In establishing the Carbon War Room, Richard Branson, the British-born media and aviation billionaire, explicitly treats the threat of catastrophic climate change as one similar to the threat posed by a world war.
Taking this metaphor a step further, Branson appointed as his general Jigar Shah to head up the CWR. Nearly a year into the mission, however, Shah seems palpably frustrated.
Speaking with Joel Makower at GreenBiz.com’s State of Green Business Forum in Washington today, Shah emphasized that the foot soldiers in this mission — companies, policy makers and voters — are waging a losing fight in this multi-decade struggle.
First some context on the scope of the fight. Shah reminded the audience that global greenhouse gas emissions are running at about 50 gigatonnes per year today, and are on track to grow to 60 gigatonnes by 2020 if economic growth and climate trends continue without change. To avoid catastrophic climate change of 2 degrees Celsius or more, scientists say we need to trim 17 gigatonnes from that trend by 2020.
Not surprisingly, technology is ready to help solve the problem, says Shah, who earned a reputation as a wunderkind of the solar business, and a fortune — perhaps several hundred gazillion dollars, Makower joked — as the founder of solar energy pioneer SunEdison in 2003. “You’ve got Bjorn Lomborg saying we can’t do anything without more R&D. And policy people saying unless we pass a price on carbon, we can’t do anything,” said Shah. “That’s just poppycock.”
The deeper problem is a tendency to grasp at feel-good solutions without reaching for, or even acknowledging, harder, far more impactful steps.
Shah offered the example of turning off the taps while brushing your teeth: it’s a painless, feel-good behavioral change promoted by countless green living advice columns. Yet compared to the 40 percent of water wasted through leaking pipes across our crumbling water networks, it’s meaningless.
While Makower suggested you could pursue both lifestyle changes and long-term infrastructure goals, Shah batted back the suggestion. “It is an either-or decision,” no matter how much we’d like to think otherwise.
Echoing psychological studies suggesting that consumers’ interest in these issues peters out after a single action, Shah said: “There’s very few people who react to [any environmental message]. So when an NGO mails out to 20 million people turn off your taps, they could just as easily say the more important thing is to actually fix this infrastructure.” But the harder sell is all to rarely made, said Shah.
The problem is compounded by failures of incomplete information, Shah added. With scant understanding of the scale of the climate change challenge, for example, good intentions get diluted.
Honest Tea, the fast-growing 13-year-old vendor of organic teas, first attracted the attention of Coca-Cola back in 2008, when the fizzy drinks giant took a 40 percent stake in the green-minded startup. Today, CEO Seth Goldman announced that Honest Tea had notified its shareholders of Coke’s decision to exercise its option to buy the balance of those shares, almost three years to the day after their original agreement. The deal is on track to close within the next few weeks.
The deal would cap a period of accelerating growth for the Bethesda, Md.-based tea brand. Sales peaked at some 100 million units of bottles and bags last year, bringing sales close to $100 million, Goldman explained, thanks in part to a boost in distribution that came from the original deal with Coke.
“We’ve seen growth three-fold,” said Goldman, thanks in part to current or pending distribution deals with major national chains including CVS, Walgreens and Rite Aid. The high point of Honest Tea’s arrival to the mainstream, Goldman joked, may have been marked when the company appeared as a clue in a New York Times Friday crossword puzzle. The clue, “Honest ______ (drink brand).” The answer: Honest Ade, not Tea — one for the experts.
In a nod to Goldman’s central role as founder and CEO — or TeaEO — Coke has ensured that he maintains an equity stake in the operation and will continue to run the brand. The move is unprecedented, Goldman told attendees at the State of Green Business Forum today at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Coke has a well-evolved business process for buying up small-brands, transitioning out the founder and folding the products into the parent’s larger manufacturing, distribution and marketing operations. “A veteran of the beverage business told me that after a takeover, for the first few weeks, they want to know your opinion, for the next few weeks, they want to know your telephone number, and after that they don’t want to know you,” said Goldman. “This was unusual for Coke, but came from the chairman.”
Speaking with GreenBiz.com’s senior writer, Marc Gunther, Goldman acknowledged the decision stirs charges that the organic tea brand is compromising its green integrity. Honest Tea has cultivated sustainable practices among its tea suppliers to achieve USDA certified organic status. It has also ruled out using high fructose corn syrup, and has certified its products as Fair Trade.
Goldman dismisses the charge, arguing that scaling up his business is the path to delivering the greatest benefits most broadly. “It’s easy to fall into a ‘big is bad, small is good’ trap,” said Goldman. “To those critics, I ask, ‘What’s your strategy to change corporate America?'”
Coke has proven loath to tinker with Honest Tea’s green appeal — even in the face of tension with the newcomer. The companies attracted national attention in 2010 when The New York Times detailed a conflict over Honest Tea’s decision to brand its kids’ beverage line as free of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), despite pressure from Coke. The big drink brand was facing charges over the synthetic nature of the corn-derived sweetener along with the high calorie count of its fizzy drinks…
GE is going back to the innovation well. Encouraged by the success of its $200 million Ecomagination Challenge — a crowdsourced contest, which yielded scores of grid-scale technology and investment opportunities — the Connecticut-based conglomerate is turning up the heat on the hunt for innovative home energy solutions.
The search includes both today’s and tomorrow’s technology. Starting with upgrades to existing gizmos — kitchen appliances, washing machine and dryer and other domestic energy hogs — innovative ideas are also sought for future solutions, such as electric car recharging systems or software apps to help cut power use.
Announced earlier this month at the Consumer Electronics Show, GE’s decision to extend the Ecochallenge was spurred by the huge volume of home-related ideas submitted in the first phase of the competition. Of some 4,000 submissions, more than a quarter focused on home energy use.
“Powering your home” is seeking submissions across two broad categories: energy efficiency, including appliances and air conditioning, as well as software systems to manage home energy; and renewable power, including familiar solar and wind systems but also residential-scale hydro and biomass solutions.
Select winners will be offered the opportunity to develop a commercial relationship with GE through:
• Investment: $145 million of the $200 million pool from GE and its partners remains to be committed. • Validation: GE technical and commercial experts will evaluate entrant’s business strategy through in-depth discussions. • Distribution: The company will also explore partnership opportunities to scale the product or service globally. • Development: Winners can tap into GE’s technical infrastructure and GE Global Research Centers to accelerate technology and product development. • Growth: They can also explore opportunities for utilizing existing GE customers to take winning products to market.
The panel of expert judges — which includes GE execs and leading academics and technologists — will also pick five ideas that represent pioneering entrepreneurship and innovation. Winners of these Innovation Awards will score $100,000.
This phase of the challenge seeks will re-examine ideas already submitted as well as new proposals submitted before the deadline of March 1, 2011. The contest is open to proposals from around the globe. Learn more at www.ecomagination.com/challenge.
Federal efforts to require companies to report on environmental impacts and other sustainability measures in their financial filings have all but stalled, victims of the recession and a loss of momentum for federal climate policy.
But while official efforts have deflated, independent groups are ratcheting up the pressure. The case for greater transparency got a push today, with the announcement that the Amsterdam-based Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), is launching a U.S. effort to guide more American corporations to adapt GRI’s framework to disclose environmental, social and governance performance. Advocates make the case that increased transparency not only tends to boost profitability, but that such details are legally material to corporate financial statements.
Dubbed Focal Point USA, GRI’s US initiative debuted today at a breakfast meeting at NYSE Euronext on Wall Street. Pointing out that only hundreds of tens of thousands of US companies strive to document their broader impact, GRI Chief Executive Ernst Ligteringen asked the 230 attendees, “Why is America letting the world lead in sustainability reporting?”
Born of 1997 U.N. initiative, GRI has over the past decade evolved rules over addressing the needs of different sectors, from mining to media, and worked to win official endorsement of its guidelines from standards bodies such as the OECD and UN.
The value of sustainability practices as crucial to risk management echoed through comments made by a panel of executives whose companies presently follow GRI reporting guidelines. “What is the justification of the 75,000 corporations who don’t report on ESG [environmental, social and governance] issues to fly blind?” asked David Vidal, director, Center For Corporate Citizenship And Sustainability at The Conference Board.
At Avon, which relies on a sales force of 6.5 million independent resellers, GRI’s framework emerged a useful bridge, linking sustainability advocates among the company’s senior ranks, with financial executives. “GRI gives a formal framework that the bean counters can relate too, and get behind,” said Susan Arnot Heaney, Avon’s director of corporate responsibility.
Issues of sustainability resonate especially strongly with Avon’s nearly all-female sales force, Heaney emphasized, creating upward pressure on corporate managers. Avon has over one million direct sales representatives in Brazil alone, a group larger than the nation’s army, Heaney explained.
Simply standardizing sustainability data into more accessible standard forms has enhanced financial markets’ regard for the value of the information, said Curtis Ravenel, Director of Sustainability Initiatives, at Bloomberg LLP. The financial and news service recently has begun to include sustainability indicators alongside conventional financial analytics on one of the most widely viewed data screens in the Bloomberg terminal.
“As a private company Bloomberg didn’t have a culture of reporting or transparency,” said Ravenel. The media company plans to release its first GRI compliant report in 2011, following a three-year effort to compile the necessary data. The exercise helped convince management of the value of reporting on sustainability data internally, and via its terminals, Ravenel explained.
“This is a dynamic time for the Global Reporting Initiative, with sustainability reporting becoming a vital part of the business strategies of an increasing number of companies, including in the US,” said Mike Wallace, Director of the Global Reporting Initiative’s Focal Point USA.
The US launch follows similar announcements in China and India. Following the New York event, Focal Point USA is planning a breakfast meeting hosted by The World Bank in Washington, DC on February 3 and a roundtable event hosted by Ceres in Boston on February 4. For more information about these events and about GRI’s Focal Point USA, contact Mike Wallace or more information here.
The e-cars are coming. You know about hybrids such as the gas-electric Prius, but they were just the first step in a long evolution toward virtually emissions-free, high-mileage vehicles. The next frontier is gas-free, 100 percent-battery powered cars: this year and next, more than a dozen electric vehicles (or EVs) will start to appear in showrooms and rental fleets. To show you what’s coming, we’ve rounded up a baker’s dozen. Our focus is fossil fuel-free vehicles (so no hybrids) from manufacturers with a proven track record. 2011-01-21
When Charlie Yarbrough, a Santa Rosa, Calif., software engineer, decided to put solar panels on the roof of his newly purchased home, he took advantage of a novel funding program known as PACE, short for property assessed clean energy. Working with local installers, he was able to borrow the $25,000 cost at the equivalent of 7.25 percent annually from the Sonoma County Energy Independence Program, a pool of public money, to be paid back over 20 years with his property taxes.
Yarbrough estimates the solar panels have cut annual power costs for his three-bedroom, 1,800-square-foot home by $1,000, while boosting by $40,000 the value of the home he bought for $300,000 in 2009. As energy costs rise in coming years, he expects his savings will grow. “Back of the envelope, this is like a 4 percent loan for an improvement which is the right thing to do,” he says, factoring in the energy savings and property appreciation.
Now, it looks like Yarborough and thousands like him got in just under the wire. PACE all but ground to a halt last July in the wake of the housing bust and mortgage crisis. The Federal Housing Financing Agency (FHFA) — which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — characterized PACE as a threat to existing mortgages. It was a signal to banks that the housing finance giants, which together buy and resell the majority of U.S. mortgages, would refuse to buy any mortgages with PACE financing attached. Simultaneously, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency issued similar guidance, further chilling lending activity…
Our correspondent hits the New York streets in the electric Smart ForTwo ED.
Americans are likely to have their first taste of an all-electric vehicle as a rental car. Our correspondent climbs behind the wheel for a test drive.
The future is here. It’s cheaper than I expected, and it’s so small that you could fit two in a single parking space. I find it plugged into a wall charger in the subterranean garage of a midtown Manhattan office tower. It’s called the Smart ForTwo Electric Drive, or ED, and it’s one of the first mainstream, all battery-powered cars to hit U.S. roads.
New Yorkers, of course, have seen Smart cars before. The gas-powered version grabbed headlines two years ago for its ultra-parkability, but it handled poorly and wasn’t much on gas mileage. Electrification fixes both of those problems. The ED’s cost per mile — the electric equivalent of mileage — is among the best available. And the added weight from the batteries improves the car’s handling, while electric motors zip it up to speed more confidently. Continue reading A Smart Ride — Testing driving Smart’s electric runabout | OnEarth→
I’ve been watching China’s ascent in cleantech for a couple of years. In that time China’s potential to leapfrog the U.S. has gone from talk to substantive examples of leadership. Even so, I’ve been surprised by the increasing frequency with which China is pushing ahead in new fronts of cleantech development.
Earlier this week, the latest surprise came from energy secretary Steven Chu, who’s been talking up China’s green progress in an effort to boost Washington’s resolve on clean tech policy.
In a talk at the National Press Club, with characteristic forceful clarity (PDF of slides), Chu illuminated the growing list of sectors where China’s emerging leadership threatens U.S. players, and added leadership in supercomputing as the most recent Sino-superlative. China’s success in these technologies represents a “Sputnik Moment” for the United States, Chu said.
“When it comes to innovation, Americans don’t take a back seat to anyone — and we certainly won’t start now,” said Secretary Chu at the event. “From wind power to nuclear reactors to high-speed rail, China and other countries are moving aggressively to capture the lead. Given that challenge, and given the enormous economic opportunities in clean energy, it’s time for America to do what we do best: innovate.”
China’s ascent to the top of the list for supercomputing speed reveals a new front in this race. Last month China’s Tianhe-1A, developed by Chinese defense researchers, became the world’s fastest supercomputer, with a performance level of 2.57 petaflop/s (quadrillions of calculations per second, for all the geeks in our audience, based on a standard test), substantially eclipsing the U.S. DOE’s Cray XT5 “Jaguar” system at Oak Ridge national labs in Tennessee, which runs at 1.75 petaflop/s. Third place is also held by a Chinese computer.
Supercomputers may seem long way from grid-competitive solar panels, long-range electric car batteries, or other cleantech gizmos, but advanced computational simulation is the keystone of most leading-edge scientific research, including nuclear energy, nanotech and materials science, proteomics and other advanced biotech applications. Basically, any very advanced science these days needs big computing horsepower. Leadership on the fastest-computer league tables has been traded off many times, between U.S., Japanese and European computing centers. China is a relative newcomer to the race, but is clearly the new elite.
Chu highlighted several crucial technologies — mostly in the areas of power generation and transportation — where China is already outpacing U.S. efforts, adding the U.S. must innovate or risk falling far behind. The following is from the DOE:
• High Voltage Transmission. China has deployed the world’s first Ultra High Voltage AC and DC lines — including one capable of delivering 6.4 gigawatts to Shanghai from a hydroelectric plant nearly 1300 miles away in southwestern China. These lines are more efficient and carry much more power over longer distances than those in the United States.
• High-Speed Rail. In the span of six years, China has gone from importing this technology to exporting it, with the world’s fastest train and the world’s largest high-speed rail network, which will become larger than the rest of the world combined by the end of the decade. Some short distance plane routes have already been cancelled, and train travel from Beijing to Shanghai (roughly equivalent to New York to Chicago) has been cut from 11 hours to 4 hours.
• Advanced Coal Technologies. China is rapidly deploying supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal combustion plants, which have fewer emissions and are more efficient than conventional coal plants because they burn coal at much higher temperatures and pressures. Last month, Secretary Chu toured an ultra-supercritical plant in Shanghai which claims to be 45 to 48 percent efficient. The most efficient U.S. plants are about 40 percent efficient. China is also moving quickly to design and deploy technologies for Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) plants as well as Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS).
• Nuclear Power. China has more than 30 nuclear power plants under construction, more than any other country in the world, and is actively researching fourth generation nuclear power technologies.
• Alternative Energy Vehicles. China has developed a draft plan to invest $17 billion in central government funds in fuel economy, hybrids, plug-in hybrids, electric and fuel cell vehicles, with the goal of producing 5 million new energy vehicles and 15 million fuel-efficient conventional vehicles by 2020.
• Renewable Energy. China is installing wind power at a faster rate than any nation in the world, and manufactures 40 percent of the world’s solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. It is home to three of the world’s top ten wind turbine manufacturers and five of the top ten silicon-based PV manufacturers in the world.
• Supercomputing. Last month, the Tianhe-1A, developed by China’s National University of Defense Technology, became the world’s fastest supercomputer. While the United States — and the Department of Energy in particular — still has unrivalled expertise in the useful application of high performance computers to advance scientific research and develop technology, America must continue to improve the speed and capacity of our advanced supercomputers.
Next page: Two research areas where the U.S. still leads
When it comes to reducing fossil fuel use, increasing energy efficiency has obvious appeal: help the environment, boost energy security and save money, too—without the grit-your-teeth-and-get-by-without attitude of 1970s-style energy conservation. Not only that, but boosting the amount of work we squeeze out of each kWh or Btu is the cheapest, most plentiful and fastest tool we have for moving toward a more sustainable energy future. Many efficiency fixes, experts point out, save so much it would be foolish to ignore them.
Americans have made some moves to enhance efficiency: Per capita energy use has fallen by 14 percent in the past three decades in the U.S., and since 1970 the energy necessary to create each dollar of GDP has been halved. Still, based on comparisons with other countries, that figure could well be halved again. And a recent report by the National Academies suggests Americans could reduce energy use 17 to 22 percent by 2020 and 25 to 31 percent by 2030 if we adopt existing and emerging energy efficiency technologies.
Why isn’t this “low-hanging fruit,” as efficiency is invariably called, being plucked? In the face of logic, incentives, regulatory mandates, new efficiency-enhancing technologies and even moral imperative, consumers remain surprisingly ambivalent about, or even muddled by, the options. Part of the problem is how human behavior often stymies better intentions. Another factor is the more banal reality that bureaucracy and a lack of capital can slow any revolution in its tracks, no matter how cost-effective it might be.
“The potential to reduce the energy we waste is compelling,” Kenneth J. Ostrowski, a senior partner at global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co., said in announcing a 2009 study of the U.S. economy. “However, to unlock the full potential, we need a coordinated national and regional strategy to overcome barriers and scale up the deployment of existing energy efficiency technologies.”
Consider the Value
First, take a step back and consider the value efficiency offers.
In an influential study published in 2008, psychologists Gerald T. Gardner and Paul C. Stern assessed the impact of around 30 steps households could take toward increasing their energy efficiency, all using currently available technologies. The sum of the efforts, they found, could cut U.S. home energy use by up to 30 percent. Since residences account for nearly one-third of total energy use, these savings could trim 11 percent from overall U.S. energy consumption.
In its 2009 report, McKinsey identified waste and other savings opportunities amounting to 23 percent of the U.S. energy pie, excluding the transportation sector. The cost of energy-saving upgrades, McKinsey found, could be entirely paid for within a few years by the resulting reduction in spending on energy. For a total investment of $520 billion, the U.S. could trim some $1.2 trillion from its energy costs by 2020. “Energy efficiency should be elevated to a national priority,” said Ostrowski.
The savings would be greater still if the calculation considers future innovation, says David Goldstein, energy program co-director for the Natural Resources Defense Council. In his 2010 book Invisible Energy, Goldstein estimated savings of 80 percent are possible by 2050 if we include technologies now in the pipeline, as well as those likely to be introduced given what we know about the pace of innovation.
Commenting on a National Academy of Sciences study estimating that energy savings of 30 percent are possible with today’s technology, Goldstein points out that by factoring in improvements in these technologies, the efficiency resource balloons in size to trillions of dollars of growth potential.
Culprit: Confusion
So if these gains are waiting to be made, what’s holding up the great efficiency revolution?
One culprit seems to be confusion. Consumers face a challenge connecting big, abstract gains with more familiar day-to-day decisions, such as installing CFL lightbulbs. And Americans are — for now, at least — so muddled about energy and efficiency that we’re largely unable to identify best choices about how to cut consumption.
In 2009, a research team led by Shahzeen Attari at Columbia University’s Center for Research on Environmental Decisions surveyed 505 subjects to assess their perceptions of energy consumption and savings for a variety of household, transportation and recycling activities. The team found that subjects sometimes overstated the impact of visible actions that offered relatively little energy savings, while profoundly underestimating the impact of less-visible steps that saved 10 or even 100 times more energy. While the test did not formally include cost estimates, the data suggest that respondents tended to underestimate choices with bigger impacts that were more costly.
Interestingly, respondents who identified themselves as eco-minded tended to be less accurate than the general public. Emphasizing that the study wasn’t testing the causes of these misconceptions, Attari points out, “The well intentioned may focus on behaviors that they do, and pay less attention to the ones they don’t do.”
But the study offers one piece of the puzzle to help encourage efficiency: Enlighten consumers about their consumption. Some utilities, for example, are tinkering with household gizmos designed to deliver data to residents so they can see their energy use. That kind of personalized instant feedback on gains made may be just what people need to make pursuing energy efficiency seem worth their while — particularly if reducing energy use is tied to something that makes a difference to them.
High costs, such as the price tag for insulation or a new, energy-efficient furnace, can be a barrier to major green upgrades.
“Go after what matters most to a consumer,” says Attari. “If they care about security, talk about energy independence. If they care about economics, talk about cost savings. If they care about their grandkids, talk about protecting future generations. If they care about biodiversity and species extinction, talk about polar bears.”
Set the Pace
Consumers are quick to state a willingness to pay for green features. But in practice, another impediment to adopting energy efficiency measures is our aversion to paying large amounts up front, even if the investment promises long-term savings. High costs, such as the price tag for insulation or a new, energy-efficient furnace, can be a barrier to major green upgrades.
Some cities have pioneered an innovative solution to this problem. Adapting a model historically used to pay for sewer systems, sidewalks and other public works, planners in Berkeley, Calif., devised an approach — called Property Assessed Clean Energy, or PACE — that financed the up-front costs of big-ticket efficiency investments by issuing a bond. Property owners could, in turn, borrow those public funds to pay for green upgrades. To pay back the loan, homes that tapped into PACE funds see their taxes rise incrementally over 20 years.
“PACE helps consumers get past the hurdle of paying up-front costs,” said Claire Danielle Tomkins, director of research at the Carbon War Room, at the Business Climate 2010 conference in New York.
To date, more than 20 states have passed laws enabling PACE programs. Perversely, however, Washington stymied the progress of PACE deployments. In the wake of the global financial crisis, federal authorities blocked mortgages attached to PACE bonds, arguing that the added payments increase a borrower’s monthly costs and thereby add risk to still sickly mortgage markets.
Rebound
Interestingly, thanks again to human nature, even implementing measures that improve efficiency will not necessarily result in reduced energy use.
Households that installed high-efficiency washing machines also boosted washing volume 5.6 percent.
One challenge is something called the “rebound effect”, or Jevons paradox. By definition, greater efficiency lowers the cost to use a resource or technology. But as goods and services grow cheaper, people tend to consume more of them .
When these two dynamics collide, efficiency gains can be diluted by increases in use. One study found that households with high-efficiency washing machines boosted the volume of washing they did on average by 5.6 percent. This increase didn’t negate the 40 to 50 percent reductions in water and energy consumption the units delivered, but it did erode total efficiency gains, according to a 2008 RAND paper by economist Lucas Davis.
For another twist on how human nature can stymie efficiency’s efforts to cut energy use, consider America’s love affair with big, fast cars. The technology to dramatically boost vehicle efficiency has been progressing for decades, but technology upgrades that could have saved energy have instead gone to soup up performance. While mileage barely budged between 1990 and now, average horsepower surged 77 percent, to around 230 today. As a result, today’s mild-mannered Toyota Sienna minivan offers about as much horsepower as Ford’s fastest ’72 Mustang.
More Carrots, More Sticks
Alas, there is no single fix for efficiency elusiveness. Logjams like the PACE policy must be dismantled one by one. And because human behavior is so complex, approaches to altering it must take many forms.
For now, incentives are the most politically saleable strategy to induce efficiency savings. As part of the 2009 stimulus bill, the U.S. Department of Energy doled out hundreds of millions to boost efficiency programs.
More vigorous mandates are making a comeback, too. Most visible, perhaps, has been the rollout of higher mileage standards for cars. And in 2010, DOE announced dozens of tough penalties against companies selling appliances, plumbing and lighting without certifying that they meet energy and/or water efficiency standards. Such well-crafted rules promise to speed change while obviating many of the psychological traps that can distract consumers. When we can’t opt for a less-efficient technology, our purchasing decisions get easier.
There may even be a public appetite for a yet heavier regulatory hand. A national survey conducted by the Mellman Group for the Union of Concerned Scientists suggests consumers may prefer tougher mileage rules. The study found that about 74 percent of voters favor tougher federal goals requiring that average fuel efficiency rise to 60 mpg by 2025. Two-thirds supported the goal even if it meant a $3,000 premium on the sticker price, assuming that could be recouped in savings at the pump within four years.
Perhaps the biggest motivator of all could end up to be the market. The sharp oil price spike of 2008 caused an unprecedented stampede away from gas-guzzling vehicles and triggered broader efforts to cut energy use. Similar increases in the cost of electricity or natural gas could do much to motivate consumers to cut back by improving their energy efficiency.
Advocates for a tax on carbon emissions generated by energy use argue such a fee would trigger the adoption of energy efficiency measures in an orderly fashion by preventing such on-again, off-again shifts toward efficient technologies. Better to create an incentive to put efficient systems into place ahead of time, they argue, than to wait for unpredictably high energy prices to return and force these shifts chaotically.
Indeed, better we all learn efficiency-improving behaviors while we can afford to.
A version of this feature originally appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of Momentum magazine, Ensia’s predecessor.
