Felix Kramer of Calcars thinks 2010 will be the year of the plug-in car. He’s got a good case: after years of advocacy and technologydevelopment, 2010 is the year that major manufacturers will finallymake plug-ins broadly available, and rapidly decreasing battery costsare helping the conversion industry reach new customers and helpretrofit the existing fleet at scale.  After years of work and promise,2010 is the payoff year.

I see a similar trend in solar in California, where years of policyand business development are all coming together to make 2010 anextraordinary year for solar development.

There are four major market drivers:

The California RPS California’s renewable portfolio statute requires the state’s utilitiesto include 20% renewables in their portfolio by 2010, and last yearGovernor Schwarzenegger issued an Executive Order increasing therequirement to 33%.  To date, California investor-owned utilities havesigned over 7 GW of contracts with solar companies, of which 4.9 GW areat prices below the Market Price Referent (that’s the 20-year levelizedcost of energy for a combined cycle gas turbine, a proxy for the fossilfuel alternative).  An Excel spreadsheet of the contracts, modifiedfrom the one found on the CPUC’s website, here. This list will be expanding rapidly; by all accounts, the 2009 RPSsolicitation garnered a tremendous response from solar (especiallyphotovoltaic) developers, and as the utilities send contracts to theCPUC for approval, we are likely to see contracts for gigawatts more ofmid-sized wholesale PV projects in the coming months.  That’s whathappens when solar gets cheap.

Utility Wholesale Distributed Generation Programs California’s investor-owned utilities have all applied for significantinvestments in utility-owned solar projects, and 2010 is when theseprograms hit the street (or rooftop).  Southern California Edison (SCE)wants to develop 250 MW of primarily rooftop solar projects; as acondition for approval, the California Public Utilities Commission isrequiring SCE to buy an equivalent amount of solar, in 1-2 MWincrements (90% of which have to be rooftop) from independent powerproducers through competitively-bid power purchase agreements.  Thedetails of how the auction mechanism is to work (including standardterms and conditions of the contract) were the subject of a workshopprocess last fall, and are to come before the CPUC for approval on Jan21.  Assuming approval, the first auction for PPAs could take place thefollowing month or so.  Details of the proceeding here and here.

Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) has applied for a similarprogram: 250 MW of utility-owned generation (systems sized from 1-20MW), and an equivalent amount to be purchased from independent powerproducers.  For the IPP portion, PG&E’s initial applicationproposed to offer standard contracts at PG&E’s cost of development(initially estimated to be 29.5 cents/kWh, but would reset based onactual costs); this issue is being litigated before the CPUC, withresolution expected around February.  As the CPUC forced SCE tocompetitively bid their IPP portion, it would be a good bet tospeculate that they will decide on a similar requirement for PG&E,but who knows?

Combined, these utility programs represent a gigawatt of wholesale distributed generation solar over the next 5 years.

Feed-in Tariff Programs California has two feed-in tariff programs under development.  The first is a proposed 1 GW market-based feed-in tariff,which would require the state’s investor-owned utilities to conductmultiple annual solicitations for 1-10 MW renewable projects.  It’sdifferent from a traditional feed-in tariff in that instead ofguaranteeing a price, it guarantees a market and lets projectdevelopers set their own price.  The proceeding to establish thisprogram is inches from the goal-line—after over a year of work, we we are currently waiting on the Administrative Law Judge to issue a proposed resolution. Weexpect the process to be concluded in the next few months (knock wood),and the first auctions to begin before summer.  The pilot programtotals 1 GW over 4 years, though once the process gets moving andproves successful, it could easily be expanded.  I believe that thisprogram hits a sweet spot on several levels: 1) the 1-10 MW sizetargets projects that don’t need new transmission, and can thusly comeon line quickly, and 2) the competitive pricing element, combined withsolar’s dramatically lower costs, will finally bring on massive amountsof solar at politically palatable price-points.

The second is SB 32, passed by the legislature last year.  SB 32requires the CPUC to develop a must-take standard-offer price forrenewable contracts—essentially based on avoided cost.  More details here, but as rulemaking will take awhile, it is unlikely that this program will be available in 2010.

Customer-side of the meter The California Solar Initiative is the program that provides incentivesfor behind-the-meter generation—the owner of the system uses theproduction to offset purchases from the utility and reduce electricbills.  Over 135 MW of photovoltaics, both residential andnon-residential, were installed in 2009.  We still have to raise the2.5 % net metering cap, but if that’s accomplished, Jigar Shah (founderof SunEdison) told me he has a standing bet that the remaining incentives (all 1303 MW) will be reserved in 2010.    Here’s hoping he’s right.  Also of note,just about every property owner in California will have access to a PACE financing program by the end of the year.  As financing the high up-front costs of solarand energy efficiency is a long-standing hurdle to greater adoption,these new programs should help drive demand considerably.

All told, we are looking at tremendous amounts of new solardevelopment in the state.  Here’s to more solar gen in two-thousand andten…

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This week, in The New York Times’ Room for Debate, I was involved in a discussion on the brewing war among environmentalists over building large power plants on sensitive land—specifically, in this case, a solar thermal power plant in the Mojave desert. “Green Civil War: Projects vs. Preservation” saw contributions from:

And me! Turns out it’s very difficult to make a point in 300 words, at least for me, so I’m reposting my contribution below and will add a few additional comments at the bottom.

———

Many folks are conflicted over the seeming clash between conserving America’s remaining wild landscapes and expanding clean energy supplies. What to do?

To begin with, it seems prudent to postpone the conflict as long as possible, by making every effort to satisfy new energy demand with low-carbon resources on land that’s already developed. Senator Feinstein has gestured in that direction, but neither California or any other state has ever offered serious, sustained support to what’s loosely called distributed energy — energy generated, stored and managed at the local level.

The U.S. power industry has always had a fondness for gigantism:  huge plants, remotely located, generating electricity that’s sold cheaply and used profligately. Wind farms on the Plains and solar plants in the Southwest desert, connected to cities by expensive new transmission lines, fit the familiar model. Regulations provide incentives for this development, which utilities know how to manage,  and which politicians understand.

Yet the land and water problems facing solar plants should be a reminder that all large new industrial projects impose social costs.  Perhaps it’s time to take distributed energy seriously.

What would a new model look like? Solar panels over every parking lot, brownfield, warehouse, and residential roof. Small-scale wind turbines on every bridge, microhydro in every stream and river,  advanced geothermal in every back yard, waste heat capture on every industrial plant. Batteries that store power to be used or sold when it’s worth most. An IT-infused grid that can manage complexity; devices that display real-time use and price information; variable power pricing. Every building sealed and weatherized, every appliance and electric car net-connected.

In such a system, it’s not just energy that’s distributed, it’s social and economic power. The result is more democratic and resilient (though such benefits rarely find their way into conventional price comparisons). If “consumers” become producers, managers, and innovators, perhaps the desert tortoise and the world can be saved.

———

A couple of ideas get tossed in here that deserve more mulling.

First, “regulations provide incentives for this development.” Tomes could be written on how utility and power regulations encourage investment in large, remote power plants. Sean Casten is probably writing such a tome right now! The situation differs somewhat between the remaining regulated monopoly utilities and the ones that have been deregulated and/or “decoupled,” like those in California. But even the most enlightened utilities still tend to view distributed energy as a kind of curio, small beans done as much for PR purposes as for serious power.

Part of the difficulty is that that utility regulations are mind-numbingly complex; part of it is that utilities have 50 years of deeply entrenched habits, models, and culture (in which innovation doesn’t play much of a role). But that’s the tip of the iceberg. As the second-to-last paragraph indicates, distributed energy requires not just different generation technology, it requires that cities be made into coherent quasi-organisms, that generation, distribution, storage, transportation, and administration systems be coordinated. Pushing all those systems forward together is a daunting task that will require, at least in the first few instances, a strong dose of central planning, to which Americans are (purportedly) averse.

Third, the last paragraph is something that’s been an interest of mine for a long while: how will distributing the ability to generate, manage, and store power affect social dynamics? What will it look like when communities are more self-sufficient? What kind of innovations will spring up when everyone has access to the levers of energy, the way the internet gave everyone access to information infrastructure? What kind of lives will people live when their energy and gas bills are radically reduced or even eliminated? This is heady futurist sort of stuff, too much to get into in this post, but I suspect the changes will be far more sweeping than anyone can anticipate.

Which leads to a final point:  cost comparisons between central-plant power and distributed power are woefully inadequate, typically focusing in on price-per-kWh. Of course rooftop solar fails by that comparison. But what happens when you factor in the saved cost of transmission lines that don’t have to be built? What happens when you factor in the efficiency gains made possible by smart appliances, smart vehicles, and smart grids? What happens when you factor in the fact that money spent on these systems will circulate almost entirely within a community rather than leaving it? What happens when you factor in energy independence, resilience, innovation,  jobs?

There are “system of systems” benefits around distributed energy that we can’t yet predict, much yet place a dollar value on. As in so many areas, the question should not be how to save pennies, but how to construct the kind of lives, the kind of society, that reflects our highest aspirations.

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Transportation bill could produce environmental and job benefits in 2010

It was one of the biggest surprises in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit, and it may be one of the best reasons for hope now that the meeting has ended in disappointment. Rapidly industrializing developing countries are pressing ahead with their plans to reduce the growth in their carbon emissions, despite the failure to reach a substantial international agreement in the Danish capital.

One by one, as last month’s Copenhagen summit approached, the main developing countries—China, India, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico, and Indonesia—announced surprisingly ambitious emission targets. Indeed, measured against what the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says will be needed by 2020, they did much more to fulfill their side of the bargain than rich countries. An analysis published during the summit showed that every one of their offers fell within the range of what would be required of them—with Brazil and Indonesia even surpassing that range—while only two of the developed country commitments, from Norway and the E.U., did so.

And the momentum appears to be continuing, even though their governments balked at endorsing global targets for emission cuts at the summit itself.

Little more than a week after leaving Copenhagen, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva signed a law to require a 39 percent reduction on forecast emissions for 2020. His environment minister, Carlos Minc, commented that this showed the country’s determination to respect its pledges: “It doesn’t matter if the Copenhagen summit did not get the results we wanted,” said Minc. “We will still meet our goals.”

Indonesia’s forestry minister then announced a plan to plant more than 52 million acres of forest by 2020, cutting the growth of its emissions by over 26 percent.  At present, Indonesia’s deforestation, according to a World Bank study, makes it the third-biggest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States. And South Africa is aiming to submit a plan by the end of this month for curbing its emissions growth by 34 percent by 2020.

Even India and China, which proved the most resistant to international targets in Copenhagen—and who, apart from the obstructive Saudi Arabia, expressed most pleasure at its limited achievement—have pressed ahead.

Indeed, India’s environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, was contradicted by his boss after he expressed satisfaction with the results: Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh insisted that “no one was satisfied with the outcome” [of Copenhagen], adding, in a flourish of hyphens, “There is no escaping the truth that the nations of the world have to move to a low-greenhouse-gas-emissions and energy-efficient-development path.”  India, he added, “must not lag behind” in adopting low-carbon technologies. Sure enough, environment minister Ramesh then announced that the country would go ahead with its plans to cut its carbon intensity—the amount released per unit of GDP—by 20 to 25 percent by 2020. And this without awaiting international financial help. “We’ve got to do what we’ve got to do,” said Ramesh. “We will have a low-carbon growth strategy.”

And China, which is already taking big steps to moderate emissions and develop clean technologies, has, if anything, stepped up the pace, despite having done more than any other country to block progress in Copenhagen. China is confident that it will, this year, meet its current target of reducing its carbon intensity by 20 percent in just five years. The country is also drawing up tough new goals for 2015. It is widely expected to exceed its formal pledge of a 40 to 45 percent reduction on 2005 levels by 2020.

Already the world’s leading manufacturer in solar cells—a position achieved in just two years after a standing start—China, last week, signed a deal with a California company to build a series of solar thermal power stations. China’s windpower is expected to exceed its 30,000 MW target by 2012, eight years ahead of schedule. It has just tested the world’s fastest train, as part of a high-speed rail program. And it is increasing sales of electric cars to the United States.

India has invited China, Brazil, and South Africa to meet with it next week to coordinate future strategy. And the E.U. is proposing pursuing a new climate agreement through the G20—which includes such leading developing countries—rather than through the unwieldy United Nations negotiating system. But all this momentum holds real dangers.

Keen though they are to press ahead with their national strategies, the rapidly industrializing countries are reluctant to be bound into agreements with developed countries. Why? They are uneasy, at the best of times, about being placed under an international, legally binding obligation to curb their pollution, and they balk at any suggestion that developed nations would be telling them what to do. And their wariness is increased because rich countries have so far offered to do less than their share of the job and have a poor record of meeting the targets they set themselves under the Kyoto Protocol.

Besides, a deal between developed and fast-growing developing countries would bypass the U.N., with its universal representation, and thus exclude those nations most likely to be victimized by climate change.  Such an agreement would, effectively, be struck among the polluters. This would mute demands from more than 100 countries, including a call for the world to aim at a 1.5 degree centigrade rise in global temperative rather than a 2 degree one. And it would breed resentment amongst those left out of the bargaining.

Such resentment among poorer and most-vulnerable developing nations emerged as a major problem in Copenhagen. Any way forward will have to address this.

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Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)At first it seemed like simply one bad idea from Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). But now we know the real story—a tangled web of public officials, polluter lobbyists, and efforts to gut the Clean Air Act. 

And every day it seems we’re learning more—more about the revolving door between the Bush administration and polluter lobbyists; more about their influence with senators and their staffers; and more about who’s really pulling the strings on efforts to block climate action—Big Oil’s MVP, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Some of the best reporting this week has come from Juliet Eilperin at the Washington Post’s Post Carbon blog. Earlier this week, Eilperin had reported that polluter lobbyists were helping Sen. Murkowski’s staffers write legislation to strip environmental protections:

The maneuvering comes as The Washington Post has confirmed that two Washington lobbyists, Jeffrey R. Holmstead and Roger R. Martella, Jr., helped craft the original amendment Murkowski planned to offer on the floor last fall. Both Holmstead, who heads the Environmental Strategies Group and Bracewell & Guiliani, and Martella, a partner at Sidley Austin LLP, held senior posts at EPA under the Bush administration and represents multiple clients with an interest in climate legislation pending before Congress.

And today, even more about the close working relationships between polluter lobbyists and Senate staffers:

More details have emerged about the involvement by two lobbyists—who were senior Environmental Protection Agency officials during the George W. Bush administration—in crafting an amendment Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) tried to offer in the fall in an effort to bar the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases on its own.

Murkowski’s staff director on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, McKie Campbell, and her energy staffer Colin Hayes, convened a meeting on Sept. 23 with aides to a handful of centrist Democrats to brief them on the final version of the amendment, according to participants and sources familiar with the session. The two lobbyists, Bracewell & Giuliani’s Jeffrey R. Holmstead and Sidley Austin’s Roger Martella Jr., called in by phone and walked the staffers through the changes that had been made to text, to reassure the staffers that Murkowski’s amendment would not block the EPA from issuing new curbs on greenhouse gas emissions from vehicles in 2010 even as it would bar the agency from imposing those limits on power plants. [...]

The meeting, which took place in Hart Senate Office Building 370 at 8:45 a.m., included two aides to James M. Inhofe (Okla.), the top Republican on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. Before leaving the room, participants were asked to turn in the documents Murkowski’s aides distributed, confirmed Inhofe spokesman Matthew Dempsey.

Holmstead and Martella dominated the opening of the meeting by describing how the revised amendment had answered the attacks lodged by some Democrats and environmental groups, a source said.

The two men are both experts in the Clean Air Act, and represent clients with a financial stake in climate legislation moving through Congress.

Why did Murkowski’s aides not want the documents to leave the room? And why, later in the article, does Holmstead issue a classic non-denial denial? “I have no memory of playing a major role in that call.” Not I did not play a role, but I don’t remember—leaving himself lots of wiggle room to revise his story later.

The stories shed new light on Sen. Murkowski’s push to strip the EPA of its Congressionally-granted, Supreme Court-approved authority to regulate global warming pollution. As Joe Mendelson, global warming policy director for the National Wildlife Federation, told Greenwire (sub. req.), the Murkowski amendment was “crafted by big pollutersfor big polluters.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)Why would a senator from Alaska, called the poster state for global warming, put polluters’ interests ahead of her home state’s climate concerns? In the current campaign cycle, Sen. Murkowski is Congress’ #1 recipient of electric utilities’ money and the #4 recipient of Big Oil money. And Greenpeace is now calling for an investigation of Murkowski’s lobbyist ties.

Despite this week’s revelations, Senators Inhofe & Murkowski could still try to bring to the floor their amendment to gut the Clean Air Act. Your senators need to hear from you. Email your senators right now and ask them to stop this polluter-fueled push to undercut the EPA’s efforts to protect people, wildlife, and our natural resources from the worst effects of global warming.

Cross-posted from the National Wildlife Federation’s Wildlife Promise.

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DETROIT—Small, hybrid, and electric cars took center stage at the Detroit Auto Show this week, as automakers adapt to the changing demands of a market ravaged by recession and soaring fuel costs.

A clutch of manufacturers also displayed fuel-efficient cars with designs inspired by Europe, in stark contrast to the traditional gas-guzzling behemoths favored by American motorists in a bygone era of cheap gasoline prices.

Chevrolet unveiled its Aveo “subcompact” and Spark cars, while Ford revealed the much-anticipated update to the Fiesta. Fiat, which took over Chrysler last year, has presented both the standard and hybrid version of its 500, due to arrive in the U.S. market by the end of 2010.

Hyundai USA Vice President David Zuchowski said the trend of smaller cars in Detroit reflected the changing face of the marketplace as tighter federal fuel-efficiency standards loomed ever closer. “The composition of our market is going to change quickly because of the federal mandate,” Zuchowski told AFP. “Our industry is going to become more like the European industry in the next couple of years, with smaller cars, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have to compromise on performance.”

Ian Robertson, vice president of BMW, added that the market in small cars was expanding worldwide, noting the success of the rebooted Mini, whose biggest market remains the United States. An electric Mini is on show in Detroit.

But Christian Klingler, executive vice president of sales and marketing at Volkswagen, said he doubted “that tomorrow everyone in the United States is going to be driving small cars.”

Ford, meanwhile, urged visitors to its Detroit displays to “Drive Green,” showcasing its hybrid Fusion, crowned North American Car of the Year. Ford also announced more than $500 million of investment in green vehicles in the United States.

Several automakers used Detroit as a shop window for their new hybrid models, notably Honda’s CR-Z coupe or prototypes such as Toyota’s FT-HS, Volkswagen’s CC compact coupe, or Hyundai’s rechargeable Blue Will hybrid.

Despite the drive toward smaller, hybrid, and electric cars, the unit sales “will still be modest,” said Jeremy Anwyl, analyst with Edmunds.com. “Consumers will be influenced by environmental issues, and also by the cost. Pricing will be the key.”

Electric cars, meanwhile, were available for a test drive at a tree-lined basement track and were parked on the Detroit Auto Show’s “Electric Avenue,” where pint-sized vehicles from firms such as Korean company CT&T and Commuter Cars are on display.

Commuter Cars’ tiny electric car, the Tango, is a slimline two-seater in which the passenger rides behind the driver.

Toyota is showing off its tiny urban electric FT-EV (Future Toyota electric vehicle), while U.S. carmaker Tesla trumpeted the success, range, and reliability of its Roadster electric sports car by driving the vehicle cross country some 2,700 miles from Los Angeles to Detroit.

Nissan, meanwhile, displayed its four-seater all-electric Leaf, which has a maximum range of about 100 miles per charge.

—by Agence France-Presse

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University of Washington researcher Dr. P. Dee Boersma has spent nearly 40 years following her passion to learn about and protect penguins.Courtesy of Dee Boersma/Penguin Sentinels www.penguinstudies.org

There once was a Michigan schoolteacher who gave her little girl a butterfly net and a suggestion: Every kid should have a hobby, could collecting insects be yours?

The little girl, driven by curiosity and a sense of duty, embraced her mother’s words so completely that, for a long time, the schoolteacher believed that her daughter had caused the crash of butterfly populations across the entire Midwest.

Of course, the real threat was pesticides such as DDT.

The little girl grew up and moved on. Now, she chases penguins, whose numbers are also spiraling downward. This time, climate change is one of the culprits.

The butterfly-and-penguin chaser is Dr. P. Dee Boersma, a preeminent penguin researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she holds the Wadsworth Endowed Chair in Conservation Studies. A 2009 winner of the prestigious Heinz Award, Dr. Boersma has spent nearly 40 years studying penguins from the Galapagos Islands to Argentina. I sat down with her to chat about penguin commute times, the human population problem, and why you should have a TV.

People love penguins because penguins are like people

Dr. Boersma first fell “madly in love with penguins” when she was doing her PhD research in the Galapagos Islands in the 1970s. Since then, she’s moved further south and for the past 27 years, she and her research crews have been following Magellanic penguins along the temperate southeastern coast of Argentina.

Perhaps Dr. Boersma keeps these model penguins in her University of Washington lab as a reminder that penguins are a lot like people: both are struggling with climate change.Photo: Ashley BraunWhy bother studying the same group of penguins for so long? Because long-term research like Dr. Boersma’s comes in extremely handy when looking at what an increasingly warmer world does—if anything—to the creatures that live in it.

Magellanic penguins, for example, can swim more than 100 miles each day in search of a nice fish dinner. After eating it (and hopefully leaving a good tip), they book it back to the nests to feed their fluffy chicks before the food is digested in their own stomachs.

“It’s not that different than [human] parents that are trying to raise their kids,” noted Dr. Boersma. (Except that your parents probably didn’t regurgitate into your sippy cup.)

Analyzing satellite data from tagged penguins Dr. Boersma discovered that climate change is forcing these penguins to swim twenty-five miles farther each day to find food than they were traveling a decade ago. That’s fifty extra miles roundtrip—every day! A situation Dr. Boersma compared to a human family where mom’s office has moved from San Diego, where the family still lives, up to San Francisco, where mom now works. The longer commute means mom spends more money on fuel and less time and energy at home. It’s basically the same for a penguin family. Except penguins can’t store extra food in the fridge, and if papa penguin also leaves the nest for food, the kids might get eaten by an armadillo.

“Penguins ... [are] having to commute farther to be able to find fish,” said Dr. Boersma. “That’s the price they’re paying for the change and variability of climate.”

Courtesy of Dee Boersma/Penguin Sentinels www.penguinstudies.org

Staring down a changing world without knowing itDr.Boersma observed firsthand another deadly example of the effects of climate variation. Onthe Antarctic Peninsula, she saw a “rain-on-snow” event, an elusivephenomenon that occurs when sudden bouts of warm air cause falling snowto turn to rain or slush. Some experts think warmer temperatures could increase the frequency of these events.That is especially bad news for penguin chicks. Their downy feathersare adapted to keeping out the cold of frozen snow. However, when snowturns to rain, young penguins get drenched and freeze to death. 

Not all the effects of—or research on—achanging global climate are so glaringly obvious to the general public.“As one guy said to me, ‘Well, you believe in climate change,’” Dr.Boersma mentioned. “And I said, ‘I don’t believe in climate change. The scientific evidence is overwhelming. Climate haschanged. We’re continuing to see more rapid changes.’ He said, “Well, Idon’t believe in climate change.’ And I said, ‘Well, you don’t have to.You can believe in how many angels dance on the head of a pin. That isa belief. But the scientific evidence is really very clear on all ofthese things.’”

This evidence of global environmental changes often is “difficultfor us to even see in our lifetime, but if we take an historicalperspective, the changes have been monumental,” she said. “In the lasttwo generations, we went from mostly having a wild world to mostly nowhaving a human world.”

Both a threat and a savior

Indeed, though climate change presents a grave threat to penguins, “the greatest threat” of all, said Dr. Boersma, is the human race. “We have 6.7 billion people in the world, and we all want to consume more,” she said. “As long as people aspire to the standard of living of Americans, we don’t have enough resources. What we should really be talking about is how are we going to get a world population of about 2 billion, and how are we going to get the most consumptive countries to reduce their consumption.”Outside of mandated population controls, how does she propose we get from here to there? “It starts a person at a time,” Dr. Boersma said. “I have no children. And I have certainly done that intentionally because I think there are too many people in the world.”

That’s what the Discovery Channel is for

Dr. Boersma emphasized the importance of connecting with the natural world, something she and her graduate students get the chance to do at her research station in Punta Tombo, Argentina, where she’s been studying penguins the last 27 years. Recently, they befriended a lone male penguin they call “Turbo.” Turbo doesn’t have a mate to make him raise a chick or take out the trash and instead has taken to paying visits to their research station. He knocks on the door with his beak and waddles right inside.

“I think people have to have that sort of experience with something that’s other than human,” said Dr. Boersma. “And if they do, it can change their life.” 

That experience can even be vicarious.

“It’s one of the reasons it’s important to have not only television so you have the Discovery Channel ... but also zoos and aquariums,” Dr. Boersma said. “Not everybody’s going to be able to go to Africa, or to Peru.”

A magazine can work toward that end as well. In 2001, she launched Conservation Magazine. Its mission, says Dr. Boersma, the magazine’s executive editor, is “to get the news out so that anybody who is interested in conservation can read interesting ideas, stimulating science that they can understand.”

Scientists who do extra credit

While Dr. Boersma has been an outspoken advocate of the Wildlife Conservation Society for years, she acknowledged that the type of passionate activism practiced by NASA researcher James Hansen is a step beyond what most scientists find comfortable.

“I think Hansen’s been an amazing advocate for something he cares deeply about,” she said. “He’s taken on activism to try to alert the public to what he sees are fundamental problems. Sometimes scientists don’t want to go quite as far as he does, but I think we all have an obligation to communicate what the loss is going to be and what scientific experiments we’re running with humans as the guinea pig.”

If penguin stalking were an Olympic event, Dr. Boersma would have taken home the gold.Penguins have clearly been the cause in Dr. Boersma’s life. Her devotion earned her a 2009 Heinz Award. Teresa Heinz established the award in honor of her late husband, U.S. Senator John Heinz. She bestows it on select individuals each year for their “extraordinary accomplishments” in areas that were particularly near and dear to him.

The prize comes with a $100,000 gift and a big, shiny medal—the part Dr. Boersma secretly is most excited about receiving. Her plans for the money don’t involve any trips to a magical children’s theme park. Instead, she’ll spend it on her three passion projects: The Penguin Sentinals, Conservation Magazine, and Global Penguin Society.

“As I was kidding a friend, it’s not enough to buy a coastline in Oregon to retire to,” Dr. Boersma said. “So I think I’ll continue to try to work on changing the world.”

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When it comes to energy, policymakers are often confrontedwith human behavior that seems irrational, unpredictable, or unmanageable.Advocates for energy efficiency in particular are plagued by the gap betweenwhat it would make sense for people to do and what they actually do. Efforts to change people’s behavior have a record thatcan charitably be described as mixed. (See my post, Makingbuildings more efficient: It helps to understand human behavior.)

Many of the experiments that have cast the most light onwhat does (and doesn’t) drive behavioral shifts around energy have been run by Dr. Robert Cialdini,until recently the Regents’ Professor of Psychology and W.P. CareyDistinguished Professor of Marketing at Arizona State University (he retired inMay of last year). Cialdini’s professional focus is not just on energy but onbehavior more generally, and the ways behavior is influenced. His seminal 1984book, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, is used in business andmarketing schools across the country, and his most recent book, Yes! 50Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Persuasive (co-authored with Dr. NoahGoldstein and Steve Martin), was a New York Times bestseller.

Robert Cialdini. Photo courtesy wikimedia commonsCialdini describes six “weapons of influence”:

He consults for a variety of organizations, exploring howthese mechanisms can be used to produce positive results. Maybe the cleanenergy crowd should listen in!

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Q. What is social psychology?

A. Social psychology is the study of everyday behavior—behavior that has some kind of a social context—and the factors that changeand influence it. How do people think about social interactions, and how dothose social interactions change the way they think?

Q. There seems to be an uptick in interest about theapplication of social psychology to energy policy. What’s bringing it about?

A. It’s the least capital-intensive way of making change.I’m speaking of both kinds of capital here: financial and social. Technologycosts a lot. Incentive programs cost a lot (and as soon as they’re discontinuedthe behavior flops back). Legislation, legal constraints, taxes, penalties ofone sort or another—those are costly in terms of social capital, whichorganizations and governments are loathe to spend these days.

What you have with social psychology is a set of proceduresthat are essentially costless to enact but produce levels of change that arecomparable to those other mechanisms.

Q. What can social psychology contribute to energy policy?

A. It can help understand a set of motivations that arebased on social interactions and social rules. I’ll give you a great example. Aneconomist at Harvard decided to see how much money it would take to get peopleto let him skip ahead of them in line. Sure enough, according to economicunderstanding of human behavior, the more he offered to pay them, the morewilling they were to let him cut ahead of them in line.

Then he found something that flew in the face of what aneconomist would say: people wouldn’t take his money. It was the offer itselfthat told them how socially responsible they were to let this guy skip ahead ofthem, because he must have a need. There’s a rule called the “norm for socialresponsibility” that says we are obligated to help those people who aredependent on us for aid. The money he offered them was a signal for how greathis need was. It wasn’t about an economic exchange at all, it just looked like itwas.

Q. It seems like fine-grained understanding of how peopleinteract. How do you scale it up as policy, to get substantial effects?

A. As I argued in Influence, I’ve tried to identify the universals of human experience—those thingsthat produce assent across the widest range of situations and settings andpractitioners. You follow an authority; you pay back those who have given toyou; you seize scarce or dwindling opportunities; you follow the lead of otherslike you and what they’re doing; and so on.

Take an example. The fastest growing development withinmarketing right now is called “social cause marketing”—it’s evenoutstripped sports sponsorship. It involves some entity, usually a corporategroup, saying to its customers or its market, “if you purchase our product oremploy our services, we will donate so much money to a good cause.” They’rebanking on an understanding of the rule of reciprocity: people want to giveback to those who have given to them in a meaningful exchange.

Well, we put signs in hotel room bathrooms—this isn’tpublished yet—that said, “[Re-use your bath towels] for the environment.” Thatwas the control group. The other sign said, “If you [re-use your towels], we’lldonate a percentage of the savings that we get at the end of the year to anenvironmental cause.” That didn’t produce any increase in towel reuse.

But if we said, “We’ve already donated to anenvironmental cause in the name of our guests,” now we get reciprocity.That produced, I think, a 28 percent increase over either of the otherstrategies. You can apply this to social cause marketing: if you’re going togive a donation anyway, you should give it first.

So it is possible to employ these principles in broad-gaugedways to produce large-scale change. And it’s costless— that’s thething.

Q. Have any policy-makers contacted you? Are you aware ofany efforts to systematize this stuff into policy?

A. Yes. Interestingly enough, in the U.K. I’ve beenasked to speak at 10 Downing Street about this three times now, and I’ve spokento congressional committees here in the United States as well. [See “TheContribution of the Social Sciences to the Energy Challenge,” a 2007hearing of the House Committee on Science and Technology.] I’m hopeful thatthere is a movement toward evidence-based decision-making, an attempt toundertake actions that incorporate what social scientists have learned.

Q. Can you point to particular policies that haveincorporated these insights?

A. I can give you some evidence of what happened in thepresidential campaign, where the Democratic National Committee used thisinformation in very effective ways to get out the vote. They recognized that itwas a serious mistake to do what they had been doing in previous elections,saying to registered Democrats, “So many Democrats failed to vote in 2004that it caused this terrible country.” Instead, they changed the wordingto, “So many Democrats voted. Join them!” There’s a recent article inthe Journal of Politics that showed that those two strategies haddramatically different effects on voting behavior.

Notice what the Obama campaign did when it announced thedonations it had received the previous quarter. It was brilliant: they didn’tjust list the amount of money they had received, they listed the number ofcontributors who had donated. The multitude became the message. People wantto be with the crowd. It tells them something not only about what’sappropriate, but what’s possible for them.

If we send people in San Diego a message saying the majorityof your neighbors are conserving energy on a daily basis, that has more effectthan telling them to do it for the environment or to be socially responsiblecitizens or to save money. If your neighbors are doing it, it means it’s feasible.It’s practicable. You can do it—people like you.

It was very important that we say “people in yourneighborhood.” If we said “the majority of Americans,” thatwasn’t effective. If we said “the majority of Californians,” that wasmore effective. If we said “the majority of San Diegans,” that wasmore effective. But the most effective was “the majority of yourneighbors.” That’s how you decide what’s possible for you: what people inyour circumstance are able to do.

Q. How do you respond to the notion that there’s somethingvaguely Orwellian about the government or corporations using this informationto change people’s behavior?

A. I’ve heard it from certain commentators on the right;Glenn Beck was one of them. There are even legislators in Congress who arecomplaining about certain aspects of the energy bill on this. It’s aknow-nothing argument; what you are railing against is honest information. Whatis tricky about telling people about what their neighbors are doing and lettingthem adjust to whatever extent they want? There’s no penalty. There’s noconstraint. There’s no government incentive. You’re going to tell me you’reagainst giving people information?

Q. Liberals still tend to think that if you give peopleplain facts, action follows.

A. In our San Diegostudy, we went door to door and put hangers on people’s doorknobs with variousmessages. We had a control group where some homes received no door hanger, nomessage. We had another control group where they received a message that toldthem that saving energy was a good idea and urged them to do it. Those twocontrol groups were equivalent in energy savings at the end of the month.Information and exhortation was the same as nothing.

Changing people’s knowledge, changing people’s attitudes,changing people’s beliefs are all on the surface of changing their behavior. Solet’s cut to the chase: Let’s change their behavior. There are techniques fordoing it that don’t involve having to change any of those [other] things.

I saw an article a while ago about Washington, D.C.‘s inner-cityparents—the extent to which exposure to fast food advertising and promotionsaffected how much they took their families to fast food restaurants. Sureenough, the more promotion and advertising they were exposed to, the more theyate fast food. But those promotions didn’t change their attitudes aboutfast food or their belief that fast food was bad for them. It only changedwhat they thought their neighbors were doing.

Q. One of the toughest nuts to crack is energy efficiency—there’s all this potential, but people just don’t do it. Any thoughts on howthese insights could be applied to efficiency?

A. You could ask people to indicate the extent to which theythink energy efficiency is a good thing, and make it a public, activecommitment—then they’re going to be more likely to be consistent with it.You can tell them what stands to be lost instead of what stands to be gained.You can tell them what their neighbors are doing. You can tell them whatexperts are saying about this. Each one might have an additive effect; you’regoing to clip 3 or 4 or 5 percent off with each one. But if you add them up,now you are talking about something that’s much more than a minor deflection.

Q. How much government R&D funding goes to this kind ofthing vs. technology development?

A. It’s miniscule. [Rep.] Brian Baird [D-Wash.] has a bill inwhich he recommends that the Department of Energy have a branch devoted tobehavioral science research. That’s what produced the “nanny state”objection in Congress. He’s had to withdraw the bill and try to make it anamendment to something else.

Q. It’s weird how long we’ve lived together as a species, yetstill we know so little about why we do what we do.

A. Nobody would be surprised to read that these areuniversals of human behavior. What’s surprising is how little people know howto activate and amplify them.

There’s research that shows that if a waiter leaves a minton the tray with the bill, his tips go up 3.3 percent. If he leaves two mintson the tray, tips go up 14 percent. What’s the message? It’s that people giveback to those who have given to them. The majority of people would say, well, Iknew that. I have to say, if people know that, how come in 50 percent of therestaurants I go in there’s no mint? How come in the 50 percent where thereare, half of the time the mints are in a basket by the door, where nobodyinside the restaurant benefits? So people know these things at a surface level,but they don’t know how to activate them systematically.

Q. I saw that you retired from academia. What’s next foryou?

A. I retired in order to write a couple of books I had in myhead. I think the greatest disservice that social scientists have performed tothe public at large is to keep their information pretty much to themselves.

Q. I find that very frustrating. Environmentalists areconstantly having tortured discussions about how to influence people. Everybodyhas their own folk theory or intuition. But where is the empirical knowledgeabout this stuff?

A. In the academic journals. In places where people wouldn’tever be able to find it, and if they could, they couldn’t parse it—it’sjargon laden. This is a soapbox issue for me. The work I’ve done and mycolleagues have done is supported by the non-academic community, either throughresearch grants or tuition payments. The public is entitled to know what wefound out with their money, about them and how they work, and we keep failingto come through on our end.

I owe it to people to write some books. We have over 50years of research into the psychology of persuasion. We know a lot.

Related Links:

Taking distributed energy seriously

Economics as pathology, part two

Rationality, welfare, and public policy

Americans pride themselves on being ________ (fill in the blank with something like “biggest,” “best,” or “first”). Especially in California, we think we lead the world on carbon-reducing advances like ________ (fill in blank with “solar power,” “energy efficiency,” or “suntanned, body-builder, movie star, Austrian-born governors”). Given Obama’s U.N.-busting initiative in Copenhagen last month, our country may soon have more to brag about in the low carbon economy of the future, but for now, we might be smart to follow a few examples from India, Italy, and Brazil.

A company in India that once made plastic bags now recycles them for both environmental and economic gain. K.K. Plastic Waste Management has built about 700 miles of roads around Bangalore, mixing 3,500 tons of plastic waste with asphalt to form “polymerized bitumen.” These plastic roads withstand monsoon rains better, reduce tire resistance (which improves fuel economy), and last longer than traditional paving. The U.S. recycles a lot of plastic, but lately has had little use for it. If state and federal highway authorities mandated use of things like plastic roads, we could __________ (fill in the blank with “save lots of money,” “cut carbon emissions,” or “recycle my faded lawn flamingoes productively”).

In 2001, Italy’s dominant electric utility, Enel, launched a five-year program to install smart meters for some 40 million customers. By 2006, that $3 billion investment, including meters using technology from California’s Echelon (ELON), enabled the utility to offer variable pricing for different times of day, energy management information to consumers, and grid connection of solar power. Enel reports it is already saving about $750 million from the smart meters and will therefore payback its investment in four years. American utilities are just beginning to experiment with smart meters, but the Italian mass-marketing effort shows that the U.S. could _______ (fill in the blank with “use smart meters to cut carbon up to 30 percent,” “enable average customers to become renewable energy entrepreneurs,” or “make tons of money for American smart meter manufacturers such as General Electric (GE), Itron (ITRI), and Sensus Metering Systems”).

Finally, Brazil recently discovered massive oil deposits beneath 20,000 feet of ocean water and a layer of salt. Energy expert Daniel Yergin says this will be one of the most complicated projects in the history of oil extraction and may never get done because of the technical challenges, but the Brazilian government is going to be sure domestic workers and businesses profit from this discovery. Brazil has mandated that its government-owned oil company, Petrobras, own/operate the field and use mostly Brazilian oil rigs and other contractors to commercialize the resource. If the U.S. did something similar, we could _______ (fill in the blank with “put billions of dollars into American companies and stimulate economic recovery,” “generate tax revenues to balance state/federal budgets or to invest in low carbon alternatives to oil,” or “violate numerous global trade and tariff agreements and hope no one notices or cares”).

Americans have many reasons to be proud, but no matter how much we know, there’s always someone who can teach us new tricks. As Congress takes up climate legislation again in the New Year, it may be worth remembering that other countries could help us fill in a few blanks in ways that benefit both the environment and the rebounding economy.

Related Links:

Developing nations continue to lead post-Copenhagen

Climate success in 2009 should inspire the new year

Copenhagen revealed a new dynamic between the U.S. and China

Co-written by Doug Kendall,  founder and president of the Constitutional Accountability Center.

For good reason, many climate activists view 2009 as adisappointing year, filled with bad news coverage and missedopportunities. The Senate seems a longway from passing a clean energy jobs bill, and the long-anticipated U.N. summitin Copenhagen has come and gone, producing only an unambitious,non-binding agreement among world leaders. Moreover, late last year, the climate movement suffered a blow to itsimage following the “Climategate”hacking scandal and reports that, for the first time in years, a decreasing number of Americans believe in human-made climate change. As we enter 2010, many climate activists saythe situation is bleak.

But looking more closely at what transpired in 2009, and byfocusing on actions by the Obama EPA, the states, and the courts, we can seethat real progress was in fact made last year.A year ago, Warming Law published a four-partblog series entitled “President Obama’s Roadmap to Cap-and-Trade,” thegeneral thesis of which was that the Obama administration could and should use itsauthority under the Clean Air Act to introduce greenhouse gas regulationswithout congressional approval—partly to prod Congress into passing atailor-made climate bill, but also to serve as a critical regulatory “back-upplan” in the event Congress fails (as it has done so far) to passlegislation. We also argued that actionby states could serve a similar dual function of prodding Congress to act andsupplying a layer of climate regulation that would limit greenhouse gasemissions until Congress gets its act together.

It is no small feat that many of our recommendations andpredictions from the “Roadmap” have been realized: despite other setbacks, the U.S. has nowadopted its very first nationwide auto emission standards for greenhouse gases,and is poised to adopt its first set of mandatory, federal power plantregulations specifically targeting greenhouse gases. Ongoing state action has resulted in thecountry’s first mandatory cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gases, and asignificant revival in tort-based climate litigation may soon lead to yetanother source of protection from (and pressure on) firms that emit greenhousegases.

These changes are very important. Not only are theysuccessfully increasing pressure on Congress to address climate changelegislatively, but they are reducing emissions now and setting the foundationfor more comprehensive reductions in the future. Below, we will briefly review the successesof 2009, and explain why together, they indicate we are in a much better placeat the start of 2010 than some might think.

Raising auto emissions standards

Almost immediately upon taking office, the Obama team beganworking feverishly to strengthen the federal response to climate change, makingthe first and biggest strides in auto emission standards. Last January, President Obama ordered the EPAto reconsider its decision to deny the state of California a long sought waiver allowing itto implement strong auto emission standards for greenhouse gases. The president followed this up in May with anannouncement that he had reached a deal withCalifornia and floundering automakers, not only to grant California its desiredwaiver but also to adopt the state’s proposed standards nationwide. This deal will soon result in the country’sfirst nationwide auto emission standard for CO2, and will bring the minimum fuelefficiency standard to 35.5 mpg by 2016 while producing an estimated 30 percentreduction in greenhouse gas emissions from new vehicles. 

As part of its deal with California, the White House alsosecured the automakers’ pledge to drop numerous legal challenges against statesthat had adopted California’s standards, which the industry previously arguedwere “preempted” by federal law. Thisprompted California Air Resources Board Chairwoman Mary Nichols to state withinhours of President Obama’s announcement that California would immediately startdeveloping an even better set of emissions standards to begin phasing instarting in 2016—once the new round of standards is fully in force. In addition, the day after announcing thedeal over auto emissions, President Obama issued an executive order formally reversing hispredecessor’s position on preemption, ordering all government agencies toreview regulations issued in the previous ten years and “scrub” them ofunjustified pro-preemption language. President Obama’s decision to grant California’s waiver, and his furtheraction on preemption more generally was thus a critical shift from the Bush administration’s aggressive stance toward federal “preemption” of stateenvironmental policies, signaling Obama’s clear support for states’ historicalrole as policy innovators and “laboratories of democracy.” This is a huge victory for progressives.

Complying with Massachusetts v. EPA

The Obama administration has also taken significant steps inthe past year to comply with Massachusettsv. EPA, in which the Supreme Court held that CO2 qualifies as an “airpollutant” under the Clean Air Act. TheCourt’s decision, as we argued in last year’s “Roadmap,” remains among the mostimportant milestones to date in compelling a government response to climatechange, as the Court effectively created a mandate for the EPA to investigatethe impact of CO2 on human health and welfare, and, if that impact were deemeddangerous, to use its authority under the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2emissions.

Within weeks of her confirmation, Obama-appointed EPAAdministrator Lisa Jackson announced that the agency would begin preparing the“finding of endangerment” required by the Clean Air Act.  Last month—coinciding with the Copenhagensummit—Jackson announced that the process had been finalized, clearing theway for the agency to begin regulating CO2 emissions.  In addition, in September, the EPA appearedto foreshadow greenhouse gas regulations when it proposed the “tailoring rule,” whichstated that with respect to greenhouse gases a source would not qualify as a“major emitter” (and therefore would not be subject to certain regulations)unless it emitted more than 25,000 tons of carbon dioxide, or carbondioxide-equivalent gas per year. (Formost pollutants regulated by the Clean Air Act, a source is considered a “majoremitter” if it emits greater than 100, or in some cases 250, tons per year ofan air pollutant; thus the tailoring rule allows the agency to promulgate rulesfor greenhouse gases without affecting the millions of small farms and businessesthat emit relatively small amounts of carbon.)With these developments in place, the EPA is now free to regulate nearly70 percent of the total greenhouse emissions from stationary sources nationwide.

These changes in position by the federal government deserveto be both applauded, and defended, by the environmental community. President Obama has strongly signaled that hewill make good on his campaign promise to regulate greenhouse gases using theClean Air Act if Congress fails to act within 18 months of his coming tooffice. Indeed, our nation may see itsvery first set of targeted greenhouse gas regulations for power plants in place by the end of 2010.

There is also no doubt that industry and Congress have beenmoved by the president’s actions. Ashift in industry attitudes was evident last year when several high-profilecompanies announced their departure from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce due to its unwavering opposition to a climatebill, while a growing list ofindustry leaders have expressed—at least in name—their support for abill. And since the announcement of theendangerment finding, Republicans in Congress, led by Senator LisaMurkowski (R-Alaska) and Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas), have stepped up efforts to removeEPA’s Clean Air Act authority to regulate greenhouse gases, signaling theirfear of the EPA’s recent moves to comply with Massachusetts v. EPA. Thesedevelopments reveal that progress over the past year is having the desiredeffect of prodding Congress to start addressing global warming, as well aslaying the groundwork for a layer of regulation that will have real impacts onemissions.

States & courts

Last year also saw the country’s very first mandatorycap-and-trade scheme take effect:  the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or“RGGI.” (Pronounced “Reggie.”) Thisprogram, which covers major power plants in 10 northeastern states, entered itsfirst mandatory compliance stage in January 2009. Though RGGI has a modest goalof achieving a 10 percent reduction in greenhouse gases below 2008 levels by 2018, itwill prevent carbon emissions in the Northeast from rising, and its relativestability, low allowance prices, and significant revenue for state governmentshave made it a model for lawmakers in Washington. RGGIremains an important limit on greenhouse gas emissions in the Northeast, aswell as a reminder to industry and national lawmakers that states can and willaddress greenhouse gas pollution if Congress does not.

Finally, perhaps the most surprising development over thepast year—and one that has nothing to do with President Obama’s election—isthe revival of tort-based climate litigation. At the start of 2009, most experts predicted that “nuisance” lawsuits—in which victims of global warming sue industries for the “nuisance” of climatechange—would go nowhere. At leastthree federal lawsuits had been filed by states, cities, environmental groups,and even Katrina victims seeking damages from energy and auto companies, andall three had been dismissed. Yet inSeptember, federal Courts of Appeals surprised just about everyone by reversingthe dismissal of two key nuisance cases. Though the next steps for the casesremain uncertain, these important decisions have put industry polluters onnotice that they may soon have to defend their global warming behavior in acourt room, and have given Congress yet another reason to pass a climate billthat would displace expensive tort-based litigation. 

Of course, as is illustrated by the “nuisance” cases,progress in climate policy over the coming years will depend in part on theindividuals who are nominated and confirmed to sit on the federal courts, wherethey will have the power to undermine or uphold federal and state action andother efforts to address climate change. Industry has already filed federal lawsuits challenging the EPA’sendangerment finding and the California waiver, lawsuits that should remindboth the White House and climate activists that judicial nominations are a keycomponent of a successful strategy to address global warming.

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The developments listed above reveal that, despite setbacks,the country is in the best shape climate policy-wise than it has everbeen. Climate activists reeling from theapparent failures of 2009 should be rallying behind these victories andencouraging more of them, as they foreshadow even greater action in the comingyear—particularly with the potential adoption of EPA regulation of carbonemissions. These victories mean theprospects for eventual, meaningful congressional action will only continue toimprove, and that even without such action, real limits on greenhouse gaspollution may soon be in place. 

Related Links:

Developing nations continue to lead post-Copenhagen

Polluter lobbyists, Senate staff: A murky relationship

India, Italy, Brazil can fill America’s blanks