The opportunity to advance transformative, progressive change has never been greater. Now, in the wake of the 2008 election and the historic Power Shift summit, young progressives have a unique opportunity to take a step back and look at the big picture: How can the we continue advancing bold solutions on energy and climate? What can young people do beyond energy and climate? And if national climate legislation succeeds, what’s the next “Big Idea” for the progressive youth movement?
These are just some of the ideas we’re exploring in a Special Breakthrough Issue – “After Power Shift: What’s Next?” – to examine the next steps for the progressive youth movement. The issue will include contributions from some of the country’s top young leaders throughout the week, and we hope you’ll join the discussion. Here’s our first piece to kick it off.
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Want to Save the World? Make Clean Energy Cheap.
By Teryn Norris & Jesse Jenkins
The Huffington Post
Over 12,000 young adults attended the recent Power Shift 2009 summit in Washington, DC. Their goal? Building the largest youth movement in decades to save the world from global warming.
Largely missing from Power Shift, however, was a critical group: young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Maybe it was mid-terms. Perhaps the event seemed too political. Or maybe the summit recruited too many traditionally-defined “activists.”
Whatever the cause, we have very little chance of overcoming climate change without enlisting young innovators at a drastically greater scale. Simply put, they represent one of the most important catalysts for creating a clean energy economy and achieving long-term prosperity.
The reason is this: at its core, climate change is a challenge of technology innovation. Over the next four decades, global energy demand will approximately double. Most of this growth will happen in developing nations as they continue lifting their citizens out of poverty and building modern societies. But over the same period, global greenhouse gas emissions must fall dramatically to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
Shortly before his untimely death in 2005, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Smalley coined this the “Terawatt Challenge“: increasing global energy production from roughly 15 terawatts in 2005 to 60 terawatts annually by 2100 in a way that simultaneously confronts the challenges of global warming, poverty alleviation, and resource depletion.
The single greatest obstacle to meeting the Terawatt Challenge is the “technology gap” between dirty and clean energy sources. Low-carbon energy technologies remain significantly more expensive than fossil fuels. For example, solar photovoltaic electricity costs up to three to five times that of coal electricity, and plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles are about twice as expensive as their gasoline-fueled competitors.
Unless this technology gap is bridged and clean energy technologies become affordable and scalable, poor and rich nations alike will continue opposing significant prices on their carbon emissions and will continue relying primarily upon coal and other fossil fuels to power their development. This will virtually assure massive climate destabilization.
So the task is clear: to avoid climate catastrophe and create a new energy economy, we must unleash our forces of innovation — namely, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs — to invent a new portfolio of truly scalable clean energy technologies, chart new paths to bring these technologies to market, and ensure they are affordable enough to deploy throughout the world.
In short, to save the world we must make clean energy cheap.
Making clean energy cheap and transforming the world’s energy systems will require a long-term, herculean effort – or as Secretary of Energy Steven Chu recently described it, a “second industrial revolution” – and an entire generation of the world’s best and brightest young engineers, scientists and entrepreneurs. Just like the “Sputnik” generation committed itself to the Cold War and led the information technology revolution, today’s generation must commit itself to the Terawatt Challenge and lead the global energy revolution.
So where do we start? An innovation-centric approach to climate and energy calls for several things. First, if you’re an aspiring engineer or scientist, consider focusing your education and career on energy technology and science. If you’re a budding entrepreneur hatching business schemes, direct your creativity toward smart ways to make clean energy profitable. If you’re going into policymaking, learn everything you can about technology policy. If you’re passionate about economics, become a pioneer in the emerging field of innovation economics. The list goes on, but the central point is that we need to become the “innovation generation” to tackle the Terawatt Challenge.
Second, students should demand far greater educational resources related to energy technology and policy at their schools, including new professors, curriculum, career development opportunities and research. Every significant institution of higher education in the country should have an energy-related institute that incubates cutting-edge thinking, research and innovation. Indeed, the greatest contribution our nation’s universities, colleges and vocational schools can make is educating and preparing tomorrow’s leaders and promoting energy innovation. If you’re a student activist looking to make an impact, consider organizing a campus campaign to launch a university-wide energy institute for new education and research.
Finally, if our central goal is to make clean energy cheap, as young people we need to focus our advocacy on policies that will drive technology innovation as rapidly as possible. Yes, we need new regulations and a price on carbon. But consider this: the United States did not invent the Internet by implementing a cap and trade system on fax machines. We didn’t invent microchips by taxing the slide rule, nor did we create the personal computer by regulating typewriters. Rather, your computer, your cell phone, your iPod — all of these revolutionary and now ubiquitous technologies were originally invented by direct federal investments supporting the relentless innovation of scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs just like yourself.
Thus the policy model isn’t so much past environmental regulations, but past federal investments in technology – like those in airplanes, microchips, the internet, and biotechnology. This requires public investments along each stage of the “innovation pipeline,” from R&D to demonstration and deployment. Moreover, just like the federal government rose to the Sputnik Challenge with the National Defense Education Act, we need to confront the Terawatt Challenge with a National Energy Education Act. Obama’s stimulus took a step in this direction, but as Secretary Chu put it last week: “Our previous investments in science that led to the birth of the semiconductor, computer and biotechnology industry added greatly to economic prosperity. And now we need similar breakthroughs in energy today. We already taking steps forward, but we need to do more.”
So, you want to save the world? Make clean energy cheap.
I have often noticed that there is low representation of science and engineering students in the climate movement. I also have not read of any serious attempts to involve such students in the climate groups. Not only is their technical knowledge useful, it would dispel the stereotype that the climate issue is just another protest fad by the sociology majors.
Teryn,
As we encourage people to dive into business, lets not forget the business of implementing the technology we already have. Breakthrough’s in technology are great. Putting the things we already have in people’s homes, and figuring out how to do that on a large scale is its own kind of breakthrough.
We paint an exciting picture about being cutting edge and being an industry leader, but those are not the technologies that change our energy use today. Things that are market tested, mass produced and simple to use do not need R and D, they need marketing and salesmanship. We should hold this up as another critical role for young people in every background.
The Obama campaign was successful because it valued everyone’s contribution, but kept the focus on the spade work that needed to be done – making phone calls, knocking on doors and registering voters. Where is the call for young people to join the ranks of solar installers, building auditors and lighting experts? That is a future (and a present source of income) that makes sense for a vast number of Americans, not just those who can do cutting edge research or high-level policy work.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you’re saying – if you read my post I say the same things. I want to call attention to what’s left out, and where the opportunities are for a large number of people now.
Teryn,
As we encourage people to dive into business, lets not forget the business of implementing the technology we already have. Breakthrough’s in technology are great. Putting the things we already have in people’s homes, and figuring out how to do that on a large scale is its own kind of breakthrough.
We paint an exciting picture about being cutting edge and being an industry leader, but those are not the technologies that change our energy use today. Things that are market tested, mass produced and simple to use do not need R and D, they need marketing and salesmanship. We should hold this up as another critical role for young people in every background.
The Obama campaign was successful because it valued everyone’s contribution, but kept the focus on the spade work that needed to be done – making phone calls, knocking on doors and registering voters. Where is the call for young people to join the ranks of solar installers, building auditors and lighting experts? That is a future (and a present source of income) that makes sense for a vast number of Americans, not just those who can do cutting edge research or high-level policy work.
I’m not disagreeing with anything you’re saying – if you read my post I say the same things. I want to call attention to what’s left out, and where the opportunities are for a large number of people now.
Sorry, forgot to add great post! Can’t wait to see your next post!
Hey Morgan, thanks for the comment. I agree 100% on the importance of deploying solutions today, and I’m really glad you expanded upon that in your post. Sounds like you’re doing exciting work with Eastern Energy Systems. Overall, I think we have a very similar mindset about the entrepreneurial, solutions-oriented work young people can be doing.
The reason we highlight young scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs is for a few reasons. From what we’ve seen, they’ve been largely left out of the so-called “youth climate movement.” “Green jobs” have been promoted for a while now, but they’ve mostly focused on efficiency and renewable energy installation. Andy Revkin had some good coverage on this issue back in December. So part of our goal is to introduce this group to the youth climate movement, as well as to inspire young innovators to commit themselves to tackling the energy challenge.
We’re also trying to inspire young people to think about how they can help “make clean energy cheap” through their activities and careers. We think this framework has big implications for what students should prioritize in their “green” educations and careers. We find this to be a very powerful and important frame, because ultimately we believe making clean energy cheap is what’s necessary to dramatically accelerate the global energy transition, for the reasons explained above — happy to discuss those reasons more if you like. (Google had a similar slogan with “Renewable Energy Cheaper than Coal” (RE<C), but unfortunately they never really ran with it.) Making clean energy cheap doesn’t at all exclude installation (see below), but it’s a different way of seeing your own role. Your work becomes not just about reducing carbon footprints, but also about promoting technological development.
So what does making clean energy cheap mean for “green jobs” more focused on installation? That’s an important question, and now that I think about it we should probably write another post explaining this in greater detail. A strategy for making clean energy cheap is integrally tied to early-stage deployment of clean energy technologies today. In many cases, early-stage technology deployment is where you achieve the most cost reductions, from learning-by-doing and increased economies of scale. I think the key, then, is for young entrepreneurs to focus their efforts on identifying emerging clean energy technologies and creating business models to deploy them in ways that prioritize the achievement of cost reductions. Isn’t that a very different way of looking at the role of installation? Within this framework, the goal isn’t just simply to “reduce emissions” — it’s also about making clean energy cheap, because we know that’s what is necessary to dramatically accelerate the global energy revolution.
Cheers,
Teryn
Teryn and Jesse write: “at its core, climate change is a challenge of technology innovation.”
I am hopeful that such a narrow frame of analysis that implies the abandonment of what was most critical and inspiring about Powershift does not constitute “what’s next.”
“I’m gonna tell you the truth about it, if all you do is have a clean energy revolution you won’t have done anything, and I’m gonna tell you why… If all we do is take out the dirty power system, the dirty power generation in this system, and just replace it with some clean stuff, put a solar panel on top of this system, but don’t deal with how we are consuming water, we don’t deal with how we are treating our other sister and brother species, we don’t deal with toxins, we don’t deal with the way we treat each other- if that’s not a part of this movement let me tell you what you’ll have: you’ll have solar powered bulldozers, solar powered buzzsaws, and biofueled bombers and we’ll be fighting wars over lithium for the batteries instead of oil for the engines and we’ll still have a dead planet. We’re not gonna put a new battery in a broken system, we want a new system- We want a new system! We’re going to change the whole thing… don’t let anyone tell you anything different…”- Van Jones, Powershift09 Keynote Address
The Cold War spending frequently referenced was supported by big business precisely because it was part of a war to maintain that broken system. Federal investments in clean energy projects that undermine the broken system Jones described are very necessary but require a change in political power to occur.
If the “innovation economics” being touted here bear any relation to the monetarist economics school of Teryn’s Reaganite mentor at the CATO institute that were so instrumental to the human and environmental disasters from the past decades of neo-liberalism (as even British PM Gordon Brown has had to admit “promot[ed] economic orthodoxies that we ourselves have not followed and that have condemned the world’s poorest to a deepening crisis of poverty”) not to mention underpin the current economic crisis, then I should hope young scientists of all disciplines are thoroughly unimpressed…
Young progressives absolutely need to do more than confront climate change. That’s partly why we created this special issue, to look beyond climate at the broader youth progressive movement. This post focused on climate and energy because we wanted to get this message out to young innovators and help foster a more inclusive movement. We do think greater efforts on energy innovation and entrepreneurship are a very important part of what’s next, and we’ve been really excited to see that other young people are looking in this direction as well.
We need to deal with confronting climate change in many ways and i’d love to see plastic bags banned asap
100% agreed with Paul. There’s no real reason for the bags to exist, and it ends up being cheaper for just about everyone to get rid of them due to the savings for businesses (which end up causing lower prices) and the environmental benefits for consumers. Cleaning up our past business practices should be the first step taken in order to improve our future ones.