Today in TV on the internet

Today’s E&ETV broadcast has coverage of last Wednesday’s event here at RFF:

Beyond the emissions reductions goals of a future U.S. climate policy, how should legislation encourage the development of technology and strengthen global partnerships? During today’s E&ETV Event Coverage of a recent Resources for the Future event, a panel of climate experts discusses the broader objectives of a domestic climate policy. Panelists include, Ray Kopp, senior fellow and Climate Policy Program director at Resources for the Future, Nigel Purvis, visiting scholar at Resources for the Future, Linda Cohen, professor of economics and associate dean for research and graduate studies at the School of Social Sciences, University of California-Irvine, and Bob Simon, Democratic staff director of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

The panel discussion at the end of the video (after the three panelists give individual presentations) is particularly interesting. The panelists had a broad range of backgrounds and perspectives, and their insights about each others’ areas of expertise are illuminating.

The session that E&ETV covers here is actually the last of three sessions from an event on designing federal climate policy. The RFF webpage has coverage of all three sessions, including both video and slides from the presenters. I recommend Jake Jacoby’s presentation from the first session, and Howard Gruenspecht’s comments in the second, particularly the last 5 minutes of his presentation and his input from the panel discussion.

Finally, if you’re curious about what the top of my head looks like from behind, you can see it on the bottom-right of the E&ETV video (just left of their logo). I was up front keeping time for the speakers.

From the inbox

Nation’s Urban Centers Ranked for Carbon Footprint

Report Released This Thursday, 5/29

For the first time, the nation’s 100 largest metro areas are ranked for the size of their carbon footprints in a new report to be released this Thursday, May 29th by the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program.

An AUDIO NEWS CONFERENCE will take place with the report authors to discuss findings and policy recommendations:

WHEN: Wednesday, May 28, 1:00 PM EDT

DIAL-IN: 877-795-3647

“Shrinking the Carbon Footprint of Metropolitan America” provides extensive analysis and surprising conclusions on

· The dramatic variations in the carbon footprints of our large urban centers

· Regional comparisons - which regions are shrinking their footprints and which are growing theirs

· The per capita size of the carbon footprint of an urban dweller vs. a non-urban dweller

· What factors determine the size of a carbon footprint – residential buildings, cars, development patterns, rail transit, freight traffic, weather, electricity sources, and electricity prices

The report offers recommendations on how the federal government should step up its support of metropolitan efforts to shrink their carbon footprints.

If you would like to receive embargoed materials or interview the authors, please contact Carrie Collins at 301-664-9000 x18 or ccollins@bcc-associates.com or Vanessa Bilanceri at 202-244-0121 or vbilanceri@gmail.com .

Is there such a thing as a free lunch?

Yes, at least if you can be in DC at Resources for the Future on June 4:

U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions Reductions: What are the Opportunities, at What Price and Through What Policies?

A central question for U.S. climate policy is the opportunity and cost of greenhouse gas emissions reductions and the best approaches to achieve them. In December, McKinsey & Company and the Conference Board released a major report — Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost? This analysis finds that 30 to 45 percent of forecast 2030 greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced at costs of less than $50 per ton of carbon dioxide equivalent — and potentially far less if sizeable energy efficiency gains are captured. Our panel will describe and discuss these findings and their implications for the current policy debate.

Wednesday, June 4, 2008
12:45 pm - 2:00 pm
A light buffet lunch will be available at 12:30 p.m.

Please RSVP by sending your contact details in an email to rffseminars@rff.org.

The McKinsey study that will be discussed has gotten a lot of publicity for suggesting that there are many large free lunches to be had in the energy and emissions arena — we can reduce emissions for negative total costs — particularly with energy efficiency projects. I will be there and am very curious to hear what one of the report authors says about the study.

Here’s a previous post from Rich on the McKinsey study.

FutureGen quote of the day

Sen Kit Bond (R-MO) compared DOE’s change of heart to leaving the project “at the altar choosing three younger, cheaper women.”

Wow. The Energy and Water Appropriations Subcommittee is having a hearing on FutureGen this week. The witnesses are Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman and FutureGen Chairman Paul Thompson. I think this quote indicates that it’s going to be nothing if not entertaining — stay tuned for a first-hand account.

For interested DC readers, the hearing is Thursday at 9:30am at 192 Dirksen Senate Building.

H/T: Shalini.

Oh, hey internet, what’s up?

Regular readers of this blog now have a general sense of what my posting habits are like in a month in which I spend a quarter of the month on vacation, two of my best friends get married, my hard drive fails, I look for new housing, and my alma mater makes a deep run in the NCAA tournament.

I don’t know if that’s an excuse or an apology, or perhaps just an acknowledgment that real life is going to distract me from this blog sometimes. But hopefully a more regular posting schedule commences today. I actually still have a housing search to conduct and a computer to nurse back to full health, but there are no weddings this month, no vacation time, and the ridiculously talented Memphis Tigers have dimmed my basketball fever.

Speaking of basketball, though, Tim Haab calls me out for making such vanilla Final Four picks in the EnvEcon tournament pool. Presumably by “vanilla” he means “correct”. The upshot is he’s slightly ahead right now but if the UCLA Bruins beat Memphis on Saturday then I beat Tim and John in their own pool. I just became a Bruins fan! Not that this is much to brag about since Tim and I are both pretty far off the lead, but I’ll take it.*

Anyway, while I was “away” we’ve had a new blogger join us, Erica Myers. Welcome Erica! She’s got some background in experimental economics, which is an exciting addition to our collective perspective.

Coming your way this month I think we should have a couple of interesting book reviews, plus I attended a couple events last month that I want to post thoughts on.

Before I go I’ll put in plugs for two upcoming events at RFF, both next week. Wednesday April 9 there will be a “First Wednesday” event on curbing electricity demand, looking specifically at Maryland’s Strategic Energy Plan. Then on Thursday April 10 Matt Kotchen will be here presenting his paper that shows daylight saving time increases energy use.  Please join us for either — or both! — events.

*We’re not even going to mention fellow environmental economics blogger Mike Giberson of Knowledge Problem, who’s whipping our butts, let alone the bloggers at the far front of the pack, Jim Casey and James Hamilton.

Workshop on managing the costs of climate policy, March 19

This event on “cost containment” within climate policy should be superb. It’s here at Resources for the Future on the morning of Wednesday, March 19 (full details at the website). I’ll be there, and hopefully can provide some post-event thoughts.

Managing Costs in a U.S. GHG Trading Program: Issues, Options and Implementation

One of the most controversial issues in the debate over the design of a U.S. greenhouse gas (GHG) trading program is how such a program will address concerns about potential costs and adverse impacts on the economy. A variety of proposals have emerged, including an explicit upper limit on allowances prices (in S.1766, the Low Carbon Economy Act) and an independent board to manage the emissions budget over time, in order to contain costs (in S.2191, the Climate Security Act).

This workshop will feature two expert panels to explore implications, advantages, and disadvantages associated with different approaches to managing costs. The first panel (8:30- 10:30a.m.) will focus on general mechanisms, like a safety valve, a quantity-limited safety valve, borrowing, and others. The second panel (10:45a.m.- 12:30p.m.) will focus on the potential role of an independent board, both to provide oversight and to intervene in the market with discretion, rather than via explicitly legislated rules. Half of the scheduled time will be reserved for questions from the audience.

Please RSVP by March 12 to April Stanley at events@rff.org or (202) 328-5074.

Where…

Where I won’t be today: the Heartland Institute’s global warming skeptics conference in New York. The first page of the program says it all. John Tierney tells us that the meeting is an assortment of “climate scientists, economists and free-market think-tankers”. Are there really any economists out there who don’t believe in negative externalities?

Where I will be tomorrow: the Washington International Renewable Energy Conference (WIREC). Too many interesting attendees and events to mention. Definitely worth checking out if you’re in the DC area, even if it’s just the trade show floor.

Where I hope to never be: at the reception desk of the DC office (read: lobbying branch) of a petroleum company. On Saturday night I had dinner with a friend who is currently temping at the front desk of an oil company. She told me how at their staff meeting last week people just went around the room for twenty minutes complaining that global warming is “total bullshit”. She also told me that the higher-ups’ private bathrooms have $10,000 hand made Italian toilet-paper dispensers. Nuff said.

Stuff To Do

1. Go see There Will Be Blood. Seriously. It was awesome. Also, if you’re interested in the the history of energy/ oil (and haven’t already read Upton Sinclair’s novel) it’s a nice complement to broader histories like Yergin’s The Prize.
2. Listen to my boss, Dallas Burtraw, and several others testify before Congress tomorrow on carbon permit allocation. Should be live on www.globalwarming.house.gov.
3. Attend this Friday’s AEI Conference on Texas Electricity Recycling. Lynne Kiesling, of Knowledge Problem, and her co-author will be presenting chapters from their new book. I know that some of us will be there.

National Academies event this Thursday

The National Research Council is sponsoring a panel on Electricity from Renewables in conjunction with a broader initiative on America’s Energy Future. This Thursday’s meeting is open to the public, and will feature comments from a wide range of industry experts and scholars. Here’s a link to the agenda. Hope to see you there.

Where I will be all day tomorrow

Resources for the Future is holding a briefing tomorrow to unveil its new report, Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options. The website for the report, www.rff.org/cpfreport, is now up:

Written by independent RFF scholars and informed by a year-long dialogue with Forum participants who provided feedback and recommended areas of focus, the report encompasses 15 issue briefs, detailing policy questions and concerns in key areas related to greenhouse gas emissions and legislative proposals to curb them. It is designed, first and foremost, to present information objectively and to focus on those aspects of federal policy design that are most important.

This report has been my major project for the last year. I got to write a few of the issue briefs, so it’s very exciting to see the full report come out!

It will also greatly simplify holiday conversations with relatives about what I do at my job: I can just point them to the website!

Climate policy briefing at RFF, November 28

There will be a briefing at Resources for the Future next week that will serve as the rollout event for a new report on U.S. climate policy. From the website:

Resources for the Future organized the U.S. Climate Policy Forum in May 2006 to analyze and make findings regarding policies to address global climate change. … The Forum’s objective is to provide legislators with well-vetted, detailed policy options; important criteria for policy assessment; and well-articulated concerns (specifying the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches), from which effective federal policy might be crafted.

The report, Assessing U.S. Climate Policy Options: A report summarizing work at RFF as part of the inter-industry U.S. Climate Policy Forum, represents the culmination of the Forum process. Written by independent RFF scholars and informed by a year-long dialogue with Forum participants who provided feedback and recommended areas of focus, the report encompasses 15 issue briefs, detailing policy questions and concerns in key areas related to greenhouse gas emissions and legislative proposals to curb them. It is designed, first and foremost, to present information objectively and to focus on those aspects of federal policy design that are most important. …

Please RSVP by November 19 to Lisa Mihalik, at 202-328-5177 or by email: events@rff.org

This report, and the process that fed into it, has been one of my major projects for the last year, so this is personally exciting for me. A lot of thoughtful analysis from a number of scholars at RFF has gone into writing the report. I encourage those in the DC area who are interested in federal-level climate mitigation policy to come. There are more details at the website.

Best. Panel. Ever. Part. 2.

From the Congressional Budget Office website:

CBO will hold the 2007 Director’s Conference on Climate Change on Friday, November 16, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. CBO Director Peter Orszag will host the conference, which will feature leading researchers addressing key questions in the debate on climate change.

The CBO has assembled a “Who’s Who” of climate change economists. Does it beat the last superstar panel? Comments are open if you want to give your opinion.

Carbon taxes versus cap and trade: debate in New York City

There will be a debate on taxes versus permits next week in New York City. From the website:

A PUBLIC DEBATE: Should Climate Change Legislation be in the Form of Emissions Cap and Trade or a Carbon Tax?

Tuesday, November 13, 2007 9:30 am – 12:30 pm

New York City Bar Association Great Hall, 42 West 44th Street, New York, NY

They request registration by November 7, but I would encourage interested readers in NYC to try to RSVP and attend.

Technology Policy: Part 2

As promised in Part 1, here is some discussion of Richard Newell’s comments from the Brookings event. More details on this and the topics discussed in Part 1 can be found in Newell’s relevant RFF Backgrounder. Full disclosure: I worked for Richard on a couple of relevant memos.

Anyway, getting right down to it, Newell’s policy suite included:

(1) Making the R&E tax credit permanent

(2) Doubling the federal climate research budget to $7 billion/yr

(3) Improving research strategy and coordination

(4) Experimenting with inducement prizes.

Technology Policy: Part 1

I attended the Brookings event with Daniel. The panel was quite impressive, as noted in Rich’s earlier post. The first discussion was a quasi-debate between Rob Stavins of the Kennedy School and Gilbert Metcalf of Tufts University as to the merits and deficiencies of permit trading versus a carbon tax. Daniel addressed this issue hours before the event in a recent post. Hence, I will skip ahead to the second panel which dealt with energy technology policy. The presenters were John Deutsch, John Podesta, and Richard Newell.

Analogies

I went to the Brookings Institution’s event on climate change policy yesterday. Larry Summers gave the opening address.

The gist of his remarks concerned the comparison between the issues of health care in 1992 and climate change today. He said, “We knew what we needed to do in 1992, and we couldn’t get it done.” The unspoken implication was that if we don’t make progress on climate change policy soon, we’ll be paying the price 15 years down the road.

I don’t pretend to know enough about health care to say whether the analogy is apt or specious, but I had to agree with the person who later remarked to me that Larry always makes good copy.

His talk also laid out what he saw as the five key questions for designing mitigation policy:

1. How do we minimize the number of losers?

2. What is the right degree of vision? How ambitious should a policy be with regards to goals and time horizons?

3. How do we minimize uncertainties? Is uncertainty about price or quantity more worrisome?

4. How do we rigorously measure benefits, particularly if they are likely but diffuse and subject to uncertainty?

5. How do we address competitiveness and emissions leakage? At what price does this become a problem?

It looks to me like there’s plenty of material there to keep environmental economists employed for years to come!

Best. Panel. Ever.

Or at least a really really good panel. On October 30, The Hamilton Project at Brookings will host a two-part forum on mitigating climate change through market mechanisms and new technologies. Check out the list of speakers for yourself.

Solar Decathlon, Oct. 12-20

The National Mall is playing host to the DOE Solar Decathlon from October 12-20. Teams of college students have designed houses that must be entirely solar-powered. The houses are open for public tours every day until the 17th (schedule here). Definitely seems worth a look.

Energy technology discussion this Thursday at the Koshland Science Museum

Details below the fold.

Upcoming climate policy events in DC

A heads up for those of you in the DC area about a couple upcoming climate policy events:

Tomorrow (Friday Sept. 21) Nicholas Stern will be speaking at a Congressional briefing about what the Stern Review means the for upcoming UN climate change meetings in Bali.  Whatever you think of the Stern Review itself, Sir Nicholas is an articulate and engaging speaker (or at least he was the one time I saw him).*  Plus there will be a Q&A session, so this is your chance to ask him why he placed such a high value on future events (if you agree with Bill Nordhaus’ critique) or such a low value on present people (if you are sympathetic to Partha Dasgupta’s analysis).

The second event is on Thursday, October 4, at Resources for the Future and is on strategies for post-Kyoto climate policy.  Harvard’s Rob Stavins and RFF’s Joe Aldy will be discussing the new book they co-edited, Architectures for Agreement, along with another couple panelists.

Both events are open to the public.  The RFF event requests an RSVP by September 26.

*Or maybe it was just the accent.  I don’t think I know any Brits I don’t consider articulate.