The Next Ten Years of Climate Policy, According to Our Experts
Two weeks ago, the IPCC released their most dire warning yet – that we have justthree yearsto prevent the most catastrophic storms, natural disasters, and droughts human civilization might ever see. We are getting closer and closer to the temperature that scientists have warned us for decades would do irreversible damage to our societies and ecosystems.
但是，科学家的角色不仅是镇上的一员，还警告我们将要发生的事情。科学家也是激进主义者将命运掌握在自己手中。上星期，scientists across the world上演的静坐，举行示范，并将自己戴上戴上最糟糕的气候罪犯，以发送大胆的信息：现在的行动时间已经是。
作为科学政策组织，我们试图弥合专家与政策制定者之间的差距。我们已经发表了数十个提案和政策备忘录，概述了大胆的气候政策思想，这些思想不仅可以拯救世界，而且会助长美国和全球经济。
Below, our experts, researchers, and staff share some of their thoughts on what the next ten years of climate policy will look like, how scientists can get involved in policymaking, and what they hope to see.
核信息项目高级研究助理兼项目经理Matt Korda Matt Korda
Climate change and nuclear weapons have a symbiotic relationship: each threat exacerbates the other. Climate change is设置舞台for conflict between nuclear-armed states, and a最近的研究suggests that even a regional nuclear war could cause mass global starvation for over a decade. Not to mention the fact that even during peacetime, decades of uranium mining, nuclear testing, and nuclear waste dumping havecontaminated some of our planet’s ecosystems beyond repair, displacing entire communities—通常有色社区-正在进行中。
Given the interconnectedness of both the climate crisis and nuclear weapons, we can’t afford for these two existential issues to be tackled in silos. Progressive climate change policies should include demilitarization and disarmament provisions, andprogressive nuclear policiesshould address the climate and humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. With that in mind, nuclear disarmament activists and climate change activists are natural allies in the fight to mitigate global catastrophic risks.
Ishan Sharma, Fellow and Policy Analyst, Technology & Innovation
The IPCC report is clear that a range of solutions is needed to reduce andremove来自大气的碳，“将温暖到1.5℃或可能低于2100的场景的基本要素”。
跨建筑物，运输，能源转型，基础设施和行业，气候解决方案技术比比皆是。问题是如何将针头移动technology readiness levels. Or, in other words, what will spur their adoption at scale?
让我们先创建正确的发射康迪特ions — climate solutions startups have long described the trouble of gaining access to funding given the large upfront costs of hardtech (when compared to software). As a result, many exciting ideas fail to cross the “Valley of Death” and achieve scaled adoption.
But what if we employed new ways of de-risking investments into climate solutions startups that incentivized more capital flows? One example: committing to buy a certain technology in advance, or advanced market commitments (AMCs). AMCs were recently used in Operation Warp Speed to de-risk and galvanize Pfizer, Moderna, and other pharma companies’ investments to produce COVID-19 vaccines. Last week, an alliance of big tech companies under the organizationFrontier了9.25亿美元对碳移除,萤火虫ing large portions towards AMCs because by “committing to buy a product early, you can help bring it to market faster”.
Fortunately, the White House Council on Environmental Quality is challenging each agency to leverage its purchasing power in eachsustainability plan, turning the federal government into a massive source of clean demand.
There’s also the related problem of scaling this type of innovation across the United States. How do you encourage legacy energy communities to support these transitions into the green economy? One way is to create the right set of economic conditions that incentivizes — and provides for — well paying jobs in new growth sectors.
Currently, there are only ahandful of cities凭借“行业和人力资本的坚实基础，一直在吸引好雇主并提供高工资……在这些炎热城市中形成的生态系统，包括创新公司，资助来源，受过良好教育的工人和强大的服务经济。”出于多种原因，很难将创新扩展到杠杆率不足的地区，包括培训愿意的劳动力和确保可行的投资生态系统以启动启动。
But if done right, it could be another answer to rising inflation, as it would bring new demand to “stone cold市场并从中间和中间稳定价格。
Fortunately, nascent regional investment efforts like the Economic Development Administration’s恢复更好的区域挑战and the Department of Energy’sEnergy Program for Innovation Clustersseeks a holistic approach to green development, bringing breakthrough research happening in the labs, training workforces in the locality, empowering startup liftoff, and facilitating spillover economic benefits from climate solutions’ commercialization. Federal assets — from national labs to federally funded R&D at universities to manufacturing innovation institutes — should be brought to bear in supporting this innovation-cluster based approach.
但是，这种清洁增长气候解决方案的一部分将需要我们在最前沿研发方面的投资与我们在制造业的投资，以便在美国生产和商业化这些技术。制造业投资不足的数十年来牺牲了“learning-by-building” - 当制造商与设计师坐在餐桌旁时，发生的实质性增值相互作用发生。
This is the reason why China-based companiesown80% of the solar panel market share, despite photovoltaic cells’inventionat Bell Labs in 1954. Afterheavily subsidizingthe manufacturing of solar panels, China capitalized on the benefits of learning-by-building, perhaps themost important factor解释了过去30年中PV细胞模块的成本近100％。
如果美国将通过突破性研发来解决气候变化，我们需要确保我们可以按大规模生产技术 - 以免我们冒失去竞争和经济优势的风险。但是，我们还需要认真考虑促进石油和天然气高于清洁生长膨胀的其他监管结构。
One example isgeothermal energy这本来可以以大约3美分/千瓦时的成本提供无限的清洁电力，但是该领域的进展受到企业家风险的处理，即处理允许要求在2年的批准时间表时的允许要求。尽管2005年的《能源政策法》授予石油和天然气公司进行相同类型的地热钻探。如果我们今天为地热做同样的事情怎么办？
Another example is the well-known fossil fuels subsidies, which have been ratherhard to kill. These subsidies areresponsible高达化石燃料努力的平均收益率的68-78％。但是，对于化石燃料补贴，有针对性的解耦情况会是什么样？一些研究人员已经调查了这个问题，确定哪些是杀死最高杠杆的补贴。首先是无形的钻井成本补贴（IDC），“将美国范围的平均IRR分别提高了石油和天然气场的11％和8个百分点。”I’m not the first to advocate for the removal of this subsidy, it’s been decades in the making, but those before me underscore the crucial need for attention focused on high-leverage subsidies — chipping away bit-by-bit at the unnecessary market advantage oil and gas has received for nearly a century.
科学政策总监Erica Goldman
我的后廊望向马里兰州银泉市的一个城市森林，实际上距离那里只有几英里雷切尔·卡森（Rachel Carson）生活并写道寂静的春天. Over the past few weeks, like all over the DC region, the bare trees behind my house bloomed brilliant pinks and whites and purples, and then went quickly green. Now, the forest gets noisier each day – birds in the morning, frogs and cicadas at night, occasional owls and foxes in intermittent conversation.
Most years, I don’t pay attention to how fast all of this happens. But this year I noticed. I’ve been thinking a lot about thresholds for change, sudden inflection points that make the incremental, exponential. With climate change, these tipping points often signal catastrophe – melting glaciers, intensifying storms, and rising seas. But what if tipping points are the key to positive change as well, and targeted interventions can bring larger than expected returns?
上星期，the加利福尼亚空气资源委员会提议将电力，氢化或插电式混合动力车的新车销售到2035年。. In late 2021,the Federal Sustainability Plan在同一年，全政府舰队全力以赴的雄心勃勃的目标是雄心勃勃的目标。同时，Bipartisan Infrastructure Law allocates $21 billionover the next five years for the Office of Clean Energy Demonstration, which could dramatically accelerate the pace of deployment of key low-carbon technologies like clean hydrogen, advanced nuclear energy, and carbon capture and storage (CCS) from industrial facilities and power plants. With these kinds of targeted interventions, strategic subsidies, and technologies ready for lift off, might these positive climate tipping points be within reach?
Scientists think maybe. Anarticle in Naturelast week showed that the climate pledges made by nations at the COP26 meeting could in fact ensure that global warming does not exceed 2 ºC before 2100 — but only if backed up by short-term policies. Meanwhile, other researchers are studying how tointentionally trigger positive tipping pointsthrough social, technological and ecological innovations, policy interventions, public investment, private investment, broadcasting public information, and behavioral nudges.
Taken together, my sense is that positive tipping points give us agency and help “unlock paralysis by complexity,” transcending incrementalism and offering “plausible grounds for hope.” We know what nature is capable of, if we can get smart about how to jumpstart recovery and then get out of the way.
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