But there are some what we call synthesis and exception products coming out of the climate change science program. They are looking at those sorts of issues. One that has relevance for the Department of Energy is a synthesis and exception product on the impact of climate change on energy production and use. So those sorts of things are being considered through the climate change science program. EPA has programs, as well as the Department of Interior and others. Mr. BILBRAY. Mr. Chairman, I apologize, but there is one very simple but very big question I have that I don't think our colleagues on the other side of the aisle will bring up. Is there one major industrial nation in the world that has substantially reduced greenhouse gases? And, if there is, what technology did they use to do it? Mr. EULE. That is an excellent question and the answer quite simply is no. We have taken a look at data that EPA reports to the U.N. Framework Convention, other countries report this data, as well, and if you take a look at the numbers for 2000 to 2004 emissions growth in the United States was 1.3 percent at a time when the economy grew by about 9.5 percent and population expanded by about 4 percent. The EU 15, which is essentially Western Europe, their emissions grew by 2.4 percent, so they performed worse than the United States. So I don't bring that up to denigrate_all the things that are going on in the EU. They are all helpful. But it just goes to point out that no country is significantly cutting its emissions at this point. Mr. BILBRAY. Who do you think is doing the best? Mr. EULE. Well, I have a chart here. I could look. The Japanese are doing quite well. But, you know, we have heard a lot about cap in trade. I would point out the Japanese are doing well but they don't have a cap in trade policy in place. The Canadians don't have a cap in trade and they are not doing as well as the United States. So there is a mix but everybody is pretty much in the same place as far as emissions go. Mr. BILBRAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I want to thank this panel. Thank you very much. This has been very helpful for us as we move forward. Thank you. We will take a minute break and get our next panel. We have our next panel: Mr. Lee Lane, the executive director of the Climate Policy Center; Mr. Richard Van Atta, the senior research analyst at the Institute for Defense Analyses; Dr. Martin Hoffert, emeritus professor, New York University; Robert Socolow, the former director, Center for Energy and Environmental Studies at Princeton University; and Dr. Daniel Kammen, the director of Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. It is our policy to swear you in. Dr. Van Atta, your daughter is where now in school? Chairman TOM DAVIS. Excellent. Mr. Van Atta. Thank you. Mr. VAN ATTA. Your remarks about Jeb Stuart are very well taken. Chairman TOM DAVIS. I knew you would appreciate it. Mr. VAN ATTA. It is a wonderful model for people to look at in terms of how a school has been resuscitated and turned into a model. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Yes. Excellent. Mr. VAN ATTA. It is a real asset for our area. Chairman TOM DAVIS. Well, I had two through there. One, Shelley, is at William and Mary, and Pamela is at Swarthmore, so they have done well. [Witnesses sworn.] Chairman TOM DAVIS. Mr. Lane, we will start with you and we will move on down. There is a light in front of you that is green when it starts, then it turns orange after 4 minutes and red after 5, but we are going to try to keep within that because your entire statement is part of the record. Thank you. STATEMENTS OF LEE LANE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CLIMATE POLICY CENTER; RICHARD VAN ATTA, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST, INSTITUTE FOR DEFENSE ANALYSES; MARTIN HOFFERT, EMERITUS PROFESSOR, NEW YORK UNIVERSITY; ROBERT SOCOLOW, FORMER DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ENERGY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY; AND DANIEL KAMMEN, DIRECTOR, RENEWABLE AND APPROPRIATE ENERGY LABORATORY, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT BERKELEY STATEMENT OF LEE LANE Mr. LANE. Thanks a lot. I really appreciate the opportunity to appear here this afternoon, and I also really want to thank both you and the committee, as a whole, for conducting this hearing. I think this subject is one of tremendous importance. One of the attachments to my written statement is an editorial from the current issue of the Journal of Nature pointing out the enormous importance of government-funded R&D as a potential source of solutions to the problem of climate change. As soon as we recognize that we really need government-funded R&D, in particular, it raises the question that the record of the Federal Government on energy R&D has been distinctly mixed, and so we really face a serious set of questions about how to do R&D to solve our climate problems in such a way that it actually is likely to get the results that we are looking for. It is a very hard, very big problem, climate change, as you know, so it is a very difficult problem and I think you are really to be commended for asking some of the questions about how to organize an R&D effort in such a way that it really works. We have a very distinguished panel of experts here and they are going to discuss, I think, several of them, some of the more global aspects of the issue of how to do R&D, but I wanted to open my remarks by focusing on what I think are three pretty simple initial steps that could really get us started, things that are not necessarily global in nature but things that would, if we could do them, would really have an impact in enhancing the cost effectiveness of our Federal climate-related R&D effort. The first of those, which is described in attachment B in my statement, would be to create a focused exploratory research program directed at finding new climate technology solutions. Several of us, four very distinguished scientists, including Dr. Hoffert and several others, and me, who is not a scientist at all, put together this straw man proposal describing a possible way of organizing an exploratory R&D program aimed at climate solutions. think that the two problems that such a program could solve are, first, that it could reduce the rigidity of the Federal climate change technology program. Bureaucracies tend to perpetuate themselves. All bureaucracies do that. It makes them rigid. It makes them slow to change. The program as we have designed it would go outside of the bureaucracy to open up the search for new ideas just as broadly as possible, and hopefully in doing that would encourage the flow of new ideas into our R&D portfolio. The second thing it would do would be to counteract some of the tendency toward risk averseness, toward over-caution in the current portfolio of the climate change technology program. This is a problem that has been noted by some of DOE's own reviews of the climate change technology program. We think that the proposal we have sketched out offers a possible way of counteracting both of those problems with the existing program. Our proposal for doing this-and there are other ways you could do it, but our proposal is to create an autonomous, notfor-profit Government-funded corporation to organize the exploratory R&D effort. We think it is better to create a corporation outside of the DOE in order to make sure that we don't simply perpetuate the same problems that exist within the existing organization. Your opening remarks alluded to one of my other key points here, which is the need for expanding the R&D portfolio of DOE to include geo-engineering and adaptation in the CCTP. I think those are extremely important points. We could find ourselves with nasty surprises, and it would be much better to have done the research on those things beforehand. I guess the third thing I will say, just in closing, is that it really is important to give DOE the planning staff of CCTP the resources that they need to do a better job of planning in the future. They have actually done, I think, yeoman's service given their resource limitations, and if we want them to do better we have to give them the resources to do that. I conclude by just saying again I think that this hearing is enormously valuable. I thank you very much for your initiative in organizing it, and certainly the Climate Policy Center will do whatever we can to be helpful. [The prepared statement of Mr. Lane follows:] CPC Climate Policy Center www.cpc-inc.org HOUSE COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM "CLIMATE CHANGE TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH: DO WE NEED A 'MANHATTAN PROJECT' FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?” Thursday, 21 September, 2006 Testimony By Executive Director Climate Policy Center Introduction My name is Lee Lane. I am the Executive Director of the Climate Policy Center, a non-profit, bipartisan Washington DC-based seeking to analyze climate policy options and to promote economically efficient policy responses to the challenge of climate change. CPC is supported primarily through grants from non-profit foundations. To begin, I wish to thank Chairman Davis and the House Committee on Government Reform for calling this hearing. For reasons that I will explain, I believe that in doing so the Committee is posing the single most important question in climate policy - how can we best accelerate progress toward technological solutions to climate change. Within that larger question a focus on exploratory research and how to organize it also seems to me to be precisely on target. My testimony this morning will begin with an explanation of why making organizational improvements to the US Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) is extremely important to the prospects for long-term success in coping with the challenge of climate change. Then I will describe three near or mid-term steps that could potentially improve the existing program. My three candidates for prompt action are as follows: 1. Create a new entity to conduct government-funded research aimed at making high payoff scientific and engineering advances capable of dramatically reducing the potential future harm from climate change. 2. Conduct the R&D needed to make more informed choices about the potential pluses and minuses of various geoengineering responses to climate change and to lower the costs of adapting to climate change. 3. Congress needs to provide the management of the Climate Change Technology Program (CCTP) and to ensure that its recommendations and analysis receive due attention in future budgeting and organizational decisions about CCTP. Government-funded R&D, a key to climate policy Cost-effective government funding for R&D will be essential in meeting the challenge of climate change. Without truly revolutionary technological advances, comprehensive Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emission limits are likely to prove ineffectual in the industrialized world and not to be implemented at all in China and India. Although the industrialized countries, including eventually the US, may adopt GHG controls, with current technology - and given realistic assumptions about social willingness to pay for GHG abatement such controls will do little to curb the growth in global emissions. Thus, according to the US Energy Information Agency's estimate, by 2025, even the original version of S. 139 would have reduced global GHG emissions by a paltry 2.6 percent. To illustrate the point, Figure 1 shows the estimated emission reductions from the original version of S.139. It compares those hypothetical emission cuts with projected global GHG output and growth. Of course, for a still higher cost, controls could more tightly limit emissions. Yet the sponsors of S. 139 withdrew this bill in favor of a less ambitious version. They took this step because they judged the initial bill's high costs as politically unacceptable, and even the scaled-back version has failed twice to attract majority support in the Senate. |