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Experts question use of technology push without emissions cap

Submitted by Bill Becker on 21/Sep/2006

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Lauren Morello, E&E Daily reporter

A new Bush administration plan outlining technology to fight climate change is of little use without a mandatory national limit on industrial greenhouse gas emissions, several witnesses told a House subcommittee yesterday.

The final "strategic plan" of the administration's Climate Change Technology Program, released yesterday, outlines a range of strategies to reduce or mitigate the effect of greenhouse gas emissions -- from the 275-megawatt FutureGen prototype coal-fired power plant to carbon storage and sequestration methods.

But "simply creating a supply of carbon-reduction technologies does not mean there will be a demand for them," said Judi Greenwald, director of innovative solutions for the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, during a hearing in the Research Subcommittee.

Greenwald called on Congress and the administration to "unleash the power of the private sector."

"In the private sector, you'll get tremendous innovation if they have a price on carbon, a national, mandated policy," she said in what was the first of two hearings in as many days to examine the CCTP report.

The bottom line is that "business competes, and this is an issue of competitiveness," said Chris Mottershead, an adviser on energy and environment for BP and director of the Center for Clean Air Policy.

A key example of policy driving technological innovation is solar photovoltaic cells, Mottershead said. In Japan, Germany, and later, Spain, government programs to regulate and or subsidize the solar cells created strong markets for the products in those countries and pushed development.

It is just one example of "an industry getting built on the back of markets developed by policy," said Mottershead, adding that is an instructive example for the United States or any other country seeking a technological solution to the problem of climate change.

Lawmakers from both parties, meanwhile, said the CCTP plan amounted to little more than an inventory of climate technology, rather than a roadmap for the climate program, which counts a $3 billion technology development portfolio across several agencies (E&E Daily, Sept. 20).

"The plan may be an excellent compendium of current technologies, but it seems to be lacking in a number of areas," said subcommittee ranking member Mike Honda (D-Calif.).

Honda, panel Chairman Judy Biggert (R-Ill.) and other lawmakers zeroed in on what they said was the report's lack of timelines for action or policy framework. Compared with the administration's Climate Change Science Program, the technology effort "appea**talled near the starting line," Biggert said.

Many of the problems that lawmakers and environmental groups identified in the first draft of the report, released last fall, persist in the final version unveiled at yesterday's hearing, Biggert said. Echoing that position was House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who issued a statement yesterday criticizing the "precious few new ideas in this 'strategic plan,' and no new funding."

Also weighing in against the CCTP document was Sierra Club head Carl Pope. "The plan fails to require any specific reductions in global warming pollution at all," he said. "The report released today ... is merely a laundry list of technologies -- many of which do not exist today at all or in any practical form -- that could allow us to reduce our emissions if they are adopted."

And Science Committee Chairman Sherwood Boehlert (R-N.Y.) criticized what he called the CCTP report's silence on deployment strategies for clean technology.

"What is [the Energy Department] doing?" Boehlert asked CCTP Director Stephen Eule. "We've got to establish priorities, establish priority steps. I'm tired of just talking about it.

"What the American people want is for someone to do something" about climate change, Boehlert added. "The ball's in your court, Mr. Eule."

Eule defended his program's plan and more broadly said DOE is making progress in bringing clean technologies to market. He cited the "Build America" program, which has resulted in more than 34,000 new homes built for maximum energy efficiency, he said.

Furthermore, "there's been some confusion about the [CCTP] plan," Eule said. "It was never intended to be a mitigation plan. It was intended to coordinate and develop technologies so that we can develop a mitigation plan that's cost-effective."

While the report "doesn't set a goal [to stabilize GHG emissions], we do look at alternate futures," he said.

Eule also said staff that compiled the CCTP report worked hard to address criticisms leveled by many in Congress and the environmental lobby at an earlier version of the plan. The final version of that report, released yesterday at the hearing, includes more explicit technology development goals and long-term climate change scenarios, he said.

Finally, Eule denied recent media reports that the administration is about to unveil a major new climate policy. "I have no knowledge of a new announcement on climate change," he said.