed. But hot or cold fusion cannot be deployed in the time remaining for peak… Read more »
So not a direct response to Andy’s question (I did that above), but I think it is worth pointing out (and others have touched the edges of this) that much… Read more »
I strongly identify with the comment of Scott Sklar. With Gates first announcement, there was criticism that attention to deployment was more important over a large emphasis on research. Contrary… Read more »
Bill: You say that “sequestration still remains a negative economic factor.” However, this is only true if you ignore the external costs of burning fossil fuels. While fossil fuel companies… Read more »
Andrew Yours is one of the best questions I have heard in a very long time. To truly address the problems you need to understand that almost all the information… Read more »
Bill Gates’ initiative for countries to increase R&D investment in clean-energy technologies such as energy storage for intermittent wind and solar power may have some value but this should not… Read more »
I’d like to expand the ongoing discussion to include some thoughts about energy storage, which is reshaping the whole electric power industry and may render a number of energy beliefs… Read more »
Flywheels would be an example of a third method of energy storage, mechanical. A simple double disk mill comprising counter-rotating flywheels might find application in dewatering and pyrolyzing, as in… Read more »
A few comments. Wind at night would be used for energy storage, not for meeting ongoing electric loads which, as you say, could be met by surplus capacity. Using wind… Read more »
If you ask a crabbed question, you will get a twisted answer. The Revkin-Gates conversation is altogether too Cancerian. If you begin, as it does, “Is there a Policy Path… Read more »
The question of the clean-tech premise cannot be answered if considered binary. It’s not an either/or choice between deployment of new clean technology or continued research into advanced technology, but… Read more »
Looking to technological or market forces as the path to solving the question posed by Andrew fails to consider the root cause of our predicament – the political system in… Read more »
Breakthrough Innovation funding is fine, although it might have been even finer 20-30 years ago. We don’t need Bill Gates’s innovation ‘miracle’ to drastically create a new climate trajectory. We… Read more »
[…] I hope they’re right, but I’m convinced “all of the above” is essential. There’s a rich discussion of this question at Our Energy Policy. […]
[…] I hope they’re right, but I’m convinced “all of the above” is essential. There’s a rich discussion of this question at Our Energy Policy. […]
[…] I hope they’re right, but I’m convinced “all of the above” is essential. There’s a rich discussion of this question at Our Energy Policy. […]
[…] I hope they’re right, but I’m convinced “all of the above” is essential. There’s a rich discussion of this question at Our Energy Policy. […]
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