Environmentalism's existential moment

Shellenberger & Nordhaus respond to critics

Posted by David Roberts at 12:52 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Read more about: climate | climate change mitigation | politics | energy | business

The following is a guest essay by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger, authors of Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility and "The Death of Environmentalism." Nordhaus and Shellenberger are managing directors at American Environics and the founders of the Breakthrough Institute.

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Shellenberger & Nordhaus This month the world celebrates the 20th Anniversary of the international treaty that phased out ozone-destroying chemicals. For environmentalists, the Montreal Protocol has long been a model for action on global warming. In the words of David Doniger, the climate director of the Natural Resources Defense Council, "The lesson from Montreal is that curbing global warming will not be as hard as it looks."

Indeed, when one looks back at the pollution problems of old, none of them were as hard or as expensive to solve as the affected industries claimed they would be. Scrubbers on smokestacks, catalytic converters on cars, lead out of gasoline, and alternatives to ozone-depleting chemicals -- these technical fixes came at a very low cost to the economy, industry, and consumers.

The same will be true, environmentalists say, when it comes to global warming. All the alternatives we need -- efficiency, conservation, renewables, sequestration, and even nuclear -- already exist. We just need to scale them up.

Sure, global warming is a bigger problem, they acknowledge. But it will be solved just like we solved acid rain: by auctioning emissions permits and allowing firms to trade them. To reduce U.S. emissions by 80 percent between 2010 and 2050, we simply need to reduce the total allowable emissions by two percent each year.

By limiting the amount of emissions each year, and auctioning or giving away a limited number of emissions permits to firms, governments will effectively create a price for carbon dioxide emissions. This price will create value for reducing emissions, and the free market -- firms trading emissions permits for emissions reductions -- will find the most efficient way to reduce our greenhouse gases by 80 percent by 2050. And as dirty energy sources like coal and oil become more expensive, clean energy sources will become cost-competitive and more widely used.

It is true, environmental leaders acknowledge, that China and the rest of the developing world haven't agreed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. But they are just waiting for the U.S. to act. These countries, China in particular, are receiving billions of investment from European firms purchasing emissions reductions. They will see the wisdom of limiting their emissions so that, in the future, they can stay in the emissions trading system. And while the developed nations that ratified Kyoto saw their emissions go up, not down, they are just getting started. The U.S. will learn from Europe's mistakes, and the next version of the Kyoto treaty will be executed much better.

The Regulation-Centered Approach

This pollution regulation framework offered by environmentalists for dealing with global warming is, for many, a reassuring one. For 15 years it has provided policymakers, the media, and the public with a mental model for understanding how such a massive problem like climate change could be solved in an organic way by the market, perhaps the most powerful institution ever created by human beings.

There's just one problem: it won't work.

There are five reasons why setting a price on carbon dioxide, either through a cap and trade approach or an outright tax, cannot reduce greenhouse gas emissions anywhere close to what is needed.

1. The regulation-centered approach won't result in the deep reductions in global carbon emissions that climate scientists believe are necessary to avoid catastrophic climate impacts. The consensus among climate scientists is that we must reduce global carbon emissions by roughly 80 percent by the end of this century in order to avoid catastrophic climate change. Many have come to the position that U.S. emissions must be reduced 80 percent by 2050. But current regulatory approaches will result in modest, not deep, reductions in carbon emissions. This is due to a combination of technical, economic, and political constraints.

Technically, there simply do not yet exist the low-cost, low-carbon technologies that could be quickly brought to scale to replace carbon intensive energy sources. The environmentalist line that "we just need to scale up existing technologies" is only partly true. It is true that some strategies for reducing emissions, such as efficiency and conservation, can be scaled up immediately. But technologies like solar and carbon capture and storage are still far more expensive than coal and gas.

Pricing carbon at $35 - 100/ton -- whether through cap and trade or carbon taxes -- can help us to get part of the way there. Carbon at those prices will drive investments into efficiency and conservation, and will create incentives for energy providers to build gas-fired rather than coal-fired plants. These measures could result in emissions reductions on the order of roughly 20 percent by mid-century. But to achieve major reductions on the order of 80 percent, we will need to replace coal and oil as energy sources almost entirely. And that will require dramatic technology breakthroughs to bring down the price of clean alternatives.

Economically, the price of carbon dioxide would have to be set at exorbitant levels for today's clean energy alternatives to become cost-competitive with coal, gas, and oil. The IPCC estimates that establishing a global carbon price of $184/ton -- a figure five times higher than what legislation in the Senate would set it at -- would still only result in a reduction of global carbon emissions by 20-38 percent by 2030. To reduce greenhouse gases by 90 percent by 2050 in the United States through regulation alone, carbon would have to priced at around $300 dollars/ton between 2010 and 2030, and at a whopping $600-800/ton between 2030 and 2050. To gain a sense of the impact this would have on consumers, not to mention the economy as a whole, consider that carbon priced at $700/ton would increase the price of coal-generated electricity in the U.S. two and a half times.

Politically, if action on global warming depends on voters and politicians accepting higher energy prices, there will be very little action on global warming. That's because voters consistently rank global warming dead last as a priority -- and just as consistently rank rising gasoline and electricity prices as a top concern. Understandably, then, politicians care more about keeping energy prices low than they do about global warming.

Shellenberger & Nordhaus

2. Governments will continue to set a low price for carbon, which will prevent clean energy sources from becoming cost-competitive. Tradable pollution limits and a price for carbon could result in some emissions reductions -- just not reductions approaching anything close to 80 percent in the U.S. or 50 percent worldwide. Recognizing that voters care more about the cost of energy than global warming, most policies under consideration in Congress would price carbon at around $30-75/ton. At that low price, private investment will flow toward the least expensive emissions reductions, such as burning methane from landfills, purchasing forest land for carbon sequestration, shifting from coal to natural gas, or retrofitting power plants and buildings so they operate more efficiently. Private investment would not, for the most part, flow toward breakthrough technologies like low-cost solar energy and carbon capture and storage, which are required to displace coal-based energy.

3. Developing nations like China will not sacrifice their economic growth to reduce its emissions. Reducing carbon emissions by 80 percent worldwide through regulatory limits alone would require setting a very high for carbon. For carbon capture and storage to become economically viable, carbon would have to be priced between $100-200/ton. For solar photovoltaic to become cost-competitive without other subsidies, carbon would have to priced at well over $500/ton.

It is important to keep in mind that high carbon prices would, in today's carbon-heavy energy economy, translate into dramatic increases in the price of energy and everything else that requires energy (which is to say, virtually everything). Given that increasing energy use and consumption are highly correlated with longer life spans and higher living standards in developing nations, a high carbon price would represent a major obstacle to economic development for poor countries.

Environmental leaders insist that once the U.S. acts, so will China. They point to the fact that Chinese firms are earning billions selling emissions reductions to European firms, thus giving China a stake in the success of global emissions trading. Moreover, China is genuinely worried about global warming.

Nevertheless, there is no reason to believe that if China does eventually set a price for carbon it will set it high enough price -- at, say, $100-$200/ton -- for carbon capture and storage facilities to become cost-competitive. Doing so would dramatically slow the rapid climb that hundreds of millions of Chinese are making out of poverty. But even if the Chinese government were to set a high price for carbon as early as 2030, China will have already constructed hundreds of coal-fired power plants -- few of which will be compatible with carbon capture and storage plans.

In the end, the only way the Chinese government will be able to substantially reduce its emissions is if the price of clean energy and carbon capture technologies come down enough to get within striking distance of the price of fossil fuels -- with or without a price for carbon.

4. Dramatic and rapid technological breakthroughs will not be primarily driven by the private sector. Private firms will play an important role in bringing new technologies to market -- and carbon pricing will play an important role in making market conditions more amenable to clean energy technologies. However, private firms will not make the large, long-term investments in R&D and deployment, nor can they create the public infrastructure (e.g., new transmission lines) needed for the new energy economy. The energy sector is unlike the pharmaceutical, software, and computer sectors. Energy R&D requires far larger sums of investment capital than are required for other technologies, which helps explain why energy remains one of the least innovative sector of the economy (coal and oil being very old fuel sources). Unlike those other industries, it is extremely difficult for energy firms to protect their patents against reverse engineering. And even pharmaceutical, software, computer and Internet industries all depended in their formative decades on large-scale government investments in education, infrastructure, and R&D.

5. Public investment will be far more important than pollution limits in driving technological innovation and reducing the real price of clean energy. This point seems to be controversial only among environmentalists.

Anyone who read the media coverage of the spring 2007 IPCC report would be forgiven for having thought that the U.N. had simply reiterated the long-standing consensus that global warming is happening and being caused by humans. In fact, the 2007 IPCC report went much further, calling not just for regulation but also for large public investments into clean energy. "Public benefits of RD&D investments are bigger than the benefits captured by the private sector," the IPCC report concluded, "justifying government support of RD&D."

Similarly, the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the influential report commissioned by the British government in October 2006, recommends that governments boost their clean-energy investments from current global levels of $34 billion (an amount that includes nuclear) to between $68 billion and $170 billion annually. Indeed, whether it's the recommendations presented by the IPCC, the Stern Review, Scientific American, or top energy innovation experts, investment is universally seen as a central element in overcoming ecological crisis. "Funding for energy research," Scientific American said in its lead editorial in a special issue dedicated to clean energy, "must be accorded the privileged status usually reserved for health care and defense." In the 2002 Science article by New York University physicist Martin Hoffert and 16 other leading energy experts that inspired the two of us to co-found the call for a "New Apollo Project" on energy, Hoffert et. al argued that, "although regulation can play a role, the fossil fuel greenhouse effect is an energy problem that cannot be simply regulated away."

Given all of this, it seems odd that global warming was ever seen as fundamentally similar problem to the hole in the ozone -- much less one that will not be hard to fix. Granted, both problems are consequences of human pollution. But whereas dealing with the ozone hole required a simple, inexpensive chemical substitute, global warming demands a totally different way of producing energy. We were able to fight smog without replacing oil. We dealt with acid rain without dismantling our power plants. And we will phase out ozone-depleting chemicals without affecting any of our energy sources. But to deal with global warming, we will need an almost entirely new energy infrastructure.

An Investment-Centered Agenda

For the last 15 years, environmentalists have been locked in a debate with opponents of action on global warming who have claimed that a) the U.S. should not act on global warming unless China does as well, and b) regulations will harm the economy. As a result, whenever we raise the specter of China, and describe the limits to pollution regulations, we get accused of either opposing pollution regulations or wanting to move slowly on global warming, or both. Bill McKibben writes in his review of Break Through, "The antipathy of Shellenberger and Nordhaus to placing limits on carbon emissions, an antipathy based on their fervent belief in what they hear in their surveys, locks them into accepting slower progress than is necessary and possible."

The truth is quite the opposite. We wrote:

In terms of birthing a new energy economy, regulation is important -- it's just not the most important thing. The highest objective of anyone concerned about global warming must be to bring down the real price of clean energy below the price of dirty energy as quickly as possible -- most importantly, in places like China.

The fact is that it has been the regulation-centered approach -- Kyoto -- that has been both glacial and utterly ineffective. The developed nations that ratified the treaty saw their emissions go up not down.

We suspected our critique of the environmental community's regulation-only agenda would be labeled "anti-regulation," so we bent over backwards in Break Through to make the point that while regulations are important, their most important function in the short-term is to generate the public investments aimed at achieving breakthroughs in the price and performance of clean energy.

Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly criticized our description of the limits to regulation:

Seed money is useful, but the businesses doing the R&D will turn the whole thing into a backwater unless they're convinced there's a huge market down the road for their disruptive wares -- and that means a credible belief that the cost of dirty energy technologies are going to stay high. A well-conceived regulatory structure can help that happen, and also helps promote evolutionary technologies while we wait for the big breakthrough. Why not support both?

The fact is that we do, as we have consistently stated. Our proposal, to state it once again, is that Congress pass legislation that either auctions permits or taxes carbon enough to a) establish a price for carbon sufficient to result in inexpensive emissions reductions, b) generate at least $30 billion a year for clean energy investments, and c) creating market conditions for the widespread adoption of these new technologies.

Given these consistent misunderstandings of our position, it was for us a sign of hope that the Sierra Club's Carl Pope ended his review of Break Through in this way:

The greatest return on any investment made by the U.S. government in the last 30 years, for example, has clearly come from the money it sank into the Internet. It is the job of societies -- of governments -- to protect, invest in, and guarantee universal access to such common resources.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus argue that greatness requires progressives to embrace such investment strategies. I agree. But investments in what? Yes, new energy technologies -- but for whom?

Since 2004, Pope has moved dramatically on everything from the need for global warming preparedness to the need for investment-centered rather than pollution-centered framework to deal with global warming. The problem is that, to date, Pope's bold words have not yet been matched with bold deeds. Neither environmentalist lobbyists in Washington nor grassroots climate activists have put major new investments into clean energy at the tops of their agendas. They are, instead, putting all of their political eggs in the regulatory basket.

Walking the Talk

There is an existential question at the heart of the debate over global warming: can green groups transform themselves into institutions motivated by a vision of prosperity and possibility? Or will they remain grounded in the politics of pollution and limits?

The first test could arrive as early as next month. That's when Congress may take up global warming legislation. What matters most about the legislation under consideration is how much money it will raise for investments into clean energy.

Pope asks an important question: what investments should be made, and how? In our view, some of it ought to be used to create a new military-industrial-academic complex around clean-energy sciences, similar to the one we created around computer science in the 1950s and '60s. Some of it ought to be used to buy down the price of clean-energy technologies such as solar panels, like the Defense Department did with microchips in the 1970s.

These strategic investments in America's economic development and national security need to be insulated, one way or another, from the pork barrel congressional politics that have sent billions in public investment toward things like corn-based ethanol and synfuels rather than toward the kinds of technologies and innovations that the global warming crisis demands. The goal should not be to subsidize clean energy in perpetuity but rather to make the kinds of investments that ultimately bring the real price of clean energy down to the price of dirty energy.

We applaud Pope for affirming the need to create a new politics that has "an eye to the future," in his words, "not nostalgia for the past." Toward that shared goal, we today formally invite Pope and the leaders of the other national environmental groups to join us in urging Congress, the President, and the leading Democratic and Presidential candidates to pass global warming legislation that directs at least $30 billion per year to make clean energy as cheap as possible as quickly as possible.

There's no time to waste.

For story: Environmentalism's existential moment
24 Comments | Post a Comment

Just saying it so does not make it so

Current solar technology costs (not priced) about $150 per ton carbon displacement ($300/ton in cloudy climates). Sunlight is cheaper than oil. Solar collectors are cheaper than new coal burners. This post perpetuates the propaganda that it will be more expensive to stop burning fossil fuels. That is the great lie of our age. Think efficiency, solar industrial process heat, district heating with seasonal heat storage, HIPV, clotheslines, passive solar architecture...

Comparisons with roof-top pv, the most expensive and least efficient type of solar energy is disingenuous.

Energy R&D is not expensive. It is just simple engineering. We do need public forums for an exchange of ideas and publications with peer review. Restoring Carter era budgets would be a good first step.

Keep it simple. We are all neglected customers.

by sunflower at 1:39 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Death of Death of Environmentalism

$30 billion a year? Where's your accompanying "Death of Iraq" paper? Hey- I thought environmentalism was dead! Why should we believe you now after that great call? I agree that private investment is working and leading the way but that's because it makes total sense and we have no political leader on this issue except Al Gore and that's not saying much. Barring a major sunspot, as long as Bush is "leading," there will be no government interference a.k.a. new programs aiding in the development of renewable energy at the expense of coal, oil, et al. Do we need the help? You bet. Can we count on it? How about writing the "Death of Relevant Federal Government" or "Death of the Death of Environmentalism?" What a bunch of gobbledygook.

http://schreinervideo.blogspot.com

by schreinervideo at 3:58 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Trying to figure out the fascination...

...with creating another military-industrial-academic complex...Maybe they think it is more palatable than just spending the money directly? They like the military? The computer revolution was not born simply because some money went through the military, it was much more complicated then that.

The other strange aspect of the piece is that they do not seem to advocate massive investments in things like public transit, although there is a nod in the direction of investing in solar panels to get the price down. I don't understand why only r&d is a legitimate governmental investment, except that maybe they are waiting for technological breakthroughs.

That said, I still think that they have provided an important public service by bringing up the idea of investment, as opposed to just regulation. Whether they do it in just the right way is not as important as trying to make the concept of public investment just as normal an instrument of environmental transformation as the idea of regulation.

by Jon Rynn at 4:07 PM on 27 Sep 2007

The usual mistakes

I think I agree with one point here: namely, that CO2 is a different kind of polluant. It is not amenable to end-of-pipe controls in the way that NOx and particulate it because there's just too much of it. It is not amenable to changes in combustion technology - like NOx and particulate - because it is an inherent product of combustion. Which means that the only meaningful way to reduce carbon at the stack is to reduce carbon at the burner tip. Shift to lower carbon fuels, and burn less of them. (To the extent there is a parallel here, it is closer to sulfur and mercury than NOx and SOx. Yes, you can scrub sulfur out, but truly eliminating sulfur emissions is ultimately incompatible with burning high-sulfur fuel. Likewise, reducing carbon emissions is ultimately incompatible with burning high-carbon fuels... no matter what the coal industry tells you.)

But after that, their arguments fall apart as they make the same mistake that every other theoretician makes: they assume the economy is optimal. All dollars are rationally allocated. No waste in the system. Certainly no barriers to those who wish to deploy more profitable approaches. Make those simplifying assumptions and less carbon must equal less fuel must equal lower standard of living.

Too bad the logic is bogus. The biggest carbon emitter is the electric sector, where all costs are pass throughs, a lack of competition prevents efficient capital allocation, cost-plus rate making incentivizes waste and monopoly regulations erect massive barriers to those who have a better idea. Fix that (through regulatory reform, no less) and you get carbon reduction AND increase in standard of living.

Shellenberger & Nordhaus make the usual errors in their assumptions, and so they never get to this point. But it basically means you can throw out all the conclusions upon which that faulty house of cards is based.

by Sean Casten at 4:28 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Who are you arguing with?

A question for Nordhaus and Schellenberger: who are you arguing with?!

You and your Breakthrough Institute cohorts keep taking this combative/adversarial tone towards the folks who should be your allies - environmentalists and clean energy/global warming activists (who may or may not consider themselves the same people) - and you come off as anti-regulation.

But when you look at your more nuanced position, I don't think you really are saying that you're anti-cap and trade or anti-carbon tax or anti-regulation.

You write: "Our proposal, to state it once again, is that Congress pass legislation that either auctions permits or taxes carbon enough to a) establish a price for carbon sufficient to result in inexpensive emissions reductions, b) generate at least $30 billion a year for clean energy investments, and c) creating market conditions for the widespread adoption of these new technologies."

So when you boil it down, you just consider regulation an incomplete piece of the full puzzle, and the funny thing is, I don't think you'll get any argument from those who you are supposedly trying to argue with (the "establishment" environmentalists, clean energy advocates, and global warming activists); you'll certainly get no argument from me!

You write talk about "the environmental community's regulation-only agenda," but where does such an agenda really exist? Which environmental groups are really putting all their eggs in the regulation basket? Which enviro groups would oppose massive investments in a clean energy future?

The reality is, they'd be hard to find.

Why do you think there's been so much focus on auctioning the emissions allowances under a cap and trade proposal? Why do you think we've been most enviro groups have been opposed to the mediocre-to-just-plain-crappy proposals of Lieberman-Warner and Bingaman? Why do you think enviro groups have been championing the best aspects of the House and Senate energy packages as a first start towards shifting our public investment from dirty to clean energy sources?

Enviros and GW activists aren't fighting you on this! Industry is. "Government-is-the-problem" conservatives are.

Yet you present your arguments in such a controversial way that you make it out as if you were in some kind of controversial fight with enviros. You're not!

That may be a great way to get attention for your articles and books, but it's not a great way to build alliances with the kind of folks who you should be building alliances with, the kind of folks who are in actuality already on your side!

So perhaps we as a movement need to strategically emphasize the public investment part (and it's benefits) over the regulation part (we do!). This is a very valid strategic critique and one that I thank you for elevating to the fore of discussions.

But we all seem to be in agreement that neither regulation or investment will work on its own, and the two - cap-and-auction and public investment - are mutually supportive and necessary components of a true solution to the climate crisis. Playing one off against the other seems like a really counter-productive way to advance climate solutions, as does hyping up supposed rifts within the movement that don't really exist in the way you describe them.

I doubt you'd find too many environmentalists who'd argue with the following (nor would you seem to argue with any of this):

Putting a price on carbon is necessary to send the correct market signals and to spur private sector innovation. But this innovation can be accelerated by public-sector research and investment, as it should be. We've got to make the transition to a carbon neutral, prosperous America as quickly as possible, and that requires public investment in our common future.

It breaks down like this, in my opinion:

1) We need to put a price on carbon emissions to harness the innovation and power of markets to find solutions to the climate crisis and ensure we reduce global warming pollution to a safe level.

2) The atmosphere is a common good, owned by all Americans, not just polluters. We should therefore force polluters to pay for the privilege to emit global warming pollution, raising money in the process.

3) Putting a price on carbon is necessary as is forcing polluters to pay for their mess, but doing so will raise energy prices. The good news is, it will also raise a lot of money that can be pumped into making sure average Americans end up better off than before. We can do this in two ways:

a) we can pump much of that money into accelerating the transformation of our energy economy to a sustainable, low-carbon system. We can provide incentives to lower the costs of clean energy technologies, provide R&D and fund public-private partnerships to accelerate the deployment of the next generation of clean energy technologies and support the innovation fueled by the carbon regulation itself.

b) we can use some of the money to reform our tax structure so that it is more progressive and leaves more money in the pockets of average Americans. These reforms will more than offset the increases (if any) in your energy bill (remember that increased efficiency can offset the effects of increased energy prices too) so in the end, the average American will be better off under a cap and auction system than you were before.

That's the recipe for a carbon-neutral, prosperous America in my mind, and it doesn't seem like I'd get much argument from enviros or from you two.

So in closing, where's all the controversy?

Jesse Jenkins _____________________ WattHead - Energy News and Commentary http://watthead.blogspot.com

by Watthead at 5:26 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Let's Step This Up...

My main concern is that $30 billion/year is a palty amount to try to transform an entire energy infrastructure with. It may sound like a lot of money but it's only a tiny fraction of the money spent in Iraq, or a fraction of the oil companies profits.

Given that even the IEA is predicting peak oil by 2012, it stands to reason that oil is going to go way up, on average. A windfall profits tax could start to channel some of the high gas prices to fund the transformation. If oil costs say $40/barrel to bring it to market, why should consumers be paying upwards of $100/barrel to Exxon-Mobil and its investors? (We could guarantee them perhaps $20/barrel profit.)Perhaps the threat of nationalization or gas-rationing will bring these behemoths to the table to see that a windfall profits tax is the best chance they have of staying alive in an era of energy depletion.

Incidentally, DR recently alerted us to a company that claims concentrated solar power (and thermal storage) could provide 98% of the nation's electricity for 10 cents/kwhr. True or untrue, we cannot be far away from the technology we need. The main obstacle, in my view, will be the carbon lobby.

by Colin Wright at 5:49 PM on 27 Sep 2007

Colin --

It looks to me like the responses to Nordhaus and Schellenberger (N/S) are almost as problematic as their post. The only thing that critics seem to be worried about is defending the regulatory model, e.g., cap-and-trade -- and if you look at Mckibben's piece, he seems to think that the market can do as much or more, as he puts it, as the government to mitigate global warming. So N/S call for a positive vision and and investment-centered strategy -- sounds good to me -- then they go off on a Pentagon-led, wimpy (30 billion) strategy. McKibben is shouting from the rooftops about global warming, and winds up not taking the positive vision/investment idea seriously (although interestingly, he praises Europe's more mass transit-city centered patterns). Make me wanna howlah.

by Jon Rynn at 8:17 PM on 27 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Waiting for Godot, part 2

Jon, yeah it's weird. Almost as if people worship the market like a
cargo cult. That is, we are mysteriously given amazing things by the Market God (ipods, Mazerati's,..). We don't know where they came from, but we like them. We invent uses for them even if don't solve any needs in our lives (Game Boys, flat screen TV's...).

Now we pray that one day the market will deliver to us some fantastically cheap and clean enegy device. We even make offerings (subsidies, cap-and-trade allowances) to the very companies that bring us coal and oil in the hope of pleasing them. We just have to be patient.

The old-fashioned idea that people could collectively solve a problem directly seems to have gone down the memory hole.

by Colin Wright at 11:45 PM on 27 Sep 2007

response to Jesse Jenkins

Jenkins covered all bases in his brilliant response to Nordhaus & Shellenberger, revealing their "red herring" approach and their invention of problems that are non-existent or readily solved. Neither N nor S will acknowledge that mandatory and DRASTIC reductions in energy demand must be the prime focus because these are the ones that bring the quickest results; any scientist or economist knows this but they seem determined to deny this. They also want to avoid inconvenience of any kind, including higher energy costs, but again, any scientist - actually any dope - knows that these are not only imperative but unavoidable. None of this is surprising since neither N nor S has an environmental background. Their public relations bias shows at every turn. Their original report (see my web site for my critique: www.lornasalzman.com) was pure baloney, contradictory and abysmally lacking in any environmental consciousness or experience. I am not paranoid (normally) but I can't help thinking, after reading their ridiculous stuff, that their loyalty lies to special interests. Could it be auto workers? The Democratic Party? The financial community? It sure isn't the earth. Let's move their stuff into the circular file and get some more honest and credible dialogue going.
Lorna Salzman

by lorna salzman at 10:55 AM on 28 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Lifted from RMI

Markets make wonderful servants, fearful masters and horrible religons.

by Aklemm at 12:04 PM on 28 Sep 2007

Hey Lorna ---

I'm a big fan of Walter Karp, I think his writing on the Democratic Party is very important now -- after reading his work I no longer wonder why the Democratic Party is usually doing nothing.

by Jon Rynn at 12:14 PM on 28 Sep 2007

Shellenberger Responds

Dear Jesse,

Thanks for jumping in on this important topic. I hope you will continue to sink your teeth into this one -- the upcoming global warming legislation is crucial to America's future. We have to be as clear-eyed about what it will do and what it won't do as we are about the science of global warming.

First let me acknowledge points of agreement. We all agree that carbon should be priced. The question is how much can a carbon price in the U.S. do to reduce emissions?

Our analysis shows that even a relatively low carbon price will do very important work in moving from coal to natural gas, increasing efficiency, and motivating conservation -- in the United States. If executed perfectly well, it might reduce emissions 20 percent over the next couple of decades (emissions reduction calculations are very, very tricky, and I am thus happy to go over these calculations in a future post for anyone who is interested).

There are some who say the great thing about a price on carbon is that it avoids "picking winners and losers." That's a disingenuous claim. Setting a particular price on carbon very clearly does pick winners and losers. The winners are efficiency, conservation, and some kinds of sequestration (e.g., burning methane off of landfills).

All markets are constructed through regulation (the RMI quote above is a great one).

What a modest price on carbon (~$10 - 20/ton of Co2) won't do is quickly bring down the price of clean energy technologies.

Why does that matter? Because if we do not bring down the real price of clean energy technologies as quickly as possible, China and the rest of the world (us included) will bring on-line a whole new coal-based infrastructure that threatens to swamp any amount of action in the U.S.

China is not going to set a price for carbon, and thus raise its energy costs, without a good economic reason to do so. It won't blindly follow the U.S., as many environmentalists allege. And even if China establishes a modest carbon price in the future, it won't establish one nearly high enough to quickly move to solar and other clean energy technologies, including carbon capture and storage (CCS) facilities for its coal plants (few to none of which are CCS ready).

One scenario we support is simply buying down the price of solar. How could this be done? In the same way we brought down the price of microchips in the 60s. Microchips used to be expensive, now they're cheap.

The DoD could purchase 10 - 20 billion dollars worth of PV -- through a competitive, transparent bidding process -- each year for 10 - 20 years. One calculation shows that it would cost $50 - 212 billion to make solar as cheap as conventional energy sources. Again, these are tricky calculations, but solar is a great case study because its price declines ~20 percent for every doubling of capacity.

There is no silver energy bullet, and this can't happen through regulation alone. Even in California, which passed the Million Solar Home law, I was told by a solar industry executive in July that because of red tape, only 20 homes are being installed with solar systems each day, when that number needs to be 200 per day to be on track. Andy Revkin at the Times pointed out that in order for solar to constitute one-seventh of the emissions reductions we need, there will need to be a whopping 200 million solar homes. And that isn't going to happen as long as solar is 5 - 10 times more expensive than coal and natural gas.

You've suggested that we've exaggerated the difference between our investment-centered approach and the environmental lobby's regulation-centered approach. But anyone who looks at the policy agenda of the leading environmental groups who determine global warming strategy in Washington will find that there is no strategy to buy down the price of solar. Nor is there any major investment strategy whatsoever. Don't confuse green rhetoric with policy reality -- you have to look at the legislation being pushed in Congress.

That said, there is today an exciting political opening. Senator Lieberman has indicated he wants to auction permits. What will the money raised go to? It's not yet clear. We estimate that what's needed is at least $30 billion in pork-free public investment capital to buy down the price of clean energy (and invest in other areas, like new transmission lines to transport wind power from rural areas to cities).

Could the Lieberman-Warner legislation do this? Absolutely. Is the environmental lobby united behind a strategy to make it happen? Unfortunately not.

At least not yet. The good news is that there's still time. The trouble that advocates are having building support for global warming legislation in Congress might be overcome if there were a big and bold strategy for creating jobs and establishing American economic leadership in the fastest growing markets in the world. Public investment is the key to doing this.

The truth is, it's up to the (largely post-boomer) generation of environmentalists and non-environmentalists to lobby environmental leaders, lobby Congress, and blog about the necessity of a large clean energy investment.

The best part about it all is that you don't really have to care all that much about global warming to support a big investment strategy for clean energy. Maybe you just care about energy independence. Maybe you just care about economic competitiveness. The large percentages of Americans who say they support cap and trade on global warming declines dramatically when voters learn that setting a price on carbon means raising the price of coal and oil. The solution is to put investment, jobs, and economic possibility -- not pollution limits and higher energy costs -- at the center of the debate.

If global warming legislation passes that does not raise and allocate at least $30 billion/year for clean energy investment, then we'll have to find some way to get that money from somewhere else. That public investment capital to bring down the real price of clean energy is more urgent, in our view, than a price on carbon.

In any event, it's great to have the conversation, and we'll look forward to your posts on our book, Break Through.

Best regards,

Michael

by Michael Shellenberger at 12:41 PM on 28 Sep 2007

Re: Shellenberger responds

Michael:

I'm clearly in the minority here, but I largely agree with your post (as I did with "The Death of Environmentalism"--the sooner we pull the plug, the better our chances of saving the world). But one factor you don't seem to be taking into account (at least in this post) is that North American natural gas production has peaked and gone into decline and significantly increasing imports of liquefied natural gas is problematic for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it would increase the U.S.'s reliance on energy imported from unstable and mostly-hostile parts of the world. I don't see any way we will have a supply of natural gas sufficient to fuel an increase in the number of natural-gas fired electricity plants; in fact, I think we are likely not going to have the supply necessary to fuel all the current plants in the foreseeable future. Production limits and rising prices are the reason why utilities have turned back to coal for electricity generation after decades of opting for natural gas to reduce air pollutants and acid rain.

So, if I'm right and we won't be able to use natural gas as a less-carbon dense transition fuel while we build an infrastructure for a truly carbon-neutral and sustainable energy system, how does this effect your strategy?

"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith

by John Fish Kurmann at 7:57 PM on 28 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

N and S's existential dilemma

N and S have a big problem: the main goal of conservatism since Reagan has been to beat the idea into everyone's head that the government is bad and the market is good. In fact, even in the political center, which is where I believe N and S want to be, this idea has pretty much taken over. Here's the dilemma: the idea of government investment is profoundly challenging of the "government bad, market good" set of ideas. In fact, it's basically left-of-center, if we have to use those terms, that is, in my opinion, it begins to bring the discussion back to a set of policy options that are people-centered as opposed to business-centered. I'm sure N and S would not like that characterization, but that's where the idea of government investment and the idea of a positive vision of the future is heading, it is serving to legitimize the idea that the government can do something.

Neocons will deny idea that government can be helpful even as Antartica turns into a summer resort, but for N and S, the problem is, how to stay in the political center while advocating something left-of-center? Their answer seems to be to funnel investment through the only institution that the Right and Center have agreed to since WWII, the Pentagon (talk about pork-barrel, which N and S state they want to avoid, but anyway)...They also prioritize research and development, which is another kind of government investment (as is, to a certain extent, education) that is also considered legitimate within the post-WWII political environment.

However, I don't think they can have their cake and eat it to. I find myself in the bizarre position of perhaps being their biggest defender here at Gristmill, even though I totally disagree with their advocacy of the Pentagon, because I think that their larger point -- which certainly doesn't depend on the Pentagon or an R&D only policy -- is so very important: that with this huge crisis we are facing, direct investment by the government is a very important means at our disposal, and one that the general public is very open to. And whether N&S like it or not, their position challenges, not just environmentalist orthodoxy, but more importantly, conservative economic and political orthodoxy as well.

by Jon Rynn at 9:47 PM on 28 Sep 2007

Well argued article.. more work for all of us?

Kudos for the poignant Walk the Talk tag line:

I agree that we have to consider spending and not only taxing. In this respect I do not agree that public R&D is as much needed as in former decades where the motivation was a Cold War enemy?

Rather one should consider more market transparency. One could argue that public spending in streets for cars indirectly subsidizes gasoline. That however would not help manifest an uptake electric cars?

The utility industries also scream for more transparency. Retail prices are often very different than production costs. Solar can be produced locally and economically during peak times and therefore does not stretch the grid as much as remotely produced energy?

Livestock is the worst single climate polluter on the planet and yet the US is pouring almost $20 billion per year of tax payer money into mostly factory farms. There is no transparency yet - no matrix of application and customer segment?

Further - it might well be that the US government comes to the conclusion that it is even better to subsidize solar than to invest in public or private R&D.

Sunflower's angry first comment was right. We underestimate how far many green technologies have traveled. This Microsoft Research lecture is among the best on the net.

Before pouring money into R&D - we should determine how far we have already come. Analise the German example a bit deeper before risking political instability with nuclear?

by hugopottisch at 4:52 PM on 29 Sep 2007

Challenging Orthodoxies

Dear Jon,

Thanks for your thoughtful comments.

You wrote:

And whether N&S like it or not, their position challenges, not just environmentalist orthodoxy, but more importantly, conservative economic and political orthodoxy as well.

As a matter of fact we spend much of our new book, Break Through, challenging conservative orthodoxies even while we challenge environmentalist ones.

What's been so interesting about the reaction from David Hawkins at NRDC and many other environmentalists writing on Grist, is that they espouse market fundamentalism as much as anyone. The market fundamentalist's fallacy is that all we need to do is set a price for carbon and we will be well on our way to reducing U.S. emissions 80 percent and global emissions 50 percent by 2050.

They offer nothing in terms of an economic or political argument that considers what carbon would have to be priced at to make clean energy cost-competitive. Nor do they consider what must be done for China to reduce its emissions. Instead, they recite textbook descriptions of how behavior follows price.

So far, nobody has refuted the extended case we made in Environmentalism's Existential Moment that regulation alone can't get us from here to there for technical, political, and economic reasons.

As for the Defense Department -- I appreciate your concerns. But at the end of the day, I'd rather have our military back home in the U.S. purchasing and installing solar panels than fighting a lost war in Iraq.

We wouldn't be having this conversation through our personal computers and the Internet had the DoD not bought down the price of microchips.

That the U.S. military has done some heinous things -- why would that disqualify it from investing in the new energy sciences? The Pentagon is not a static, singular institution. It is neither all good nor all bad. Yes, it has made some bad contracting choices, like the B-2 bomber and the Osprey. But it has also made some excellent ones, like microchips and the Internet.

We should harness the military's strengths and assets to achieve positive goals, like making solar panels as cheap as coal -- or at least as cheap as natural gas.

Again, thanks for your comments.

Michael

P.S. In a bit of nice timing, the San Francisco Chronicle today ran a very good piece about how Silicon Valley -- including Intel and Google -- wouldn't exist were it not for the DoD.

The early chip industry, like the two waves of innovation before, initially depended on military expenditures, Paul Ceruzzi, a curator at the Smithsonian Institution, writes in his book "A History of Modern Computing."
Only this time, it was the Cold War that opened the government's checkbook.
The Soviet launch of Sputnik on Oct. 4, 1957, prodded the United States to modernize its missile and space program. The newfangled silicon chips were considered vital - albeit costly - components, and Ceruzzi writes that NASA and the Defense Department bought so many "that the price dropped from $1,000 a chip to between $20 and $30."
Falling chip prices fueled development of new electronics for corporate customers and eventually individual consumers. Reliance on military purchases lessened, though defense dollars remained important in spurring research. Thus, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin later dreamed up Google, a defense research grant helped support their work. And when Stanford computer scientists won a robotic car race in 2005, the prize came from the Defense Department.
By the 1970s, therefore, Silicon Valley was poised to capitalize on new civilian technologies like PCs, as exemplified by Apple Computer.

by Michael Shellenberger at 8:19 PM on 30 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Natural Gas

Dear John,

You may be right about natural gas, though I would add that such predictions are exceedingly difficult. But I'm not sure I understand your point. Our argument is that no matter what happens with the price and availability of coal, oil, and gas, we need to make very large investments on the order of $30 billion annually to deploy, procure, and invent new clean energy technologies. Obviously, our goal is to get the price of clean energy down as quickly as possible so that it is at least in spitting distance of the price of coal.

Best,

Michael

by Michael Shellenberger at 8:23 PM on 30 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Re: Natural Gas

Michael:

My point was to ask whether it affects your plan if there is an insufficient supply of natural gas (NG) to increase NG-fired electricity generation, as suggested in your essay. How much does it affect your plan if not only is there insufficient NG to increase NG-fired electricity generation but insufficient NG to maintain the current levels of NG-fired electricity generation and NG use as a transportation fuel?

It's a sincere question, which perhaps would be answered by reading your book--but I haven't done that yet. Any energy plan that doesn't take into account near-term supply constraints can't be taken all that seriously, in my opinion, so I'm trying to determine if you've taken these possible constraints into account.

My personal suspicion is that constraints on both oil and NG supplies due to peaking oil production worldwide and past-peak North American NG production are going to force us to emphasize reducing consumption by changing the way we live over the transition to renewable technologies, but we shall see how things play out.

"You can never get enough of what you do not really want." - Huston Smith

by John Fish Kurmann at 10:25 PM on 30 Sep 2007
[ Parent ]

Michael --

Thanks for taking the time for responding to my responses -- and I would be very interested in your response to my next post.

First, I agree that the environmental movement seems stuck on the mainstream, market-based solutions that have been ascendant in the last 25 years. As you'll see in my next post, I go quite in the opposite direction! But I very much appreciate your arguments, as I hope I make clear, because I think that the ideas of a positive vision and public investment are essential to fighting global warming, and many other problems besides.

Now to the Pentagon -- and maybe a more extended discussion is called for -- but let me lay out a few general ideas here.

First, the military is filled with millions of hard-working men and women, and most of them want what's best for their country. But like any organization, they also want what's best for their institution, and though they may not agree, it is up to those of us outside the military to argue about the pluses and minuses.

Your argument is basically a spin-off argument, that is, that the military has produced important technological innovations in the process of pursuing its basic function (and the history of silicon valley is important, although much more complex than giving the pentagon the central role). But the Pentagon's basic function is, to be very direct about it, to destroy. I have a Ph.D. in international relations, so I know that this capacity is important, but it has repercussions in the larger economy. I worked for many years with an industrial engineer, the late Professor Seymour Melman, who wrote many books concerning the effects of military and military production on the wider economy.

To be as brief as possible, he argued that the military economy distorts and depletes the civilian economy. It isn't just that the money could be used elsewhere. since you are interested in avoiding pork barrel projects, you should be aware of the extreme pork barrel that goes into pentagon contracts, but also, the cost-plus nature of pentagon contracts -- that is, the contractors are guaranteed a profit -- has the predictable result that the work is generally overpriced, way too complex, a nightmare to maintain, and maybe worst of all, the engineers involved in the process adopt these attitudes.

So what would happen with solar? Depending on how it's done, it would possibly, or maybe even probably, be a contracting nightmare -- and I'm not even talking about outright fraud as we've seen in Iraq. If the military was too involved in the process, the solar panels developed would be so complex and expensive that they would be useless for the civilian economy.

In addition to that, the spin-offs like computer technology were of great intrest to the military because it directly effected the military's ability to destroy. Solar? maybe they could be used to power military bases, but that leads me to a more positive response -- if the main acquisition was for bases, why not just have the Federal (and local) governments buy solar (and other technologies) to make all governmental buildings zero-emission by a certain date?

The advantage of this approach would be that you would get a multiplicity of choices because different governments would choose different technologies, you would get something somewhat similar to a market, but without the big gorilla (not to diss gorillas) of the military sitting there dictating a one-best technology that would be a political decision (which military company should we reward, and in who's district). This is a wide topic, but the general point is that the civilian side of the government would be perfectly capable of doing a better job than the Pentagon, with a greater level of demand to spur economies of scale, than the military. As for research, the defense advanced resesearch projects agency (darpa) also has a rather complex history, but there is no reason that the national science foundation, or something similar set up for the express purpose of doing research, would not do a better job, because they would have the direct goal of generating renewable energy, not defending the nation.

There is also a political consideration -- basing policy proposals on the military involvement would make hash of forging a progressive coalition, in my opinion, but also, it would make it difficult to pare down -- more would be better, in my opinion -- the military budget to use for solar, etc. Now, I imagine you might think this is political suicide, and I want to assure any rightwingers (or mainstream types) reading this post that Michael has absolutely nothing to do with my opinions. Making a coalition with people who think the military should be prominent is dicey, at best -- although again I can understand the attempt, but I think there are better ways to do it.

I can't recall the source, but apparently there is some super-strategic office in the Pentagon, and the Dr. Strangelove there has written about global warming, but his approach seems to be, How can the Pentagon use this to its advantage? In other words, there will be instability, that means trouble, that means we will need a big military to deal with it. I would hate for a sincere attempt to deal with global warming turn into a greenwashing by the Pentagon just to try and get a bigger budget. There are better ways.

So there's my attempt-to-be-brief answer concerning the usefullness of broadening the governmental role from the Pentagon to the rest of the government, to put a positive spin on it.

by Jon Rynn at 8:20 AM on 01 Oct 2007
[ Parent ]

Spin Offs: Don't Focus on Military Innovation

Military spin offs are usually measured incorrectly because many economists and innovation theorists have not figured out how to do it properly.

Let us start with the idea of "opportunity costs."
These have to include the actual use of weapons systems, not just the domestic or national spill overs from military technologies weighed against their diversionary impacts on the domestic economy.

For every weapons system developed and used, the costs of the actual use, e.g. bombing Iraq or Afghanistan, killing civilians and infrastructure, has to be weighted economically. This usually does NOT happen. It did not happen among most economists making the macroeconomic benefits argument whom I met at a conference on defense economics I attended a few years ago in Paris.

Next, we have to measure not just the positive gains of military technologies against the positive losses, but we also have to consider the reasons why spin offs do NOT happen. In my academic articles I have shown that the power of military interests within the firm, can block the extent of spin offs because the military interests and their development criteria (and criteria for what should be developed and their claim on resources within the firm) are favored at the expense of civilian interests and innovators.

I will now quote from my article in this summer's Social Text special issue on militarism:

"Military Keynesianism has been used to keep the U.S. economy stimulated, but any 'macroeconomic gains' have been accompanied by harsh economic costs. While the military economy may promote innovation in key sectors, there is no guarantee that manufacturing (and eventually engineering and design) jobs created by such innovations will remain in the United States.44 For example, while military procurement contributed to the development and growth of the U.S. aerospace sector, it is far from clear that military subsidy of the sector guarantees domestic growth and U.S. jobs. The increasing limit to military contributions to the aerospace market is graphically demonstrated by the following startling statistic: 'in the future 70 percent of Boeing's new 787 will be manufactured offshore primarily in China and Japan.'45"

For footnotes, go to the original article.

Those hoping to use the military to support environmental technologies will be supporting military claims to resources and the military parts of defense firms against the civilian firms and civilian parts of firms trying to develop environmental technologies.

It is possible to convert or diversify defense firms to support civilian environmental technologies. To do so, requires civilian industrial policies that shrink and eliminate the military parts of production.

Are their military to civilian spill overs? Yes, of course there are. Is a policy of using military firms and technology in and of itself the best way to support environmental technology development? No. Most successful diversification and military development of civilian technology or technology with civilian applications depends on partnership with civilian firms as my research has shown.

There are some exceptions to this pattern, e.g. when the military develops a technology before there is a civilian equivalent (see Feldman, 1998 below). Yet, in this case, without civilian oversight, power and control the larger project would not have been successful. In the case of computers, we have a huge government subsidy that could have easily been directed to civilian firms. Past a certain stage, computer technology has been dominated by civilian firms anyway, e.g. Microsoft.

The idea that we should entrust the military industrial complex to develop environmental technologies would be a huge mistake. The military industrial complex has had trouble even developing weapons systems. Imagine the problems that they would have developing environmental technologies, if the process began and ended with their power, authority and expertise.

REFERENCES (Articles by Jonathan M. Feldman, Selective List)

BOOK CHAPTERS

"Industrial Conversion: A Linchpin for Disarmament and Development." Chapter 12 in Dimensions of Peace and Security: A Reader, Gustaaf Geeraerts, Natalie Pauwels and Eric Remacle, eds. Brussels: Peter Lang, 2006.

"The Conversion of Defense Engineers' Skills: Explaining Success and Failure Through Customer-Based Learning, Teaming and Managerial Integration." Chapter 18 in The Defense Industry in the Post-Cold War Era: Corporate Strategy and Public Policy Perspectives, Gerald I. Susman and Sean O'Keefe, eds. Oxford: Elsevier Science, 1998.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

"From Warfare State to `Shadow State': Militarism, Economic Depletion and Reconstruction," Social Text, 91, Volume 25, Number 22, Summer, 2007.

Co-authored, "Medium-Sized firms and the Limits to Growth: A Case Study in the Evolution of a Spin-Off Firm," , European Planning Studies, Volume 8, Number 5, 2000.

"Extending Disarmament Through Economic Democracy," Peace Review, "Workplace Democracy," Summer Issue, May, Volume 12, Number 2, 2000.

"Civilian diversification, learning, and institutional change: growth through knowledge and power," Environment and Planning A, Volume 31, Number 10, October, 1999.

by Jonathan M Feldman at 8:43 AM on 01 Oct 2007
[ Parent ]

How much do Iraq/Iran/NorthKorea/Pakistan cost us?

..well argued comments all around!

They inspired the following questions?

How much would oil and gas independence be worth to the cause of national security (and hence the DoS) alone? And what are the risks of promoting nuclear energy as a world-wide solution in this context?

I know that we can rather survive a dirty bomb in DC or NY than an ecological disaster... but there must be a price tag attached to those risks as well which should be passed on to solar, wind, geothermal solutions (and away from nuclear)?

How much is risk mitigation of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, etc conflicts worth to us? The DoS/Pentagon/CIA should publish their current quantifications sooner rather than later in the climate change and nuclear context?

I hope that contrary to John's fear that the defense government "wants more enemies and risks" in order to protect their "jobs" - many actually want to prevent social costs. The same argument can be made for the pharma industry (which wants to keep us sick and ill and in need of their products) but that is not how the world works.

As long as humans are mammals they will fall ill and will need treatment. The same for violence and need for policing and defense of some form. Many defense employees understand this - they know that their jobs are more secured doing something that the public perceives as productive (eg also defending them from natural disasters at home and not some oil protecting adventure around the globe?)

Again:

DoS/Pentagon/CIA: give us your honest assessment of the security risks of global spread of nuclear applications. Please attempt to quantify it in economic terms ($) as well.

DoS/Pentagon/CIA: give us your honest assessment of the economic benefits ($) of resource independence (from eg Middle East, South America).

by hugopottisch at 11:00 AM on 01 Oct 2007

New technology?

We don't need new technology. It's already out there. R&D for what? A better use for those $30 billion (it seems to be the figure) would be to make it available as easy to pay loans to anyone who decides to install proven, clean, money saving technologies. Like solar and wind. I believe there should be a slight preference towards the best cost/benefit products already available (not preference towards any manufacturer). I'd put an enfasis on solar home heating (collecting abundant summer heat and storing it underground for use in winter) and solar water heating. I'd make it almost mandatory to use solar heating for swimming pools,(it is the biggest use for solar energy world wide) After that, electricity generation, either for personal use or for micro power generation to sell back to the grid.

$30 billion is $100 per person per year. Nothing to sneeze at. If it is given as a loan to pay in 15 years, the payments will be lower than the savings on fuel or electricity obtained. Maybe 25 years for today's PV. With a bigger market the price will come down.

Don't give it away, that doesn't work. After all it is our money they are spending.

by solar greg at 3:00 PM on 02 Oct 2007

Wonder of wonders!

There has been very little argument about one of N&S's premises: that conservation alone cannot solve the world's energy and environmental problems. Widespread recognition of that fact means we can start to make some progress.

by richard schumacher at 6:35 AM on 03 Oct 2007

Why Not?

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by RemyP at 12:39 PM on 09 Feb 2008

ADVERTISING POLICY

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