Despite increased talk about climate change and energy security, federal R&D spending on energy has declined over the last decade. Daniel Kammen reckons it is time for the new presidential candidates to explain how they are going to rectify this worrying situation

Over the next five decades progress to meaningfully address the risk of significant climate change will require an estimated 80 percent, or more, reduction in the global emissions of greenhouse gases. From the baseline in 2007 of over seven billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions, three-quarters of which comes from fossil fuel combustion (with the remainder largely from land conversion and forest burning), the reductions required are from a global emissions portfolio that is currently increasing.

As the largest current emitter, at roughly 25 percent of the global total -- but more importantly as the nation with the largest energy resource and research base to affect change -- the United States and its inaction on climate protection for the last several years is poised to play a critical role, if not the critical role in our collective climate future.

It is now very clear that through action or inaction, our collective climate future is strongly tied to what course the United States steers in the beginning of the 21st Century.

A range of technologies exist that can protect the environment and improve our economic and political security -- in many cases not at a cost, but instead with political and economic benefits to the nation in the form of reasserted leadership both technologically and financially, through increased geopolitical stability and flexibility, and through job growth in the clean energy sector.

To accomplish these goals, not only will a comprehensive strategy be needed, but we must develop a balanced approach that recognises that replacing the vast infrastructure and economic machinery developed to exploit fossil fuels will be a central challenge of the 21st Century, and one where the fundamental mindset of large, centralised energy monopolies will need to evolve to one of a decentralised clean energy marketplace. This is the issue where -- more than any set of technologies or economic incentives -- climate change causes the most uncertainty, and in some cases fear and pushback.

Developing a balanced portfolio of energy research, development, and deployment projects is central to meeting the challenge of climate change, but it is equally clear that "technology push" projects must be accompanied by "demand pull measures." Among the most important demand-pull -- or market creating or enabling -- options available to us today are:

• A national commitment to saving money and energy through energy efficiency measures at every step of the economic value chain (some states, including California, are fully 40 percent more efficient than the national average);
• The pursuit and steady increase of renewable energy portfolio standards as a baseline, and in the cities, states and regions with mandate to pursue more aggressive policies, the addition of feed-in laws to diversify and expand the number and type of clean energy producers;
• Low-carbon fuel standards that evolve in time into sustainable fuel standards;
• The use of carbon taxes or cap and trade systems under which carbon emission rights are limited;
• Developing and using for business, industrial, municipal and -- critically -- personal purchases carbon footprint analyses; and
• International collaborations and public-private partnerships designed to commercialise, or at least open market space for clean energy and energy efficient technologies.

This is a remarkably simple list, but one that has enough teeth, and economic opportunities, to truly harness the innovative power of the Superpower economy. It also happens to be a simple enough plan that a suitably committed presidential candidate, or president, could put it into action.

Despite a great deal of sound and fury, it is critical to recognise that we currently do not have an energy plan. In the United States arguably there has not been anything even remotely resembling an "energy plan" since the efforts by Presidents Ford and Carter three decades ago.

Recently, however, integrated planning on climate and energy has begun to emerge, although largely at the state and regional level. The precedent for this changing the course of national energy policy is, however, a strong one. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis wrote in 1932 that:

… a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel economic and social experiments….

Conservative and liberal justices have quoted this line over 30 times in subsequent Supreme Court opinions. Courageous experiments are now taking place in a number of US states, and can form the basis of needed federal legislation and leadership.

The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006 (AB32) in California, as well as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic States are such examples. By contrast, the US Federal government's current target will require only a slight change from the business as usual case (Figure 1, left). More relevant to the climate problem, reaching this target would actually allow emissions to grow by 12 to 16 percent. This target would thus represent a larger increase than the 10 percent increase that occurred in the previous decade.

If we are to be serious about meeting the climate challenge we need to set a goal consistent with the US Department of Energy's Climate Change Technology Plan (CCTP) objective of moving in the long term (e.g. ~ 2050) toward 80 percent reductions in net emissions. In fact, the CCTP actually mentions a zeroing of net emissions at some time after mid-century.

The California climate change protection plan is one to carefully consider in developing a comprehensive climate plan. The Governor of California's five decade GHG emissions targets of 80 percent below 1990 levels (EE 3-05) and the 25 percent GHG reductions adopted via AB32 (signed on September 27, 2006) include both near-term and longer-term goals -- including market-based cap and trade mechanisms -- that delineate a path of emissions reductions toward climate stabilisation. Congress should act to set a series of targets that show a clear path to meaningful emissions reductions.

What is needed is a sustained commitment to emissions reductions and a time scale that conveys to the country the urgency of the need for future options. The California plan, for example, does not start or end with AB32, but includes a set of mutually reinforcing laws and executive orders. The most recent of which, the Low Carbon Fuel Standard (EE 1-07) makes a significant advance in our regulatory power to discriminate between the full range of liquid (petroleum or fossil-fuel based) fuels or electricity to power plug-in hybrid vehicles. The California plan represents only one such path to a low-carbon integrated, consistent approach that both initiates early action and clarifies the long-term roadmap to a decarbonised future.

The US has under-invested in energy research, development, and deployment for decades, and sadly the FY2008 budget request is no exception. This history is shown in Figure 2 left: federal energy research and development investment is today back at pre-OPEC levels -- despite a panoply of reasons why energy dependence and insecurity, and climatic impact from our energy economy are dominating local economics, geopolitics, and environmental degradation.

As an example of the "commitment" to clean energy, consider the US federal energy budget. At $2.7 billion for energy research, the overall federal energy research and development budget request for 2008 request is $685 million higher than the 2006 appropriated budget. Half of that increased request is accounted for by increases in fission, and the rest is in moderate increases in funding for biofuels, solar, FutureGen, and $147 million increase for fusion research. However, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) budget is to be cut precisely at a time when concerns over energy security and climate change are at their highest level.

The larger issue, however, is that as a nation we invest less in energy research, development, and deployment than do a few large biotechnology firms in their own, private R&D budgets. This is unacceptable on many fronts. The least of which is that we know that investments in energy research pay off at both the national and private sector levels.

In a series of papers (Margolis and Kammen, 1999; Kammen and Nemet, 2005; Nemet and Kammen, 2007 -- all available from the RAEL website), my students and I have documented a disturbing trend away from investment in energy technology -- both by the federal government and the private sector, which largely follows the federal lead.

The US invests about $1 billion less in energy R&D today than it did a decade ago. This trend is remarkable, first because the levels in the mid-1990s had already been identified as dangerously low, and second because, as our analysis indicates, the decline is pervasive across almost every energy technology category, in both the public and private sectors, and at multiple stages in the innovation process. In each of these areas investment has been either been stagnant or declining. Moreover, the decline in investment in energy has occurred while overall US R&D has grown by 6 percent per year, and federal R&D investments in health and defence have grown by 10 and 15 percent per year, respectively.

Figure 2 shows all US federal R&D programs since 1955. Notice the thin strip showing the small energy R&D program relative to other sectors. The current budgets for energy R&D would continue this situation, or even reduce R&D investment (Kammen and Nemet, 2005). This is not in the best interests of the nation.

We are now in a moment -- perhaps a first -- where a growing view exists that energy and climate could be front-burner issues for candidates and voters. The time is right to focus on the energy system we want, not on the one we had, and sadly, still have.

Daniel M. Kammen is the Class of 1935 Distinguished Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley. He co-directs the Berkeley Institute of the Environment and is founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. He has appointments in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy.

This article first appeared at Greenbiz.com