Clean Tech Alternatives to Natural Gas
10:09:40
Glen Dowell: Good morning welcome. Thank you for coming. My name is Glen Dowell. I am
the moderator for this panel. I would like to thank Ben Tettlebaum and the Environmental Law
Society for inviting me to do this. We are here to talk about clean tech alternatives to natural
gas. Ben has assembled a very nice panel experts in a variety of areas. We should have a good
time here. My job of course is to keep things moving on time. So of course he gave me three
academics and keeping academics on time is the proverbial herding cats. So I am going to lean
heavily on my help here. I got a time sign and a hammer and I have asked the hammer and of
course you as the audience to respect the time and try to remember we are the only thing
standing between you and lunch so we will get through. I am an assistant professor of
management and organization of the Johnson School just across the road and I am also affiliated
with the Johnson Center for sustainable global enterprise. So my particular area is understanding
the difference in environmental performance among organizations and trying to see how
regulations impact organizations differently, how organizations, some of them go beyond what
regulatory departments ask for and others as we know kind of flux up and down right around that
line of regulatory requirements and I am going to let the panel. We got Todd, Al, Ben and
Emmanuel, I will let them introduce themselves and I have been asked to give a couple of minute
introduction just to give you a flavor for their own expertise and from there I got some questions
and then of course we will take some questions from the audience with Jessie walking around
with the microphone. So I guess we will just start and work out way down the panel. Todd?
Todd Glass: Great. I'm Todd Glass. I am perhaps, well I am different because I am not an
academic, I am rather a practicing lawyer and we bill by the six million increments so I know
how I know how to _____*10:11:33. When somebody is paying for it that really helps. I
graduated Cornell in 88 and spent a couple of years working for the EPA, basically moved west
and became an energy lawyer and I have been practicing energy law for, I don't know, 17 or 18
years. I represented industrial customers buying large amounts of power and gas, represented
utilities, doing everything from transmission distribution, rate cases and that type of thing and for
about the last eight years, I have been developing and financing renewable energy projects
throughout the country and internationally. I guess the perspective that I bring to the panel is
that sort of where the policies, where the money, where sort of all the things come together to
actually get things built and financed and that is really where I am going to go today and what
my perspective is. I am with a law firm, Wilson Sonsoni Goodrich Rosati. It is the leading
technology law firm perhaps in the world. It's based in Silicon Valley. We have over 400
energy and clean technology clients. Most of them are venture-backed. We do a whole lot of
venture-backed companies and it is really an exciting time. So one of the other things that I am
hoping to be able to lend today is a view towards what is coming next in technology because
there are some very exciting things happening.
Al George: I am a professor in the engineering college, although it doesn’t say it in the
programming here, my speciality is systems engineering. So I take a look at this from a systems
point-of-view. My background is aerospace and automotive systems and I more recently have
been working on energy systems. I have got experience working for NASA, for BMW with
Germany and Harley Davidson in the U.S. Basically the problem we have ahead of us is that
energy is the thing that allows our civilization to exist. If we don’t have energy we are back to
basically hunters and gatherers and etcetera. We use a tremendous amount of energy in the
united states, about twice as much as they do in Europe for example and about three times in
other intermediate countries and the question is where are we going to get this from. We are
exhausting what is there as far as fossil fuels are concerned. So what are we going to do about
this? What is going to happen now and I am looking at a little bit longer time scale then some of
the previous panels and in the next 30 to 100 years so my grandchildren’s grandchildren, alright?
We are going to have to make really big changes. We are not going to have the kind of use of oil
that we have now. Fifty years from now there is no way we are going to be driving around with
the way we are with gasoline powered cars and SUVs, etcetera and the question is how do we
make the transition? How do we get from here to there? All the energy sources including to the
certain extent the renewable ones have disadvantages. The previous panel there was nice lead in
by some of the things with coal. If it is coal versus gas, there is certainly lots of problems. As
we know recently, nuclear has problems too, although as I will mention later we have to quantify
the risks. We have to quantify what the risks are ______*10:14:59. So we have these problems
on here and the thing that keeps me going on all this is looking at all the mistakes we made as a
society and civilization recently and energy. So subsides for Hummers and very large SUV’s,
flex-fuel economy credits were making cars where essentially 98% of them will never see a flexfuel in them. We are trying to make corn ethanal and coal methanol, both were basically bad
ideas because they weren’t looked at from a systems point of view. That is what I am trying to
give you is a systems point of view here. So the main thing to look at is we talk about energy
and I will show you a little slide later that you don’t have to understand the details of, but
basically is very complex energy. We have first of all how much energy we use is the first
question. So a lot of the times we tend to think of energy we want to think our energy we want
to keep our exact present lifestyle indefinitely and therefore we have to have the amount of
energy we are using in the United States right now per person and not only that we kind of look
around and say I guess maybe India and China deserve the same thing eventually too, but that is
not possible. So that is the first part of the problem, but then you start saying okay we need a
certain amount of energy. Where did it come from? There are a whole lot of different sources
that you have to think about. Also distribution and moving the energy around. You know liquid
fuel you can move around and put it in the tank of the car. Electricity is more difficult.
Emmanuel will say things about this probably, there are other possibilities for transportable fuels
coming up and then in anything that we look at we have a whole lot of things to worry about, we
have the economics including jobs and taxes, local and national. We have environmental affects,
both what you think as normal environment and risks due to events, for example like tsunamis.
You have community perceptions and decisions. Basically ranging from very small
communities like Ithaca up to a state, like New York State or a country decisions are made by
people based partly on logic or partly on perceptions and feelings about things and this is very
important and has to be taken into account. You can not just ignore that. You have to take into
account. Education may change some people’s opinions. The point is that people have an
opinions with you know democracies and that's how it is going to work out and then there is
questions of national security that I will get into as well. So I want to quickly go to the first slide
here. This is the way you really have to look at a problem that is complicated. You have to look
at it starting out what is the context you are in. So the context here includes the opinions of
people as well as factual things like how much energy we need and then from there you move
down to coming up with requirements. Requirements is a very underestimated thing.
Requirements means before you start designing something and you decide what it is you want.
So we are not just saying we wants lots of energy, how much energy do we really need, okay.
Then also what kind of health requirements do we have? All energy sources have risks. How
are we going to spread that risk around? How bad can it be? The risk of having certain health
affects for the population versus all of using half the amount of fuel we are using now that has to
be evaluated and there needs to be requirements for that. Then you come up with designs,
multiple designs and we are talking about multiple fuel sources, energy sources. You come up
with a design, you look at it and you study it and you finally make some decisions. Now the next
slide, my last slide here this shows a chart that I do not expect anybody here to understand. I can
talk about this for a couple of hours, but the idea this is the complexity that is involved in energy
choices. All these things matter, okay and it is kind of mind boggling all these things, but if you
change any of these that affects some of the others in some way. So the question is how do we
deal with it and the way we deal with it we can’t do it all at once.
Glen Dowell: I got a chance to see this yesterday, incredibly complex and interesting and I am
sure we are going to get a chance to talk about it because I think we are going to talk about
different technologies that we do.
Al George: I wasn’t going to talk about it I was just going to say we have to itemize things
groups at a time.
Glen Dowell: Absolutely and interactions. Thank you. Ben?
Ben Ho: Yeah so my name is Ben Ho. I am an assistant professor at the Johnson School, but
like Glen, before coming to Cornell I was the lead energy economist for the White House and so
my main areas of expertise are behavioral economics which I do sort of crazy experiments with
other graduates in my laboratory and try to see how emotions effects behavior, but today I am
mostly here as an environmental economist, which is basically using economics tools to
understand environmental issues. I teach a class in environmental economics and a student came
to me before the first day of class and looking at me like I was crazy. Like what could
economics and the environment have anything at all to do with each other and I think a lot of
people don’t appreciate that economics actually says a lot. I think in too many of environmental
debates people talk about the scientific consensus and what the science says and I was listening
to a panel this morning about the science of hydrofracking and I work in climate change and
people talk the science and consensus of climate change. What you never hear is economic
consensus of climate change and what you barely hear about is you know what the economists
think and actually economist have a lot to say. So I am going to start off a little defensively. I
just saw the movie Inside Job, any of you seen this movie? Right if you haven’t seen this movie,
it effectively sort of blames the economist for the financial crisis and we are all evil and we are
collecting millions of dollars. I am a poor academic. I got no money. My car is 20 years old.
But basically I think economists first of all, economist, first of all an economist profession there
is two things I want to make a point of, one is that we care about the environment. We are not all
just sort of re-driven people. We are there sort of to save the world. I work for the Bush
administration and people have this image of the Bush administration. I feel a lot of people here
are not big fans. As an economist there we are mostly democrats, right what you don’t
appreciate as an economic profession as a whole we are mostly democrats. We are out to sort of
save the world and I think we have economic tools to sort of get us there. The second thing I
think you need to understand about economics is that there is a big difference between
microeconomics and macroeconomics and I think the financial crisis a lot of that was
macroeconomics, understanding growth, understanding unemployment, GDP. To be honest I
think economist have no clue going on. We want the grad school to basically try to save the
world. To figure out how to improve GDP, reduce unemployment, all these things that you hear
about form the news and I learned that ten years ago that it is hopeless, that we just don’t know.
But on issues of sort of microeconomics we actually know a whole lot and the field of
environmental economics comes out of the microeconomics tradition and so the main thing I
want to make here in microeconomics is that fundamentally what it is all about is maximizing
benefits and minimizing costs. I think it is a pretty simple proposition to say that as a society,
the goals of society should basically maximize, do a cost benefit analysis to sort of maximize the
difference between benefits and costs. So economists sort of believe in markets because we have
nice strong evidence and proof that markets are really good at doing this maximization. The
exception comes about though in that there is market failures and we know about the market
failures very clearly. We could use sort of science and economics tools to go out there and
identify where those market failures are in terms of impact on the climate, in terms of impact on
water supplies and in terms of impacts on health and asthma and all these other conditions and I
think walking in here you get sort of an idea of how economics see the world and how
economics can make the market better. I think probably the best way to understand how clean
energy policies should go moving forward.
Glen Dowell: Ben I am sure that they were more angry that I teach MBA’s than your
economics, but thank you. Emmanuel?
Emmanuel Giannelis: Good morning. My name is Emmanuel Giannelis. I am a professor in
material science and engineer here at Cornell and I am also co-director of the center here that
focuses on energy and sustainability. As part of that ______*10:23:34, part of the research work
that I am doing we are looking at new sustainable or renewable sources of energy, but at the
same time we are looking at ways to mitigate against emissions of CO2 with the understanding
here that we need to look for new sources of energy, but at the same time fossil fuels we have
asked for a quite a bit of time and therefore a good approach is to actually look at a new sources,
but also ways to mitigate from existing sources.
Glen Dowell: Thank you. I had the panelists send me some questions over the last couple of
weeks which I have tried to condense down into a few that we can get seated discussions. So
before we turn to the audience, I think I will try to get a couple of these questions going and I
have asked the panelist to, we wont get all four of them on every question, but we will get some
different view points. I would like to start with thinking about what criteria do you use for
deciding which of the cleaner energy options get pursued? How do we as a society should we
make these decisions? How are they being made now? Lets start with that first. How do we
decide which options to pursue? How should we decide?
_____*10:25:00 (Panelist? Todd Glass): Me?
Glen Dowell: Go ahead. Sure you're on the investment part of it.
_____*10:25:04 (Panelist? Todd Glass): I think that perhaps one very important thing is
obviously there is a lot of different things, there is policies, you name is a lot of different
influences on how we make resources decisions, but I think perhaps one of the less understood is
the amount of capital that is required to do it. I think in the last day or so we have been talking
about fracking and natural gas and coal and I think that it is important to note that there is just
simply a reality of the way that the system has actually been built and dealing with that reality
and moving directionally towards that renewable. For instance it is all good and I have built a
whole lot of projects and financed over 100 solar projects and I am all for it, but we have to
realize we have to deal with what we got as far as the transmission system, as far as a regulatory
system, as far as integrated utilities and whether or not and deal with the reality and it is going to
take one hell of a lot of capital to really see significant changes. It is going to take time so
getting to the influences on how we make decisions it is a number of different factors, but the
one thing I think that is good to keep in mind is what is actually doable with the amount of
capital and resources that we have.
Glen Dowell: What criteria should we be using or are we using in shale?
Emmanuel Giannelis: If I may add to that I would say these are very complex questions and I
think as Al suggested before is we need to look at these from a systems point-of-view. So
because I'm an ecologist, I would say that from my point-of-view, you need to really look at the
technology all the time. Is it physical? You know a genius from the audience might recognize,
what I'm going to say well does it violate the _____*10:26:58 dynamics. We can talk about
things that look good, but if at the end of the day they are not going to work then nobody wants
to start going down that path. Then you need to develop a technology, the materials that are
needed to make that possible so that is one part of the forum. Then you need to look at the
economics, but at the same time you need to look a little bit deeper and you need to think about
what I will call a life cycle analysis. So let me give you an example of what I mean by that.
Many years ago, or not many years ago, I think, a few years ago we were really going down the
hydrogen economy. The hydrogen economy that is going to produce cleaner cars, that it is going
to mitigate against CO2. A lot of us put it to through idea. I certainly did. I had a project on
developing new technologies for fuel cells. One little secret that was not always communicated,
it was the fact that hydrogen is not just out there, you have to make it. That is the fuel by the
way for those of you who are not familiar. That is the fuel we will be using to really get these
fuel cells to produce electricity, well hydrogen the last time I checked was not in natural
abundance out there to be used. You couldn’t just drill and get it out and so you had to produce
it and some thought we were going to produce it from oil. If you are going to produce hydrogen
from oil (a) you are going to be drilling, (b) you are going to be producing CO2. Now the fact
that you are not you producing the CO2 when you are running the car it doesn’t mean that
somebody else before you didn’t produce the CO2. So you could feel good about using a fuel
cell car, but at the same time it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t pollute. I am just using this example
and I exaggerating, I apologize, I am exaggerating a little bit here to make a point, but what I am
trying to drive at is we really need to look at from a systems point of view and really do a life
cycle analysis that allows us to really evaluate the technology, the economics, the policy and
then of course we can come to a decision that is informed by all these factors. Because just
picking up things without having done all that analysis it doesn’t necessarily help us. A lot of it
is really critical issues that we are all going to be facing in the years to come.
Ben Ho: So I come like I said from, as I said, an economics point-of-view and I think just as
Emmanuel is saying that when you think about a life cycle, I think once we have that life cycle
analysis what we want to do is basically think about the costs and benefits of each component
about life cycle and I think one thing to keep in mind is that there are no good guys and bad guys
here, right? I think we basically have to keep in mind that oil can be good sometimes and that
solar can be bad sometimes and it is important to sort of calculate how good and how bad each
thing is. So basically from a cost benefit point of view I think how do we evaluate different
energy sources. The easiest thing that economist do is calculate the cost. What is the cost of
using oil? Right and you go out there and you do the math and it is not huge but it is substantial,
you can say maybe it is about a dollar per gallon of external costs and those costs are things like
natural security costs. Those costs are things like environmental costs and so you know what
should we do about it? We should start out just basically saying is well the best thing we should
about is we should put a tax, an extra dollar on gasoline and at the White House that is what the
economist proposed and the politicians basically said sounds great we agree with you but that
isn’t going to happen. There is no way the voters are going to support that. So what happens in
Washington instead is if we can’t tax oil then lets make everything else cheaper, right? So
basically we have politicians out there picking and choosing and trying to subsidize their favorite
policies and I think some of these subsidies make a lot of sense. Right? Whereas subsidies for
wind farms and sort of new hydro. I think a lot of these subsidies make a lot of sense, I think it
can be excessive. I think one area where it is quite excessive is solar. I was talking you know to
one ______*10:31:15 the other day and she was just so proud that the government gave her
$50,000 to install her new solar panels. The panels themselves costs like $75,000 and the
government decides to pay for $50,000 of it and for me I am thinking about the benefits are not
there. You can’t just possibly justify that much benefit for just a single technology and it would
be far more good for society by finding the most cost affective clean technologies out there
instead of the ones that are looking the best on a magazine cover, instead of the ones that look
the best and make us feel the best and we sort of see like tell our neighbors, look how green I am.
We want to make decisions based on what is best for society not best on what makes me feel
good, just as an economist.
______*10:32:06 (Panelist?): Can I just jump in? There's a stack and a dynamic element to
this. If we are subsidizing technologies where we think in creating scale we will get to a much
lower price point then that has some sense, but if we are subsidizing where we know this is cost
and it is going to stay that way that obviously had a role. Which of these technologies do we see
as becoming increasing viable in a cost competition way with what we are currently have as a
mix?
Ben Ho: Yeah I think that is an excellent point. That is the next point that I had. So my next
point though, it's a defense, so my teacher's class, I encourage my students to push back on me
and I encourage all of you to push back on me because I say you know sort of extreme things to
make my points, but there's new ones in everything that we do and I think one thing is that the
dynamic are important. I think one of the reasons that justify in funding solar is the fact that it
could get a lot cheaper and it could make a big difference and you know I think the dynamics in
terms of long terms effects also tells us thing about natural gas. So natural gas actually has
potential great longer effects, in terms of a 50% reduction, you know or maybe less if we decide
this morning, but has some potential for reduction, but if we have an entire solar economy that is
like a 100% reduction in our emissions and so it is not just about where we are today, but where
things are in the future. On the flip side of that the other popular notion that it goes against is
conservation. I am maybe weird I believe in helping the environment. I am not a huge fan of
conversation, because I think conservation makes sense in the short run but in the long run we
are not going to get 100% conservation and so even though we can make some short-term gains
by sort of using different light bulbs we are not going to get the 100% CO2 production from
turning lights off more, but we will get that from things like solar and wind which have
transformative potential. So I think it is important to think through the entire 100 year timeframe
of us going on when you think about the technologies to pursue.
Todd Glass: The one thing I would say is that it is actually happening, the cost of solar isn’t
going down and over the last five years I have seen the price go down in the deals that I am
doing by almost 20%. It is being done by very vigorous competition, both nationally and
internationally for the equipment and what not and also financing and what not. So if you look
across renewables a lot of them are getting cheaper as they are reaching a scale and reaching a
more competitive environment.
Glen Dowell: Absolutely and one of the points that Ben touched on and we have had a couple of
questions from the audience about I think we are all interested in because it does relate to the
natural gas question and everything is what roles or what is the work that you are seeing in
policies that are effecting these technologies? _____*10:34:58 subsidies for our current mix that
make little sense and subsidies that has suggested that maybe _____ cleaner technologies which
could be better thought of. So one of the questions is why do we see massive wind farm
installations in Iowa and very little on the east coast. What are the policy issues that are
effecting this in the wrong ways and the right ways?
Todd Glass: Well there is actually both federal and state policies and they are both definitely
driving. But before you get to the policies to answer why wind is in Iowa? It is windy there.
You go to where the wind is, whether it is the Columbia gorge between Oregon and Washington
or the midwest. You go to where the resources are. That is why renewable solution for one state
and one region is not the same as it is going to be for others. But from a policy perspective, juicy
renewables, at the federal level is the tax policy and production tax credits that have been used to
really help promote wind and investment tax credits, which is the 30% tax credit for solar
property and other types of things. Second thing is a massive influx of nearly 30 billion nearing,
it's going to hopefully get even larger than that, of federal government money in form of low
guarantees to large scale manufacturing and projects. At the state level though that is where the
real action is. It is renewable portfolio standards in 29 states have created micro-markets for
renewable energy in 29 states and that is what really driving. I would say the other policy, which
is probably the most important policy that people don’t focus on is net meter. Net meter is
hugely important for you know creating the opportunity really for distributing generation and
other things that happen sort of on the customer side of the meter and that is really its driving
technology and driving business policy.
Glen Dowell: Al, there must be a systems answer to this a little bit.
Al George: Yeah I think the main thing here is we have all kinds of benefits and risks and we
have to look at them together and try to do the best we can to quantify them and the economists
are usually trying to quantify externalities. We have to also quantify what we think about risks
of different kinds of things that we have and make a decision that way, also the thing that you
have to take into account is the fact that some things are affiliated with mature wind is fairly
mature. There is still the cost that is coming down steadily. Other things are failing, biomass.
Biomass, we are not really clear we are not really clear what we can get out of biomass and so
there is also capacity limitations. So I have to disagree a little bit with Ben that renewable things
do have a capacity limitation therefore conservation is important. You are right we are definitely
not conserving 100%, but if we can get down somewhat we might be able to sustain ourselves on
thing like wind, biomass and solar.
Ben Ho: I think in terms of you know sort of making sense of this you know jigsaw puzzle of
different polices that are out there I think economists can’t stand it. Right I think you know in
general for sort of making environmental policy we have an easy answer just tax the bad stuff,
right? The easiest way to do that if everyone sort of comes to a greenhouse gas emission any
ways is do a natural carbon tax and if we can’t do a natural carbon tax we should do a cabin
trade. The problem with politics and since ____*10:38:29 studying political economy is that it
just doesn’t work because no one wants to be responsible for a carbon tax, but everyone loves to
point out, all politicians love to be able to point to like this factor that they help to subsidize or
that the new technology they helped subsidize and the problem even with even sort of cabin
trade, which is a step in the right direction, is that the politicians are going to re-distribute the
credits to different people and that leads to sort of all _____*10:38:54 at least a lot of politicking
to get their credits to their favorite constituents, whereas if we just sort had a carbon tax and said
hey if you emit carbon you are hurting the environment, you got to pay up. That is the easiest
way to do it. So instead we just have this mix of almost every policy that you can think of. My
students in my class they write papers and each paper often times sort of proposed new policy
ideas and just like I heard from Todd and pretty much anything that you guys can possibly think
of already exists in some form. Right? And it's basically and from a systems point-of-view the
______*10:39:26 directions that maybe have unintended consequences. Ethanol is great
example. Basically people think that getting fuel from corn is a good idea and so we have a
dozen different policies out there to promote it. To the point now that something like 1/6 of the
U.S. corn supply goes toward gasoline, goes into our cars and as we sort of think these things
through this mix different policies sort of drives us nuts and ideally if you guys have a chance I
would push for a simpler tax, even though I have sort of given up right now and realize that that
probably won't happen.
Glen Dowell: So a couple of things that have come up here from the question that I have
received and from the comments are we too fixated on technology as a solution? Should we be
thinking, I think there is this sort of bifurcation as I see it. There is people who think there is a
technology that will fix all this and then there is people say we really have to think about our
own behavior and consumption. Could you speak, Ben has already touched on that, but a little
bit more on how we get the mix right in terms of behavioral changes and technology?
Emmanuel Giannelis: Well if I may start? I think that is a very good question because clearly
we need to do both. If you actually look at the energy needs today and what is projected lets say
by 2050, it is clear that because there is going to be more of us on earth and because we really
have this humongous appetite for energy we ______*10:41:05. With the energy needs in the
years to come are going to be so large and the question is where is that energy going to come
from and at this point there is not really a very good answer for that. We could talk about what
we have and what we can develop and so on and the thing is if you just say well it is only going
to be technology well that is not good. If you say it is all going to be behavior, well that is not
good either because I don’t see us not going back to not driving, not using cell phones, not doing
the kinds of things that we are accustomed to. So then our energy consumption is going to go
down. So I think we need to do what is right. We need to push say more efficient cars, but at the
same time we can walk a little bit more than we normally do, especially in this country, but at the
same time there is only so much we can do with that and I think we need to have the technology
to being pushed to the limits because the energy needs of today are only going to be increased in
the years to come and I don’t see that with doing only one kind of one side of us.
Glen Dowell: Todd, you are in California which is actually on a per capita basis done very well
in terms of energy use compared to the rest of the country.
Todd Glass: Right and actually California has done more in energy efficient than any other state
because they de-coupled. I don't know. In the late 70s they de-coupled how much utilities made
as far as profits from the actual sale of energy which allowed energy efficiency to become
actually something that really happens. So they have done a lot in that. The other thing is that
they have really propelled renewables forward and just this week they passed the 33% renewable
portfolio standard and the government should be signing it soon, so absolutely, but I am a firm
believer in technology. I don’t think that we can to a large extent the system that we have in the
united states is the same system that we have had since the 50s and 60s with the modest new
generation of natural gas generation in the 90s and then a little bit of renewable. We absolutely
need new technology. As Emmanuel says we have an ever-growing load and if you look at the
rest of the countries around the world that themselves are becoming more developed they need
energy too and technology has to be part of the solution. The other aspect I would say is that as
we try to de-carbonize our energy system it is going to have to come through newer technologies
and newer ways of doing things and so.
Glen Dowell: Do you mean new technologies that we don’t even have yet?
Todd Glass: Absolutely, think of carbon capture utilization and sequestration technologies. It is
not really out there yet, well it is being developed now. It is not nearly near the
commercialization stage yet and it is not nearly the point of deployment in a scale that really
makes a difference but directionally that is the way that we have got to be going on and I don’t
honestly see any other alternative other than pursuing new technology resources.
Al George: I would agree with needing the new technology, I certainly believe that, but I think
it makes you remember new technology can reduce consumption as well. I think that is equally
as important or maybe more important.
Glen Dowell: Like _____*10:44:36 (s/l smart car).
Al George: The _____, as you mentioned and avoid having to use energy in some ways, as
things like teleconferencing and skype and all that is really important.
Glen Dowell: Right or and distributed generation which we don’t have a leakage in the system
to begin with. And , Ben, I know from behavioral economics we have a lot of information about
how to affect that kind of change.
Ben Ho: Yeah I really want to believe behavioral change matters, right? I mean cause that's the
research I do. So one of the like various lab experiments that I do in the laboratory is I bring
students into the lab and I try to get them to feel guilty about their own carbon emissions and
then see if that effects their good behavior later on. It might have some effects but on the whole
people are much more likely to use this guilt as an excuse not to do something than to actually do
something and there has been some sort of widespread _______*10:45:22 in California through
this company called O-Power that basically put a smiley face on your electricity bill if you are
losing lower amounts of energy and a frowning face on the electricity bill when you are using
too much electricity and they find that it's getting to be a 1% to 2% reduction in people’s
electricity use. I think not even doing this, I think these are good experiments to be done, but I
am really counting on technology to really save the day. I am a technical optimist. It is
unfounded but just think back 50 years where basically we just invented DNA, computers were
barely existed, the internet didn’t exist, Facebook is only ten years old and we are trying to
project 50 years, 100 years from the future using sort of today’s mind set. I just sort of think that
is crazy. Right? I think that sort to refer back to what Al said that you know the goal is to
basically or when someone said this morning, the goal is to basically bring the world up to
European lifestyles in the next 100 years, I think that is not ambitious enough. Right? You
know I think our standard of living has been doubling every 20 to 30 years for the past 100 or
something and for the hundreds of years now, I see that is going to keep going. Right? You
know and where is the energy going to come from? I don’t know, but I think there is going to be
new technologies that basically you know improve our standard of living then ______*10:46:40,
I guess that is what Al is saying and I guess sort of reduce our use.
Glen Dowell: Okay. So one of the things that we know though is that with new technology
come unanticipated consequences and how do we mitigate or how do we best deal with that as
move forward and that is of course a systems view. It also got _____*10:46:59. Everyone of
these technological solutions we have to think as you say cost benefits, but benefits for whom it
costs, or by whom and how do we manage that as a society? I don't know. Maybe that is my
monologue, but I will try to make it a question. How do you deal with that from a systems or
economics or?
Ben Ho: No I mean economics doesn’t have a good answer on that. Standard answer you hear
from any economist is again if there is not consequences, tax it. Right? But I've already said
that and politics won't let that happen and another standard answer and the fairness issue is a big
one. Right? So if we look at the fairness issue of sort of who is going to be hurt by climate
change, it's actually not going to be us. Right? The U.S. will be able to do very well, you know
Canada, Siberia. These cold places are going to do very well from global warming. It is just like
poor countries, like Bangladesh that are going to be hurt and how do we fix that? Well the easy
economics answer is well we just give them money. We write them a check to make up for it,
but I think in the real world that just wont work at all.
Al George: I would like to recommend to you if you haven’t read the book Collapse, by Jared
Diamond. You will find that there are many societies around the world historically that have
done themselves in by running themselves out of resources. So I think you have to look at that
perspective that we do have to be careful and some societies made good choices and they are
islands that have been going on for a couple of thousand years without any problems and there
other islands that have become extinct like Easter Island and it depends on the leadership that
you have and the leadership is really not just the people we elect it is all of us here. I think we
need it with great interest and I think the main thing is to make sure that our society, try our best
to make sure that our society makes sensible decisions. For example, we could decide that we
are just going to burn up everything that we can find in fossil fuels and forget about everything
renewable because right at the moment it is cheaper to do that. If you did that I can pretty well
predict what will happen. On the other hand, you can say we have to at a present time in
government, various governments, plural as you pointed out, are sponsoring things that are not
completely economically _____*10:49:04 and have a promise of being so and that is a policy
that is likely to lead to us. Our grandchildren’s grandchildren having some kind of reasonable
standard of living. The first one I suggested, which is a possible solution and depending on how
the politics works, will pretty much lead to disaster.
Glen Dowell: Lets open this up a little bit and take some questions from the audience. I am told
I have a couple instructions, one is if you can keep your questions as brief as possible and two to
make sure that they are actual questions and not monologue, which means the question goes up
at the end. Right back there. Jessica, if you can walk around? Yep, go ahead, sir.
Audience member: Okay. As on overall topic, the difference between making change down,
up and down, so I think the people in society are waiting for the government or some great
industry to come and tell us how to manage energy and there is millions or billions of people
sitting here that have potential for making huge changes, but we don’t feel empowered to do it
and the question is there a way to make policy that really does actually empower us to go
towards green energy?
Glen Dowell: Have we seen that? Is there a place where we have seen better quality? We know
that one of the things we have is the patchwork quilt policy and we have seen examples or do
you know of?
_____10:50:32 (Panelist ?): Well certainly in Europe where you have a $4.00 a gallon on tax
on gasoline has completely changed the kind of vehicles that you see in Europe. The average
European uses half as much energy as we do and have completely comparable lifestyle. So there
are things that can change.
Glen Dowell: Is there a key one part of that policy that makes it work?
Ben Ho: Gas tax.
_____*10:50:58 (Panelist?): I would throw out and I was sort of leaning towards net meter. It
is sort of a confluence in policy that allow people to have greater information perhaps on their
energy usage and the do something about it. I think one of the most exciting things in the energy
technology area right now is the customer facing information, which is really the confluence of
people being able to net meter, for instance, and do things sort of behind the meter on their own,
whether it is putting solar panels on the roof or having their thermostats or lighting balanced
change, and things of that nature. I think driving the opportunity for behaviors to change through
various policies, very powerful and if you look at goggle for instance and other companies like
that they are trying to get into the space between how you use the electric power, how you
monitor it and then what you do with it. So enabling from a policy perspective, change to
happen behind the meter I think that is very powerful and allows people to make changes.
_____*10:52:05 (Panelist?): Yeah so I would jump in for just one second. Is information I
think is great. When Ben was talking about markets, markets we could have this dim view of
markets. Markets function really well when we have information. Markets function very poorly
when we have more opacity and so when we are talking about smart metering. When we are
talking about simple things like fuel economy gages in their car they actually pay attention and
drive better surprisingly enough. So information is a huge piece of this puzzle for empowering
individuals to make better decisions.
_____*10:52:47 (Audience): As a local activist on the gas drilling issue, I am often involved in
basic discussions and what I hear from politicians and gas drilling performance, as you said,
renewables just aren’t ready and in part what they mean that we can’t turn off tomorrow and start
using you know solar. If we develop a time scale of shale drilling on potential resources in the
next 20 to 30 years would we have to put more on that time horizon. So since they have this
esteem panel, who have lots of experience in you know innovative ideas. You know there is
guy, Mark Jacobson said yes we can do it in 20 to 30 years and the guy from Chesapeake says
there is no way we can do it in 20 to 30 years. What I want to hear from you guys on what do
you think on a 20, 30, 40 year time scale is the chance of moving to at least a half carbon and not
carbon-free future. Is it not possible, don’t see it happening or yes here is how we can do it. If
you think we can what do you see as the way forward and if we can’t what are the stomach
blocks that we can’t?
_____*10:53:42 (s/l Todd Glass): I will start but I am sure there is other opinions. I don’t
think we can get 50% in 30 years. I don’t think it is possible. There is a variety of reasons. One
starts with just the amount of capital involved to get there. It would be so damn expensive. It's
mind boggling, though I am all for doing as much renewable as we can. You know I think that if
we can get to renewables you know up to 20% I would be surprised if we could get that far. It's
great. It would be wonderful. Not only technologically, but I think we are ready in a number in
respect to renewables, but we need some more technology. For instance on energy storage. To
make intermittent resources something that we can use. The other thing is that part of that
opportunity really comes from the retirement and existing generation on the system now,
whether it be coal, nuclear or other things. We are going to be needing to replace that anyway.
So I think there is an opportunity to move in that direction but I don’t think we can get 50% in 30
years.
______*10:54:49 (Panelist? Al George): I am a little bit more optimistic about. There have
been many studies including one from California including one done by Stanford University
showing us that if you link together for example lots of wind turbines and Goggle is sponsoring
an interconnect for electrical power along the Atlantic coast, you can ramp up consuming more
than what people have thought in the past as far as wind energy and the same thing is certainly
true that there are nuclear plants that can be built that are absolutely safe from the failure of
anything you can stop the ______*10:55:20. There are a lot of things out there, but I agree the
capital is a big problem, but I think it depends on the will power we have as a nation when we
were in World War II and we re-vamped our whole productive capacity in five or six years. It
depends on how urgent you want to be.
Ben Ho: I just want one quick clarification Mark Jacobson is a friend of mine. I think he is in
San Diego now and not in Stanford anymore. I know the paper you are referring to. He is
actually a bit too much of an encomiast in some sense. I don’t know if I trust the predictions of
economist, but I am an economist myself, but just some on some of the financial crisis I think we
are really bad predicting some of these big macro changes and I sort of agree with the previous
two panelists. I don’t think we can move as quickly as these abstract models suggest.
Emmanuel Giannelis: I think this is a very difficult question to answer. The problem is the
falling. If you look at today’s energy needs where something in the order of 15 terawatts and it
is projected will go to in 2050 to about 30 terawatts, so it is going to double. So if you then ask
the question where is that energy going to come from. There is people that have been thinking
about this problem and they have come up with a portfolio that looks potentially able to solve the
question and answer your question and so the fossil fuels are there about a third and then they
say about 2/3 is going to come from renewables or other sources, but there are some assumptions
there that are really unrealistic. For example, there is a good chance that it is going to come from
nuclear. Now aside what happened two or three weeks ago, even with that there was the
following problem. There was going to be one nuclear plant that was going to be constructed on
commission every two days for the next 45 years. There was another chance that it was going to
come from biofuels. Well what that meant was that all arable land in the world will be used for
biofuels, well okay you know where that is going and the third one was that there was another
part that was going to come from hydro which is also a nice clean source of energy, but what I
meant that we are going to dam every river in the world. So the thing it is good to talk about
renewables. We all like renewables, but at the end of the day I think we need to instill some kind
of realism into these discussions and the answer is going to be a lot more complicated then yes it
is going to happen, no it is not going to happen. I think I am sorry but a yes or no answer is not
going to be possible.
Ben Ho: Can I ask a quick question? What does the panel think about that actually? I'm really
curious.
[cross-talk]
_____*10:58:23 (Panelist?): I like it. I think that one of the more exciting. I think we need it.
Everything that is on the books are proposed right now, even if it was built on the standardized
three weeks would only replace the retiring facilities anyway so I don’t see in the current
environment a lot of massive investment in new too much more, at least in the near term. I am
all for it though. One exciting thing is that there is two or three new companies that are doing
modular nuclear technology, which is reducing the scale of a project that is two to three billions
dollars down to something that is a couple hundred million, that is more on the scale of 100
megawatt block versus you know massive and I think things like could make it more difficult as
well instant.
_____*10:59:12 (Panelist): I think there is a strong possibility like I said before, I think there is
nuclear technologies that have been around for awhile and is much safer. The other thing that I
will say about nuclear is it not a completely logical way if you look at nuclear. Coal kills
thousands and thousands of people every year. It is not documentable, not counting the National
Academy of Science has just released last year a study of just the health effects of coal which are
huge and they figure it is worth $0.03 or $.04 cents a kilowatt hour in cost that is being worn by
everybody else around who breathes and drink water etcetera, etcetera. So I think at the present
time it is politically very difficult to convince people that nuclear makes sense, but actually the
alternative coal is killing many, many more people that have ever been killed every year working
with coal than have every been killed with working with nuclear.
Glen Dowell: But if we think nuclear is part of the mix we have an envy problem with wind
farms. How are we going to get? So Fisk Johnson, right, the CEO of SC Johnson the benefactor
where Ben and I work and if you don’t know about SC Johnson and their efforts with clean
energy and Fisk’s own beliefs in environment. He has got four of five degrees from Cornell,
whichever it is, anyway including a PhD in engineering and he has been trying for years to get a
turbine directed in his yard in Racine, Wisconsin and if he with his political power in Racine
can’t get one done, so within the issue for nuclear and when you talk about something that is
modular, if you're saying you've got, that it sounds great, but you got more of the them to site,
which is are we going to get past that?
_____*11:00:56 (Panelist?): Real quick people got to grow up and figure out that we just have
to live with something somewhere and I like the idea of spreading it around so that everybody
gets to participate and enjoy having them next door.
Emmanuel Giannelis: I think nuclear is good. I am for it, but I think the reality is the recent
accident is going to push us so much back and let me just give you a little analogy here. We all
know with the data that air travel is safe, but because when one plane goes down and 200 people
get killed it in the news for quite sometime and make people like my mother think that air travel
is worse than automobile travel and a lot of others, so the problem is because it is big it is going
to be with us for awhile. It doesn’t mean that it is not safe. It just means that it stays in the news
a lot longer and moving from the perception is going to be very difficult.
Glen Dowell: Thank you, I didn’t know we were going to take questions from the panel but that
was good.
Audience member: I know that we live in a country where the dominant paradigm is that oil
and gas are providing us energy. It is something that Jay Rockefeller came up with in the 19th
century _____*11:02:20. I think there is probably much more cleaner renewable energy on the
surface of the planet, geothermal digging in houses and so on and so forth and boosting the air
that comes in off the ground just a couple of degrees will warm a house. Everybody is talking
about natural gas is going to warm your house. How else are you going to do it? It is absurd and
it is absurd because we have huge hurdles. The American Petroleum Institute has a strangle hold
on the democratic process in our congress. We never can get these renewables really started
because we are chocked off. My point is that there is energy on the surface of the planet and is it
feasible when the planet does go two degrees centigrade hotter, which is certainly looks like it is
going to that we can cap and trap somehow the huge plume of methane gas that is going to come
up off the _____*11:03:24?
_____(Panelist): I guess I'll tackle that one but I have some trepidation about it. What you are
talking about is very diffuse energy and it's you know capturing off the river cross and you have
to somehow cover it up with a big plastic bag or something like that. The same thing goes with
capturing heat from the ground, yes you can use heat pumps and you can be more efficient, but it
still requires quite a bit of energy. It is still diffuse what you are talking about. It is there but it
is diffused.
Ben Ho: Just a quick correction. This is from the economist point of the sort of strangle hold.
It's just that if you sort of the cost benefit analysis to the best you know the best that we can, you
sort of find that yes, you know oil is worse for the environment then these other renewable
sources, but it not that much worse and that the sort of the subsidies of these renewables and
mostly already get actually already account for the additional benefits that they are getting. So
actually I am optimistic. I sort of believe the system is sort of working close to correct as it is,
even though it is a much more complicated system than it should be.
______*11:04:27(Todd Glass?): Can I just comment? I think maybe in general, but I was
involved in wind energy 15 years ago and the subsidies saw two things up and down essentially
killed wind energy for about ten years, so you need stable incentives and stable policies.
Because actually these kind of policies, the kind we have in our country where they go like this
actually discourage renewable.
Al George: I am sure that Todd has seen this analogy, but that is exactly what we talking about.
I know as a person teaching business I get this, why is there not more investment in renewables?
Why are businesses always trying to drive policy to this? Honestly what businesses generally
want is stability. They can make investment decisions with stability. They can’t make
investment decisions with these constantly expiring subsidies and so.
______*11:05:10 (Todd Glass?): Very well stated. Right now wind is on the decline because
of the production tax credits and the investment tax credits for wind expire at the end of next
year so nobody is investing. Everybody is just going to sit tight.
Glen Dowell: Right and whereas you know Europe has been 20 to 30 years of declining
subsidies for these things that have given the investment a rise and it makes sense. But we
should move on the gentleman in the black shirt has been waiting as patiently as any of us wait.
Audience member: Thanks. My question concerns demographics and how it might relate to
different types of energy and the quantities of that. We have heard projections about the growth
and the global population in the next 100 years and we have heard projections about the expected
increase in demand for energy in the next 100 years and yesterday we were confronted with huge
discrepancies on the planet between people who are going to be able to use energy and those
who frankly would not because they are just too poor or living in circumstances where the
distribution. So exactly how much energy? Who is going to get it and what kind are you talking
about here with this big amount of energy is needed?
Emmanuel Giannelis: The projection it is not mine. I am not in that kind of business. I am
using information that is out there. It is true that the expectations is that countries like India and
China that will actually increase their demand for energy as they are developing father, but I
think if I get the question right is there is always going to be discrepancies between the haves and
have nots. There are going to be countries that are going to be having more available to them
and there are others that are going to be getting this in smaller amounts. I don’t think that is
going to change, but still the fact of the matter is there is going to be more of us and there are
going to be more of us that require more because of the standard of living that we got
accustomed to and also because more people are going to want to come to our standard. No
matter how you slice and dice it that is where we are going to be. Is it going to be all fair and
equal? Well income is not all fair and equal, energy is not going to be.
_____*11:07:41 (Todd Glass?): So one of the things when you are thinking about, if you are
interested in this issue I encourage you to go to the Center of Sustainable Global Enterprise at the
Johnson’s School web page and my colleague there Stuart Hart wrote a book called Capitalism
At the Crossroads. He thinks a lot about this and there has been a lot of work that has been done
and one of the exciting things if we think about it actually there is _____ *11:08:02 from the
energy use that is going on from the poorest of the poor around the world. We don’t think of it
that way, but if they are burning dung for fuel. They are deforesting and going further and
further to get fuel and there is actually ______ as well as other problems and one of the paradox
of this is because there is no infrastructure there, there is actually room for these technology that
we think of too expensive are actually competitive and they don’t have to build mega products.
They can try to distribute energy and one way, one of my students from a couple of years ago is
a director of a company called Tough Stuff which is selling very low costs solar solutions to
individuals and households in Madagascar and eastern Africa and it is really interesting because
they are using energy we just think of it the way we do because they don’t flip a light switch, but
there is a great opportunity to see technologies there that may end up bubbling up here because if
you can make it cheap enough and hardy enough and simple enough to work in this very poorest
of poor and toughest condition it has a chance to displace what we do now. So there is a lot of
work going into this right now which is very exciting.
_____*11:09:16 (Al George?): Just one quick comment on that. If you look at what is
happening in China as well those developing economies they are going to leapfrog the problems
that we have today because we have invested in the infrastructure that we are now having to live
with and try to change. Whereas there is a lot of places and even some students here at the law
school probably will never have a landline.
Audience member: This is perhaps a question for Todd. We have spoken to the economic and
the technological dilemmas and I am just wondering among your venture capital you know
network to what degree is something like wave energy being held up by legal obstacles? So
wave energy being something that is available to a greater degree in places with strong wind
surges, but likely across coastlines you know you've got options, in prototype form in Oregon in
the north sea. But to what degree can maybe China or any country near the coastline starting
utilizing this? To what degree in the U.S. or elsewhere, I don’t know if this particular panel can
speak to it, but in your general though process are we being held up by the legal obstacles? Not
necessarily the subsidies, not necessarily renewable ______*11:10:47, but the complexity of our
offshore coastal sites approach or in this community in terms of siting, in terms of and I teach
property law. It's not easy to get your head wrapped around the dilemmas of fracking and
property loss. It is even harder when you go offshore.
Todd Glass: Yes. Absolutely. The problem is regulatory system and Hydrokinetics hold you
know incredible you know opportunity, really energy opportunity and there was verdant a
company that installed underwater turbines in the east river. The first two times they put them in
there was so much energy in the water it ripped the blades right off their turbine. So there is
absolutely energy there. The problem is that no venture firm and I have tried, no venture firm
will touch hydrokinetics of wave tidals.
Audience member: Because of the legal aspects?
Todd Glass: Yeah absolutely because of the legal. If you think about a venture capital firm
wants to put its money in and get a 10x return in five to seven years. Hydrokinetics probably
five to seven years away from being commercially ready and then you've got five to seven years
of FERP, Federal Energy Regulatory Process just to get the right to build the dam thing.
Hydrokinetics wont work in this country, so long as it takes. You can do a pilot project. FERP
is allowing pilot project to go in a little bit more rapidly, but if you are talking commercial scale
venture firms won't touch hydrokinetics because the length of time of having a viable project
built.
Audience member: So it is in the same category of carbon sequestration whereas perhaps it is
going to take the public governments to step in and start this?
Audience member: I am glad we are talking about life cycle analyses now and I wonder if
anybody has done life cycle analysis of what is really possible in terms of what if we really
intensely went into conservation. The building we were in yesterday had the windows open and
it was still too hot. We can’t possibly replace all of our buildings with _____*11:12:57
buildings. We have to deal with the ones we have. We never thought, people use to think we
couldn’t get people to wear seat belts, or recycle or stop smoking. So is there any effort? Has
anybody started to do a life cycle analysis for conservation and to what extent is the debunking
of climate change science part of this lack of urgency that we all feel?
_____*11:13:22 (Al George?): Those are two. Let’s start with the first part and I will just
mention quickly is anybody doing it? Yeah absolutely and one of the things I use in my classes
is a great study. I like it so it is a great study, but the _____(s/l McKinsey) has done showing
there is basically a free lunch available from energy efficiency and what is happening is of
course more of these companies are being made aware of this and I just had lunch the other day
where there were consultants working with a major retail firm in the midwest who is finding that
these buildings are put up in piecemeal and the simplest, quickest way possible, but going back
and doing simple re-engineering is allowing for massive, massive return on investment and that
is what is driving a lot of it.
Ben Ho: Just on that quick point. I use that study in class as an example of a bad study actually,
but to fill in that study basically said that maybe a good 20 you get 20% reduction these through
conservation measures.
Glen Dowell: _____*11:14:35 we are going to run a few minutes over because we started a few
minutes late. I hope that is okay but we will send you to your lunch in reasonable time but
because we got a little bit of a late start we'll press the lunch and make it up. Right here in the
front, right behind Ben.
Audience member: Yes, Dave Hill. What implications does the panel see on the legal
profession with respect to this whole environmental bucket of opportunities here with respect to
energy and litigation alternatives?
_____*11:15:22 (Todd Glass?): A lot of opportunity. A lot of billable hours. There is a lot of
different aspects to it. If you look at what is happening. I have got a chart that basically looks at
the way that technologies have been ruled out, whether we can look at this sort of E-commerce
and PCs and things like that. There is a rise of basically the money, well the intellectual property
for instance and then the capital and wherever the capital goes, litigation follows because really
you follow the money in a way and there is disputes that follow them and I think that there is a
lot of opportunities for lawyers to be played in this space and you know overtime, I mean the
solar industry right now is we are on the verge of well ______*11:16:18 are starting to operating
on our space which are going to mean that there is going to be huge amounts of litigation over
time, you know intellectual probably. So you know overtime I see this area as growing and
wherever there is constraints and disputes over limited resources, yet we have more litigation and
stuff so I think from a law school perspective there is a lot of opportunity in this.
Glen Dowell: We have time for one or two more questions. This one right here in the green.
Audience member: How far away is fusion always 20 or 30 years?
_____(Panelist member): Yeah it's always 20 years away, ever since I was in college and that
was a long time ago and so it is still 20 years away at least.
_____(Todd Glass?): I think it is equally long though, I will say that there is venture firms that
are investing in fusion. So they think it is five to seven years.
_____*11:17:11 (Al George?): But that is why they need 10x return on the rest of their
investments.
Audience member: I have been at the conference since it's in session here and I have heard not
one mention of the systems approach also including the possibility of changing the structure of
our government’s decision making process. The driving factors in this country today are
cooperate state based and not based on individual communities making decisions around these
issues. In Germany the green party being in the middle between two major parties was a major
driving force for those decisions that changes that whole environment there. How do you feel
about as technocrats and attorney and economists that are behind the Chicago School of
economics that currently demonstrated, where do we fit in and see that kind of change come in
this country?
Ben Ho: So I guess in addition to environmental economics I also teach a class on sort of
political economy and there we look at how people study how influential are cooperate interests
in the government and we found out if you look at it statistically instead of emotionally it is not
as big as people feel it is, right? So there is a study that 10 biggest companies in the U.S. and
they spent roughly a hundred times more money on charity then they do on political campaign
contributions and I think the conclusion was that yes there is some influence in terms of
cooperation and access, but it may not matter as much as you think. My second thought as
actually having been in government and having worked to the White House and having talked to
congress, I come away thinking these are good people. It is not sort of overrun by sort of corrupt
people cantering to you know money interest. I think it is people trying to do the best they can,
trying to account for the people of the community and it is sort of an adherent you know problem
of democracy that sort of that makes it the way that it is. There is theory called
______*11:19:19 and possibility theorem, that basically says it is mathematically proved it is
impossible to have a perfect fair system and I think given those constraints we do a pretty good
job.
Glen Dowell: Isn’t is almost more depressing that you were in a government that you thought
they were really good people doing their best? Light green shirt.
Audience member: How effective would it be to incrementally increase registration fees for
automobile to discourage consumption? Such as the least efficient ones in their class?
_____*11:20:03 (Todd Glass?): Makes sense but it gets back to the politics of it.
_____(Al George?): I would agree with that. The question is can you get a government to do
that and people get re-elected.
_____(Todd Glass?): The one thing I would add on that is that you've got to move 50 states
because that's solely within the statutory states.
_____(Al George?): It might be simpler if we think about just labeling SUV and light pickups
and fast cars instead of as trucks.
Ben Ho: They do.
____(Al George?): In some states, it is a state level. Emissions are not necessarily _______.
[cross-talk]
Glen Dowell: Front row and then we'll break.
Audience member: We have been focusing on the federal level. I am wondering if you guys
have disease on city and regional planning as a way to really make up a lot of this ground that we
are talking about?
_____*11:20:53 (Todd Glass?): Certainly municipalities through zoning can make a big
difference using energy standards and housing installation and there is a lot things that can be
done. They are not going to solve the whole problem is part of the answer.
Ben Ho: The tricky thing is that these are global issues, right? Even federal level may not be
big enough. There is concept called leakage that people talk about a lot in these environmental
issues which is that lets make the United States super green and then that is caught frequent
incentives to sort of all the dirty industries to other countries where they become even dirtier and
so I think states and cities can sort of start and act as leaders and innovations and lead us an
example, but the solution has to be global in the end.
____*11:21:43 (Todd Glass?): Right and the only thing I would say is that many of these
things in very large numbers actually benefit if you were to do them. Conservation for example
if you don’t need so much foreign oil, or maybe having smaller military or things like that.
_____*11:21:58 (Al George?): I think one of the things that is such a confusion when you go to
the local, California is a great example where they register a permitting process to get solar
varies so much from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. It is just incredibly confusing for the companies
to try to do it. There is a small company, I can't think of the name of it, 15 people, which is a
huge fix cost for a small company that are only there to get permits to run around and so run
around for government office and stand in line. So when you are talking about local then you
just add I think a bigger problem to the previous question about how do we change decisionmaking.
Glen Dowell: The very back there, the gentleman standing up.
Audience member: I have two questions for the audience if I could.
Glen Dowell: Lets start with one and see where we are.
Audience member: The first is a short statement. ______*11:22:41 that if we all went
vegetarian, we would save 16% of our total energy. Question for the audience, how many of you
are willing to do that? How many of you have done that?
Ben Ho: I think your numbers are wrong there, but that is okay.
Audience member: Second question if we reduce the size of automobiles from over an average
of 4,000 to 2,000 pounds we would save 19% of our energy. How many people are willing to do
that?
Glen Dowell: Again I don’t think that statistic is correct sir.
[cross-talk]
Ben Ho: All automobiles only use 20%.
Glen Dowell: I was going to say automobiles don’t account for enough of our energy to make
that statistic.
Audience Member: I'm talking about all four wheel vehicles.
Ben Ho: It is less than 20%.
Glen Dowell: Last question, gray t-shirt, right in the back there. Sorry, folks, but I'm trying to
be as democratic as possible with this but we have more questions than we have time.
Audience member: We, as you know intelligent citizens, that care about issues are in some
sense at the mercy of you experts and the advice that you give to policy makers and the studies
that you make and everything and I don’t want too seem overly naive or unrealistic, but it is kind
of depressing to hear that would be hard. Or that conservation methods are because it is only
20% that we should give it the time of day. How do we feel confident when the people that we
rely on as sort of the middle man between us and the possibly evil politicians that you work with.
We count on you as scientists and officials to help us make this change that the people in this
room clearly care about and how are we to feel confident when the people in the middle who are
supposed to take our word and the effort that we made and they say that was too hard?
[applause]
_____*11:25:01 (Al George?): How would you feel confident if we said that is easy when it
wasn’t? I mean our job isn’t to be to give an easy answer to make you feel good. It is to try to
get as close as we can “truth” and I put it in quotes because the truth is so complicated. I agree
that there are distortions and there are problems and we need do a better job of communicating.
We didn’t even get a chance to talk about the role of media in this. If you want to talk about
middle man that is really where I can get comfortable. I wish that I had the influence with
anybody that you put on us as experts. But I think our job is to be as honest as possible not to be
as reassuring as possible.
Emmanuel Giannelis: We are not politicians to give you good news right? You want us to give
you informed decisions based on facts and data and if we are not doing that I don’t think we are
doing you any service. I think the opposite, right? So if reality is ugly that is what it is. You
want us to give you an honest opinion that is not influenced by politics, by sentiment but is
influenced by facts as much as we have the facts available at the time. That is what we are trying
to do. If the new is bad don’t blame the messenger.
Ben Ho: And telling you it is hard is not telling you to give up. Telling you it is hard but you
got work harder.
Glen Dowell: Well I appreciate everybody’s involvement. I know we could of probably gone
for twice as long. This is not meant to be an hour and a half dialogues or monologue. Please
followup with questions if you have any that relate to this.