{"id":4360,"date":"2010-12-15T17:36:11","date_gmt":"2010-12-15T21:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/?p=4360"},"modified":"2010-12-15T17:36:11","modified_gmt":"2010-12-15T21:36:11","slug":"energy-innovation-as-key-to-economic-and-environmental-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/2010\/12\/15\/energy-innovation-as-key-to-economic-and-environmental-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy Innovation as Key to Economic and Environmental Success"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs<\/em><\/p>\n

I caught the front end of today\u2019s <\/span>Energy Innovation 2010 Conference<\/span><\/a> in Washington, DC featuring a range of individuals involved or thinking about national and global energy.\u00a0 Speakers included the President and CEO of Securing\u00a0 America\u2019s Future Energy, the Executive Director of the Department of Defense\u2019s Strategic Environmental R&D Program (SERDP), a co-author of the report \u201cRising Tigers, Sleeping Giant,\u201d and many others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Co-sponsored by the <\/span>Information Technology and Innovation Foundation<\/span><\/a> (ITIF) and the <\/span>Breakthrough Institute<\/span><\/a>, the purpose of the conference was to explore how energy innovation can help \u201caddress some of the most urgent imperatives of our time\u2014renewing the economy, improving energy security and public health, and overcoming key environmental challenges.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In his opening remarks, the President of ITIF, Rob Atkinson, stated that innovation will be the key to moving the U.S. and the rest of the world to clean energy\u2014not because it is forced on countries, but because (through innovation) it will be cheaper, cleaner, and better than fossil fuels.<\/span><\/p>\n

A key theme was that it makes both economic and environmental sense to move forward on creative energy solutions and that it necessarily requires public investment through the federal government to fuel the experimental and risky research that private industry tends to avoid.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some speakers, notably <\/span>Roger Pielke<\/span><\/a> with the University of Colorado, Boulder, argued that instead of focusing on only one reason to shift from fossil fuels to other energy sources\u2014for example, the need to address climate change\u2014we should include the multitude of viable reasons for the United States to embrace this shift. These include staying globally competitive (it was pointed out by another panelist that Japan and other countries are outspending the U.S. in R&D as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product), containing costs, securing an energy supply, ending damaging subsidies, as well as curbing greenhouse gases.\u00a0 Pielke pointed out that such an approach offers a much broader justification for action than does debating climate science.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0In the U.S., said Pielke, we are stuck arguing about the science instead of getting into the \u201cnitty gritty\u201d of tackling the problem.\u00a0 Multiple reasons to do something offer more potential to create a broad base of support that can be sustained over a period of many decades, he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>ITIF\u2019s Atkinson raised a point that seems all too vivid in the wake of the recent BP oil disaster: it\u2019s the choice that matters; if you don\u2019t have another choice, the default is the status quo.\u00a0 That is, until cheap and scalable alternative energy sources emerge, \u201cyou can\u2019t price uncertainty\u201d and that prevents people from making decisions.\u00a0 He also pointed out that in a capitalist playing field, one should expect tremendous resistance from the \u201cincumbents\u201d (such as the fossil fuel industry) who are not going to just \u201croll over\u201d to make the path to cleaner energy easy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Jeffrey Marqusee, Executive Director of DOD\u2019s <\/span>SERDP<\/span><\/a>, argued that sometimes the raw self interest of a mammoth agency such as DOD can lead to positive results.\u00a0 It\u2019s in the interest of DOD, said Marquesee, to find ways to reduce its $4 billion annual energy expenditure and it sees renewable energy as one way to do so.\u00a0 Concerns about energy security are another driver; the ability for the military to operate even during grid outages.\u00a0 Because of DOD\u2019s enormous scale and variety of installations\u2014from barracks, to single family homes, to hospitals, and light industrial buildings\u2014DOD is a \u201cmicrocosm of the energy use of the rest of the country,\u201d said Marqusee.\u00a0 DOD wants to partner with the Department of Energy and the private sector to take on risky innovation, test it, and if it\u2019s successful, deploy it at numerous installations, he said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In light of the continuing global inability to establish climate policy that leads to results, a prevailing sentiment from some panelists seemed to be to tackle the problem from a different direction: spur innovation in cleaner energy, make it cheaper than fossil fuels, and thereby address a myriad of problems all at once, with reduced greenhouse gas emissions as a bonus.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0This post contributed by Nadine Lymn, ESA Director of Public Affairs I caught the front end of today\u2019s Energy Innovation 2010 Conference in Washington, DC featuring a range of individuals involved or thinking about national and global energy.\u00a0 Speakers included the President and CEO of Securing\u00a0 America\u2019s Future Energy, the Executive Director of the Department of Defense\u2019s Strategic Environmental R&D…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[1085,1086,132,1087,1088,1089],"class_list":["post-4360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecology-in-policy","tag-clean-energy","tag-climate-science","tag-energy","tag-energy-innovation","tag-energy-innovation-2010-conference","tag-serdp"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/esa.org\/esablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}