Comments by Jesse Jenkins Subscribe

On Being Smart and Efficient on the Stimulus and Careers

Note, this is a guest post written by Timothy Den-Herder Thomas

On The Low Carb(on) Diet

Excellent article Marc!

On Relative prices, lump sum transfers and Carbon Cap and Trade

Tim, thanks for describing the relatively clear mechanics (and rationales) behind Cap and Dividend or Cap and Rebate or tax and shift or the various other proposals that rely on the same logic.

The problem with this logic though, is that it assumes we all start out on the same footing and that our carbon emissions are entirely the result of decisions we have control over. Unfortunately, that's just not the case.

Here's one simple example. I used to live in Eugene, Oregon. I was served by a monopoly utility, that happened to have a very low carbon footprint for it's electricity supply. Since the utility was a publicly-owned, municipal utility, it had historically been granted access to the subsidized federal hydropower system built in the Pacific Northwest during the New Deal era and the decades afterwards. My carbon footprint for electricity generation was just 450 lbs of CO2 per kilowatt-hour.

Flash forward a year and I now live in Portland, Oregon. My local utility there is an investor-owned utility, PGE. PGE, since it's privately owned, has been historically shut out of the federal hydropower system (which is prioritized for public utilities based on decades-old rural electrification policies) and therefore imports a good deal of coal-fired electricity from Montana and other points east. PGE also relies pretty highly on natural gas. The result: the utility's carbon footprint is about 1,200 lbs per kilowatt-hour, almost three times what it was for the Eugene utility. And heck, the other utility that serves parts of Portland, Pacific Power, has a carbon footprint for electricity of about 1700 lbs/kWh, so good thing I didn't move in across town, or the picture would be even worse!

Now, I do all sorts of things to conserve electricity, and did basically the same things in both cities. But simply by moving between the two largest cities in the very same state, my carbon footprint from electricity tripled - and the difference in emissions was the result of about a century of historic electricity policy and regulation, investment decisions of monopoly utilities, and the local availability of various resources (e.g. hydro) not my personal decisions.

The same is true writ-large all across the United States. The midwestern states are far more dependent on coal than the Northwest. That's because when rural electrification proceeded in the early half of the 20th century, the government subsidized the lowest-cost available resources. For the Northwest (and much of the West), that hydropower at federally-constructed and operated dams. For the Midwest, that was coal-fired power plants. For the Southeast, a mix of the two (i.e. TVA), but more coal than hydro.

Once you factor in historic land development patterns, differences in weather, and all sorts of other factors outside of an individuals control, and you see that the image of perfectly rational actors freely chosing whether or not they want to emit carbon based on market signals is far from the reality of the situation.

This makes dividend and rebate schemes more than just unfair; it presents very real political challenges. Just look at a map of the most coal-dependent states and a list of the critical swing votes needed to secure passage of any climate policy, and you can see what I mean...

Other than that, it's a fine economic theory.

Jesse Jenkins WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

On ATTN Matthew Wald at the NY Times: Does This Look Like "Environment-Friendly" Coal to You?!

I have no reason to assume Matt isn't a good guy, and I hope I didn't imply otherwise in my post.  But when he repeats whole hog the talking points BS from the coal industry about how "clean" coal is getting and ignores the dirty nature of the entire coal lifecycle, its a bad case of reporting, and does a disservice to readers.  I hope that if Matt writes more on CCS and coal, that he'll do some more digging into the fuel's dirty nature before hand.  Hopefully this post can serve as a resource.  Cheers,

Jesse

On New flavors of chutzpah

The world does seem to be playing a cruel joke on us sometimes, doesn't it?!

On Renewable Energy Grid Infrastructure Reality Sinks In

Thanks for bringing up the realities of grid expansion in this post.

While coordinated national planning (Renewable Energy Zones) is a great step, I wonder if we're really just going to have to build a new national grid "electron superhighway" the same way we built the national interstate system.  Really, the situation of our current grid in many ways parallels that of the highway system pre-Interstate.  It's good for getting from Boston to New York maybe, or Los Angeles to San Francisco, but good luck trying to get from Denver to San Fran or Bismark to NYC.  And much like the Interstates, the new supergrid would be a new "backbone" overlaying the existing grid, with various on and off ramp points (literally, if this is an HVDC system, with DC-AC intertie points). 

Right now, local utility customers or project developers bear the costs of new transmission.  But like the Interestate highways, the intestate supergrid is a public good, benefitting the entire nation.  We can finance it through ratepayer charges spread out across grid interconnects (as some have proposed), or we can finance it through taxpayer dollars (a more progressive solution), but ultimately, public finances will (and should) be used to finance a good portfion of such critical public infrastructure.

Keep up the great posts,

Jesse Jenkins
WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

On What percentage renewables?

"At this point we can't know what will actually deliver the goods, in the long run; we should be buying more options, not closing doors."

Well said Geoff. Scenarios are good to consider potential paths forward. Not good when they become overly proscriptive. And I fear that's exactly the point of the Greenpeace report (and for the record, I also have several friends at Greenpeace, so I'm sympathetic to what they're up to).

I blame George W. Bush's attempts to play arguments about (lack of) technological readiness against action to deploy current technologies, but there's been far too much effort on the part of Green Groups to convince everyone that "we have all the technology we need; all we lack is the political will" (as the tired piece of "wisdom" goes). Unfortunately, this just isn't true, according to just about every objective observer. Significant improvements in price and performance of existing technologies and a whole new generation of techs would be needed to fully decarbonize the global energy system, all while supplying vastly greater amounts of energy to a developing population of 9 billion by mid-century at an affordable cost (see Richard Smalley's "The Terawatt Challenge" (pdf) for a beautiful description of the scale of our challenge). We have a long way to go after all, until clean energy can make coal and oil obsolete, the way personal computers made the typewriter obsolete, or automobiles made the horse and buggy obsolete.

All that said, that is in NO way an argument against action today. We certainly have enough technologies to begin the task of decarbonizing the global energy system without delay. It's ludicrous, really, to assert we need to have every technology we need today to accomplish a multi-decadal transition to a global clean energy system to even begin such a transition. Of course we can get started. And since cost and performance improvements often happen during deployment (as economies of scale are reached and learning-by-doing occurs), there's all the more reason to make serious investments in the deployment of clean energy technologies today.

I fear though, that efforts to convince policymakers "we have all the tools we need" amount to cutting off our nose to spite our face. We need to begin today (yesterday really), a major increase in RD&D in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency, to open up new, massively scalable and more affordable pathways to a prosperous, low-carbon global economy. The clock is ticking, and breakthrough's don't happen overnight, after all.

Cheers,
Jesse Jenkins
WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

On New flavors of chutzpah

Excellent post Lou.  And bravo for highly appropriate use of the word chutzpah! My Jewish bubbe (grandma) would be proud.

I covered the Harriman coal ash story pretty extensively for those interested here.

On Geoengineering: Time to get serious?

Marc, excellent, thought-provoking piece.  If we are to take the scientific reports on climate seriously (and they just get worse and worse), it's not hard to see we'd be wise to invest R&D dollars in opening up new potential options, including geoengineering and air capture (both chemistry and biologically based).  Great post.  I'm going to link through to this from the Breakthrough Institute blog.

On What percentage renewables?

Haven't read the Greenpeace report yet, but plan to. Initial reaction is (a) extreme skepticism (b) a "who cares?" response.

(a) Skepticism: the conclusion that we can meet global energy needs and slash emissions with ONLY today's technologies requires a HUGE stretch of the imagination and directly contradicts a pretty broad expert consensus that even while we deploy today's technologies, we must strive to steadily improve their price and performance while getting serious about driving R&D to make breakthroughs in materials, methods and designs that can make non-linear improvements in price to make clean energy cheap. Steven Chu recently testified in Congress to this effect and spoke to reporters at the Times to say something very similar last month. He called for a "second industrial revolution" and "Nobel-level breakthroughs" in clean energy technologies. Not exactly the kind of thing that jives with the hunky-dory conclusions of the Greenpeace report.

(b) Who cares: about 2050 that is. Like Geoff notes, 2050 scenarios are largely an exercise in imagination, not planning. Could we have even envisioned the U.S. economy of today in 1958? Focusing on nearer-term timelines, like 2020 or 2030 are much more relevant for scenario planning. We need to see how far we can push things in the next 10-20 years, and strive to open up as many potential pathways to a low-carbon global energy system in that time period. Thinking ahead to 2050 is fine, but doesn't tell us much that useful for planning or policy purposes.

Again, haven't read the Greenpeace report yet, and plan to soon, but that's my initial reaction to the press reports.

Cheers,
Jesse Jenkins
WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

On $10B in Stimulus for High Speed Rail: How Did it Get There and Is it Enough?

China has a magnetic levitation train line running between the Shanghai airport and the city center.  They've built the largest high-speed rail system in the world in just four years.  We are WAY behind! 

Freakin' maglev trains!  In China... 

It's time to take our place in the 21st century with a proper, functioning high-speed rail system linking our major population centers.  This is a good first step, but as you accurately point out, we've got a long way to go.  Great post.

Jesse Jenkins
WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

On Cap as the next stimulus

The problem, of course, is that no political economy in the world has been willing to impose a truly "hard" or binding carbon cap, without including one, or usually several cost containment provisions.  The EU ETS overallocated allowances, allows plenty of offsets through the CDM, and has therefore seen prices collapse several times.  Every bill proposed in the U.S. Congress has included either explicit safety valves, heavy use of offsets, discretionaly price controls, borrowing from future allowance periods or sometimes all of the above. 

The reason?  The public and policymakers alike are reluctant to increase energy prices significantly.  That's true in the U.S. and, yes, in the much-hallowed EU.  It's even more true in China and India, where the two nation's leaders have made it clear, over and over again, that they will not accept higher energy prices through carbon pricing if it constrains their economic development.  And why should they, when they are still working to pull literally hundreds of millions of their citizens out of poverty?

The upshot though is this: there is essentially no such thing as a true cap.  All you have is a variable carbon price, set by market factors (and inherently volatile ones at that) that floats between $0/ton and whatever the maximum price political constraints or explicit cost containment provisions will allow.  Since a cap's only enforcement mechanism - the only tool to ensure that "environmental outcome" it supposedly "guarantees" - is that price, the only way it will ensure the environmental outcomes are met is if there is a ready and abundant supply of emissions reduction opportunities at costs lower than that maximum tolerably price.

This argues two things:

First: caps are illusions.  They give us a false sense of security, in a world where innovation is uncertain and politics constrains action.  There is no cap.  Not when the ideal version of the market mechanism is translated into the world of political economy (i.e. reality).

Second: if we want to see emissions targets hit, we must focus explicitly and earnestly on accelerating clean energy technology innovation.  We must rapidly develop and deploy a whole suite of clean energy technologies, improving the price and performance of all.  Without clean and cheap energy sources, we will not achieve emissions reductions at costs below what the public will tolerate.

Carbon pricing is great, but doesn't solve all of the many non-price barriers to innovation and the deployment of new technologies. Rather than put all our faith in a top-down policy like cap and trade that supposedly guarantees success (while doing nothing of the sort), we'd be better served to take a bottoms-up approach to identifying key emissions reduction opportunities in each sector of the economy; identify the key barriers to these opportunities; and use whatever policy tools we can, including regulations, carbon prices, and direct public investments, to bring those barriers down.

And we must implement an overall strategy to make clean, massively scalable energy sources cheap as well.  China, India and the developing world demand abundant and affordable energy sources to fuel their development.  Fossil fuels are currently the only thing that fits the bill, and as long as that is the case, climatic chaos is essentially guaranteed.  It's time to make clean energy cheap.