Economy

For those wanting to take a break from the campaign, here is a report on climate change and clean technology....

When it comes to addressing climate change how do we do more than play at the margins? That was the challenge posed by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the latest Cleantech conference bringing together venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, clean tech entrepreneurs and others seeking market solutions to climate change. Noting that San Francisco has the largest fleet of plug in hybrids in the country-three, Newsom warned that despite all the promise of new clean technologies, rollout has barely begun A lot of low hanging fruit is out there, Newsom exhorted, but mayors, governors, corporations and people need to do reach out and pick it.

At the latest Cleantech, a conference that has gone from filling a room to an entire hotel in just three years, a host of visionaries and venture capitalists looking to cash in on what John Doerr says is a bigger opportunity than the Internet, exchanged the latest news on thin film solar technologies, biofuels, windmills and electric cars as oil economists predicted gas prices of over $4 per gallon this summer and higher prices ahead. With global oil production at close to full capacity and China and India just beginning their consumption trajectories, oil prices (as well as those of natural gas) seem almost certain to continue to climb. Falling prices of batteries, solar power and other renewables have made clean technologies the obvious solution to a looming energy and climate disaster. But first costs have to drop and acceptance has to increase.

Concentrating solar power through mirrors is one promising way to bring the cost of solar power down. So are thin films-the use of sun absorbing foil and other materials--in place of expensive silicon. To store intermittent wind, water and solar energy, better and cheaper storage, whether mechanical or chemical in the form of lithium ion batteries, will be critical. Finally, new business and pricing models will be important to the rollout of electric cars, home generation of electricity and other consumer methods of creating power.

While the technologies on display were impressive, they are not developing quickly enough to stop, for example, the melting of the summer Arctic ice cap. That's where policy will be critical. The easiest lift is efficiency. California consumes only one half the energy of the country as a whole at no loss to consumers. Speakers agreed on the need to "put a price on carbon" whether through a carbon tax or cap and trade system with several projecting that the United States would have a cap and trade system in place within 24 months. A "feed in" tariff such as that employed in Germany that pays consumers for producing power, predictable instead of on-and-off subsidies and decoupling of production from purchase markets were also mentioned as critical levers.

Blocking progress has been the stodgy nature power utilities-the largest customer for many products--that operate under a web of regulation. Absent in the industry so far has been the adrenaline of cost reduction through mass production-the driver of the consumer electronics, cell phone and Internet revolutions.

While no one has yet figured out a way to marry the speed of the Internet to clean technology, next month Vice President Gore's Alliance for Climate Protection will begin a multi million dollar ad campaign to raise awareness of the danger of climate change and hopefully accelerate action.

Indeed, other countries are arguably outpacing the United States. At the conference, Dr. Sultan Ahmed al Jaber of the UAE accepted an award for the UAE's $15 billion clean tech initiative, Masrad. If the US has one strength it is innovation and high tech companies are rushing to get into the game with Google, in particular, making a huge push to reduce its carbon footprint and offering $10 million to companies making a plug-in hybrid car. Google has installed one of the world's largest collections of solar panels the Googleplex.

I'll be back in California later in the month to meet with clean tech participants and NDN members to learn about your efforts and insights regarding this challenge. Or email me at mmoynihan@ndn.org.

One of the speakers at our Moment of Transformation day-long conference on March 12th will be a high tech entrepreneur with no experience in politics. But, like everyone else at this event, he is in the transformation business. And political people will find it useful to listen closely to what he has to say.

Shai Agassi is trying to transform the $1.5 trillion-a-year auto industry and eventually make the $1.5 trillion-a-year gasoline industry obsolete. He is the CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up called Better Place that is trying to jumpstart the electric car business with an approach to building an infrastructure for swapping out batteries in a practical, quick way.

Agassi is no wide-eyed dreamer. He was one of a handful of top executives at SAP, the third-largest software company in the world, and he barely was edged out for the top CEO position in 2007. When he did not get that job, he left to become the founder and CEO of Better Place. Since then he has successfully lobbied the Israeli government to back his plan to quickly scale up electric cars in Israel. He has raised more than $200 million in venture capital, and found a auto-company partner in Renault Nissan. This plan is for real. For the detaield version of this amazing tale, check out a recent BusinessWeek story.

Agassi will be speaking late in the morning on March 12th about his big, bold idea and what it takes to think and act in a transformative manner. With all the talk about change and even transformative change coming to politics, we will be stepping back and talking about just how transformative the changes could be in America and the world as we come off this historic election. Agassi will be just one of about a dozen people talking about the transformations happening in their fields of expertise.

We hope that you will come and join many others in giving your insights into what kind of change we will see coming in the months and years ahead. Spread the word about this free, open event among your friends and colleagues. And then make sure you come and RSVP. Thanks .

Peter Leyden
Director of the New Politics Institute

Traveling in Europe, last week, I got a first hand impression of the urgency with which Europeans view the climate change issue. While climate change is just now breaking through as an important political concern in the US, in Europe it is a mainstream concern, popping up in advertising in the London Tube, on television in France and in speeches across the continent. Europeans are--after years of wringing their hands--optimistic if not ecstatic that with the three leading US presidential candidates, Obama, Clinton and McCain all favoring major action on climate change, the US will again engage on this issue.

At the ULI Europe conference in Paris, former UK chief scientist, David King spoke about the multi-billion dollar investments, the UK is making in flood and drainage control in anticipation of erratic weather and a new billion dollar private-public fund to develop technologies to combat climate change. The author of the forthcoming book, The Hot Topic, King, like others I spoke with, is optimistic that the US is now poised to reassume a leadership role. Some of the points he raises are indeed alarming. The summer size of the Arctic ice cap is now a fraction of what it was a mere 20 years ago. Seeing the thousands of square miles of former summer ice that are now open water on a map brings the magnitude of warming home. While the melting of the northern ice cap is alarming, since the ice is formed from ocean water, it is unlikely to have the devastating impact of the melting of the Greenland Ice Shelf which would send land-trapped water flowing into the ocean, raising sea levels by many meters, but that too is accelerating. Were the shelf to melt, some of the largest cities in the world, among them New York, but also many of the megacities of Asia would become uninhabitable. What King's work shows is that even at current levels of carbon dioxide production, there is a 20% chance of disaster. Major action is needed to reverse far worse odds. Thus the importance of the US again showing leadership on this issue.

Key members of the environmental community such as Michael Jacobs, Gordon Brown's special advisor on climate change whom I met with at 10 Downing Street, view US engagement as critical to a globally integrated approach to reducing emissions. The European cap and trade system which got off to a rocky start is, nonetheless now up and running and central to European climate change policy. Trading of carbon permits has created about five thousand financial jobs in London, according to one knowledgeable observer. Environmentalists I spoke with suggested a number of ways that a US system such as the ones proposed for California, the Northeast and, even for the US as a whole in the Warner Lieberman legislation, might learn from the European example. For example, they stressed the importance of auctioning off credits-as opposed to handing them out to polluters--and imposing tight limits. Both Senators Obama and Clinton support the 80% reduction by 2050 and full auctioning of credits recommended by the environmental community.

European environmentalists also support outright mandates and a carbon tax of the type recently endorsed by Vice President Gore.

In coming months, I am excited to be leading NDN's Green project to create a policy framework to combat climate change and working with the NDN community, the emerging clean technology community and other stakeholders to achieve real results. Please email me at mmoynihan@ndn.org with your ideas and suggestions.

The other thing one notices visiting Europe after a hiatus, is the comparative absence of sprawl. With high speed rail now ubiquitous on the continent and gas about twice the price here in the States, the spawl gap between Europe and the US could not be more striking. The Eurostar linking Paris and London now makes the trip in just over two hours. Traveling from Paris to Nice or Bordeaux, once an eight hour tip, is now a two hour blur. Paris has municipal mountain bikes for rent using a credit card at stands across the city. The first half hour is free. In cafes, waiters print out receipts using a handheld printer at your table rather than walking back to a cash register. Half size smart cars from Mercedes that one can easily park and maneuver are the rage.

One is reminded that while the US has been preoccupied with the Iraq war over the last eight years, Europe has been investing and advancing. Nothing stands still and, if the US is to regain its leadership position, it must again discover the future.