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A Climate Hawk is a person who understands that climate change is a threat to our safety and security. Climate Hawks favor taking aggressive action to neutralize the threat. Many Climate Hawks are environmentalists, but one does not need to be an environmentalist to be a Climate Hawk.

The Climate Hawk destroyed the climate appeaser in its mighty talons.

Which candidate for President of the United States do you believe is the strongest climate leader?

The two Democratic candidates are going to Flint, Michigan, for a debate. Sparked by the horrific lead poisoning of (far, far) too many under Republican Governor Rich Snyder’s ‘watch’, this debate is expected to focus on challenges for urban minorities. A growing chorus is emerging advocating that the focus truly revolve around the core issue here: environmental justice.

As per the following, I’ve joined the choir.

Too many “Flints” nationwide. DNC & CNN: focus on #JusticeForFlint, debate #environmentaljustice #race #climate https://t.co/VJ2VfyzjhZ

— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) March 2, 2016

Simply put, you should add your voice too.

These are fundamental issues.

Fundamental issues that are not enough of the public dialogue nor enough of the Presidential election discussion.

Rather than pontificating finger sizes and hair styles, our national discourse (and Presidential campaign / debates) should engage robustly in discussing problems of and paths to address environmental justice and climate change.

UPDATE: Petition delivered to DNC:

Delivering petition to DNC demand Debate on #JusticeForFlint @climatehawkvote @colorofchange @dailykos @foe_us pic.twitter.com/EMeoempR06 

— Brad Johnson (@climatebrad) March 2, 2016

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As a respite from watching Republican Party debates and campaigning, I am spending three days at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit. In stark contrast to those @GOP science-denial soundbites, this Super Tuesday morning, Al Gore spent an hour on stage being interviewed by Steve Clemons from The Atlantic.  There are a number of people — like Al Gore and his former boss, Bill Clinton — that are simply worth listening to for their thoughtful and informed discussion whether you fully agree with specific points.  Listening with an open mind, anyone should learn and be spoked to thinking.  This morning’s Q&A, in front of 1000s of the nation’s leading edge energy scientists, engineers, and investors was no exception. While, hopefully, ARPA-E will make this full talk available, after the fold are a few dozen tweets that — well — don’t do justice to the Vice President’s comments.

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At the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit, Katie Fehrenbacher asked two CEOs (Michael J. Graff, American Air Liquide Holdings; Wayne T. Smith, BASF) their thoughts as to Bill Gates’ call for an “Energy Miracle” to address climate change.  

To paraphrase, her question:

Bill Gates has called for an “energy miracle”, for focusing on creating innovations to create new technologies for addressing climate change for deployment 15 years from now. This has created a bit of a battle as to what we should focus on: deploying available technologies or innovation.

Do you think that we should be investing more on deploying technologies and systems available today or should be we investing on innovation research?

Smith’s direct response:

I think we need both.

And, Graff:

I would fully agree with that.

Simply put, these two high-technology CEOs — both heads of firms with significant resources invested, annually, in developing ‘new’ technologies and capabilities — rejected the either / or premise and emphasized the importance of deploying climate/clean energy solutions today even as we work to develop new options for tomorrow.

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The Department of Energy just released a study that sparked this question:

Can @SarahPalinUSA see #pv panels from her porch? https://t.co/if4vJ2080g For rural #Alaska, #solar is low cost path to reliable energy

— A Siegel (@A_Siegel) February 22, 2016

Entitled Solar Prospecting in Rural Alaska, the study examines the return on investment for installing solar panels in communities far from the grid.  In remote areas, the cost of transporting goods and materials can be multiples of their price.  While flying in basic goods like milk (and coca cola) via the US Postal Service is subsidized by the rest of the nation, the reality is that it costs a lot more to get a gallon of diesel fuel to an Alaskan village far from the nearest road than it does at your neighborhood gas station.

While petroleum products have dwindled to less than one percent of America’s electricity supply, diesel generators are a prime electricity source for smaller communities not connected to the grid.  Very roughly, as a rule of thumb, consider roughly 1/20th to 1/20th of a gallon per generated kilowatt-hour.  E.g., just for the fuel, when diesel is $2 per gallon, electricity will cost $0.10-$0.20 per kilowatt hour to produce when the average American is paying $0.12 per kilowatt delivered to their home. Add in the cost of buying & maintaining the generator and you’ve likely doubled that production cost.  However, the fuel isn’t $2 per gallon in rural Alaska — with some villages having prices closer to $7/gallon. And, this ends up in the electricity bills.

Electricity generated by diesel fuel in some rural Alaskan villages can cost $1.00 per kilowatt-hour or more, which is more than eight times the national average.

Solar has been encroaching into Arctic energy systems.

Cleaning solar panel on Kodiak Island (U.S. Coast Guard photo by Petty Officer 1st Class Sara Francis)

For example, researchers have pursued wind/solar combo systems to support remote research sites and there are a number of solar installations around Alaska (including this home heated with solar thermal panels).

For rural Alaska villages, the DOE study concludes:

this analysis suggests that solar PV—along with fuel and other electricity savings measures—can be economically competitive in many remote Alaskan villages and could have a number of benefits including reducing a village’s dependency on diesel fuel, improving electricity price predictability, providing local environmental benefits, and more.

With that in mind, should we wonder whether, rather than Russia, Sarah Palin can see solar panels from her porch?

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Up front, the expert scientific community is near unanimous: climate change is occurring and human action is driving this change.  Simple truth:

“Over 97 percent of climate scientists have independently concluded that human-caused global warming is happening.”

As three leading science communication experts put in a US News & World Report OPED,

In the history of science, there have been few instances in which almost all experts in a particular field were in complete agreement.

Climate change is one of those instances.

Now for the troubling point.
Too many — under the withering propaganda attacks on climate science financed by the Kochs, Exxon, and others of their ilk — do not understand this.  And, this fact — that scientists have strong agreement on climate science — matters.  And, it even matters across the political spectrum.

A “Gateway Belief” is a piece of knowledge, a fact that — if known — opens the door for greater and deeper understanding of an issue. When it comes to climate change, across the political spectrum, this one point (that over 97% of experts say humanity is driving climate change) is such a gateway belief.

increasing public perceptions of the scientific consensus is significantly and causally associated with an increase in the belief that climate change is happening, human-caused and a worrisome threat. In turn, changes in these key beliefs are predictive of increased support for public action. In short, we find that perceived scientific agreement is an important gateway belief, ultimately influencing public responses to climate change.

In other words, want greater support for climate mitigation and adaptation action, a good starting point: educate people about the substantive (overwhelming) climate consensus.

Those resistant to action on climate change have long understood this — no wonder that they attack “97%” and trot out their pet anti-climate science talking head(s).

Sadly, far too many across the English-speaking world do not know this gateway belief.

Recently released research shows that a particularly troubling group is tripping over this gateway:

Only 30 percent of middle-school and 45 percent of high-school science teachers in the U.S. are aware of the fact that nearly all climate scientists are convinced that global warming is caused mostly by human activities.

And, things get worse.

Here’s the kicker: The authors explain that although many science teachers themselves believe that climate change is happening, because most are not aware of the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change many opt to teach “both sides” of the so-called climate debate, mistakenly giving students the impression that the basic facts are still contested, rather than conveying the fact that there is a deep and well-established consensus among climate scientists.

“Both sides” is clearly not solely a problem in traditional media “he says, she says,” all sides should be reported, tradition.

Not surprisingly, political ideology impacts teachers approaches to climate change. Further to the (and the redder the school district, I would suspect), the more likely “controversy” and “both sides” will make its appearance in the science curriculum.

97 percent, however, could well be the most effective tool against this.

one of the few facts that speaks to both conservatives and liberals in a powerful way is information about the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.

Purple, blue, or red: knowing 97% “strengthens other important key beliefs that people hold about climate change”.  And, most powerfully, among conservatives.

Knowing about scientific consensus is powerful in other fields.  After all, there is a reason why “4 of 5 dentists agree” is embedded in the social landscape of a generation of TV watchers.  And, sowing doubt is powerful too.

Tobacco companies have long understood the psychological consequences of sowing doubt: As long as people think there is disagreement among the experts, most won’t act.

Sadly, rather than 97% being understood by 97% of Americans, the real figure is about 1% who know this.  E.g., it is far from only school teachers who are tripping at the gateway.  However, teaching teachers “97%” and getting them to teach their students that might be a way get beyond 1% and have fewer Americans tripping on the gateway and falling flat on their face when it comes to climate science knowledge.

We are seeing extraordinary shifts across virtually every technology arena even though, especially in areas of large-fixed infrastructure (buildings, energy systems, etc …), it can sometimes be hard to see the change.

Whether solar pv or wind pricing, the ability to squeeze out efficiency in systems (buildings, vehicles, machines, etc …), or battery capacity per pound, the pace of change in systems commercially available is often hard to comprehend. As the Department of Energy has put it, we are living through a Revolution NOW!

DOE on on LED light bulbs: price nosediving, installations skyrocketing

With the breadth and pace of change in the energy market, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that it is hard even for those pushing innovation to keep up with that pace of change.

“Innovation” is certainly a strong thematic in government energy policy discussions around the world. The announcement of the ‘billionaires’ club’ Breakthrough Energy Initiative provided one of the major ‘side’ elements to the COP21 in Paris.  Associated with that, a pledge by major governments to double energy R&D funding by 2020.

Building on this, four major ‘names’ (Arjun Majumdar (Stanford, first head of ARPA-E), John Deutch (MIT), George Schultz (former Secretary of State), and Norm Augustine (former CEO, Lockheed Martin)) have called for a major private-sector push for energy innovation.

The concept is interesting. In essence, seek to create ten ten-Corporation initiatives groups. Each of these 100 firms would commit to $10M/year in funding, for a total of $10B over a decade, to develop breakthrough energy options through the innovators’ valley of death into broad commercialization and deployment.

each Energy Innovation Entity would be supported by roughly 10 companies, each committing about $10 million a year for 10 years — a “10-10-10” mechanism.

Lots of challenges in this concept. A bit much focused on ‘develop tomorrow’s options’ without mentioning today’s and, well, a concept for business cooperation that seems at odds with most firm’s corporate governance approaches and …  However, still an interesting concept.

Embedded within the discussion, however, an example of just how hard it can be for ‘innovators’ to keep up with the pace of change. The following is the authors’ major example of where large-scale private business investment is required.

Take, for example, advances in battery technology. A battery that costs less than $100 per kilowatt-hour with a lifetime of more than 1,000 cycles would be a game changer for offering affordable and reliable renewable electricity across the world. Today’s lithium ion batteries cost three times more.

Yes, $100 per kWh is generally see as a critical threshold for making EV vehicles truly cost competitive with traditional gasoline vehicles on purchase price (and much less expensive to own).  The problem is found with “today’s” — or at least how one thinks about it.

Batteries have been nose-diving in price.  In the Energy Innovative Entity concept OPED, the authors certainly imply that getting from $300 to $100 is unlikely to occur with lithium ion batteries without some form of intervention like they suggest (note, $1B is a relative pittance in the battery world) and is a stretch goal requiring major intervention and significant time to achieve it.

That, however, does not comport with “today’s” reality.

The Chevy Bolt, being built today, has batteries that General Motors is buying at $145 per kilowatt-hour capacity.  GM released that price information five months ago.  And, GM forecasts achieving $100 per kWh battery pricing by 2022 in the normal course of business.

GM Battery Cost Price Projections

Note that the  $145/kWh price is what GM is paying today.

The actual price today (okay, five months ago — at least) is less than half what the authors cite.

With the rapid advances in battery density and rapidly lowering costs, the GM graphic above is likely pessimistic about what we will actually see in the market place.

It seems plausible that the $100 per kWh battery target will be broken before 2020.

Simply put, the advances in energy systems (and, well, across virtually every field of technology and science) are going so rapidly that even those most concerned with ‘innovation’ are having a hard time keeping up.

Senator Bernie Sanders, amid the Democratic Presidential primary, has had strong words about Republican presidential candidates and climate change.  Amid discussions of the (distorting) influence of interest group financing in politics during the 3 Feb debate with Secretary/Senator Clinton, Sanders said

Do you think there’s a reason why not one Republican has the guts to recognize that climate change is real, and that we need to transform our energy system? Do you think it has anything to do with the Koch brothers and ExxonMobil pouring huge amounts of money into the political system?

Polifact took on the this statement — in a dissected form — and went to rate it.  As an advance warning, they did so in a convoluted manner focused on “fact” that ended up leaving aside “truth”.  Before getting to Politifact, let’s lay out some climate truth:

Hopefully media outlets will more deeply explore how well the candidates’ comments square with climate science going forward, particularly in articles that purport to be “fact-checks.” Splitting the GOP field into “outsider” candidates who reject climate science and “establishment” candidates who accept it might make for a compelling media narrative. But it doesn’t make for an accurate one.

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UPFRONT NOTE:  President Obama’s proposed 21st century clean transportation program, funded by a $10 fee per barrel of oil, would likely have significant positive return on investment: reduced fossil fuel pollution impacts, improved economic activity in areas with mass and other transit investments, reduced economic vulnerability to oil market volatility and price shocks, reduced oil imports, reduced climate impacts, …. Those benefit streams, however, aren’t entering the public discussion …

Cost-Benefit Analysis …

There are those, such as Frank Ackerman, who see cost-benefit analysis as perverting of government regulatory decision-making (especially related to environmental issues). With some strong analysis and reasoning behind them, they argue that the practice should be abandoned. No matter the power of their work, there is a simple truth to deal with: ROI (return on investment) and other business concepts are so embedded in decision-making culture that an abandonment is unlikely to occur.  Thus, the discussion returns to a lesser of evils: what can be done to foster analysis that provides accurate and useful support for decision-making.

When it comes to cost-benefit analysis (environmental, energy, or otherwise), a simple touchstone: evaluate both costs AND benefits.   And, importantly, avoid stove-piping and provide a window on systems implications for a fuller look at those costs and benefits. Regretfully, it is extremely rare to find a serious systems’ look.  Even more abysmally, there is a robust tradition when it comes to energy and environmental issues of looking at “costs” with little to no discussion of benefits. (For example, here, here, here, …)

In a quick-look at the “macroeconomic impacts” of President Obama’s proposed $10 fee on a barrel of oil, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) joined a long legacy of cost-only looks at climate and clean energy policy options.  In its three-page memo to Congress, with substantive large discussion of potential costs (increased gas costs, reduced oil exploration, etc), CRS essentially wrote off that there are potential benefits. A word search provides a quick touchstone:

• Cost: five uses
• Benefit: nilch, nada, zero guest appearances.

Within its “macroeconomic” discussion, CRS lets us know that the fee might reduce domestic oil exploration, might weaken energy security, might cost jobs in the oil and gas sectors, might hurt consumer confidence, might create inflationary pressure, might …, might … might …

Amid all those mights, CRS included one sentence on “benefits”:

Jeff Zients, director of the White House National Economic Council, pointed out that the Clean Transportation System programs would generate transportation infrastructure jobs as a partial offset to the effect of higher petroleum product prices.

As long as CRS was speculating on costs, perhaps speculation on benefits would have been in order.  The proposed 21st Century Clean Transportation Program, including the $10 fee on oil, might:

• Strengthen the economy: foster innovation in oil-dependent products (from cars to plastics) to create more value from every barrel (which, by the way, would increase export competitiveness of US products); create growth around transit paths (as is seen in areas with transit, as real estate values sky rocket near new transit stations); etc…
• Make transportation work better for Americans across the nation, from transit systems to better lighting controls to improved highway traffic (due to more people/goods moving by rail, etc …) with the potential to take a bite out of the 7 billion hours/year Americans waste due to transportation bottlenecks and problems.
• Reduce pollution, with concurrent benefits in reduced health costs and reduced climate risks.

A true systems’ analysis likely would show that a $10 fee on a barrel of oil, with appropriate protections for U.S. producers against foreign competitors, would have a significant set of benefits for Americans that would outweigh (potentially by an order of magnitude in value) the costs.  To arrive a meaningful understanding of that fully-burdened cost-benefit analysis, however, you first have to recognize that there are benefits.  Regretfully, in this case, CRS didn’t take that first step.

Without doing fully burdened cost-benefit analysis, NOAA and University of Colorado Boulder researchers analyzed various electricity portfolios (article) over the coming decade and found that:

Even in a scenario where renewable energy costs more than experts predict, the model produced a system that cuts CO₂ emissions 33 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and delivered electricity at about 8.6 cents per kilowatt hour. By comparison, electricity cost 9.4 cents per kWh in 2012.

Not surprising, this conclusion leads to headlines like Bloomberg’s “Cutting pollution from coal cheaper than you think“.  As discussed below, however, the study team seems to understate the real case — with a richer study perhaps leading to a title “Cutting pollution from coal more profitable than we realized”.

As to the study, this team modeled an integrated national system — leveraging regional differences for renewables based on high-fidelity weather records — to foster a designed grid to reduce the need for backup generation to cover intermittencies. The grid buildout, in their model, relies heavily on HVDC (high-voltage, direct current) power lines which would enable moving electricity long distances with minimal transmission losses.

Alexander MacDonald, co-lead author and recently retired director of NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL), compared the idea of a HVDC grid with the interstate highway system which transformed the U.S. economy in the 1950s.

“With an ‘interstate for electrons’, renewable energy could be delivered anywhere in the country while emissions plummet,” he said. “An HVDC grid would create a national electricity market in which all types of generation, including low-carbon sources, compete on a cost basis. The surprise was how dominant wind and solar could be.”

The modeling has interesting (powerful, even) results.

“Our research shows a transition to a reliable, low-carbon, electrical generation and transmission system can be accomplished with commercially available technology and within 15 years,” said MacDonald …

And, it is getting praised

“This study pushes the envelope,” said Stanford University’s Mark Jacobson, who commented on the findings in an editorial he wrote for  the journal Nature Climate Change. “It shows that intermittent renewables plus transmission can eliminate most fossil-fuel electricity while matching power demand at lower cost than a fossil fuel-based grid

The team found that

“The United States could slash greenhouse gas emissions from power production by up to 78 percent below 1990 levels within 15 years while meeting increased demand”

… and at a price similar to (if not below) currently delivered electricity prices.

That is a powerful result …

Yet, the analysis looks to undermine that power: there is no discussion of all of the value streams that come from driving down carbon emissions in the electricity system. Here are just a few direct payoffs for the U.S. economy through moving toward a cleaner electricity grid.

• Employment (Jobs! JOBS! JOBS!!!) is higher with renewable energy, per kilowatt hour, than traditional fossil fuels: building wind turbines, installing solar panels, and, with efficiency, insulating homes (and manufacturing that insulation), etc …
• Railroad capacity to move goods and people as lower coal movements reduce bottlenecks.
• Reduced pollution leading to higher productivity (fewer lost work days due to asthma attacks).
• Etc …

And, of course, that ‘oh by the way’ value from reduced climate risks.

This looks to an important study — showing that an accelerated move to a clean electricity grid is viable at essentially low cost.  Regretfully, by what looks to be a stove-piped analysis solely within the electricity market, the analysis fails to highlight a simple truth: this transition would create tremendous value — not just be cost neutral — while lowering risk.

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