Peter Fox-Penner in Huffington Post on Climate Policy’s Twin Imperatives
Reflecting on Mission Innovation, Fox-Penner stresses deployment over invention
Born out of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, held in Paris from November 30-December 11, was Mission Innovation—a new initiative to rapidly advance clean energy innovation across the globe. Twenty countries, including the world’s most populous nations (China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil), have committed to doubling their energy research and development over the next five years.
Peter Fox-Penner, newly appointed professor of the practice at the Questrom School of Business and director of Boston University’s Institute for Sustainable Energy, weighed in on Mission Innovation in a piece for the Huffington Post. While he certainly welcomes the invention of new clean energy technologies, Fox-Penner urges the world to focus on the improvement and deployment of current technologies to reduce costs and carbon emissions.
Technologies already in place, such as LED light bulbs, solar PV, and wind power, are steadily dropping in price, Fox-Penner notes, adding that though these technologies are not enough to solve the climate crisis, the world cannot afford to halt efforts to deploy current solutions as quickly as possible. “By finding even more effective ways to deploy these technologies, with careful attention to keeping energy affordable and accessible, we will save millions of tons carbon and reduce the costs of these here-and-now solutions as we go.”
Excerpts from the Huffington Post:
The launch statement begins by explaining that current technologies are inadequate to solve the climate crisis, noting that, “while important progress has been made in cost reduction and deployment . . . . the pace of innovation and the scale of transformation and dissemination remains significantly short of what is needed.”
This sentiment was echoed by President Obama, who said at the Paris conference that “we’re also going to have to just invent some entirely new technologies,” and futurist Ted Nordhaus, who flatly states that “we do not, in fact, have all the technology we need to achieve deep a reduction in emissions.”
To the casual listener, these statements might sound a bit defeatist regarding near-term action. Current technology not up to the task? OK, let’s just chill while our scientists engage in a moon-shot program to invent better gear. Why deploy today’s not-up-to-snuff clean energy sources when we can just wait for better and cheaper stuff?
This interpretation isn’t merely wrong – it’s dangerous. If it was simply a matter of building and installing new hardware, we could vastly reduce energy greenhouse gases with clean energy technologies available now. Wave a magic wand that installs all cost-effective energy efficiency technologies and carbon emissions would drop overnight by ten to twenty percent, probably more. Wave a second magic wand, to electrify transport and power it with carbon-free power, and shazam: roughly a third of world carbon emissions would disappear. That carbon-free power could come – today – from wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, and yes, nuclear energy sources, all of which operate thousands of megawatts of commercial power right now.
But Mission Innovation’s real point is rather that today’s clean energy technologies are, in many places, still more expensive to the customer — that is, not counting subsidies or external costs. It would certainly be much better if “breakthrough” clean energy sources emerge cheaper than current clean energy plants. Cheaper and better technologies are always easier to adopt more quickly.
However, when juxtaposed with the critical need to decarbonize during this century, this premise turns the defeatist view of Mission Innovation on its head. If the goal is much cheaper clean energy technologies, and much more rapid deployment, the imperative is to redouble our efforts to adopt and improve current energy efficiency and clean energy technologies, not invent brand new ones. Through these efforts we will vastly reduce clean energy costs, start to change government and regulatory institutions and policies, and expand clean energy markets.
Read the full piece here.