Climate One At The Commonwealth Club

Energy Innovation: Overhaul or Tweak? Severin Borenstein, Co-director, Energy Institute, Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley Richard Lester, Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center Dan Reicher, Executive Director, Steyer-Taylor Center for Energy Policy and Finance, Stanford America’s innovation engine is the envy of the world, yet it struggles to deploy new technology at the scale commensurate with its economic might. This panel of experts from three of the nation’s leading universities says that the U.S. risks falling behind if it refuses to address the technical, financial, and political barriers slowing energy innovation. Richard Lester, Director, MIT Industrial Performance Center, lays out what he calls the three waves of energy innovation: energy efficiency in this decade; the scaling of low- or de-carbonized energy supply technologies beginning in 2020 and running through about 2050; and breakthroughs we don’t even know about today, or may know about but are in the lab stage, but that can take deca

Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Co. It might sound strange coming from the scion of a family whose name is synonymous with cars, but Bill Ford is worried about a world with too many automobiles. “Even if we clean up our cars, 4 billion clean cars is still 4 billion cars,” he tells this Climate One audience. “Most everybody has been focused on CO2 and fossil fuels and the effect that has on us politically and environmentally. That’s absolutely an appropriate focus,” says William Clay Ford, Jr., Executive Chairman, Ford Motor Co. “But I have started to realize that there is this other looming issue lurking out there that nobody was focused on, and that’s what I started calling ‘global gridlock.’” In a world of 4 billion cars, “How are they going to move? How are we as mobility providers going to provide solutions, and not be part of the problem?,” he asks. His answer, to a large degree, is technology. Ford gives an example. His company is testing a fleet of demonstration vehicles outfitted with vehicle-to-vehicl

US Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) America should wean itself from foreign oil and invest in clean energy technologies and infrastructure. Join us for a broad conversation about what Congress could do to promote electric cars, create jobs and spur development of biofuels from forests and agricultural lands. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 26, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Beyond Petroleum: Lessons from the Gulf of Mexico Bill Reilly, Co-Chair, National Oil Spill Commission Bob Graham, Co-Chair, National Oil Spill Commission More than a year after oil stopped gushing into the Gulf, the co-chairs of the commission tasked with investigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill appear together in this Climate One panel to assess the nation’s response to the disaster. Bill Reilly and Bob Graham commend the Obama administration for overhauling regulation of the offshore oil industry, and praise the oil industry for initiating internal reforms, but they blast Congress for doing next to nothing to respond to the spill. Former EPA Administrator Bill Reilly says that the administration and the oil industry have heeded the call for reform. “The systemic reforms that we recommended are underway, certainly in the Interior Department under the direction of Michael Bromwich at BOEMRE and Secretary Salazar. They’ve issued any number of new rules on safety and environmental management that are long

Beyond Petroleum: Navy Seals Leading the Charge Jackalyne Pfannenstiel, Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Energy & Installations Jeremy Carl, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University The U.S. military has ambitious plans to reduce its dangerous dependence on oil and other fossil fuels. Can the buying power of the Pentagon drive innovation in new energy technologies and create markets? This conversation explores how the U.S. Navy and other military branches can align their intellectual and financial capital to accelerate and broaden the transition to cleaner sources of electricity and transportation fuels for American forces and the American economy. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on October 21, 2011 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Saltworks and Beyond Peter Calthorpe, Principal Architect, Peter Calthorpe Associates David Lewis, Executive Director, Save the Bay Jack Matthews, Mayor, San Mateo The debate over Saltworks, a proposal to build 12,000 homes on former salt ponds in Redwood City, is a harbinger of coming development fights in the age of climate change. In this October 18 Climate One debate, architect Peter Calthorpe argues that the need for housing in the San Francisco Bay Area is so great that infill development alone can’t meet demand; conservationist David Lewis counters that developing one of the region’s last unprotected wetlands is not worth the cost. “This is not a site for housing,” says Lewis, Executive Director, Save the Bay. “This one area in Redwood City was held onto by the Cargill Salt Company because they wanted to develop it,” he says. “They have no entitlement to develop it. The city’s general plan says it should remain as open space. It’s a priority area for acquisition by the federal wildlife refuge.” “I do h

On Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World Daniel Yergin, Executive Vice President and Chairman, IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates; CNBC Global Energy Expert; Author, The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World Bullish on technology’s ability to tap previously unreachable oil and gas, energy analyst Daniel Yergin tells this Climate One audience to expect the age of fossil fuels to continue well into this century. Yergin is author of The Quest: Energy, Security, and the Remaking of the Modern World, sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning history of the oil age The Prize. A pivotal year for Yergin is 2004 when, he says, the world woke up to the surge in energy demand in emerging markets, notably China. After Yergin’s opening remarks, Climate One’s Greg Dalton reads a 2010 statement from International Energy Agency Chief Economist Fatih Birol expressing concern over rising global oil demand and urging a transition from oil. Yes, the statement was reasonable, Yergin says,

Red Alert: China Time, China Scale Peter Greenwood, Executive Director of Strategy, China Light and Power Group Stephen Leeb, Co-author, Red Alert Alex Wang, Visiting Professor, UC Berkeley School of Law Julian Wong, Attorney, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Former Advisor, U.S. Department of Energy The four China watchers assembled for this Climate One panel debate the motives for, and the implications of, China’s domestic climate action, particularly its abundant clean energy investments. Stephen Leeb, co-author, Red Alert, is the panel’s contrarian. “I don’t think China does anything with the world’s interest at hand; I think they do everything with China’s interest at hand. Climate change is very much a mixed bag for them. Much more important to them is the issue of resource scarcity.” Leeb was suspicious of the intent of China’s renewable energy investments. China, he says, aims to control the solar market to the detriment of foreign players, including the United States. Julian Wong, an attorney with W

Drop In, Scale Up? Ed Dineen, CEO, LS9 Alan Shaw, CEO, Codexis Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme Next-generation biofuels are on the verge of a breakthrough but aren’t ready to displace conventional fuels, three Bay Area biofuel company CEOs say in this Climate One talk. The CEOs insist that their fuels must compete on price with conventional gasoline or diesel, with or without government support, or a price on carbon, which means they have to scale up, fast. For biofuels to scale, all agree, they must be drop-in fuels. Meaning, says Jonathan Wolfson, CEO, Solazyme, “a fuel that fits directly into the existing infrastructure without modification.” “You’ll not replace mass transportation, internal combustion engines, in our lifetime – not at mass scale,” says Alan Shaw, CEO, Codexis. “What drives it is a liquid transportation fuel. We need an alternative to that. We’re still in the very early days. And that’s because the technology is not ready to be deployed at scale.” Ed Dineen, CEO, LS9, says “for the type of

Truckin' John Boesel, CEO, CALSTART Mike Tunnell, Director, Environmental Affairs, American Trucking Associations Alan Niedzwiecki, CEO, Quantum Technologies In August, the Obama administration announced the first-ever fuel efficiency standards for heavy-duty trucks and buses. The three experts convened at this Climate One panel say that the trucking industry is ready to meet the new rules, which require semi-trucks to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2018. “What’s exciting now is that we have some decent public policy in place,” says John Boesel, CEO, CALSTART. “The engineering talent that was dedicated to cleaning up the criteria emissions is going to be applied to helping reduce our dependence on oil and cut greenhouse gas emissions. I think we’re going to see a lot of innovation in this space.” The new rules “will encourage fleets over this short term to develop best-available technology that is there today. It won’t really be technology forcing,” he says. At the same time, h

Jeremy Rifkin President, Foundation on Economic Trends; Author, The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing the World The world is doomed to repeat four-year cycles of booms followed by crashes if we don’t get off oil, Jeremy Rifkin warns in this Climate One talk. The solution, what he calls the Third Industrial Revolution, is the “Energy Internet,” a nervous system linking millions of small renewable energy producers. For Rifkin, author of the new The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy and Changing the World, a seminal event occurred in July 2008, when the price of oil hit $147 a barrel. “Prices for everything on the supply chain went through the roof, from food to petrochemicals. Purchasing power plummeted all over the world that month. An entire economic engine of the Industrial Revolution shut down,” he says. “That was the great economic earthquake,” he goes on. “The collapse of the financial markets 60 days later was the afters

Big Green Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club Felicia Marcus, Western Director, Natural Resources Defense Council Karen Topakian, Board Chair, Greenpeace USA It would not seem a fruitful time to be on the frontlines in the fight to protect the environment in the United States, with the EPA under daily attack and climate legislation stalled. But the three environmental leaders participating in this Climate One panel note that many fronts exist outside of Washington, with at least one formidable adversary, utilities operating coal fired-power plants, forced to play defense. Until recently, says Michael Brune, Executive Director, Sierra Club, “every single conversation was about, Will we get 60 senators to pass comprehensive climate legislation – when that really represented just the tip of the iceberg, part of the conversation about climate change.” Brune and fellow panelists Felicia Marcus, Western Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Karen Topakian, Board Chair, Greenpeace USA, agree th

Carbon & Courts II: Cap and Trade: Fixable or Fatally Flawed? Edie Chang, Office of Climate Change, California Air Resources Board Brent Newell, General Counsel, Center on Race, Poverty and the Environment Bill Gallegos, Executive Director, Communities for a Better Environment Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate Projects, Natural Resources Defense Council It might be the only reference to Star Wars you’ll ever hear at Climate One. Reaching for an analogy to drive home the impact of a shrinking cap on carbon emissions in California, Kristin Eberhard, Legal Director, Western Energy and Climate Projects, Natural Resources Defense Council, asks the audience to remember the trash compactor scene from the original Star Wars.“This is the cap for Chevron. That cap is coming down on them year after year after year. And they have to figure out what they’re going to do,” she says. “In the trash compactor, there’s no out. They’re in it. And that’s what we’re finding. These regulated facilities ar

Carbon & Courts I: Atmospheric Trust Phil Gregory, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy Pete McCloskey, Former Congressman David Takacs, Associate Professor, UC Hastings College of the Law With climate legislation dead in Congress, and the international climate talks years from resolution, some proponents of climate action are turning to the courts in the hope that judges will compel governments to act. This Climate One panel brings together three attorneys who are pursuing climate action through a novel concept: atmospheric trust litigation. In May, Our Children’s Trust filed the first atmospheric trust suits, with young people named as the plaintiffs. The strategy couples lawsuits, which have now been filed in all 50 states and in federal courts, with the mobilization of youth. Phil Gregory, Principal Attorney, Cotchett, Pitre & McCarthy and co-counsel for the federal suits, explains the strategy. “You have to say to the courts, you, the judge, need to declare that there’s a problem here, and that the government, the

Ken Salazar, Secretary of the Interior California reservoirs are at healthy levels this year, but the state’s water system remains in crisis. Projected changes in the Sierra snowpack and precipitation patterns, along with a growing population, present challenges for hydrating the state’s citizens and economy. How will the federal government help the state secure future water supplies by aiding ambitious projects such as the restoration of the California Bay Delta and the San Joaquin River? How will it keep rivers healthy and balance the water needs of humans and ecosystems? Prior to joining the Obama administration in 2009, Ken Salazar was a U.S. Senator from Colorado active on issues including renewable energy, food and fuel security, and the concerns of ranchers and rural Americans. Join us for a conversation with Secretary Salazar about fresh water, fishing and farming, and other resource concerns in California and the American West. This program was recorded in front of a live audience at The Commonwealth

“Humanity needs nature to thrive.” For Peter Seligmann, who delivers that line, and Jib Ellison, who shares the stage with him at this Climate One panel, the abundant services provided by nature too often go unrecognized. So what are those services?, asks Climate One’s Greg Dalton. In basic terms, replies Seligmann, CEO, Conservation International, ecosystem services are what we get from the natural world. He assigns those services to one of four categories: provisions – food, freshwater, and medicine; regulating – climate, flood control on coasts; supporting: the soil and nutrient cycles; and cultural – the places we live, the places that shape our belief systems. All of them are essential for people, he says, but “we’ve lost track of the relationship that we have with nature and ecosystem services because we don’t think about our foods coming from a forest or a farm; it comes from the supermarket. There’s a real disconnect now.”Jib Ellison, CEO, Blu Skye, a sustainability consultancy, emphasizes that busine

In this Climate One conversation, two of the most influential environmentalists of the past 30 years share the same stage for just the second time in their long careers in public life. Bill McKibben, co-founder of 350.org and author of Eaarth, and Paul Hawken, entrepreneur and author of Blessed Unrest, talk about the ailing economy, the economy we must build to succeed it, and the forces that stand in the way. Climate One’s Greg Dalton opens by asking Hawken and McKibben how the United States ended up mired in recession. “We get into this predicament by artificially stimulating consumption for the past 40 years,” replies Hawken. The bursting of the credit bubble should tell us, he says, that consumerism, our longtime economic crutch, won’t get us out of this mess. McKibben agrees. Since the end of World War II he says, “the basic animating force of that economy was the task of building bigger houses farther apart from each other. It’s a project that ended up being environmentally ruinous, and socially ruinous

Canada’s Oil Sands: Energy Security, or Energy Disaster? Cassie Doyle, Consul General, Canada; Former Canadian Deputy Minister of Natural Resources Jason Mark, Earth Island Institute Carl Pope, Chairman, The Sierra Club Alex Pourbaix, President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, TransCanada The 1,700-mile Keystone XL pipeline would carry heavy crude oil from Alberta to America’s Gulf Coast refineries. In this Climate One debate, a panel of experts argues for and against the controversial pipeline. For Alex Pourbaix, President of Energy and Oil Pipelines, TransCanada, the pipeline builder, and Cassie Doyle, Canada’s Consul General in San Francisco, the merits of the project are clear: America would bank a stable, secure supply of crude from a friendly neighbor. Why would the United States opt to buy crude from anyone other than Canada if given a choice?, asks Pourbaix. “To suggest that those other countries are more responsible environmental citizens than Canada begs comprehension. It is far more compelling to be ge

Power Down The Rev. Canon Sally G. Bingham, President, The Regeneration Project Chris King, Chief Regulatory Officer, eMeter Gregory Walton, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University Energy underpins our civilization. It’s hardly surprising that convincing people to use less of something so tied to their comfort and survival is challenging. Smart policy has given California a head start, but it’s not enough. We need to dig deeper to reap energy savings, say these three experts convened by Climate One. “I think there’s a downside in focusing too narrowly on money,” says Gregory Walton, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Stanford University. Instead, Walton and his team focus on creating the sense that saving energy is a community movement. We need to reach a point where saving energy becomes the social norm, he says, as is the case with wearing seat belts and recycling. “There’s a psychological transformation that happens,” Walton says. “It’s the same behavior, the same experience, but it comes to

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council The fact that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is so readily embraced by progressives can conceal that his message is an inherently conservative one. Listen to Kennedy talk for an hour and you’ll hear the words “free market” invoked more often than in any Milton Friedman tome. “Show me a polluter, and I’ll show you a subsidy,” Kennedy is fond of saying, as he does here. The market is flawed, he says, by polluters who “make themselves rich by making everyone else poor” – externalizing their costs and internalizing the profits. Kennedy, Senior Attorney, Natural Resources Defense Council, was in San Francisco to promote The Last Mountain, a new film that features his efforts to end mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. If dirty fuels were forced to cover their full costs, Kennedy says, not only could they not compete in the market, renewable energy would win. “Right now, we have a marketplace that is governed by rules that were written by