Monday, November 2, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Energy and Global Warming News for November 2: Concentrated solar power from Sahara a step closer; Gore says Obama likely to attend Copenhagen

Posted: 02 Nov 2009 09:38 AM PST

Desertec

Concentrated solar thermal power from Sahara a step closer

A $400bn (£240bn) plan to provide Europe with solar power from the Sahara moved a step closer to reality today with the formation of a consortium of 12 companies to carry out the work.

The Desertec Industrial Initiative (DII) aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 or earlier via power lines stretching across the desert and Mediterranean sea.

The German-led consortium was brought together by Munich Re, the world's biggest reinsurer, and consists of some of country's biggest engineering and power companies, including Siemens, E.ON, ABB and Deutsche Bank.

It now believes the DII can deliver solar power to Europe as early as 2015.

"We have now passed a real milestone as the company has been founded and there is definitely a profitable business there," said Professor Peter Höppe, Munich Re's head of climate change.

"We see this as a big step towards solving the two main problems facing the world in the coming years – climate change and energy security," said Höppe.

The solar technology involved is known as concentrated solar power (CSP) which uses mirrors to concentrate the sun's rays on a fluid container. The super-heated liquid then drives turbines to generate electricity. The advantage over solar photovoltaic panels, which convert sunlight directly to electricity, is that if sufficient hot fluid is stored in containers, the generators can run all night.

For more on CSP, see "Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload — a core climate solution" and "World's largest solar plant with thermal storage to be built in Arizona — total of 8500 MW of this core climate solution planned for 2014 in U.S. alone" and "The secret to low-water-use, high-efficiency concentrating solar power"

For more on Desertec, read the study, "Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East."  More from the story:

The technology is not new – there have been CSP plants running in the deserts of California and Nevada for two decades. But it is the scale of the Desertec initiative which is a first, along with plans to connect North Africa to Europe with new high voltage direct current cables which transport electricity over great distances with little loss.

Leading European energy industry expert Paul van Son has been appointed chief executive of DII and will recruit staff to build up a framework to make the building of both power plants and the grid infrastructure.

"We recognise and strongly support the Desertec vision as a pivotal part of the transition to a sustainable energy supply in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe," he said.

"Now the time has come to turn this vision into reality. That implies intensive cooperation with many parties and cultures to create a sound basis for feasible investments into renewable energy technologies and interconnected grids."

Desertec has gained broad support across Europe, with the newly elected German coalition government of Angela Merkel hoping the project could offset its dependence on Russian gas supplies.

North African governments are said to be keen, too, to further exploit their natural resources. Algeria and Libya are already big oil and gas suppliers to Europe.

Höppe said Munich Re had been concerned about the potential impact of climate change on the insurance business since the early 1970s. Extreme weather events related to climate change are already a reality and have the potential to be uninsurable against within a few decades, pointing to a possible crisis for the industry, he said.

"To keep our business model alive in 30 or 40 years we have to ensure things are still insurable," he said.

Munich Re also plans to invest in the new initiative and Höppe said banks were confident that they could raise sufficient funding to make the project work.

There are already some small CSP plants in Spain and North Africa, with the power used locally. But Desertec plans to see big power stations of one gigawatt operating in five years' time and exporting some current across the Mediterranean. The consortium stresses, though, that power generated by solar fields in North Africa would be used by North Africans as well as Europeans. North Africa has a small population relative to the size of its deserts. For similar reasons Australia is putting together its own Desertec initiative.

Gore Says Obama Likely to Attend Copenhagen Climate Summit

US President Barack Obama is likely to attend the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December, former US Vice President Al Gore has told SPIEGEL in an interview. Gore said he is optimistic the US Congress will agree an outline of climate legislation before the conference, allowing Obama to head to the Danish capital with "a more substantive position."

Former US Vice President Al Gore says US President Barack Obama is likely to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December.

"I see the calendar, I see the unfolding of events, and I feel certain he will go," Gore told SPIEGEL in an interview. Gore expressed optimism that the US Congress will agree on the outline of climate change legislation before the conference. "Therefore, I think there is a very real prospect that the legislation will pass, and that as a result, Obama will have the ability to go to Copenhagen with a more substantive position."

Gore also asked emerging nations for radical changes in their climate change policy: "They have to accept binding provisions. Many developing nations are still thinking that the wealthier countries will take binding obligations, and the developing countries will have non-binding provisions. That is not a formula for success."

Gore also commented on Obama's presidency, saying: "He had a bad summer, but he is having a good fall."

He said about criticism that the president is engaging in too many reform projects at the same time: "After eight years of retrogression, Obama would have been more bitterly criticized if he had chosen only one priority and had not tried to address the many challenges that need to be undertaken. So I do think there is a grain of truth to it, but I also know that his mandate was and is strongest at the beginning of his term."

Gore also addressed the risk of presidential over-exposure by too many appearances: "There have been times when I thought that President Obama maybe got close to that line, for instance with regard to his television interviews."

Merkel to Pressure U.S. Lawmakers to Step Up Climate Measures

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will call on U.S. lawmakers to step up efforts to fight climate change when she speaks to Congress next week, adding pressure as leaders gear up for a make-or-break United Nations summit.

Merkel will speak jointly to the House of Representatives and Senate on Nov. 3, carrying with her the European Union's goal of a 30 percent reduction of air pollution blamed for global warming by rich nations as a whole. She said she'll tell Congress it's time to join a campaign the EU began years ago.

"We just can't do it all by ourselves," Merkel told reporters after an EU summit meeting today in Brussels. "We've set the agenda with everything."

The EU is urging wealthy economies to commit to reductions in greenhouse gases by 2020 under any new UN treaty to counter the heat waves, storms and floods tied to global warming. The UN aims at a December meeting in Copenhagen for an agreement that would replace the Kyoto Protocol after it expires in 2012.

The Senate threatens to undermine President Barack Obama's push for a deal in Copenhagen because it may not pass a climate bill before the two-week meeting is scheduled to begin on Dec. 7. The House of Representatives passed a bill earlier this year.

Even as EU leaders today failed to approve climate aid for the developing world as poorer nations within its own bloc balked at the costs, Merkel stressed the EU's more robust position on climate compared with the U.S.

"I will make statements on climate change that aren't different from what we've talked about today," Merkel said.

While the EU is on course to cut greenhouse gases by a fifth in 2020 compared with 1990, congressional draft legislation would reduce U.S. emissions about 5 percent over that period. The EU has said it's willing to deepen its reduction target to 30 percent over the period provided other wealthy economies follow suit.

UN climate chief: Deal must be legally enforceable

Developing countries don't trust wealthy nations' promises that they will help them meet the challenges of climate change, the U.N.'s top climate official said Monday, adding that means any new global warming deal must have legal force.

The legal status of an agreement and whether nations will be sanctioned for failing to meet their commitments are contentious issues in talks on controlling the world's emissions of carbon and other heat-raising greenhouse gases.

"We live in a world of broken promises," said Yvo de Boer, the U.N. climate chief, told The Associated Press. Developing countries are concerned "they will commit to targets and not deliver."

He spoke as negotiators resumed work Monday on a draft agreement for approval at a major U.N. conference next month in the Danish capital of Copenhagen.

The talks among some 180 countries focus on emissions targets by industrial nations and on actions the developing countries can take to slow the growth of their own emissions without impairing their development. Delegates also must determine how to raise and manage some $150 billion (euro100 billion) a year to help poor countries adapt to climate change.

With time running out and wide gaps between nations remaining, attention focused Monday on if United States can commit to a specific target to reduce emissions over the next decade and how much the U.S. will contribute to a global fund to help developing countries.

Scientists say poor countries will be hardest hit by climate change. They say coastal areas will be threatened by rising sea levels, countries will be hit by more severe storms as well as more frequent drought, and tropical diseases and warm weather pests will spread.

U.S. commitments have been tied up in legislation slowly making its way through Congress, which may not be completed before the Dec. 7-18 conference in Copenhagen.

"We expect the United States to be able to deliver on one of the major challenges of our century," said Danish Environment Minister Connie Hedegaard, who will chair the Copenhagen meeting.

Hedegaard noted that President Barack Obama will be receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in the neighboring country of Norway on Dec. 10 – just as the decisive climate conference is under way.

UC Berkeley program to link business, energy research

The University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business is launching a center to help speed energy and environmental research to the marketplace.

The Haas Energy Institute will bring together existing programs at UC Berkeley like the Center for Energy and Environmental Innovation and the Cleantech to Market initiative, which link scientists, businesspeople and policymakers.

Other top business schools have energy programs, and Haas wants one, too, said Severin Borenstein, co-director of the new energy center and director of the systemwide University of California Energy Institute.

"You hear about a new one every single day," he said. "All the top business schools are now coming to this area."

The institute will be primarily funded by Haas, the University of California president's office, and a grant from the California Energy Commission, Borenstein said.

Matt Rogers, the U.S. Department of Energy's senior adviser in charge of implementing the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, said at Berkeley last week that increasing cooperation between the policy and technical sectors is of paramount importance right now as the federal government seeks to disburse tens of billions of dollars in grants and loans for energy projects.

"Charting America's environment and energy future represents one of the defining issues of our time," he said. "We have to find practical solutions to the challenges we face as markets begin to take place. Once the markets take shape, we can retreat back into our little silos and go deeper and deeper."

Chinese Involvement in Proposed Texas Wind Farm Stirs Passions

News last week of the first major influx of Chinese capital and wind turbine manufacturing expertise into the renewable energy market in the United States — a 600-megawatt wind farm planned for the plains of west Texas — had many readers of the Green Inc. blog in a state of agitation.

"I don't understand why China is exporting wind energy to the U.S.," wrote Mark from New York City. "Isn't this exactly the kind of project a United States company could and should be doing?"

Another reader — Drew from Boston — was more blunt: "Again, China is playing the West for a sucker," he wrote. "We send them our engineering, they get the manufacturing work and experience."

The details of the deal known so far: Contingent on financing from Chinese commercial banks — and no small measure of funding from the U.S. economic stimulus package — A-Power Energy Generation Systems, a Nasdaq-listed company based in the Chinese industrial city of Shenyang, would provide 240 of its 2.5-megawatt wind turbines for a 36,000-acre, or 14,600-hectare, utility-scale wind farm in west Texas to be operated by Cielo Wind Power, a developer based in Austin.

The total cost of the project, which was brokered in part by the U.S. Renewable Energy Group, an American private equity company, was estimated at $1.5 billion. At an event after the announcement in Washington on Thursday, Cappy McGarr, a managing partner at the company, was beaming.

"This planned $1.5 billion investment in wind energy will spur tremendous growth in the renewable energy sector," Mr. McGarr was quoted in a news release as saying, "and directly create hundreds of high-paying American jobs."

The devil, though — as many observers pointed out by the end of the week — is in the details.

The group's calculations last week put the number of American jobs at a little more than 300 — most of them temporary construction jobs, along with about 30 permanent positions once the wind farm is operating. Mr. McGarr told The Wall Street Journal that more than 2,000 Chinese jobs would be created by the deal.

That, along with the fact that the project was hoping to secure 30 percent, or $450 million, of its financing from U.S. stimulus funds, was enough to send tempers flaring.

"Why are U.S. stimulus funds being used to subsidize manufacturing jobs in China," wrote a reader at Green Inc., who pointed out that American officials had repeatedly warned that the United States could lose its competitive edge on renewable energy manufacturing to China.

And yet, he continued, "the federal government gives stimulus monies to subsidize a project buying turbines made in China. Why?"

Part of the agitation almost certainly arises from China's own reputation for green protectionism.

CEI abandons James "the last flat-earther" Inhofe. In 31-page testimony, CEI never challenges the science while warning inadequate policies threaten "those who will suffer the consequences of global warming."

Posted: 02 Nov 2009 08:38 AM PST

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Et tu, Competitive Enterprise Institute?

When we last left Senator James Inhofe (R-OIL), the Washington Post was mocking him as "the last flat-earther" for his denial of the increasingly painful reality of human-caused climate change, noting that even his fellow Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works committee had abandoned his far-out-of-the-mainstream denial:

"Eleven academies in industrialized countries say that climate change is real; humans have caused most of the recent warming," admitted Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.).

That was just Day 1 of the hearings.  On Day 3, came another stunner, the denial-free testimony of Iain Murray, Vice-President for Strategy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute — a group long funded by ExxonMobil to attack the science, which recently went ape for the Scopes climate trial that the Chamber of Commerce proposed.

I can't actually recommend you read the 31 pages of mostly nonsense he submitted.  He spends a lot of his time pushing the myth that the European Trading System (ETS) has somehow failed even though it is increasingly clear that the Europeans are going to meet their targets under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol (see "Europe poised to meet Kyoto target: Does this mean the much-maligned European Trading System is a success?" and "The European trading system has worked — and a new report details lessons for U.S. climate bill").

The news is that the CEI dog didn't bark on climate science.  Not once.  Apparently they got the memo that denying climate science in the public forum of the Senate simply makes conservative opponents seem like the flat earthers they are.

Indeed, the entire thrust of the CEI testimony is that the climate action being considered domestically and internationally isn't enough to preserve a livable climate.  Well, duh!  Of course, the CEI's conclusion is that therefore we should give up this approach.  For climate science realists, the conclusion is that, like the Montréal protocol (which would not have stopped chlorofluorocarbon concentrations from rising forever and thus would have not stopped the destruction of the ozone layer), you push for the strongest action that can be taken now — and then you take stronger action the future as the observations and scientific analysis makes the danger more self-evident.

CEI runs so far from their recent positions that, if you didn't know they were deniers, you'd think they were actually serious about solving the problem.  After they diss the ETS, they write:

It's less good news for those who will suffer the consequences of global warming.

[Cue violin strings.]

Yes, now CEI is it worrying about those who will suffer the consequences of global warming, after spending years and years trying to stop all action.

In his oral statement, Murray even admits (minute 321), "unchecked global warming could do significant damage to developing countries"

And here's an excerpt from the penultimate paragraph in his written testimony, about Copenhagen:

There will surely be some agreement reached, that will of course be hailed as an historic agreement, probably noting that it was reached despite America's stance, but in the cold light of day it will fall some way short of binding parties to make the sort of hard choices that are needed if we are to stabilize CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere at anything like the level of 450 ppm, never mind the new demands for 350 ppm.

Yes, CEI is really, really worried about the fact that Copenhagen won't result in 450 ppm or 350 ppm.

Again, the news isn't the hypocritical gibberish in the testimony.  The news is that even a group as conservative as CEI feels the need to completely drop their attacks on climate science in lengthy Senate testimony, and give lip-service to the threat posed by global warming, presumably so they won't be lumped in with the dwindling number of flat-earthers like Inhofe.

That meant the discussion in the Senate hearing was precisely where it deserves to be — on how best to solve the climate problem.  I do urge you to watch the video of the third panel from Thursday (starting at Minute 300) if you have the time.  It was the best discussion of the sea change in China I've heard (see also "Increasing competitiveness through clean energy: Taking on China's broad-based effort to be the world's clean energy leader" for CAP CEO Podesta's testimony).

Finally, given the state of the scientific understanding and the diminishing Senate debate over it, I don't think that progressive witnesses need to spend a lot of their valuable testimony focusing on it.  But it still is worth repeating, as Podesta does:

In 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a series of groundbreaking reports on the consequences of global warming. The reports led to the conclusion that the increase in temperature due to greenhouse gas pollution should be no greater than 2 degrees centigrade by 2050. This translates to an atmospheric greenhouse gas emission level of no more than 450 parts per million, up from 395 parts per million today. To achieve these goals developed countries must reduce their emissions by at least 80 percent by 2050, and developing countries must also make significant reductions.

Since the IPCC report a flood of scientific evidence suggests that the predicted impacts of global warming—including temperature rise, ice caps melting, and drought—are occurring ahead of the projected schedule. Nations around the world, including those long resistant to global warming pollution reductions, have reversed course and now support steps to cut pollution. The G-8 nations agreed at their July 2009 meeting that "the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C."

WashPost gets climate bill politics story backwards, buries the big news: Graham and Kerry are in talks with White House "to discuss a possible compromise."

Posted: 02 Nov 2009 07:08 AM PST

The big climate bill story of the last few weeks is the breakthrough Senate climate partnership between Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and John Kerry (D-MA).  The result — E&E News's latest analysis shows, "At least 67 senators are in play" on climate bill.

This isn't to say Senate passage will be easy, but I think it is now likely, and, it is certainly far more likely than it was two months ago.  That's what makes the lead story in today's Washington Post so flawed.  It opens:

With Democrats deeply divided on the issue, unless some Republican lawmakers risk the backlash for signing on to the legislation, there is almost no hope for passage.

Uhh, yeah, well, it now looks like quite a few GOP lawmakers are willing to risk that backlash.  Equally lame, the article's subhead is "Democrats Deeply Split," and the print edition continuation headline is

With Senate Democrats still divided, climate bill's prospects cool

Now what's particularly amazing about that headline — other than it gets the direction of recent political movement exactly backwards — is that the WashPost quotes precisely one Democrat dissing the bill's prospects, Ben Nelson (D-NB).  Yet no serious vote counter had ever considered Nelson a serious prospect.  For E&E, Nelson was always a "probable no."  For Nate Silver, Nelson is a whopping 10.29% "probability of yes" — the lowest of any Democrat (see "Epic Battle 3: Who are the swing Senators?"

The real news, and it's pretty big, is actually buried at the end:

Graham and Kerry are set to meet Wednesday with Energy Secretary Steven Chu, as well as with Obama's top climate adviser, Carol M. Browner, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar to discuss a possible compromise. They are also setting up meetings with colleagues on the issue.

Wow!  Graham and Kerry are now directly engaged with the White House.  That is what should have been the headline and lede.

"There is nowhere near 60 votes for a nuclear power bill on its own. There's not 60 votes for a cap-and-trade bill as it's currently constructed," Graham said in an interview. He said combining the two measures is "the only way you'll get to 60 votes."

It is what Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope calls "the old formula for bipartisanship."

"They would agree on a goal, they would not agree exactly on the means to a goal, and they'd come up with a legislative solution that takes elements from both sides," he said.

Wow again!  Even the Sierra club is warm to the deal, even knowing it will include a strong title on nuclear energy and another on drilling for oil and gas.

And Graham, for his part, has become a lightning rod for controversy back home. On Oct. 22, the American Energy Alliance, an advocacy group funded in part by energy companies, launched a radio, TV and online advertising campaign in South Carolina that has cost "close to $300,000″ so far, according to the group's spokesman, Patrick Creighton.

Featuring a Halloween theme, the TV commercial warns of "some scary stories coming out of Washington" and says, "The latest is Senator Lindsey Graham's support for a national energy tax called cap-and-trade."

Creighton said the group questions why Graham says a deal will help offshore drilling, which Congress has already allowed.

Groups backing the climate bill came to Graham's defense last week. They aired radio and television ads that featured state Sen. John Courson, a conservative Republican who became concerned about global warming after witnessing the decline of polar bears in Churchill, Manitoba.

"Out-of-state interests are attacking our Senator Lindsey Graham," Courson says in an ad underwritten by Republicans for Environmental Protection, "because he's backing an energy plan that produces more power in America."

Sen. Tom Udall (D-N.M.), a member of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said he is optimistic that the parties can reach an accord because Americans are not divided along party lines on global warming. "Is there bipartisanship in the country? I think clearly there is," he said.

So the real headline is that with the prospect for serious bipartisanship, climate bill's prospects warm.

The Western "Lords Of Yesterday" attack climate action

Posted: 02 Nov 2009 05:32 AM PST

Our guest blogger is Tom Kenworthy, a CAP Senior Fellow who lives in Colorado.  In the TV grab, Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) and Glenn Beck deny global warming.

Sen. John Barasso (R-WY) and Glenn BeckIn his book "Crossing the Next Meridian," University of Colorado law professor Charles F. Wilkinson called the timber, mining, grazing and water development interests who for too long dictated how our western public lands should be managed the "lords of yesterday."

Western lawmakers with their politics still stuck in a 19th-century time warp continue to do the bidding of the lords of yesterday, who now include big energy interests. Witness the letter 16 House and Senate Republicans sent to Interior Secretary Ken Salazar protesting his secretarial order creating a Climate Change Response Council that is designed to coordinate efforts among Interior agencies like the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to cope with the impacts of climate change. The new council, the lawmakers said, represents an end-run around Congress and could be used to stifle oil and gas development and other activities on western lands on behalf of "special interest groups with narrow agendas":

Businesses in the West are worried about potential court challenges and administrative action. These new rules will allow special interest groups with narrow agendas to block all existing and future activities on federal lands in the name of climate change.

Of course, the "special interest groups" these politicians attack are the Western people, with the "narrow agendas" of preserving their land and way of life against the ravages of uncontrolled development and runaway global warming.

Leading the charge in this effort to ignore the new realities of a changing climate is Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), one of the Senate's leading opponents of legislation to regulate carbon pollution. Barrasso represents Wyoming, the nation's top coal producer, and is the chair of the recently formed Senate Western Caucus, a latter-day reincarnation of the 1970s "Sage Brush Rebellion" that fought federal oversight of Western lands, according to Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Barrasso has previously temporarily blocked the Obama administration's choice to head the air office at the EPA, fought the establishment of a CIA climate change center, and accused the EPA of "silencing" a dissenting voice to its finding that greenhouse gases are a threat to human health.

Salazar, whose department oversees public lands comprising about one-fifth of the U.S., most of it in the West, issued his order on climate change planning in mid-September. It sets up a council made up of senior officials to coordinate the department's response to climate change, and establishes eight regional climate change response centers and a network of conservation cooperatives to work with states, localities and the public in developing strategies to cope with global warming impacts.

Barrasso and his co-signers see this as a conspiracy to get through administrative fiat what the Obama administration may not be able to get through climate legislation. "These regulations will hit the Western United States the hardest," they charge in their letter. "Westerners will suffer from higher energy and fuel costs or simply be put out of work."

If Barrasso et al. are genuinely worried about the western U.S. being hard hit, they should take a closer look at what climate change is already doing to the region. In the state of Wyoming alone, a mountain pine beetle epidemic spurred by climate change had claimed 1.2 million acres of forest by the end of 2008, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Elsewhere in the West, declining snowpack and earlier spring runoff will mean the Colorado River, the lifeblood for some 25 million Westerners, will be unable to meet demand as much as 90 percent of the time by mid-century, according to a recent study.

This was a Wonk Room repost.

The must-read solutions book — "Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis" by Al Gore.

Posted: 01 Nov 2009 12:28 PM PST

http://images.indiebound.com/347/867/9781594867347.jpgThe long-awaited sequel to An Inconvenient Truth comes out Tuesday.  If you want a preview, Gore and the book are featured in an excellent Newsweek cover story, The Thinking Man's Thinking Man.

In September, Nature Reports Climate Change asked me (and several others) to suggest three books to read ahead of the Copenhagen conference.  Of those, they then asked me to review Gore's new book, Our Choice:  A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis:

When your last work led to an Oscar and Nobel Prize, anticipation is high on the sequel. And former US Vice President Al Gore's new book delivers. Our Choice, due out in November, is a wonderfully readable treatise on climate solutions.Whereas An Inconvenient Truth framed the crisis that climate negotiations are tackling, this followup spells out what needs to be done.

Based on 30 of Gore's 'Solutions Summits' as well as one-on-one discussions with leading experts across multiple disciplines, the book aims, in Gore's words, "to gather in one place all of the most effective solutions that are available now". Gore naturally focuses on energy, the source of most anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, and discusses many underappreciated strategies such as concentrated solar thermal power and cogeneration. He also devotes a full chapter to soil, a major carbon sink that is gradually degrading. Farming strategies for restoring soil carbon are described, including biochar, a porous charcoal that can potentially enhance the soil sink while providing a source of low-carbon power. And like its PowerPoint-based predecessor, Our Choice is replete with lush photos and simple but powerful charts. This [is] a must-read book for those who want a primer on all the key solutions countries will be considering at Copenhagen.

I was at one of the Solutions Summit, as long-time readers know (see "My Al Gore story").   I was interviewed by Newsweek about that Summit for their cover story:

Gore assigned each speaker at the summits a half dozen or so questions: Is nuclear power a viable solution? How can new photovoltaic technologies enter the market? He moderated every discussion, and no one remembers him ever glancing at his iPhone during even the most eye-glazing PowerPoint slides ("differentiation of value chain strategies"). Every panel at the New York meetings ran late, recalls Joseph Romm, who oversaw the Department of Energy's renewables program from 1995 to 1998, as Gore asked question after question. "It was a fire hydrant of information," says Romm, and it taught even experts things they didn't know "about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy." Gore also hosted a reception afterward, where he betrayed no doubt that everyone would find everything as fascinating as he did. "Have Tim tell you all about soil carbon!" he said to one scientist. "Gore bothers to come talk to us," says climatologist Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "Most other politicians are too busy: 'Just give us the talking points.' He's the only politician who's interested in the nuts and bolts of the science—and the only one who knows what a hydroxyl radical is."

[Note:  I typically say I helped oversee the DOE's energy efficiency and renewables program from 1995 to 1998, as principal deputy assistant secretary and then acting assistant secretary.  I was in charge of technology and market analysis for the office during much of that time.]

Like Gore, I learned a lot from the summits.  Here is what I wrote in January 2008:

For the last three days I attended a small climate solutions summit hosted by the former Vice President and current Nobel Laureate. It was off-the-record, so I can't report on presentations directly, but they have made me a lot smarter about the latest technologies and strategies for clean energy, which will inform my blogging this year on climate solutions. I will say now as an aside that I have become much more bullish on the potential for large-scale solar photovoltaics as a result of attending these meetings. The VP asked me to speak for seven minutes on hydrogen at dinner Wednesday. Before dinner, I gave him a copy of the brand-new paperback edition of — warning, shameless product placement — Hell and High Water. He looked it over for a few minutes and said, deadpan,

I have only one problem with this book — this blurb on the back here that says, "If you buy only one book about global warming, make it Hell and High Water." I just can't agree with that.

When he introduced me that night, he repeated the line to great laughter.

BTW, in case it wasn't obvious from his movie, the VP has a terrific sense of humor — and not just in his delivery timing of canned jokes, but in quick, impromptu one liners, like the one above, many of them self-deprecating (one of the speakers from a web-based company thanked him for his work accelerating the Internet, and he said something like, "You heard I had something to do with the internet?").

And in case this wasn't obvious from his movie, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of all things related to climate, energy, science, and technology.

I didn't realize until I read the Newsweek piece that the VP had a similar reaction to the PV panel:

By all accounts, Gore was open to changing positions he brought to the summits. He originally thought that concentrated solar thermal power, in which the sun heats liquids that then power an electric generator, is superior to photovoltaics, in which sunlight produces electricity directly (PVs are the solar panels sprouting on rooftops these days). But "the PV industry surprised people over the last three years with the speed at which costs dropped," says Cornelius, who is now at Hudson Clean Energy, a private-equity firm. Gore came around. "We are at or near a threshold beyond which photovoltaics will actually have a cost advantage" over concentrated solar as well as fossil fuels, Gore writes. He likes the fact that they can be deployed in small installations—those rooftops—whereas solar thermal projects are immense; he's impressed that the price of photovoltaics is dropping while their efficiency is rising, thanks to new materials and manufacturing techniques. "Photovoltaics are a prime example of where the developmental pathway had a big impact on my conclusions," Gore said at his home last month. "The rate of cost reductions and increases in efficiency for PVs is very impressive. PVs probably overtakes concentrated solar thermal within the next half year."

I'm not certain one can directly compare PV and solar thermal.  And I still think solar thermal will deliver more kilowatt-hours this century than any other form of low carbon electricity — see Concentrated solar thermal power Solar Baseload — a core climate solution — particularly because it is so much cheaper and efficient to store thermal energy than electricity, and there are no obvious production bottlenecks for CSP.  But this summit did convince me to include a full wedge of PV in "How the world can (and will) stabilize at 350 to 450 ppm: The full global warming solution," along with 3 wedges of CSP.

The Evolution Of An Eco-Prophet The Newsweek article is by Sharon Begley, a journalist who definitely gets global warming — see Newsweek's Science Editor explains why climate change is "even worse than we feared" and how "a consensus has developed during IPY that the Greenland ice sheet will disappear."

And for those who want to learn about soils and biochar, the book has a good chapter:

Gore loves plants and soils as only a former farm boy can (well, a summertime farm boy: as a kid he spent the school year in Washington, where his father was a senator). He regales you with numbers: more CO2 is emitted from burning and destroying forests—20 to 23 percent of the annual total—than from all the world's cars and trucks; only by the 1980s did CO2 from fossil fuels overtake that from deforestation, which accounts for 40 percent of the CO2 increase since the 1800s.

The potential for soils to absorb more of the CO2 that our utilities, factories, and vehicles spew poses a dilemma for Gore, one of two where his scientific and political instincts collide. With better management, soils could sequester much more carbon than they do now. The question is how much more. Soils scientist Rattan Lal of Ohio State University was surprised to get a call last summer ("Vice President Gore would like to talk to you") that began, "I have 15 or 20 questions about soils and climate for you." Lal calculates that if more farmers adopted mulching, no-till farming, and the use of cover crops and manure, 3,700 million acres worldwide could sequester 1 gigaton per year of CO2, roughly 12 percent of annual global emissions. Other experts are even more sanguine. "If we feed the biology and manage grasslands appropriately, we could sequester as much carbon as we emit," says Timothy LaSalle, CEO of the Rodale Institute, who presented at two summits. The political clash is this: if you tell people soils can be managed to suck up lots of our carbon emissions, it sounds like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and could decrease what little enthusiasm there is for reducing those emissions—as one of Gore's assistants told LaSalle in asking him to dial down his estimate. (He didn't.)

To his credit, Gore sides with the science, letting the political chips fall where they may. He writes that soils could sequester an additional 15 percent of annual global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. That could cut 50 parts per million of CO2 from the atmosphere over the next 50 years. (We are now at 387, up from 280 before the industrial era, with 450 ppm or even less a dangerous level.) To encourage changes in agriculture that would foster carbon sequestration, Gore advocates moving away from price supports and toward paying farmers for "how much carbon they can put into and keep in their soil," he says. Paying farmers to sequester carbon might jump-start the use of biochar, which Gore calls "one of the most exciting new strategies for restoring carbon to depleted soils, and sequestering significant amounts of CO2." Biochar, which he learned about during a 1989 trip to the Amazon, is basically porous charcoal. Made by burning switch grass, corn husks, and other waste, it can absorb CO2 like a charcoal filter in a cigarette absorbs gases. Gore estimates that biochar could sequester 40 percent of annual CO2 emissions.

Begley notes one especially unexpected chapter in the book:

But because of one sentence, and one chapter, it does surprise. The chapter is an astute analysis of the psychological barriers that keep most Americans from taking the threat of climate change seriously, his acknowledgment that emotion, not just reason, drives the decisions people make. The sentence is this: "Simply laying out the facts won't work."

… Gore is a canny-enough politician to know that change of this magnitude takes time, and that politics tends to trump science. A new poll by the Pew Research Center found sharp declines in the numbers of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world is warming (57 percent, compared with 71 percent in April 2008), and in how many believe it is because of human activity (36 percent vs. 47 percent). Gore blames this on the boatloads of money the coal and oil industries have spent to muddy the science and confuse the public…. His favorite quote in Our Choice is from the philosopher Theodor Adorno (1903–1969): "The conversion of all questions of truth into questions of power … has attacked the very heart of the distinction between true and false."

The piece concludes with Gore's native optimism:

"You know, the political system is [like climate] also nonlinear," Gore says. "I've been waiting a long time for that tipping point," when politicians and the public recognize the threat of climate change and act to avert it. "But I think we're closer than ever. Reality does have a way of knocking on the door."

Walking back through the house, I ask Gore again whether he believes the sanguine vision of Our Choicewill come to be. He points to solar panels on his roof, and to his driveway, 300 feet beneath which seven geothermal wells gather the planet's warmth to heat and cool his house. "I have to," he says.

Our Choice is really the anti-Superfreakonomics.  I'm sure it will be widely attacked by the deniers and delayers, so no doubt I'll be blogging about it more this month.  The bottom line is that besides being informative, Our Choice is a truly beautiful book page after page, and I highly recommend it, particularly for those who want a broad overview of the key strategies for preserving a livable climate.