Earliest Energy

In order to understand where we are with our energy resources and consumption patterns today, it's worth taking a look back at how human energy use has changed over time. Most of us have trouble imagining a day without interior lighting in our homes or Internet connectivity, so imagining early humans and their most primitive of energy resources is somewhat challenging.

The Industrial Revolution and Energy Use

It really wasn't until the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s that human's ability to harness energy on a (relatively) large, efficient scale took place and truly revolutionized our ways of life and ability to perform work. Prior to that, early people relied primarily on caloric energy from the food they consumed to give the energy they needed to perform their basic tasks for survival. With the discovery of fire and the ability to burn biomass (wood, animal dung, charcoal), humans then had an important source of heat.

With the domestication of animals, humans were able to transition from a more nomadic way of life as a hunter/gatherer into a more agrarian society. Harnessing animal energy allowed early humans to grow more food more efficiently and stay in one place. It comes as no surprise that the ability to produce more food easily translated into sustained population growth. Early society was taking a different shape, thanks in large part to human's ability to utilize these energy opportunities.

Figure 1.2: US Energy Consumption Graph

Credit: EIA Energy Information Administration, 2020.

As the graph above illustrates, wood remained the dominant fuel source until it was surpassed by coal powering the Industrial Revolution in the late 1880s. Throughout wood's reign as the world's primary fuel source, overall energy consumption grew steadily, but remained quite low compared to the levels that would develop in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. Coal was our primary energy source until around the late 1940s when it was overtaken by oil, which remains out main energy source.

This explosion in energy consumption changed human history in almost every way. The ability to mass produce goods and a focus on a consumption-based economy were huge paradigm shifts from previous subsistence societies. The migration of people from rural areas to cities for work led to issues associated with poor sanitation and working conditions. But many of the modern conveniences on which we've become reliant were born out of this era.

Energy Transitions

Vaclav Smil defines an energy transition as, "the time that elapses between the introduction of a new primary energy source (coal, oil, nuclear electricity, wind captured by large turbines) and its rise to claiming a substantial share of the overall market" (2010).

If we explore historical energy transitions, we will see that they all have one thing in common - they tend to be slow, spanning decades or more. Let's look at some examples (also from Smil's Energy Myths and Realities):

• For millennia, people relied on biomass fuels to meet their energy needs. Coal did not overtake biomass as the primary fuel source until the late 1880s.
• Oil was first commercially produced in the 1860s; however, it did not reach 10% of the market share until 50 years later. It took another 30 years to raise that from 10% to 25%.
• Natural gas, first available in 1900, did not reach 20% of the total energy market until 1970. Its share in 2008 was just half of what had been anticipated in the 1970s.

What's happening with these energy transitions that are causing them to take so long to develop? Infrastructure is a big consideration. Think about the global infrastructure that exists to extract, process, transport, and utilize our current mix of fossil fuels. Even if we assume a utopian scenario of the discovery of a new energy resource that is plentiful, clean, easily accessible, and cheap, that doesn't change the reality of our past investments. And the physical infrastructure is only part of the equation. There's also a global workforce of individuals whose livelihoods are based on the development of these resources.

In addition, people are creatures of habit, and a reluctance to accept change can be a significant challenge to overcome in the quest to grow the market share of a new energy resource. One easy example is that of hybrid cars - many people are uneasy about purchasing an alternative fuel vehicle because they fear the unknown. What if something happens to the battery? The technology is still too new. Our own reluctance to accept new risks influences the marketplace. Many people are willing to accept less efficiency for more predictability.

A New Transition is Afoot

And now we find ourselves in the midst of the next big energy transition as we look to move beyond the hydrocarbons that have propelled our society for two centuries now in favor of lower-carbon, more environmentally sustainable alternatives. The transition to a low carbon economy is one borne more out of necessity from the perspective of addressing climate change than it is a response to dwindling supplies of fossil-fuel-based energy supply. However, that concern also factors into the decision. And like the energy transitions of the past, this one is playing out over an extended time frame, though the more rapid deployment of technology over time (generally speaking) may expedite this journey a bit. And while we can't perfectly predict how the transition will unfold, corporations and governments the world over are trying to understand the likely scenarios and plan for them.

This graphic below is really nicely done because it lays out peaks in various resource use as well as the overall peak in our global demand for energy along with the ramping up of renewable capabilities. DNV GL offers a projection of the next 10 years here (spoiler: there is progress, but we are not transitioning fast enough to carbon neutrality), if you are so inclined. This is of course one think tank's best guess at what the transition will look like as they seek to prepare their partners for the changes ahead. Can you find examples of other models of what our transition to a sustainable energy future might look like? Feel free to share them in our HAVE A QUESTION discussion board!

Figure 1.3: Energy Transition Timeline

Click for a text description of Figure 1.3

Highlights of our forecast energy transition to 2050. The green slope represents the share of non-fossil energy sources in the energy mix. 

ENERGY PEAKS:

• 2014: Coal Peaked
• 2023: Oil Peaks
• 2026: Transport energy demand peaks
• 2032: Peak primary energy supply
• 2033: Nuclear peaks
• 2034: Natural gas peaks
• 2035: Peak final energy demand
• 2039: Manufacturing energy demand peaks

ENERGY TRANSITIONS:

• 2023: Seaborne container trade exceeds crude oil trade
• 2026: Gas over-takes oil
• 2031: Wind overtakes hydro
• 2034: Non-fossil capex overtakes fossil capex
• 2038: Seaborne gas trade exceeds coal trade
• 2044: Solar PV overtakes biomass in primary energy
• 2049: Solar PV overtakes oil in primary energy

ENERGY MILESTONES:

• 2023: PV installations 1TW
• 2028: 95% of the world population has electricity access
• 2035: World grid capacity doubles from 2016
• 2035: Maritime energy demand peaks
• 2038: Wind supply x10 more than 2016
• 2040: PV installations 10TW
• 2042: Half of maritime energy use is non-oil
• 2044: Non-fossil expenditures overtake fossil expenditures
• 2048: World grid capacity triples from 2016

NON-FOSSIL SHARE:

• 2024: Light EVs reach cost parity with internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles.
• 2033: Half of all light vehicle sales electric
• 2042: Half of the world’s fleet of road vehicles - light and heavy - is electric
• 2047: Heavy electric vehicles start to outnumber ICE heavy vehicles on the road

2016: 19% of the energy mix is non-fossil

2050: 50% of the energy mix is non-fossil

Credit: DNV GL Energy Transition Outlook 2019

The Industrial Revolution

It would be difficult to discuss the history of human energy use without at least a brief discussion of the Industrial Revolution. And, in a class where we're focusing on energy not just for energy's sake, but also incorporating the climate impacts of our energy use, it's absolutely critical.

And while we tend to think of the Industrial Revolution in a historical context, because it occurred so long ago in the western world (starting in England, and spreading readily to other European countries and the colonies now known as the US), it's important to remember - especially in the context of energy policy - that much of the world is still striving to achieve industrialization. Industrialization serves as a major sticking point for international climate policy negotiations, with lesser industrialized countries lamenting the fact that the western world enjoyed unmitigated development with cheap, dirty fuel sources and had no climate considerations burdening their desire to grow and evolve. The western world, however, recognizes the implications of continued growth in carbon-intensive fuel sources to support a higher quality of life around the world and (from the luxury of their industrialized societies) calls for cleaner, more expensive energy alternatives moving forward.

The Industrial Revolution marks a turning point in how we viewed energy, consumption, and our environment. Prior to this, the manufacturing process was small and on a highly localized scale. Skilled laborers worked in small groups to create complex goods. The Industrial Revolution saw increased farm production and efficiency, allowing more people to abandon subsistence farming for livelihoods in industrial centers. Fewer farmers feeding more people allows society to advance and branch out in all areas, with individuals able to devote time to livelihoods in manufacturing, textiles, services, and other areas.

And while it's termed a 'revolution,' these changes still took time. Remember our discussions about energy transitions and how they are slow-moving events? The Industrial Revolution was no exception to that. The primary difference here is that the Industrial Revolution marks a time in history when we had a fundamental shift in how we did things, and this transcends just a system of factories. Agricultural practices, economic policies, and societal norms were all upended to make way for more efficient ways of doing business and a rapid pursuit of a higher quality of life. On a rudimentary level, we can think about the Industrial Revolution as being similar to the advent of e-mail. E-mail fundamentally changed how businesses operate - and seemingly helped make them more efficient. Good news - we didn't have to unlock millions of years' worth of carbon for the e-mail revolution.

Joking aside, you can probably pinpoint a few major shifts in how we operate. But even as revolutionary as some of our recent technological advancements have been, few things will ever be quite the spot-on history that the Industrial Revolution has been. Lumped under this heading is a series of events that cascaded into the very real quality of life improvements for people of the times, and people today. Modern-day conveniences like washing machines and sewing machines (just to name a few) owe their roots to the Industrial Revolution.

But, for many people living the reality of the changes on the ground, it wasn't all good. Poor working conditions, child labor, crowded living conditions with little sanitation, and extreme air pollution are but a few of the consequences of the growth and advancement during this time. And lest we forget that industrialization in the West would not have been possible without the horrors of slavery and colonialism (and the illiberal practice of neocolonialism that arguably exists today), as well resource exploitation. And this phenomenon is not only historical. A bevy of research has found that airborne pollution - largely from manufactururing and energy generation associated with industrialization - causes major health impacts. One recent study found that pollution reduces the averages Chinese citizens' life by almost 3 years. There are negative impacts from things like mining rare earth metals, toxic electronic waste pollution, land grabs to secure raw materials, and more - all resulting as a consequence of the current energy transition and global industrialization. These impacts are disproportionately visited upon marginalized populations domestically and globally. It's important to keep these side effects in mind as we think about radical shifts in energy sources. While our goal to be more efficient and provide more people with a better quality of life isn't all that different from the goals of large-scale industrialization, we must be mindful of the unintended consequences and externalities of our actions.

In 1976, Amory Lovins wrote about 'hard' and 'soft' energy paths (which you'll be reading all about in this week's assigned reading) and how the path the nation chooses would dictate the energy future that would follow. Now, more than three decades later, we can recall the energy futures Lovins predicted based on policy choices in the 1970s and understand the implications of energy policy of that time.

Characteristics of hard energy paths:

• centralized high technologies
• increasing supplies of energy (especially electricity)

This graph depicts Amory Lovins' description of a hard energy path, reliant on centralized fossil fuels. While nuclear fuel is projected to play a much bigger role post-2000, the reliance on coal and natural gas still leads us down a heavily carbonized path. What this graph wasn't able to predict at the time of its conception was the boom in natural gas production, both domestically and globally, with unconventional plays in shale formations creating a surge in its market share, snuffing out coal to a large extent.
The Negawatt Revolution 1989

Credit: Amory Lovins

Characteristics of soft energy paths:

• emphasis on energy efficiency
• development of renewable energy sources - matching in scale and quality to the end use need

This graph depicts Amory Lovins' concept of a soft energy path, emphasizing energy efficiency and increased use of renewable sources. This illustration of the soft energy path not only demonstrates a downward trend over time in overall emissions, but more importantly, a relatively rapid decline in reliance on traditional centralized fossil fuels like oil, gas, and coal, in favor of what Lovins described as soft technologies, including decentralized renewable energy like residential rooftop solar.
The Negawatt Revolution 1989

Credit: Amory Lovins

Summary

In this lesson, we've taken a brief look at human energy use throughout history. By understanding how people have harnessed energy resources in the past, we can more fully appreciate the nuances of our energy challenges moving forward. We've learned that energy transitions of any kind take time, money, and support in order to be successful - and often take more of each of these things than initially estimated or anticipated. Understanding these patterns of transition has critical importance for effective and realistic energy policy development. Establishing achievable timetables for measured success requires an understanding and appreciation of the pace with which new energy resources can realistically be expected to have any real impact commercially.

One fact that will be critical for us to remember as we continue on in the course is that we're always writing history - so be thinking about what students taking a graduate-level energy policy course will be learning about in 30 years. Or 50. What will be the history we write? Will it be one of the rapid adoption of more sustainable and renewable energy technologies with more distributed infrastructure? Will it be one of the continued reliance on traditional fossil fuels with little widespread adoption of newer sources? These are tricky questions to answer, given the likelihood of currently unpredictable events that will shape our energy outlook and policy. Unforeseen technological advancement, new scientific discovery highlighting major benefits or detriments of any particular energy resource, and the real wild card of societal behaviors and preferences make it difficult to foresee what's coming. Thirty years ago, it would have been nothing short of science fiction to imagine an iPhone, or how my new car (a hybrid) coaches me as I drive to drive it with maximum efficiency - spitting out nearly continuous MPG data and suggestions for improvement. Only fifteen or so years ago, the thought that electricity from renewable energy would be as cost-effective as coal or natural gas (aka grid parity) was almost laughable. Now properly-stied onshore wind and utility-scale solar are cheaper on a levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) basis - without subsidies.

This course is designed to approach issues of energy policy in a two-pronged (somewhat conflicting) manner.

• Dream Big. I want you to think outside the box, imagine radical shifts in thinking and governance, and develop idealistic and utopian views of our future. What future do you want to see, and how can we get there?
• Stay Grounded. I also want you to recognize all of the constraints and conflicts tugging at the very core of energy policy - current and future. Our social, cultural, economic, and political circumstances are real and likely here to stay.

It's my hope that if we take a little bit of each of these approaches, we can all learn something about the energy policies governing our world and what exactly we need to do to improve them. Without the ability to dream big, we get stuck in the status quo, and our policies don't change and evolve with the times. But, if we don't stay grounded to some extent, we risk losing the ability to affect real change in the social constructs in which we must operate. Finding this delicate balance will be our goal.

This lesson was also about tradeoffs.

• There is no magic energy source. As we continue to refine existing technologies and develop new ones, we may be improving upon the social and environmental consequences of our energy consumption, but we cannot yet eliminate that from the equation. We value non-renewable energy resources for their abundance and relatively cheap costs ("cheap" ignoring externalities, of course), but are becoming increasingly discontented with their environmental pollution and social impacts, particularly with regard to greenhouse gas emissions. We value the lower emission rates of renewable resources, but find the costs, lack of social acceptance, and new environmental consequences to be barriers to widespread adoption. With this foundation, let's take a look at how policies can help alleviate some of these challenges to renewable resource adoption!
• The path we've chosen might be a bumpy road. In your review of the Amory Lovins article, you learned that even several decades ago, people were questioning our energy choices and the consequences we'd be faced with depending on what we value most in energy in this country. While his concepts of hard and soft energy paths might seem a little extreme on either end of the spectrum, he illustrates the point that we cannot (yet) have it all. Cheap, centralized energy is dirty. Energy efficiency and conservation are hard to incentivize with cheap energy. If nothing else, walk away from that article with the understanding that the decision to hop from one path to another is a complicated and daunting proposition, and one which requires strong policy decisions.

Reminder - Complete all of the Lesson tasks!

You have reached the end of this lesson! Double-check the Lesson Requirements in Canvas to make sure you have completed all of the tasks listed there.

Energy Policy and Climate Policy

These two are inextricably linked as we move forward. We cannot address the challenges associated with reducing human-induced climate change without taking a good, long look at our energy policies and the resources on which we depend so heavily. So much of the anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are tied directly to energy extraction, production, and consumption - as you can see in the image below, nearly 75% - therefore, any efforts to reduce these emissions will necessarily have very real consequences for all facets of the energy industry.

In effect, climate policy IS energy policy.

What are the goals of climate policy? While many countries (and other levels of government) are still trying to figure out what an effective climate policy really means for them, we can broadly explore some of the goals of instituting climate policies, recognizing that no one policy can be all things to all people.

Generally, we can sort climate policy objectives into the following two categories:

Addressing climate change has always been a two-fold challenge and will continue to be one. In order to avoid more severe consequences of change in the future, we must look for ways to mitigate our emissions now and moving forward. But mitigation efforts alone are not enough, because the emissions we've already released will inevitably impact the climate and because we are already seeing climate change impacts that we must react to. Adaptation policy is often more complex and less easily quantifiable than mitigation policy, but it's important to understand that together they represent a comprehensive approach to addressing global climate change.

Over the past several decades, there have been various legislative attempts to combat climate change at the federal level, with varying degrees of success. Here is an excellent summary (required reading!) from the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions. You'll see on that summary that several attempts at carbon pricing (mostly through cap and trade) emerged with bipartisan support.

The list stops short of the Clean Power Plan (also 2015), which in many ways was a turning point in US federal climate policy as the first ever energy policy designed specifically to reduce carbon emissions and was done so to position the US for the then-upcoming Paris climate negotiation talks. While we could devote an entire semester (or doctoral dissertation! or career!) to an analysis and discussion of the merits, drawbacks, and politics of climate legislation in the United States, we need to condense it into part of just one lesson in our course. If you find yourself really interested in this material and would like to know more, feel free to explore the links on your own and/or post to the class discussion board.

The Economy....from late 2007 through mid 2009, the United States experienced an economic downturn and recession unparalleled in scope and severity since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Triggered largely by risky lending and the securitization of mortgages, coupled by increases in commodity prices like food and oil, thes "Great Recession" and substantial job loss made it quite a difficult proposition for elected officials to support climate policies perceived (to some extent, correctly so) to increase energy prices.

The Politics...every facet of tackling climate change is politically charged. As we saw last lesson, many people question the validity of the science that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are influencing our climate system. Others worry that climate policy will affect end users of energy more than energy producers. Still others are concerned that until the fast-growing, developing countries of China and India commit to reducing their unchecked emissions, the United States will put itself at a global competitive disadvantage for manufacturing goods (conveniently ignoring that the U.S. emitted GHGs unchecked for hundreds of years to establish itself as a global superpower). Climate policy is an issue with so much at stake - for everyone - that tensions run high and fears are plentiful. It isn't the goal of this class to draw political lines in the sand - instead, you need to understand the motivations of all sides and how the vested interest of various parties influences the decisions that are made about this issue.

This is a list (certainly not exhaustive) of some of the major attempts at climate legislation in the House and Senate over the past several years. While somewhat redundant with the C2ES list linked above, I include it here mostly for the summaries of these various pieces of legislation. I encourage you, as you're working on your research projects, to seek out summaries from credible, non-partisan think tanks. They can be quite helpful!

The Process...In case you are not familiar with how a bill becomes law, here is a good summary from USA.gov, and here is a more detailed explanation - including videos that provide a step-by-step explanation of the process - from the U.S. Congress. 

Of course, the process is almost never this straightforward, as things such as "horse trading" (I'll support your bill if you support mine, I'll support your bill if you publicly state this or that, etc.) and political posturing have resulted in this process often being referred to as "sausage making" after the famous quote: "Laws are like sausages, it is better not to see them being made." Whether Otto von Bismarck said it or not, the quote and characterization are still used to this day.

As we've discussed earlier, climate policy is energy policy - and often actions we can implement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are cost-saving and carry additional ancillary benefits. It's no surprise, then, that in the absence of a federal climate policy, smaller scale bodies of government are working hard to address these challenges in their own regions, states, and localities.

We find ourselves at a tumultuous point in US climate policy history. Retreating from the commitments of the Clean Power Plan and the Paris Agreements and renewed investment in the fossil fuel industry puts us at odds with what the scientific community understands about climate change and the actions we must take to address it. As you can imagine, in the years (decades, really) prior to 2015, the very noticeable absence of federal leadership on this problem created a void smaller geographic scales just couldn't ignore. The next several pages of this lesson will take you through the climate policy efforts which emerged at a variety of sub-national geographic scales and introduce you to new ones growing out of the stalled progress we've seen in the past several years with federal climate policy until the Biden Administration took over. Now, these efforts are to a large extent supported by federal initiatives, and so it will be interesting to see what kind of progress can be made while the IRA and IIJA rubber starts hitting the road. As the Rhodium Group notes, the IRA should "provide a decade of policy certainty" supporting emissions reductions and a change in the energy industry, which has never happened before.

Addressing climate and energy challenges at smaller scales of government offer a degree of flexibility in the strategies implemented to solve the problems which are best suited to a particular place in a way that a blanket federal approach would fail to accommodate. It affords policy makers the opportunity to explicitly tailor plans to the economic, social, and environmental factors and incorporate these place-based nuances into their decision-making process. However, the piece by piece approach also leaves room for inconsistency, and for leakage of emissions from more stringently regulated states to those which are more lax, and may fail to spur innovation across all states. This was really what was so innovative (and smart) about the Clean Power Plan's design; it was structured to strategically have the best of both worlds - a federal program with national targets which allows states to choose their own pathways to meeting reduction goals.

As you go through the various sub-national scales of climate action, think about where you live and what action, if any, your region, state, or municipality has taken. Do you live in an active region? Or, is there a lot of work to do? Maybe that's work you will want to do when you graduate!

Without national climate policy, regional efforts sprout up

Despite the federal government's ability to enact comprehensive climate legislation to mandate a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions (the IRA should lead to emissions reductions, but to not mandate it), much of the United States is moving forward to address climate change.

There are 3 Regional Programs committed to greenhouse gas reduction which together represent 23 states and 4 Canadian provinces, and account for half the US population and more than a third of US greenhouse gas emissions.

These programs represent a widespread interest in mandatory greenhouse gas reduction across the country. As you look at the participating states and provinces, you'll see a wide diversity of politics, resource consumption, economies, and environmental concerns. Their willingness to address climate issues represents not only an acknowledgment of the problem, but also an acceptance of the challenge of solving the problems while juggling economic and political considerations. Because the states are all so varied, addressing climate change at this sub-national scale represents an opportunity for the states to tailor their programs specifically to their assets and handicaps.

State Participants in Regional Greenhouse Gas Programs Around the United States

Click Here for Text alternative to regional greenhouse gas programs image

Regional Greenhouse Gas Programs

Program	Participant(s)
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and TCI	Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Pennsylvania (new as of 2022 via Executive Order by Governor Wolf)
Midwest GHG Reduction Accord	Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas
MGGRA Observer	Ohio, Indiana, South Dakota
Western Climate Initiative	Washington, Montana, Oregon, California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico
Western Climate Initiative Observer	Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Nevada, Alaska

Credit: n.a. U.S. Regional Cap-and-Trade Programs. World Resources Institute (WRI). January 15, 2009

Many states across the country have drafted, adopted, and implemented climate action plans. Some states have done this as part of their commitment to regional initiatives. In addition to making the progress we need now to address the climate crisis, these state level efforts might just spur federal action, too.

How does state climate action take shape? In many cases, state-level policy makers and stakeholders enlist the assistance of external groups to help them determine an appropriate list of actions and policies the state could adopt, to achieve climate goals. Often this process begins with an inventory of the state's greenhouse gas emissions across sectors, and then the adoption of reduction targets. It's quite similar to how actions arise at larger scales. Groups such as the Center for Climate Strategies come in and meet with relevant state stakeholders to scope inventories and devise strategies for emissions reduction and cost savings.

When the Trump Administration came into power and started the procedure to eventually withdraw the US from the Paris Climate Agreement and dismantled the Clean Power Plan, states took notice.  Many had already been preparing for the coming Clean Power Plan requirements, and therefore weren't going to suddenly backtrack on those investments simply because the federal political winds had changed.  States are often better at seeing the ancillary economic and environmental benefits, are moving forward as if the plan were still in place. In Pennsylvania, Governor Wolf signed an executive order in January 2019 to address climate change and conserve energy, and eventually signed an Executive Order joining RGGI in 2022.  

Local Governments Solving A Global Problem

While we tend to think of climate change as a global problem, the solutions are often highly localized in nature. Therefore, it makes sense that local governments take action to reduce emissions and develop sustainable energy solutions. To an even larger extent than state governments, local scale climate change mitigation efforts offer supreme flexibility for creating solutions tailored specifically to local circumstance. Whether it's an old coal mining town in the northeast hoping to revitalize its economy with newer energy technologies or a farm town in the Midwest seeking additional revenue sources for its small-scale agricultural producers, local action empowers people because they are able to feel more connected to what is happening.

And the story of local action has never been more important than it is right now. Early local action efforts rose out of dissatisfaction with the US decision not to actively participate in the Kyoto Protocol almost 20 years ago now. Local municipalities and states filled the void left by a lack of federal leadership on climate change. During the Obama presidency, that void filled in a bit with hallmark achievements, including the Clean Power Plan and the ratification of the Paris Agreement. Then U.S. again found itself lacking federal leadership on climate action during the Trump Administration and states, municipalities, and private businesses all recognizing that there's simply no time to waste are stepping up to fill the void again. And of course, federal support is a reality again with the Biden Administration. This umnfortunate game of political football has on the one hand stunted aggressive national policies but on the other hand has motivated states and localities to take their own inititiatives.

• Notably, the We Are Still In campaign is a pledge of American businesses, non-profits, universities, and municipalities who remained committed to achieving the reductions outlined in the Paris Agreement no matter what is happening at the federal level.
• The Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy is a worldwide alliance of more than 7,500 cities and towns committed to climate action and provides resources for both inventorying emissions and enacting climate action plans to reduce them.
• The US EPA's Local Climate and Energy Program helps local governments around the country reduce emissions and meet other sustainability goals through training and competitive grants. Check out their website to learn more about what's going on where you live (perhaps you'd like to discuss this with your classmates).
• The International Council for Local Environment Initiatives (ICLEI) has been around since 1990. Their climate program is but one of many sustainability-driven initiatives the Council runs. Their Climate Program is structured into 3 areas - Mitigation, Adaptation, and Advocacy - recognizing that all parts are necessary if we're to address the totality of the problem. Specifically, their Cities for Climate Protection campaign has gained notoriety for drawing more than 1,000 members from local governments all over the world. ICLEI members can draw on an extensive network of in-house research, training programs, and the support of other members as they devise strategies for handling climate policy at their local government level. Signatories to the Global Covenant are able to access ICLEI's ClearPath software for free to conduct local GHG inventories.
• The Urban Sustainability Directors' Network joins together folks working on sustainability issues in towns and cities across the country. This focused group allows them to share ideas and best practices about programs and approaches which work.

What about your community? What's going on there? If not, maybe it's time for you to change that! You could start by revieweing some of the resources above, which provide a wealth of suggestions and models, as well as best practices. It only takes one person to get something going, especially at the local level!

While climate change has not historically been a politically divisive issue until recent years, the fiercely partisan divide as it currently exists makes garnering the support necessary for meaningful change very challenging. 

Despite Congressional stalemates to produce meaningful, broadly-scoped legislation to address greenhouse gas emissions, President Obama utilized executive authority to regulate emissions under the Clean Air Act based on the landmark 2007 Supreme Court ruling that categorizes carbon dioxide as a threat to human health. In doing so, he directed the EPA to establish rules for both new coal-fired power plants, and perhaps more controversially, for existing coal-fired power plants (in what became known as the Clean Power Plan). The former was viewed by environmentalists as a bit of a lame duck policy, since you could argue that in 2014, it seems silly to be building ANY new coal-fired power plants. But to regulate the 600+ existing facilities in the country - this could have wide-reaching implications for not only emissions themselves, but also how we as a nation view and value the carbon cost of our energy generation.

The Trump Administration rolled back the Clean Power Plan and implemented the Affordable Clean Energy Plan, which significantly neutered the original legislation. This afforded states more authority to choose to regulate (or not regulate) the emissions from their power plants, citing executive overreach of the Clean Power Plan's structure. As we know, the main federal climate policy since then is the Inflation Reduction Act, though the Infrastructure Investment Act also addresses emissions.

But what did the rollback really mean for overall emissions reductions? 

It depends on where you are.

This NY Times summary provides an excellent overview (and these great maps!) of what the rollback (and eventual repeal) would really mean. Remember, a lot of actions were already set into motion before the Trump Administration rolled back the requirements. So for some states, moving forward regardless of the current political winds just makes good economic sense based on recent investments.

Credit: n.a. "How Will the Clean Power Plan Repeal Change Carbon Emission for your State? NY Times. 

You can learn more about the Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule that lays out the specifics for regulation under the Clean Air Act, as well as a brief history timeline of this action. EPA went on to structure the proposed rules to afford states the flexibility to meet their emission standards through the employment of a cap and trade system or carbon tax. And while these efforts would have certainly been smaller in reach than an economy-wide system, because these stationary sources are such a big part of the emissions profile, the potential GHG reductions are profound.

The Center for Climate and Energy Solutions offers this list (required) of ways in which Congress can work to achieve GHG emissions reductions without necessarily explicitly crafting climate policy.

In this lesson, we've learned about climate and energy policy at all scales of government, from local municipalities to intergovernmental panels. Climate change is unlike many other environmental challenges, in that it is a global issue. So, while we can all work separately to achieve reductions in greenhouse gases locally, we can't fully address the problem without global cooperation.

Global cooperation on anything is a challenge in itself. Integrating the disparate interests, intentions, and abilities of all the world's nations and finding a path forward is daunting to even consider. As the Kyoto Protocol experience illustrated, we really need to all be in this together. Will climate change be the ultimate tragedy of the commons? Will some countries recognize the economic potential of developing large-scale renewable energy technologies and out-compete us on the global stage? Will the US rise to the challenge of addressing climate change while managing a weak economy and public misunderstanding of the issue? These are not questions we can answer easily in one lesson or one course. But these will be the types of questions you may find yourself working on as an ESP graduate or any field that deals with climate/energy policy.

Yearly Meetings of the IPCC

Each year since 1995 the UNFCCC's Conference of the Parties (COP) gathers to discuss a global response to climate change - both in terms of mitigating future climate change through emissions reductions and adapting to the change we're already committed to experiencing thanks to present and past emissions. (COP 1 was in Berlin, Germany in 1995.) For many years, it seemed that the venue was the only thing that really changed at the annual climate talks. Until Paris.

Paris 2015: The year we finally did something.

At the COP 21 in Paris in late 2015, participating countries signed a landmark agreement to contain global average temperature warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (with an ultimate goal of keeping it much closer to 1.5 degrees). Unlike the framework used to develop the Kyoto commitments 20 years ago, one of the most important developments which led to the success of getting 195 countries in agreement in Paris was to focus less on this developed vs. developing country designation for responsibility for reducing emissions. Instead, many of the largest emitting developing countries (like China and India) have come together to acknowledge the role they, too, must play in reducing global emissions. The agreement acknowledges that developed countries must take the lead in reducing emissions, but it does not absolve developing countries of setting and meeting targets. You can read the entirety of the Paris Agreement on the UNFCCC website. And while the Trump Administration withdrew the US from the Agreement, the rest of the world marched boldly on - recognizing the gravity and urgency of the climate crisis we collectively face - until the Biden Administration entered the U.S. back in on his first day in office, 20 January 2021. Until the Biden Admiinstration signed on, the US was the only country to not be party to the Agreement, after the other remaining holdouts - Nicaragua and Syria - had signed on a few years prior.

UNFCCC leaders celebrate the adoption of the Paris Agreement.

Credit: Arnaud Bouissou - MEDDE. Adoption of the Paris Agreement at COP 21 in Paris. United Nations. July 20, 2016.  CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0.

COP 27 - Sharm-el Sheikh

One of the important outcomes of COP 27 was the establishment of the Loss and Damage Fund, which "allocates money to assist low and middle-income countries respond to climate disasters" according to Reuturs. There was also some movement on limiting or eliminating the use of coal. Reuters provides a good summary here.

COP 26 - Glasgow

Some important agreements were made in Glasgow in 2020. This includes the Glasgow Pact, which - though not containing any binding requirements - recognizes the importance of immediate and sustained action in a number of ways, including providing funding for mitigation and adapation, as well as moving away from fossil fuels. See a summary of agreements and deficiencies here, from the UN.

COP 25 - Madrid

COP 26 in Madrid, Spain was a mixed bag of successes and failures to reach agreement. See a summary from Carbon Brief here.

COP 24 - The Kawotice Rulebook

Learn more about the outcomes of the COP meeting in December 2018. Despite the US plans to withdrawal formally from the Paris Agreement, the rest of the world remains committed to achieving the Paris Agreement goals.  

Past COP Meetings Leading to the 2015 Paris Agreement

Lima 2014

Lima set the stage for the success of the Paris talks. The Lima Call for Climate Action laid the foundation for the idea that the agreements reached in Paris would be binding for both developed and developing countries. Nothing agreed upon in Lima really had any strong enforcement behind it, it was merely a stepping stone for what was expected to come in Paris the following year.

Delegates to the Lima COP20 gather in late 2014.

Credit: COP 20 - UN Climate Change Conference - Lima by UNclimatechange is licensed under CC-BY 2.0

Warsaw 2013

Participants have agreed to stay on track to adopt a new 'universal climate agreement' in 2015 which will be implemented no later than 2020. In preparation for this, countries have been instructed to begin working on logistics at home in advance of the next COP in Peru so that everything will be set by 2015 in Paris. Another big outcome of this meeting was the decision to increase funding for vulnerable countries experiencing damages and hardships from severe weather events and rising sea levels.

Warsaw COP Meeting

Credit: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Doha 2012

Like many of the meetings before it, a primary point of debate for this series of talks is the developing and developed country classifications for the purpose of emission reduction and adaption funding responsibility. Near the end of the meeting, participating countries did finally adopt the agenda of the Durban Platform.

Doha Climate Change COP Meeting

Credit: UNclimatechange from Flickr is license under CC BY 2.0

Durban 2011

The most significant development to come out of this Conference of Parties was the Durban Platform. For the first time in global climate negotiations, this document sets for binding targets for all parties. This is a significant deviation from earlier agreements and incremental progress that has focused primarily on the developed/developing country divide.

Durban COP 2011

Credit: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Cancun 2010

This meeting followed the disappointments of the 2009 Copenhagen meeting as member countries left without making any real, solid progress on post-Kyoto plans for global reductions in emissions. The hopes for Copenhagen had been high - the US had a sitting president (Obama) who expressed interest in the importance of climate legislation, and had the Congressional backing to do so. But, the high hopes of Copenhagen were eventually met with disappointment, as that meeting failed to produce a binding climate deal. (Read about what went wrong at Copenhagen). Therefore, expectations going into the Cancun negotiations were much more measured and conservative. This means that they did not tackle some of the broad, contentious issues that have held up previous meetings, but instead focused on some important, more narrowly defined issues.

Some outcomes of the Cancun Climate Negotiations include:

• stricter and more detailed reporting guidelines for measuring, reporting, and verifying greenhouse gas emission mitigation efforts;
• $30 billion in aid through 2012 (called 'fast-start' funding) and eventually $100 billion in public/private funding annually by 2020 for mitigation efforts;
• developing national strategies to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (known as REDD).

Cancun COP 2010

Credit: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

In this lesson, we've explored the connection between energy policy and climate policy. Climate change mitigation is a relatively new consideration for energy policy, but the ancillary benefits from enacting policies to curb anthropogenic climate change often overlap with goals of modern energy policy like improved efficiency, decreased dependence on foreign oil, air quality improvement, and job creation. I've tried to introduce the idea of scale of governance as a key factor in climate policy considerations, as it will factor particularly predominantly in this SP 2020 offering of the course with our local scale climate action planning project. We'll get into a bit more detail later this semester, primarily through assigned readings, but this lesson was intended to give you an overview of the interconnected nature of climate and energy and get you thinking about scale. Geography matters!

Important Concepts to take away from this lesson

• Climate policy inherently is energy policy - because so much of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions results from the combustion of fossil fuels to meet our energy needs, any policy to address climate change has substantial consequences for energy policy as well.
• Climate policy is happening at every scale - local climate change efforts enjoy the specificity of really addressing a place's unique circumstances, while national scale policies have the benefit of influencing international agreements on the issue. Regional efforts combine the like-minded goals of geographically clustered states to address climate issues and take advantage of regionally specific resources and talent in the absence of more direction from the federal government. It is the combined efforts at all scales that will allow us to tackle the problem holistically. Our lawmakers may be unwilling to address greenhouse gas emissions at a large scale, but there are other legislative courses of action, namely through the Clean Air Act, that we can pursue. Perhaps they aren't as efficient or practical, but they are likely better than nothing.

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Local GHG emissions vary tremendously from place to place, depending on each area’s biophysical, socioeconomic, and cultural contexts. For example, a college town in central Pennsylvania (hey, I know one of those!) will have a significantly different emissions profile than an agricultural area in southwestern Kansas or an industrial city in northwestern Ohio. Indeed, each place’s GHG emissions profile is unique, but a few important sources appear in most locales. Those sources are energy use, transportation, waste disposal, and land use.

Local energy use is complex and varies with the specific type of user: residential, industrial, or commercial.

Residential:& This graph below shows how we're using energy in our homes here in the United States. More than half of it is to heat and cool our spaces (which means this also represents our biggest opportunities to reduce energy demand through gains in efficiency or moderated use). Understanding our energy consumption at home empowers us to make decisions that lower our utility bills and reduce our demand.

Residential GHG emissions are extremely important in both their quantities and their symbolism. Symbolically, residential emissions are vital because almost every person has a primary residence and has (some) control over his or her energy use and resulting GHG emissions. Large opportunities exist in reducing household energy consumption. Local emissions obviously vary with climate, socioeconomic status, energy systems, and more.

• Think about the things you can do in your home to reduce energy use. (I'll go first - I have made three big changes that I see on my now-lower bills: (1) I don't let my dishwasher dry my dishes, (2) I use a lower heat setting on my dryer, and (3) I set the thermostat higher in the summer and colder in the winter by a few degrees each way. Doing those things, I reduced my monthly energy bill by about 25%!

Our energy use at home is determined by a variety of factors. EIA points them out on their Energy Use In Homes page:

• Location - hey look, geography matters! (spoiler alert - geography always matters!) Your climate will dictate your heating and cooling needs, and we already determined those are the biggest piece of our energy use pie.
• Type of housing - Maybe your apartment is snuggled in among others and stays pretty cozy in the winter without needing to crank the heat too much. Or, maybe you rent a house like I did in grad school where I could see my blinds and curtains move when the wind blew because it was so drafty.
• Devices - we're adding devices to our daily lives all the time. I look around my own home at the things we're plugging in - phones, Switches, tablets, a dehumidifier that runs constantly in the basement, our pandemic era acquired chest freezer. These all require energy.
• Size of household - this is an interesting one because there are some efficiency gains to be made by more people living in one spot than occupying separate individual spaces that need to be heated/cooled separately, but that is then offset by the increased demand on laundry, hot water for showers, running the dishwasher more frequently, etc. And, there's the behavioral component. When my husband is away, I adjust the thermostat to a much more energy-saving temperature.

Do you know what kind of energy sources are used to power your home? Check out this visualization from Carbon Brief illustrating electricity sources across the US.

Energy Use in US Homes (2015)

Credit: US EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey (2015). U.S. Energy Information Adminstration (EIA). (Public Domain)

Industrial uses of energy reflect their GHG emissions. Utilities emit the most GHGs; manufacturing emits the next greatest proportion; mining and related extractive industries emit a smaller yet still significant proportion; and all other industrial activities emit a small quantity of GHGs. Manufacturing involves hundreds of products and processes including such diverse activities as dog food manufacturing, yarn spinning, house slipper manufacturing, ethyl alcohol manufacturing, and lime manufacturing. Local manufacturing can be specific and unique, meaning that local GHG emissions from manufacturing can also be specific and unique. For instance, because Seattle is home of Boeing’s main production facilities, emissions from aircraft manufacturing is unusually dominant in that city.

US EIA 2012 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey
Click Here for a text description.

Primary Energy Use

Type of Energy Use	Percentage
Lighting	10%
Cooking	7%
Water Heating	7%
Space Heating	25%
Ventilation	10%
Space cooling	9%
Refrigeration	10%
Electronics	3%
Computers	6%
Other	13%

Credit: EIA 2012 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). (Public Domain)

Institutions, which include such diverse entities as government buildings, prisons, military facilities, and schools, colleges, and universities, are important consumers of energy and emitters of GHGs (and are considered commercial buildings). Each local institution has a unique energy use pattern and GHG emissions profile, but, until recently, construction of most institutional buildings focused on building costs and not on energy efficiency. The net result is that the institutional sector tends to waste energy; large opportunities for energy savings and GHG reductions exist.

Local land use varies dramatically over space and time. Different places use their land for agriculture, commerce, industry, transportation, mining, forestry, or conservation. Some places have mixed land use, whereas other places have only one or two primary land uses. Each land use is associated with a particular GHG emissions pattern. Cropland emits relatively large amounts of nitrous oxide from the surface, while pastureland emits relatively large amounts of methane from cattle and other ruminants; feedlots emit much greater concentrations of methane than pastures. Forests tend to be sinks for carbon dioxide, but clear-cutting releases significant amounts of this GHG. Urbanized and suburbanized areas are hotbeds for GHG emissions: they emit large quantities of GHGs through residential, commercial, institutional, and possibly industrial activities; urban transportation activities similarly emit huge amounts of GHGs; even suburban fertilized lawns emit nitrous oxide. Thus, localities must account for their land-use emissions when addressing climate change.

Many different actors are promoting local mitigation. Four important –– or potentially important –– actors are local government, universities, business, and environmental, social, and faith-based organizations.

Local government and politicians have taken leadership for local mitigation at thousands of locations around the world. Perhaps the best case of local government leadership is the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. More than 1,000 mayors have signed the Agreement, committing to the following three actions (Mayors Climate Protection Center, 2011):

• strive to meet the Kyoto Protocol targets in their own communities, through a variety of context-relevant actions;
• urge their state governments and the Federal government to enact policies and programs to meet the United States GHG emission reduction target suggested by the Kyoto Protocol;
• urge the U.S. Congress to pass bipartisan GHG reduction legislation establishing a national emissions trading system.

Mayors participating in the U.S. Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. This U.S. map depicts points clustering around the Northeast, Chicago, Minneapolis, and the West Coast, with sporadic points elsewhere. See list of participating Mayors for details.

Credit: United States Conference of Mayors

Universities have proven to be key agents in local mitigation efforts (Knuth et al., 2007). As large institutions, universities emit significant amounts of GHGs and have the expertise to quantify those emissions. They provide moral leadership by developing their own mitigation plans. University researchers develop new GHG inventory and mitigation techniques. Universities educate students about climate change and GHG emissions, often facilitating community outreach involving students. They also often provide scientific expertise to local governments and other local actors to help these entities develop climate mitigation plans. In the U.S. alone, hundreds of universities are engaged in climate change mitigation.

Numerous non-profit, non-governmental environmental organizations are involved in local mitigation efforts, including the following three notable examples.

1. ICLEI Local Governments for Sustainability started with 14 international cities in the mid-1990s. Today, this program provides climate mitigation guidance to hundreds of cities around the world, including a couple of hundred in America. The State College Borough, Ferguson Township, and the Centre Region are all ICLEI members. There are many others throughout the state, too! Many of them have joined in the past three years as part of DEP's Local Climate Action Program. Almost a dozen ESP students have partnered with communities in this program to complete their first greenhouse gas emissions inventories and start writing local climate action plans (check out this Penn State News story from April 2020). (I told you, the future is indeed local!)
    
2. Cool Air-Clean Planet is a U.S.-based organization that partners with companies, campuses, communities, and science centers to help reduce their GHG emissions.
    
3. The Center for Climate Strategies has helped at least 40 state governments, their officials, and their stakeholders build consensus and take action on climate change. Their work extends beyond the US, and they're doing low emissions development planning around the world.

We are!  Reducing Emissions!

As we think about the unique opportunities that local scale climate action affords, it's worth exploring the unusual localities that are our university and college campuses.  Well-delineated and largely autonomous, university campuses offer a different perspective on emissions accounting and reduction efforts.  Beyond that, universities and colleges are home to the front lines of education and research related to climate change, and so it makes sense that their campuses could serve as living laboratories for addressing these important contemporary climate challenges.

Penn State has been tracking its greenhouse gas emissions annually since 2002.  Fun fact: some of the initial work on this effort as well as their early mitigation planning was born out of the Department of Geography! As you can see in this graph below, not only is your university tracking its emissions, it has adopted relatively aggressive reduction targets and is working toward meeting them. It takes a lot of different efforts and initiatives, each working together, to pull that emissions trend downward. There is no magic carbon bullet here to save us - we must take aggressive incremental action to achieve our reduction goals. The recent Solar Power Purchase Agreement was the biggest piece of that puzzle in a while, and it will continue to pull that curve down by supplying 25% of the university's electricity needs, but even that is just a portion of the story.

Caption: Annual GHG emissions by sector for Penn State through 2019 and projected through 2050  

Credit: Penn State Sustainability

You can learn more about the GHG Emissions Inventories (they track them for all 24 Commonwealth campuses, too!) and other sustainability-related initiatives here at Penn State by visiting Penn State Sustainability.  

In April 2020, the University Faculty Senate* passed a climate action resolution calling for the administration to take the following actions:

1. develop a university-wide climate action and adaptation plan
2. reduce purchased electricity emissions by 100% by 2030
3. reduce net GHG emissions by 100% by 2035
4. increase investment in initiatives focused on climate science, solutions, and management
5. engage peer institutions to raise awareness and reduce impacts of a changing climate

It's important to understand that Faculty Senate resolutions are non-binding. So even though this passed quite handily (I think the vote was something like 114-21), it didn't have any teeth (as in, it didn't then REQUIRE that the university do anything with it). It's more of a visible and tangible expression of the collective will of the faculty. And while they didn't have to do anything with it, I can tell you that (1) the administration knew it was coming and was supportive of it being taken up by the Senate and (2) have since started taking action! The administration has convened a carbon emissions reductions task force that is meeting regularly and working to develop an action plan.

*I am very proud to tell you that I (Brandi) was the author of this climate action resolution! While it was a collective effort with colleagues at the Sustainability Institute, I got to bring it to my Senate colleagues for a vote!

One of the things about Penn State is that because we're so big, it can be really hard to keep track of everything that's going on. The Sustainability Institute website has this nice summary of ongoing initiatives related to climate and sustainability, which may be of interest to you.

What about other colleges and universities?

Penn State is certainly not unique in its pursuit of ambitious environmental initiatives and greenhouse gas reduction efforts. However, Penn State was one of the early pioneers in this space. It's exciting to see the breadth and depth of work happening in this space now in a variety of formats:

• AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education)
• PERC (Pennsylvania Environmental Resource Consortium)
• Second Nature's University Climate Change Coalition
• Harvard - fossil fuel-free by 2050 and more recently the Harvard faculty votes to divest from fossil fuels
• Top Universities for Climate Action
• We Are Still In -University Climate Change Coalition

But, that's not to say we couldn't be doing more.

*Students who register for this Penn State course gain access to assignments, all readings, and instructor feedback, and earn academic credit. Information about registering for this Penn State course is available through the Energy and Sustainability Policy Program Office.

In this lesson, you learned about local GHG emissions and mitigation. Specifically, you found that each place has a different energy profile, but that nearly every place has important contributions from energy use, transportation, waste disposal, and land use. You saw that local energy use varies greatly among industrial, residential, commercial, institutional, agricultural, and other users. You explored ways that industrial, residential, commercial, institutional, waste disposal, and land-use practices contribute to local GHG emissions. You discovered that local governments, universities, businesses, and environmental, social, and faith-based organizations are leading local efforts to mitigate GHG emissions. You thought about the fact that a place’s emissions are a function of local physical properties and the drivers of GHG emissions (technology, economics, politics, and culture, and you observed that a place's mitigation plans are a function of local economics, politics, and culture.

Despite all of these incredibly important reasons to address climate change causes at the local scale, it's also really important to understand that it's limited. Even if Pennsylvania, one of the most energy-intensive states in the country, suddenly went carbon neutral, we alone can't halt climate action. As you think about the role of local governments in reducing emissions, think too about the role that those actions play in spurring action at wider scales of governance as well. We need bottom up and top down approaches to truly address the challenges of transitioning to a low carbon economy.

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In 2009, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication published Global Warming's Six Americas which identified these 6 categories into which the American public falls based on their cultural, ideological, political, and other reasons for responding in a given way to the science of climate change.  They continue to update this study regularly and have greatly expanded upon the depth and breadth of the questions asked (see the Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2021 for a fascinating look).  We'll use this framework this week as we think about the importance of engaging our entire community in our climate change efforts, and not simply those whose ideas might align most closely with our own.

Credit: Michael Sloan. "Global Warming's Six Americas." Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. 

The danger in generalizations: It's important to note that some of the material we'll discuss in this lesson includes generalizations that may not translate to truth at the individual level.  For example, while it's factually correct that more Republican lawmakers deny the existence of climate change than their Democratic counterparts, it is NOT true that all Republicans deny climate change and all Democrats support aggressive action.  So please keep this in mind as we work through some of these generalizations - there are certainly nuances to all of this.  (Check out RepublicEN and Climate Solutions Caucus, for examples.)

But, let's take a look at this graph depicting the League of Conservation Voters' scoring of members of the House and Senate on their environmental voting records from 1970 through 2016 (as recent as I could find comprehensive data for).  The divide is growing, and climate change is a big part of that. What was once roughly a 20 point separation is now about 80.  This graph is an important reminder that climate does not have to be a politically divisive issue, even if it is in our current politics.  Remember, some of the earliest efforts to address climate change involved market-based approaches like cap and trade systems sponsored by Republicans like John McCain.  And we can look further into the history of major environmental legislation to find that some of our hallmark laws passed under Republican-controlled administrations, such as the formation of the EPA and many seminal federal policies such as the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act when none other than Richard Nixon was president.

Our growing political divide on environmental legislative measures

Credit: Dana Nuccitelli. "Conservative media bias is inflating America climate denial and polarization." Skeptical Science. September 6, 2016.

The characteristics for each of these categories is pulled from the 2009 Global Warming's Six Americas research from Yale.

• The Dismissive - they're sure climate change isn't happening (or at the very least is not caused by humans), it's not important to them on a personal level, and they don't worry about it; however, they contend they are well-informed and highly unlikely to change their mind; they think the scientific community does not agree on the causes of climate change or that the scientific consensus is instead that climate change is not happening.  We could also call this group climate change deniers.
   
• The Doubtful - these folks aren't sure if it's happening or not, but like the dismissive group, this issue is not important to them on a personal level and they don't worry about it.  While they also find a lot of disagreement among scientists, the Doubtful consider themselves less informed on the issue than the Dismissive. And while the Dismissive group does not see climate change affecting people in the US ever, the Doubtful think it won't affect people in the US for at least 100 years, but could after that.  We could also call this group climate change skeptics.
   
• The Disengaged - this is an interesting group because they identify as the mostly likely to change their minds on the topic.  So while they haven't previously thought much about the issue broadly or from a personal perspective, and they only know a limited among about it, some disengaged folks do believe people are the cause of the change, but they just don't know enough about it to know whether scientists agree on that.  They give just a 30-year time horizon for impacts to negatively affect the US.
   
• The Cautious - this segment of people haven't thought too much about the issue, but are open to the idea that humans are causing the changes we see in the climate.  And while it might not be of high personal importance or perceived threat to them, they recognize the future threat it poses.
   
• The Concerned - these folks understand the scientific consensus on the issue, but are decidedly not as emphatic as the Alarmed.  And while they might not think it's currently a problem for people in the US, they only put the time horizon on it becoming a problem at about 10 years.  Generally, they feel relatively well-informed about the issue, but haven't devoted as much time to it as the Alarmed.
   
• The Alarmed - this portion of the population is most convinced about climate change; it's very important to them, and they're really worried about.  They believe themselves to be very well-informed and, much like the Dismissive group on the other side, they are highly unlikely to be persuaded away from their current stance on the issue.  They view climate change as a current threat to themselves and others.

It's important to note that misinformation at either end of the spectrum - either from Alarmists (which I would describe as a small faction of the Alarmed category as described by the folks at Yale) or the Dismissive is problematic in advancing sensible and appropriate action to address the causes and consequences of climate change.  For instance, ten years ago, it wasn't yet clear whether climate change would cause more intense and more frequent hurricanes; but we now understand that it does and will continue to do so.  The disagreements among scientists on this topic were pretty intense. Climate alarmists, like their dismissive counterparts, tend to leave little room for doubt or caveats. In contrast, climate scientists tend to be a cautious lot and usually prevaricate by using terms like “likely,” “unlikely,” “possible,” and “probable.” Frankly, though, in the ten years I've been teaching these courses, many of the topics that used to be relegated only to alarmists (like hurricane intensity) have been proven with rigorous and replicable science, and so the line between a climate change alarmist and centrist is getting a bit blurrier.  Could that be because the evidence suggests we need to be alarmed?

Credit:  Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf. Global Warming's Six Americas, 2009. Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. May 20, 2009

One decade later you can see opinions shifting toward concern and alarm:

Credit:  Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. December 2018

And here is December of 2022, which interestingly (and alarmingly) shows that opinion shifted just a bit to the right despite record-breaking heat waves, wildfires, and other signs of climate change:

Click here for a tabular description of the previous 3 images.

There are three images that show the proportion of the U.S. adult population hold specific attitudes towards climate change. The attitudes are, from the highest belief in global warming/most concerned/most motivated to lowest belief in global warming/least concerned/least motivated are alarmed, concerned, cautions, disengaged, doubtful, dismissive. The following table shows the data of each category from 2009, 2018, and 2022.

American's attitude towards climate change over time

Attitude	2009	2018	2022
Alarmed	18	29	26
Concerned	33	30	27
Cautious	19	17	17
Disengaged	12	5	11
Doubtful	11	9	11
Dismissive	7	9	11

Credit:  Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. September 10, 2023

But what does this shift mean for meaningful and effective action to address climate change? We can see that the Alarmed group (Which, if you remember, are the folks that unequivocally believe climate change is happening, that humans are the cause of it, and that it's already affecting people in the US) saw the most marked change - jumping from 18% of survey respondents to 29% in 2019 and 26% in 2022.  The 3% and 6% decrease in Concerned individuals is likely at least partially explained by moving from Concerned to Alarmed.  And while these numbers are encouraging from the perspective of engaging in meaningful policy measures to address climate change, there's also something going on at the other end of this spectrum.  The percentage of Dismissive has gone up by 2% then 2% again.  Are we simply becoming more polarized in our views? Given the relatively strong correlation between climate concern and political ideology. Take a look at the Disengaged group and remember that they were identified as the group most likely to change their opinion on the topic.  They've gone from 12% to just 5% over one decade, then up to 7%.  It appears that the American people are becoming more solidified in their stance on climate change. It will be interesting to follow these trends as aggressive climate policies are implemented by the Biden Administration, and as weather patterns continue to get weird and "natural" disasters continue to occur. As I write this, the people of Maui are recovering from one of the deadliest wildfires in U.S. history and the earth had its hottest July since 1880, just to name a few recent climate-influenced events.

Here are five common lines of argument climate deniers or skeptics may use. These lines tend to be hierarchical. But first, a note about semantics: I use the term "deniers" to refer to individuals who refuse to accept well-founded scientific evidence and/or logic and/or increasingly, basic reality. "Skeptics" are individuals who accept evidence, but may have some doubts or otherwise would like firm proof. Remember that scientists are skeptics, at least legitimate ones. Skepticism is at the core of the scientific method after all, as the purpose of good science is to try to disprove theories.

1. There is no conclusive evidence that climate change is happening. This argument ignores the global body of scientific research demonstrating that climate change is happening. Alternatively, to counterbalance the overwhelming weight of climate science research, it selectively uses the relatively few inconclusive empirical studies conducted by credible scientists or work written by fellow deniers but discredited by mainstream climate scientists.
    
2. The changes in measured temperatures are part of the natural cycle. These deniers are admitting that there is climate change, but not that it is anthropogenic. On the surface, this argument is much more plausible than the first argument. However, climate scientists have gone to great lengths to develop methods that show how anthropogenic climate change rises above the natural signal (the so-called “fingerprinting” of climate change). Moreover, some of the more important natural cycles should be causing global cooling at present.
    
3. Climate change and CO₂ are good. Skeptics who take this line of argument are acknowledging that climate change is happening, and that humans may be causing it. Instead, they extoll the virtues of climate change and are skeptical of potential negative impacts. For example, they claim that agriculture will benefit from higher temperatures, increased rainfall, expansion into northern latitudes, and the fertilization effect of CO₂. Climate scientists, ecologists, and agronomists have shown that negative impacts far outweigh positive effects of climate change on agriculture. In fact, the weight of evidence suggests that negative impacts will swamp positive impacts in all sectors.
    
4. The scale of climate change is not sufficiently large to take action beyond sensible least-cost measures. This line of reasoning accepts that climate change is likely, that it is human-induced, and that most impacts are negative. Nonetheless, these skeptics do not believe that climate change will be as bad as mainstream science thinks it will be. A time goes by, however, observed climate changes are greater, and observed impacts are worse than originally projected by climate scientists. Although most experts agree that it is prudent to use least-cost measures when possible, they also agree that combating climate change cannot be cheap because the scope is so large.
    
5. The economic impact of making substantial cuts in greenhouse gas emissions on the scale suggested by the IPCC and other groups is too large. This final line of reasoning by skeptics accepts the conclusions of climate scientists, but says that society cannot afford to make the cuts needed to stave off the worst impacts of climate change. Numerous analyses, however, show that the ultimate cost of inaction or limited action to society will be far greater than the cost of robust responses to climate change and delaying action now necessitates more aggressive action in the future, which is likely to be more expensive.

Senators Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) and John McCain (R-Arizona) authored an early and innovative cap and trade program for US emissions, recognizing the opportunity for a market-based solution to an environmental problem.

Credit: Russell Berman. "Climate Change Bill Will Test McCain-Lieberman Alliance." The New York Sun. June 3, 2008

Today, American politics appears to be polarized, with loud voices on the left and right drowning out anybody in the middle. This tendency extends to views on climate change, with skeptics and alarmists dominating public discourse. As in politics, there are many individuals and organizations in the middle of the climate debate that have difficulty being heard. These so-called climate centrists acknowledge that humans are warming the Earth and that it is prudent to be good stewards of the natural services provided by the climate system. Although their philosophical and political homes may be in the right or left wings, they challenge their peers on the right and left to act on mitigating climate change. They offer innovative, yet common sense solutions to the problem.

Sometimes, strong opponents of climate science use dishonest or unethical tactics to counter climate change science. This can create a false equivalency in the climate narrative, in which public news outlets offer equal air time to dissenting views, which leads viewers to believe that the jury is still out on climate science.

One of the most damning indictments of deniers’ culpability is a 2007 publication by the Union of Concerned Scientists, “Smoke, mirrors and hot air: How ExxonMobil uses big tobacco’s tactics to manufacture uncertainty on climate science.” Here is the executive summary from that report:

In an effort to deceive the public about the reality of global warming, ExxonMobil has underwritten the most sophisticated and most successful disinformation campaign since the tobacco industry misled the public about the scientific evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease. As this report documents, the two disinformation campaigns are strikingly similar. ExxonMobil has drawn upon the tactics and even some of the organizations and actors involved in the callous disinformation campaign the tobacco industry waged for 40 years. Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil has:

• Manufactured uncertainty by raising doubts about even the most indisputable scientific evidence.
• Adopted a strategy of information laundering by using seemingly independent front organizations to publicly further its desired message and thereby confuse the public.
• Promoted scientific spokespeople who misrepresent peer-reviewed scientific findings or cherry-pick facts in their attempts to persuade the media and the public that there is still serious debate among scientists that burning fossil fuels has contributed to global warming and that human-caused warming will have serious consequences.
• Attempted to shift the focus away from meaningful action on global warming with misleading charges about the need for “sound science.”
• Used its extraordinary access to the Bush administration to block federal policies and shape government communications on global warming.

The report documents that, despite the scientific consensus about the fundamental understanding that global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping emissions, ExxonMobil has funneled about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue. Many of these organizations have an overlapping — sometimes identical — collection of spokespeople serving as staff, board members, and scientific advisors. By publishing and republishing the non-peer-reviewed works of a small group of scientific spokespeople, ExxonMobil-funded organizations have propped up and amplified work that has been discredited by reputable climate scientists.

ExxonMobil’s funding of established research institutions that seek to better understand science, policies, and technologies to address global warming has given the corporation “cover,” while its funding of ideological and advocacy organizations to conduct a disinformation campaign works to confuse that understanding. This seemingly inconsistent activity makes sense when looked at through a broader lens. Like the tobacco companies in previous decades, this strategy provides a positive “pro-science” public stance for ExxonMobil that masks their activity to delay meaningful action on global warming and helps keep the public debate stalled on the science rather than focused on policy options to address the problem.

In addition, like Big Tobacco before it, ExxonMobil has been enormously successful at influencing the current administration and key members of Congress. Documents highlighted in this report, coupled with subsequent events, provide evidence of ExxonMobil’s cozy relationship with government officials, which enable the corporation to work behind the scenes to gain access to key decision makers. In some cases, the company’s proxies have directly shaped the global warming message put forth by federal agencies.

As far back as 1978, one of Exxon's own scientists warned that increasing CO₂ emissions could have negative consequences. (Click here for the internal memo from 1978 - it is an interinteresting, and surprisingly accurate!) You can see a timeline of many of Exxon's (now Exxon-Mobil) warnings about climate change and actions resisting efforts to address it from Greenpeace here.

There are many sad conclusions that emerge from this and other efforts of deniers. Scientists have had their research vilified and their motives and ethics questioned. The public has become distrustful of scientists and as a result has grown increasingly skeptical about climate change. Ultimately, deniers’ tactics have delayed mitigation and worsened climate change, with the public suffering the consequences. Climategate is the most egregious example of deniers’ work and their greatest success.

Listen in as Penn State's Michael Mann discusses How Climate Change Denial is Ruining Our Planet on WPSU.

As a social scientist, I find this type of exploration into climate change to be really fascinating.  If we have any hope of addressing the problem effectively, we need to understand the motivations of various actors, including the public.  Ultimately, the public put elected officials in office, and therefore drive the policy narrative to some extent. And while the Yale framework of Six Americas provides us with a useful way of thinking about the issue, particularly in terms of how to frame the discussions depending on someone's ideology, it's important to always remember that we're all in this together, and it will take all of us to solve the problem.  The key is identifying those pieces of the climate change story that resonate with people who perhaps vote differently than we do, come from different cultural or educational backgrounds, or simply just hold different views.  Because so much of the action we take to solve the climate crisis has numerous cobenefits related to human health, environmental quality, and economic prosperity, it's not actually a big stretch to make the case for action.

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To understand what drives policy development, we need to think about the geographic scales of influence on any given body which may develop and implement policy. A useful framework for this is to think about vertical and horizontal policy diffusion.

• Vertical policy diffusion occurs when a policy mechanism adopted at one scale of governance transfers to others (and this can occur in either direction). An example might be a state adopting ambitious CAFE standards for fuel economy, which are then adopted by the federal government.  In this example, the policy mechanism (CAFE standards) moves from the state to the federal level - or diffuses vertically.
  
  This makes a lot of sense, and not just in issues related to climate change. Sometimes we try things out at one scale as a bit of a pilot for what it might look like at a larger scale. This was true with the Renewable Portfolio Standards at the state level - that was widely thought to be a testing ground for a national RPS system that never came about.  
   
• Horizontal policy diffusion occurs when a policy mechanism adopted at a scale of governance transfers to other areas at that same scale. An example of this might be a state adopting renewable portfolio standards after seeing a neighboring state do so, or a municipality choosing to set a greenhouse gas emissions reduction target after learning about success in other municipalities around the country. In this example, the policy mechanisms are staying at the same geographic scale, but diffusing horizontally outward to other entities at that same scale.
  
  It's not just policy where we look to our peers to see how they're handling a particular challenge or issue, so this is no surprise that policy creation would follow a similar pattern. Being able to speak to the success of a policy mechanism in a similar application elsewhere lends credibility and can assuage concerns about effectiveness, popularity with constituents, or costs.

Horizontal and Vertical Reinforcement in Global Climate Governance (Martin Jänicke, 2015)

Credit: Martin Jänicke. Horizontal and Vertical Reinforcement in Global Climate Governance. MDPI. June 16, 2015

Both types of policy diffusion are critical to addressing the global climate challenges we face. Think back to the Clean Power Plan - while inherently a federal policy, it offered states wide-ranging flexibility in how they'd set and meet their targets, including the opportunity to collaborate regionally. This illustrates both vertical and horizontal policy diffusion. The Paris Agreement is another example - it's an international agreement with nationally determined contributions that very likely would require integration at the state and local scales as well. But what if one level of governance isn't as active as others? That's a bit of what we were seeing during the Trump Administration. While the federal government in the U.S. wasn't actively seeking to address climate change through federal policy measures, states, municipalities, and businesses were continuing to work in this space and were learning from what their counterparts were doing - a strong example of horizontal diffusion.

One common way that policies are actively diffused is through publishing best practices, case studies, and other resources. Not only can you save time by modifying an existing policy instead of creating it from scratch, but you can also evaluate the effectiveness of the policy where it was originally applied. See e.g. the Resource Library for the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy, which is one of the organization identified in Lesson 5. The Horizontal and Vertical Reinforcement in Global Climate Governance article is a good read if you're interested in understanding this better.

Who is writing our climate policy? It depends heavily on the scale of governance. For this discussion, we'll focus primarily on federal level energy policy - but keep in mind that similar networks exist at other scales. Let's take a look at the roles these groups play and how they work together. 

Legislators

Our elected officials provide the voice for legislation as it works its way through its designated approval process. Here, we could be talking about a township adopting a resolution or state or federal representatives proposing a bill.

Special Interest Groups

Special interest groups are coalitions of people and organizations banded together by common beliefs on policy decisions. Working together, these groups have the power to inform and influence policy decisions through correspondences with legislators and their staff. While we often think only of the negative side of special interest groups, they do also serve an important role in keeping policymakers informed.

Scientists

The scientific community has an important role to play in the development of policy, epecially with issues related to energy and the environment. Many scientists directly inform the president, mostly through the Office of Science and Technology Policy. The president also has an Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, a cabinet-level position that provides science-base adivise on any number of matters. Scientists and researchers are also called on to testify at congressional hearings related to energy bills. For environmental and energy challenges, legislators usually rely on the scientific community to provide them the basis for which legislation must exist. At the local level, scientists still often provide an important voice to the validity of proposed measures.

With regard to energy policy specifically, here are just a few of the issues on which the scientific community provides their expert opinions to policymakers:

• acceptable levels for criteria pollutants produced during the extraction, processing, and combustion of fossil fuels
• quantity of fuel reserves available for extraction
• safe levels of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere
• potential consequences of a warming climate due to increased greenhouse gas concentrations
• risks associated with the extraction of fossil fuels
• issues related to necessary infrastructure for new energy technologies

Private Citizens

Believe it or not, as a voter, your voice matters! Last week, we looked specifically at the role citizens play in climate policy decisions. It's important not only that you stay informed about the issues affecting your life, but that you voice your preferences for policies about them to your elected officials. Politicians want to stay in office, and that means keeping their constituents happy. Be a proactive and engaged citizen. Let your leadership know that you're paying attention.

It is exceedingly rare to have perfect circumstances under which to develop and pass policy. It's important to recognize that policy development must fit within larger agendas, and sometimes seemingly unrelated issues can make it difficult to pass even a popular policy. Let's take a look at some of the threats to policy change and think about how they relate specifically to energy policy.

Political Disagreement

Sometimes it's not about finding agreement that something should or should not be done, but how it should be done that causes problems. Energy policy is a perfect example of this. On both sides of the aisle, politicians agree that revamping domestic energy policy is a worthwhile venture, agreeing most about the national security benefits of reducing US dependence on foreign oil. However, there is clear disagreement about how to achieve that goal, with Democrats generally more interested in renewable energy but Republicans tend to promote domestic fossil fuel exctraction. Interest groups' influence often weigh heavily in these decisions - especially at the federal level, less so at the local level - though constituents can also be influential. This is particularly true with energy and climate policy, as there are many interest groups that get involved, some of which are quite influential and well-funded (e.g. fossil fuel companies and individuals who make money from the fossil fuel industry). It is also not uncommon for one policy to be "held up" until an agreement is made on a separate policy (aka "horsetrading").

Status Quo

Inertia is a powerful force in politics. While all sides might agree that a current practice isn't the best or most efficient, a known inefficiency is often less daunting than the unknown or possible negative impact, and nothing changes. Economic impacts are an especially potent consideration in energy politics in this regard. Addressing energy challenges often involves internalizing the cost of environmental degradation associated with traditional fuel sources, which increase prices in the short term, and lawmakers and citizens alike approach the idea of increasing costs for energy with great trepidation. (This is why subsidies and other incentives are common in pro-renewable policy.) While this is true irrespective of the broader economic context, it is particularly difficult to justify during times of economic hardship. After the financial crisis in 2008, many lawmakers backed away from the ideas of a clean energy overhaul for the country or a price on carbon. With the economy crippled and Americans struggling to combat rising unemployment and decreasing home values, clean energy legislation was perceived as a luxury we could simply not afford, despite its macroscale cost savings over time.

But does it have to be that way? After the economy recovered (for some), many energy and climate policy advocates focused more on the economic benefits of adopting less carbon-intensive energy policies. Job growth in the design, manufacture, installation, and maintenance of these technologies as well as lowered energy costs due to enhanced efficiency became the lead talking points in the conversations for the advancement of clean energy policy. These were certainly themes before the economic downturn, but now represent a more pressing concern for Americans. One prominent example of this is the Inflation Reduction Act, for which the name speaks for itself. Even though it is as much a climate bill as an inflation reduction bill, it is (justifiably) couched in the language of economic and employment benefits, since they have a broader bipartisan appeal.

Uncertainty

Uncertainty is a characteristic of climate change impacts which comes up frequently. While scientists understand the anthropogenic forcing of the climate and can anticipate the types of responses the physical environment may exhibit, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly when and where a climate change impact will be felt and how severe it will be. This uncertainty surrounding the issue provides an opportunity for people and groups opposed to climate and energy reform to suggest the issue is not immediately pressing. Consider this: uncertainty over policy outcomes leads to more reactive -instead of proactive - policies, which are typically more expensive and less effective at addressing the problem. For climate change specifically, this is particularly problematic because despite the uncertainty about some of the specifics, it is quite possible that if we're 'wrong' it is because we've underestimated the possible impacts and severity. And this seems like a good time to (re)share my favorite cartoon encapsulating our efforts to enact climate policy at all scales of governance:

What if? Cartoon of the Copenhagen Climate Summit suggesting that efforts to reduce climate change might make the world a better place, based on a 'hoax'. Presenter has a slide that says "Energy Independence, Preserve Rainforests, Sustainability, Green Jobs, Livable Cities, Renewables, Clean Water/air, Healthy Children, Etc". An audience member stands up and asks, "What if it's a big hoax, and we create a better world for nothing?"
Cartoon by Joel Pett run in USA Today right before the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009.

Credit: Joel Pett. "What if it’s all a big hoax, and we create a better world for nothing!” USA Today. December 13, 2009.

We've spent a lot of time this semester discussing the role of all scales of government in developing energy policy. But it should be clear by now that they aren't the only players. Industry plays a huge part in shaping policy of all kinds, and energy is certainly no exception. Let's take some time to explore the advantages and disadvantages associated with having industry involved with the development of energy policy. Collectively, we'll refer to anyone spending money to influence energy policy as the energy lobby.

How do they participate?

What does it really mean to be part of the energy lobby? It means working directly and indirectly with the nation's lawmakers in Washington to inform and influence the content and scope of legislation. This can take on many forms, from donating to campaign funds for candidates who support favorable policies to preparing brief documents to be distributed to committee members, to working with congressional staffers, to actually drafting language to be included in the text of legislative bills.

Why do they participate?

They have a lot at stake. In the case of energy policy, specifically, we are talking about billions of dollars, national security, and international relations. A commonly used metaphor for energy companies and their participation in energy policy (even policies that limit emissions or impose other restrictions) is that companies would rather be at the table than on the menu. If they are able to help inform the development of policy, they are more likely to ensure that the policies eventually adopted have less negative (or more positive) consequences for them, and it helps policy makers understand how policies will affect their businesses.

It's not rocket science - public policy, for better or worse, can have significant impacts on individual companies and entire industries. Lobbying can and does influence these policies, so lobbying is seen as an investment that can provide returns. 

Political advantages to participation

Recall that as previously noted, legislators cannot be expected to be experts on energy, education, health care, homeland security, the environment, and any other number of issues that are impacted by their policy decisions. Instead, politicians rely on experts in the field to provide them with accurate, complete information as they try to navigate policy alternatives and options. Experts such as private industry executives, scientists, environmentalists and many others participate in this process. They play an important role in educating legislators and allowing them to focus on passing policies (and getting re-elected).

Disadvantages to participation

Of course, no action taken by any individual or company is done in a vacuum. Everyone has motives and goals, and sometimes these do not align with policy development goals. For example, if Congress considers decreasing a subsidy to oil companies, citing recent profits as a demonstration that the subsidy is no longer needed, lobbyists from oil companies will likely lobby against it. There is also the risk of "regulatory capture," which is when corporate (or rarely, other than corporate) interests have such an outsized influence on a regulatory agency that the agency creates regulations that favor the outside interest instead of achieving the agency mission. This has more to do with the application of policy, but is a consideration for lawmakers when crafting a bill as well. It is such a widespread problem that Sheldon Whitehouse introduced a federal bill to prevent it in 2011. (It never made it out of committee, unsurprisingly.) There are also organizations such as the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a libertarian (and anti-renewable) non-profit that exists primarly to write legislation that they would like adopted word-for-word by legislators at all level of government, to varying degrees of success.

All of this speaks to why it is important for legislators to seek the advice and input of many diverse interests as they develop polices. Simply letting the companies and organizations with the loudest voices (which translates to the deepest pockets) have the final say in how policies are structured does not result in beneficial or effective policy — energy or otherwise.

In this lesson, we've talked about the factors influencing the development and change of energy and climate policy. 

Important Concepts to take away from this lesson

Hopefully this content has you thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of industry's involvement in the development of policy. Without their expertise and insight, it might be difficult to construct policies that are realistic, feasible, and achieve the desired results. The other side of that coin, however, is that industry stakeholders bring to the table their own agendas and motives, many of which are (understandably) self-serving, not altruistic. So, where and how we draw the line on industry's policy influence is a real challenge.

Ferns growing in hardened lava

Credit: Anthony Robinson

I like to think of energy and climate policy formation in terms of the image shown above (taken by my husband, on a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii). When lava oozes from a volcano, and blankets out across the landscape with no regard for what was there before, it covers everything in a crunchy, challenging, and rocky landscape. I feel like this is where we were starting a few years ago in terms of addressing our energy and climate challenges. The federal political environment, much like this lava field, seemed totally inhospitable and wholly incompatible with our climate goals. But, despite that seemingly impenetrable layer of political stalemate, some positive possibilities have found their way, just like these ferns have found a way (are those vertically diffusing ferns?!?). You can think of the IRA, and to a lesser extent the IIJA as the little fronds poking through the desolation. (Hopefully they continue to grow then spread across the entire field until the lava is completely concealed!) We've also seen how inaction on the lava-covered national stage hasn't stopped smaller-scale efforts from sprouting up. I wanted to end the lesson on a hopeful note, recognizing that very quickly these topics can seem a bit hopeless or too big to address. So - chin up! There are so many folks just like you who are working hard to make sure the ferns of climate policy are able to sprout and thrive.

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Nemet et al. (2016) explore the pitfalls of our historically shortsighted policy responses to energy crises and proposes a different model for approaching our energy challenges which are so longitudinal in scale and scope while Rashidi et al. (2018) try to identify what role network membership has on local scale climate action. 

*Students who register for this Penn State course gain access to assignments, all readings, and instructor feedback, and earn academic credit. Information about registering for this Penn State course is available through the ESP Program Office.

In this lesson, we've talked about the factors influencing the development and change of energy and climate policy. 

Important Concepts to take away from this lesson

Think about these considerations in the context of your municipality's work. Who are the stakeholders with the most to gain (or lose) from its implementation, and how have they been/might they be involved? You should also be thinking about the advantages and disadvantages of industry's involvement in the development of our policies. Without their expertise and insight, it might be difficult to construct policies that are realistic, feasible, and achieve the desired results. The other side of that coin, however, is that industry stakeholders bring to the table their own agendas and motives, many of which are (understandably) self-serving, not altruistic. So, where and how we draw the line on industry's policy influence is a real challenge.

Ferns growing in hardened lava

Credit: Anthony Robinson

I like to think of energy and climate policy formation in terms of the image shown above (taken by my husband, on a trip to the Big Island of Hawaii). When lava oozes from a volcano, and blankets out across the landscape with no regard for what was there before, it covers everything in a crunchy, challenging, and rocky landscape. I feel like this is where we're starting right now in terms of addressing our energy and climate challenges. The current federal political environment, much like this lava field, seems totally inhospitable and wholly incompatible with our climate goals. But, despite that seemingly impenetrable layer of political stalemate, some good will find a way, just like these ferns have found a way (are those vertically diffusing ferns?!?). We've also seen that how inaction on the lava-covered national stage hasn't stopped smaller-scale efforts from sprouting up. I wanted to end the lesson on a hopeful note, recognizing that very quickly these topics can seem a bit hopeless or too big to address. So - chin up! There are so many folks just like you who are working hard to make sure the ferns of climate policy are able to sprout and thrive.

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You have reached the end of the Lesson! Double-check the Lesson Requirements in Canvas to make sure you have completed all of the tasks listed there.

Most of the policy issues presented to this point have focused exclusively on public policy. We've been talking a lot about what governmental bodies can do to develop policy. Most of what we think of related to environmental and energy policies is public. Clean water, clean air, safe food - these are all topics on which public policies are developed for the greater public good.

Environmental policies (and energy policy in particular), however, also spill over into the private sector. Institutions, organizations, and privately held companies all establish their own internal policies related to environmental stewardship and energy use, and this trend is only gaining in popularity as environmental awareness and emphasis on sustainability work their way up the priority lists of legislators, shareholders, and consumers.

Smart energy policy is smart business policy. Anything an organization can do to cut back on energy consumption will save it money in utility costs. So, environmental benefits aside, there are tangible cost-saving reasons to encourage conservation and increase efficiency.

Let's take a look at some examples of policy planning at the corporate level. As you go through the next page's material, be thinking about the greater implications of these policies on society. Are they reducing environmental pollution? Consumption? Greenhouse gas emissions? What message and ethic does this policy send to employees, shareholders, and customers? If this corporation produces a good, how does its energy policy align with the type of good it provides?

After we explore corporate energy policy broadly, we're going to take a look at a specific case study - Penn State! So, continue with the lesson to learn more about what private companies and your own university are doing (and be thinking about what they aren't doing as well).

Really, we've been talking about the role of government in the context of energy policy all along in the course so far. The government is involved in energy policy at various steps along the way from inception to enforcement. Let's take a look. As we go over these, consider the types of governmental bodies that need to be involved at various stages. (Don't forget about vertical and horizontal policy diffusion!)

The role of government is often a contentious issue in policy development. Views on the role of government represents one of the fundamental defining characteristics of how people align themselves politically. While Republican-leaning individuals and companies tend to emphasize a minimal role for government (particularly the federal government), Democratic-leaning individuals often place more stock in the ability of government-led programs to be successful and cost-effective. This course isn't about deciding whether one of those views is right or wrong - there are valid elements in each approach. What I hope you take away from this material is first, that there is a role for our government in the context of energy policy. Given that governments are at minimum charged with helping to protect the welfare of its citizens, energy and climate change are essential considerations and require some government involvement, even if it is just oversight. Second, regardless of how much of a role you think they should play, the government is involved and so it is important for us to understand how they impact policy development, implementation, and enforcement.

For this discussion, we need to establish some definitions associated with goods and services.

• Rivalrous - the consumption/use of the good or service by one person reduces the availability of the good or service to another person
  Example: There are a dozen donuts in the kitchen at work. I eat one (well, more likely, I eat two) - and therefore there are fewer donuts for my colleagues to enjoy.
• Non-rivalrous - the consumption/use of the good or service by one person does not reduce the availability or utility of the good or service to another person (these goods are often, but not limited to, intangibles)
  Example: Kauai is quite possibly my favorite place on earth. And I really enjoy the beautiful scenery there. Enjoying this view doesn't prevent others on the island from enjoying it too.
• Excludable - any excludable good or service is one that someone can be prevented from accessing if they do not pay for it
  Example: You need a ticket to ride the train; without paying for the ticket, you do not get to use the good/service of riding the train (unless you break the law, of course).
• Non-excludable - any good or service that someone cannot be prevented from accessing because of non-payment (or it is extremely expensive to exclude)
  Example: While our taxes go to fund the military, we do not (and cannot) deny national defense services to those people in our society who have not paid taxes.

So, when we make different combinations of rivalrous/non-rivalrous and excludable/non-excludable goods, we get what are called public and private goods. Take a look at the matrix below to see examples of different types of goods, and be thinking about how different topics related to energy and our environment fit into these categories.

The Tragedy of the Commons

I know: you've all seen this before, but it's worth refreshing our thinking on The Tragedy of the Commons and what that means for climate and energy policy decision-making.  In 1968, Garrett Hardin wrote about the potential for common goods to be exploited and depleted, specifically in the context of fears of overpopulation. While this article is now more than 40 years old, the concept persists and is certainly a challenge with energy and sustainability issues we face today, and in particular with climate change. (I used to require it for this lesson, but most students had already encountered it in multiple courses prior to this one. If you've not read it, I encourage you to do so as your time permits.)

Some points to consider in thinking about the Tragedy of the Commons:

• Like the herdsmen seeking to maximize their own gain, we all do things that don't seem that bad in the bigger energy picture....It doesn't matter if I leave my TV on all the time, it's just one TV...So what if I drive a big SUV I don't really need; my commute is short...How much water does it really waste if I leave the sink on while I brush my teeth? While some of these goods aren't necessarily common goods, our environment is, and it's difficult sometimes to see what our individual impact really is. And it's not just individuals that operate with this thinking - think about oil companies, for example, who are seeking to maximize their own profits by producing more and more oil. Do they know there are climate consequences down the road? Of course they do, but they're thinking first about their own positions...just like those herdsmen.
• Common goods utilized for private benefit will always be vulnerable to exploitation. We tend to fend for ourselves, not considering how our actions affect others now or future others. Keep in mind that the atmosphere is a common-pool resource (it provides the service of absorbing our pollution and can be referred to as the "atmospheric commons"), and I don't think I have to convince you that humans are exploiting it, mostly for personal (or corporate) gain.
• Hardin was concerned with how a rapidly increasing population would affect the commons of the environment. As we examine the problem of the commons from an energy policy perspective, we can see that it is (at least in part) a function of our growing population - and not just a growing population - but a growing affluent population. As more and more people aspire to enjoy the creature comforts of modern western life, this puts pressure on our energy systems and resources and necessitates consideration in our policies governing those systems and resources.  (Think back to GEOG 30N and I = P*A*T)

The Precautionary Principle was initially proposed in the Declaration on Environment and Development at the United Nations Conference in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and states that,

In other words, when considering actions (or inactions) whose consequence could pose serious or irreversible damage to human health or the environment, the burden of proof that those actions won't cause harm lies with those taking the action. The Precautionary Principle affords policy makers discretion in the decision making process when there's the possibility of causing harm, but not the extensive scientific research to substantiate that risk.

There are two broad types of the Precautionary Principle - strong and weak.

In the strong version of the principle, costs are not considered in preventative action, and no level of environmental risk is acceptable, regardless of the economic or social benefits. A strong precautionary principle may also involve a mechanism by which those advocating for the action to be taken (and claiming its environmental / human health risks are nonexistent or low) are liable for any environmental harm that may result.

With a weak precautionary principle, there must be some evidence to suggest a given likelihood and severity of environmental harm. A weak precautionary principle takes into account the costs of precautionary measures as well as the benefits vs costs of such actions. In addition to scientific uncertainty, economic considerations can postpone action. The burden of proof falls on those advocating for the precautionary action, and there's no assignment of liability.

While we often think of issues surrounding energy and climate policy as being global in scale, it's also important to recognize the important roles smaller scale governments and institutions can play.

Over the past 20-25 years, state level action on energy (particularly renewable) and climate policies has flourished partially as a response to federal inaction here in the United States. By tackling this problem at a smaller scale, individual states and communities are more easily able to tailor plans and activities to work well within their own unique geographic and political realities.

Visit the EPA State, Local, and Tribal Energy page to learn more about state and local actions across the country. You'll see they also offer training and greenhouse gas inventorying tools to help local governments inventory and plan to reduce their emissions. (Side note: for a trip down memory lane and evidence of the sometimes subtle ways that federal agencies change their focus under different administrations, see the archived page from the Trump Administration and see if you can spot the difference.) The Center for Climate Strategies has also been working with state-level stakeholders and decision makers across the country to develop climate mitigation plans that not only reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions, but also drive the development of alternative energy technologies. Has your state developed a climate action plan yet?

On a broader scale, creating a cleaner energy future for the United States (and the world) is a dauntingly large task. So much of our economy is driven by the availability and use of inexpensive fossil fuels. The future threats of a changing climate are difficult for politicians and voters alike to reconcile with the very immediate and pressing economic realities we face right now. In fact, recent climate change-exacerbated events like Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria along with the wildfires in Maui and the West prove that even current climate change impacts are difficult for people (like our lawmakers) to process and respond to quickly. It is important for us to recognize that there will be no magic bullet technology to propel us into a low carbon economy. Instead, we must strengthen and create a host of technologies and fundamentally change the way we think about energy. This will require support and innovation from all levels of government and society.

Let's look at an example from the Marcellus Shale gas and oil play happening here in the Northeast to gain a better understanding of the intertangled nature of the roles of different scales of government in energy policy.

The following is the nature of this multiscale relationship:

• The federal government requires oil and gas companies to obtain permits for exploration and extraction on public lands.
• The state government dictates how mineral rights and surface rights affect who benefits from the production of wells, responds to any complaints from landowners, and also issues permits for exploration and extraction within the state.

Here is a real-world example of this: A moratorium on oil and gas exploration in the state of New York went in effect in 2014 until more information was gathered and analyzed to assess how the extraction of mineral resources from the Marcellus Shale formation could impact water supplies and ecosystems, despite threats from the Republican gubenatorial candidate (who lost) in 2022. For this state-level moratorium, it was the local governments who were responsible for managing on-the-ground efforts related to the gas production - everything from road maintenance and truck traffic to increasing public services to accommodate a larger population.

While all of this seemingly complicates matters since drillers and other players in the natural gas industry are required to work with stakeholders at multiple scales, it actually makes sense. Consider how difficult it would be if the following were true instead of the current arrangement:

• local government set permitting standards for drilling, resulting in energy companies having to comply with myriad different standards for well design, air quality, and water quality across the country;
• federal government managing on-the-ground issues related to drilling - they would lack the local expertise and trust necessary to ensure that localities' and residents' concerns are addressed adequately.

When we hear politicians talking about energy policy, one of the buzz phrases that comes up often is energy independence. It's one issue related to energy policy where politicians agree - being energy independent is preferable to relying on the resources of other countries to meet our huge energy consumption demands.

Let's move beyond energy independence as a buzz phrase, though, and take a look at the facts about where our energy comes from, how much that costs us, and how we would really achieve energy independence as a country.

Petroleum - the EIA categorizes crude oil and other petroleum products (including gasoline, diesel, heating oil, propane, liquefied natural gas, and biofuels) together. These fuels are used for a variety of functions, including transportation and home heating. In 2022, the U.S. consumed an average of 20.01 million barrels of oil.....every day. This added up to 7.3 billion barrels of oil for the year.

Are you surprised when you look at the previous chart? I was the first time. I had assumed that a much higher percentage of our oil came from the Middle East.

Take a look at the EIA Energy Explained site to learn more about energy production and consumption.

Top 5 Crude Oil Producing Countries from 1980-2022

Credit: Oil and Oil Products Explained US Energy Information Administration. International Energy Statistics. September 2023

The chart above illustrates the fluctuating production rates for the top five crude oil producing countries in the world. Does anything surprise you? Notice how shortly after 2000, Russia began producing almost as much annually as Saudi Arabia. US production has increased sharply in recent years and is now the world leader, while Iraq has been slowly increasing since around 2005, but has been in the 2-4 million barrels a day range since 1980 (conflict times aside).

Natural gas - most of the natural gas that we use in the United States is extracted and distributed domestically, with small amounts coming from Canada. In recent years, substantial gas reserves in rock formations across the country have been discovered and are starting to be explored and processed. We've already talked about one of these, the Marcellus Shale region across Appalachia. Natural gas is used for heating and cooking, and increasingly as a fuel for large vehicles like buses and trucks.

The chart below shows the US consumption, production, and imports for natural gas from 1950-2016.  If you look around 2005, you can see the impact unconventional production has had on overall production and consumption.  Why the increase in consumption?  As natural gas prices fell, many coal-fired boilers in steam plants were converted to burn natural gas or replaced with natural gas boilers.  You can also see that as domestic production has increased in recent years, imports have gone down, which is what you would expect.  

US Natural Gas Consumption, Dry Production, and Net Imports, 1949-2022

Credit: US Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, p. 104, Table 4.1.  (Public Domain)

A gateway fuel? - Natural gas is often touted as a bridge to a cleaner, more reliable energy future. With greenhouse gas emissions roughly half those of coal combustion, natural gas is being marketed as a cleaner fossil fuel. Partially because of the direct emissions reduction, but also because it has become cheaper to produce than coal, mostly due to fracking. The U.S. currently generates about 40% of it's electricity from natural gas.

Lifecycle assessments evaluating the entire processes involved in extraction and processing for both fuels are being done to determine the true environmental footprint of using these fuels. This includes recent research out of Harvard, Duke, and NASA that found that natural gas has just as much of a climate impact as coal and will continue to until gas companies "all but eliminate leaks," according to the New York Times.

Working with renewables? - In addition to the (possibly) lower greenhouse gas emissions than coal, power plants fueled by natural gas have another distinctive benefit of offering reliable, scalable backup power generation for renewable sources like wind and solar. Wind and solar supplies are less predictable and may fluctuate in short cycles. With little ability for commercially-available large-scale storage options for these energy sources, the presence of a reliable back-up source is crucial. Natural gas-fired power plants have the ability to cycle more rapidly than their coal-fired counterparts, quickly adjusting the amount of electricity they can produce to meet demands.

Coal - the abundant domestic fossil fuel is in many ways an iconic and cultural fixture in our society, denoting progress and growth. Coal is cheap (not including externalities, of course), readily available, and we've got the infrastructure to burn it. Coal is responsible for about 20% of the electricity in the US. We also use coal in the production of steel. Unfortunately, coal combustion results in high greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to consuming a lot of coal domestically, we also produce and export large quantities of coal. Some areas of the country (like the Gulf states) actually find it cheaper to import foreign coal than to transport it from the distant domestic places of origin.

Five states produced approximately 70% of US coal in 2021 (EIA, 2023):

• Wyoming - 41%
• West Virginia - 14%
• Pennsylvania - 7%
• Illinois - 6%
• Montana - 5%

The Road to Energy Independence - as you can see by examining the roles of various fossil fuels in our overall energy picture, we are not, as a country, currently totally at the mercy of foreign energy supply. But remember, as we gulp down over 20 million barrels of oil a day, even a fraction of that is still a large volume.

Will increasing our use of natural gas be the answer to solving our shorter term goals of reduced reliance on foreign oil? Remember that it's not as easy as flipping a switch....things currently running on petroleum-based products must be converted or replaced to accommodate a new fuel source like natural gas. One major barrier to fuel-switching is that about 2/3 of our oil use is in the transportation sector. Natural gas vehicles are not the answer, but electric vehicles might be if - and only if - we switch to less carbon-intensive (and eventually, carbon-free) sources of electricity.  Not only will this require a scale of transportation technology deployment that hasn't been seen since the automobile started to be mass-produced (I wonder what they did with all of those out-of-work carriage horses?), but it also requires us to change our electricity fuel mix, our electrical grid, and generate more electricity to accommodate the increased the electricity demand. This is possible, but what will be the drivers for these changes? Consumer demand? Escalating energy prices? Volatility in oil exporting regions? Political will? Do you think we'll see an energy independent United States in our lifetime? If so, what role could/should energy policy play in this transition?

Global Markets, Local Effects: Several years ago, we witnessed a ripple of protests across oil producing countries, as citizens demand democracy and freedom. Here's an article explaining how unrest in Libya influenced global oil prices. Read this and do some research on your own to better understand the price fluctuations at the pump. Here's another article explaining how Saudi Arabia's price war with Russia at the start of the coronavirus pandemic also created chaos. Just another reason to bolster our domestic clean energy initiatives!

The EIA offers a summary of Oil Prices and Outlook is certainly worth 5 minutes of your time because it offers perspective that is 1) factually correct and 2) all too often missing from the dialogue regarding the subject to which we're exposed via the popular media and our politicians.

It is important to understand the framework through which our utilities are delivered to us. We flip a switch and lights go on, but who makes that happen? How do they produce that power? How far is it from my house or office? In order to understand almost any facet of energy policy, you need to have a good understanding of how the public and private natural gas and electric utilities work in the United States.

Energy resources are a lucrative commodity. There are various considerations to explore when it comes to ownership in the context of energy resources. One important distinction when it comes to the extraction of fossil fuels like oil, coal, and natural gas is between surface rights and mineral rights. It is not always the case that the person (or persons) who own(s) the land also own(s) the energy resources beneath it.

Surface rights - the landowner only owns the land, nothing below it.

Mineral rights - refer to ownership of the oil, coal, gas, or other minerals below the surface and includes the right to access the minerals and to receive bonuses and royalties from the extraction/production of the minerals.

It might be surprising that you could own a huge tract of land sitting on top of some valuable energy resources but not actually own any of those minerals, doesn't it? How does this happen? When the property is bought and sold, the seller may choose to retain rights to the minerals and only transfer surface rights to the new owner. But, obviously, the two go hand in hand to some extent - how can the owner of the mineral rights access their property if they do not also have surface rights?

The mineral rights owner can use as much of the surface as is reasonably necessary to extract the mineral resource. In many instances, they do not even need to acquire the permission of the surface rights owner to do so.

Policymakers engage in discussion.

Credit: UNclimatechange from Flikr is licensed under CC BY 2.0

In 1998, Steve Rayner and Elizabeth Malone made ten suggestions for policymakers developing climate policy. Most of them are as relevant today as they were then.^[1] It is worth reviewing these suggestions as we think about climate policy.

1. View the issue of climate change holistically, not just as the problem of emissions reductions. As we learned earlier in this course, to establish lasting, long-term reductions in emissions, it is necessary to address not only the human activities (proximal causes) emitting GHGs, but also the underlying socioeconomic drivers causing people to engage in those activities.
2. Recognize that, for climate policymaking, institutional limits to global sustainability are at least as important as environmental limits. The failures of the Framework Convention and Kyoto Protocol, as well as of national-level climate policy in the U.S., demonstrate that policy cannot become law when intractable political, legal, and other barriers stand in its way.
3. Prepare for the likelihood that social, economic, and technological change will be more rapid and have greater direct impacts on human populations than climate change. Climate change is not the only factor influencing people, and, in most instances, climate change will have much less impact on people than human changes. Good examples are the rapid change in global security following 9/11 and the profound impact of the Internet on society since the mid-1990s.
4. Recognize the limits of rational planning. Planners are not omniscient: they cannot plan for all contingencies, and they make mistakes. No long-range plan goes “according to plan.”
5. Employ the full range of analytical perspectives and decision aids from natural and social sciences and the humanities in climate change policymaking. Most policymakers rely too heavily on engineers and physical scientists, paying little attention to life scientists, social scientists, and humanists. However, this course has demonstrated that climate change is essentially a holistic, human problem that requires significant input from all branches of science, especially the social sciences.
6. Design policy instruments for real world conditions rather than try to make the world conform to a particular policy model. The problem with Bush Era climate policy was that it tried to make climate policy, as well as most other policies, conform to a particular worldview. Many commentators said of that Administration that it did not let facts get in the way of its preconceived notions. Climate change is a real world problem requiring pragmatic policies.
7. Incorporate climate change into other more immediate issues, such as employment, defense, economic development, and public health. This course has demonstrated that climate change affects people, their jobs, their security, and their health. It has also shown that climate change infuses many parts of life. Because it is difficult to get policymakers either to believe that climate change is a serious issue or to maintain focus on climate change when so many other issues demand their attention, a good strategy is to incorporate climate change policies into other policies that address employment, defense, development, and health, to name a few.
8. Take a regional and local approach to climate policymaking and implementation. We have seen that regional and local climate policy is currently more effective than national and international policy. In 1998, this idea was quite radical because most people, including scientists and policymakers, thought of global warming as a global problem. Today, the regional and local dimensions of climate change are understood and appreciated by many individuals.
9. Direct resources into identifying vulnerability and promoting resilience, especially where the impacts will be largest. At least among scientists, this idea is well understood today; it was much less well understood in 1998. This idea is slowly trickling down to policymakers.
10. Use a pluralistic approach to decision-making. A failure of Bush Administration policy was its assumption that decision-making should come from the top down. Numerous research studies show that, at all levels of governance, people tend to accept and support a policy when they have a hand in developing that policy, even if they are initially skeptical. This finding is also true of climate policy.

Important Concepts to take away from this lesson

This lesson has provided an exploration of many concepts associated with assumptions in energy policy formulation. Again, we're looking at the different roles various entities and structures in our government and economy play in creating energy policy. Governments, utilities, and markets all play a part in ensuring that the energy policies we adopt lead to efficient, fair use of resources. As we consider the evolving goals in energy policy, we need to understand that all competing interests must be addressed. Is it just about supplying the economically cheapest electricity for homeowners, or do we bear some social responsibility to place economic value on the environmental impact of the energy we use? How can we prioritize economic, environmental, and political attributes of energy sources and the policies that govern them? These are questions that you, as energy professionals in a changing landscape, will need to address.

Reminder - Complete all tasks!

You have reached the end of the Lesson! Double-check the Lesson Requirements in Canvas to make sure you have completed all of the tasks listed there.

As you've explored the various energy policies that have been implemented throughout US history, what do you notice about how they influence the energy systems themselves?

Let's look at some examples.

The 2008 Farm Bill has many provisions for renewable energy. Without these provisions (and the funding they carried) much of this work couldn't be completed. The money designated for competitive grants is designed to help quicken the pace of technology transfer from the research phase to on-the-ground projects.

• $2.1 billion in guaranteed loans for cellulosic projects
• $500 million for bioenergy and bio-based product research
• $500 million for renewable energy systems and energy efficiency grants

Read an article from CNNMoney about the importance of the energy provisions in the Farm Bill.

The 2014 Farm Bill (they generally only occur every 5-6 years) was especially problematic and delayed because of Congressional bickering. You can learn more about the highlights between the 2014 version and pre-2014 versions, but here are a few of them:

• It reduced mandatory funding for the Energy Title from $1.12 billion over four years (as specified in the 2008 version) to $694 million over 5 years. And while this reduces the scope and funding available for energy-related projects quite considerably, it does build upon important historical successes. The Rural Energy for America Program (known as REAP) helps agricultural producers and rural business owners (and rural electricity cooperatives!) in the form of loan guarantees and competitive grants in all 50 states. Under this iteration of the Farm Bill, it's the top-funded program.

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) - mandate that states generate a set percentage of their electricity from renewable sources. In the absence of that state being able to produce renewable sourced electricity at home, they also have the option to buy Renewable Energy Certificates (RECs) from other electricity suppliers. The benefits of a RPS system include improved air quality, reduced greenhouse gas emissions, and, potentially, job creation in the emerging renewable sectors.

Want to know more about the RPS in your state? Click here for a list of RPS policies across the country from DSIRE (the go-to website for energy policies in the U.S.!). See detailed summary maps here. You can see the most recent version here. and a summary map that has solar carveouts and distributed generation requirements here.

The 2005 Energy Policy Act provided a whole host of provisions and measures related to the production, distribution, and types of energy we use in the United States. This list is FAR from exhaustive, but is just here to get you thinking about some of the impacts on energy systems we can have with our policy decisions. If you'd like, you can read a summary of all enacted provisions of the bill.

• Increased the amount of biofuel (typically ethanol) required to be mixed with gasoline sold in the United States (to 4 billion gallons by 2006, 6.1 billion gallons by 2009, and 7.5 billion gallons by 2012). What impact do you think this provision alone has on energy systems? Is incentivizing increased production of ethanol sound energy (and environmental and climate) policy? Who are the winners and losers associated with subsidized ethanol production?
• Requires public electric utilities to offer net metering to customers on request.
• Authorizes $200 million for "clean coal" initiatives, increases coal as an energy source.
• Provides incentives to companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act directed more than $31 billion into clean energy projects around the country. You can read the Obama White House Retrospective Analysis to learn more. And of course, the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act has a host of provisions that impact energy and climate.

The Implementation of Energy Regulations

When a bill is passed by Congress and signed into law by the President, what happens next? If you take a look at many of the energy policy examples from earlier in this course (like the big table from Lesson 3), you'll see that the body of the legislation itself contains a timeline and plan for implementation. It calls out who the key players and administrative units will be and a timeline for how they'll actually go about incorporating this new law into their activities. It is essential to consider that Congress is not the body that actually implements the laws. The implementation and enforcement falls to the pertinent agency (see below for specifics).

The subsequent pages of this lesson are devoted to the different types of energy policy and how they are implemented. I've tried to set each of them in real-world examples. As you work through the lesson, be thinking about how you will structure your discussion of policy implementation in your own Research Project. Implementation and monitoring are critical steps. A well-designed policy is no good to anyone if it is poorly implemented or ineffectively managed.

Who is implementing Energy Regulations?

When we look at energy-related regulations, there are a handful of governmental agencies through which these policies are typically implemented.

• The Department of Energy is the biggest hub of information relating to all things energy that happen in this country. They regulate the imports and exports of fuels, domestic energy production, are responsible for all things nuclear - from weapons to energy to safety and disposal, and fund research related to energy technologies.
• The Department of the Interior works closely with the Department of Energy on matters related to onshore and offshore resource extraction.
• The Environmental Protection Agency handles policies related to climate change, air, and water pollution - all of which are linked to energy production and consumption. Climate policy proposals bought before Congress in recent sessions typically gave substantial (if not all) jurisdiction to EPA for the regulation of an emission trading system. In the absence of that, EPA has the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act.
• The Department of Agriculture has a somewhat substantial role to play in climate policy (not as much in energy policy unrelated to climate, though) because of the emission sources and sinks associated with animal production, conservation tillage, and forest carbon sequestration.
• Even the Army Corps of Engineers plays a role in climate policy, in particular with regards to ensuring resiliency of federally-constructed infrastructure, such as roads and dams. Interestingly, they are also the "largest generator of hydropower and renewable energy in the country," according to USO. (See this and some other interesting facts - some of which are climate related - here.)

Taxation is one mechanism relevant to energy policy we explored early in the course. By levying a tax on a good or service, the government can fairly accurately predict the cost of the policy. Let's take a closer look at state and federal taxes on fuel to understand the role taxes play in our energy policies, how they are implemented, and what is done with the revenue they generate.

Costs in a gallon of gasoline and diesel fuel (2016)

Click Here for Text alternative for Costs in gas and diesel fuel

What we pay for in a gallon of Gas vs. Diesel: (in percents)

Fuel Type	Price	Taxes	Distribution and Marketing	Refining	Crude Oil
Regular Gasoline (January 2023)	$3.34/gallon	15%	10%	20%	55%
Diesel (January 2023)	$4.58/gallon	13%	19%	28%	40%

Credit: EIA

Gas prices - we've watched them skyrocket as the war in Ukraine drags on and disrupts supplies and makes investors uneasy. But what are we really paying for when we fill up? This graphic illustrates the breakdown of the gasoline prices we pay at the pump.

Notice the top, light blue box devoted to taxes. This is comprised of both federal and state taxes. The federal tax on a gallon of gasoline in the US right now is 18.4 cents (24.4 cents on a gallon of diesel). According to EIA, in addition to that federal tax, states add an average of another 22.01 cents per gallon in excise taxes and 12 states also charge additional state sales or other taxes on gasoline. There are even some locations where county or city taxes can also be included in the price.

Learn more about the factors influencing the price of a gallon of gas.

What are the taxes levied on gasoline used for? Excellent question! The American Petroleum Institute updates this interactive map each year to illustrate the relative taxes in gasoline across the country. As you look at these numbers, remember that the federal excise tax on gasoline is 18.4 cents of the number that you see printed on this map. The rest is whatever additional tax that particular state charges.

Federal Gasoline Tax (18.4 cents/gallon)

• 15.44 cents/gallon to the Highway Account of the Highway Trust Fund
• 2.86 cents/gallon to the Mass Transit Account of the Highway Trust Fund
• 0.1 cent/gallon to the Leaking Underground Storage Tank Trust Fund

In the case of the individual taxes levied by each state, there's a lot of variability with how those revenues are utilized. Many states also contribute a portion of their taxes to the Underground Storage Tank Trust, or for state road work, or charge other environmental service fees. On top of the additional fuel taxes that states charge, there are 9 states that currently charge sales tax on gasoline as well.

It is worth noting that many European have significantly higher fuel tax rates than the U.S., which is why gas prices are higher in Europe - sometimes significantly so - than in the U.S.

What role do taxes on gasoline and other liquid fuels really play? Are they a deterrent to use? Not really. Are they meant to be? Not really. The taxes associated with liquid fuels finance projects related to the use of those fuels. People are going to drive, so if the government taxes the fuel they use, that creates a fund from which road maintenance can be completed. Storage tanks for these fuels will inevitably leak - having a fund set aside to handle the environmental problems associated with a fuel leak is another reasonable use of gasoline tax dollars.

But what about taxes for other purposes? We've talked earlier this semester about potentially taxing greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to slow down anthropogenic climate change. A carbon tax would serve a very different purpose than a gasoline tax. A carbon tax would be designed specifically to deter the use of carbon-intensive fuels by bringing their costs more in line with alternative energy sources. The revenue generated from a carbon tax could be used for a variety of programs to aid in a transition to a less carbon-intensive economy. One of the ideas that has gained some bipartisan traction is a revenue-neutral tax, which would divide tax revenue up and provide an equal amount to each citizen of the U.S.

As we learned, though, carbon tax (like any potential solution for pricing carbon) has its drawbacks. It is difficult to know how high the tax will need to be set to ensure desired results. If set too low, firms may just be willing to pay the additional cost and continue on with business as usual - netting no real emission reductions. It also runs the risk of driving emitting firms out of the country, where they can emit freely without the costs of a tax. The implementation of a successful carbon tax would require an appropriately set tax rate and a strict enforcement mechanism to ensure all emissions are included in the accounting. Impossible? No. Challenging? Yes.

Another way to reduce energy consumption and cut back on utility costs is through the adoption and implementation of an energy conservation policy. Energy conservation policies typically outline reduction targets.

DSIRE - DSIRE is the Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency and will prove an invaluable resource for you both during your time as a student and once you find yourself working as an energy industry professional.; DSIRE is a comprehensive repository of all state-level incentives across the country for both renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. They also house information about federal incentives and programs that extend beyond energy conservation. Be sure to consult this website to learn more about opportunities that exist in your own state, and opportunities that may be applicable to your Research Project, e.g. by piggybacking on existing incentive programs. (Sometimes the main site does not work, so see an overview of state-level policies here.)

ACEEE - the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy is also another wealth of information -- specifically relating to energy conservation policies. They have some helpful information on state-level policies here. You may want to view their State Efficiency Scorecard here. 

Recent energy legislation passed at the federal level mandates conservation policies for federal buildings and purchases. Listed below are some of the highlights of these policies. To learn more about federal energy conservation efforts, read the full report from the Congressional Research Service on the Department of Defense Facilities Energy Conservation Policies and Spending (2009).

You should also take a look at the fully amended National Energy Conservation Policy Act. This act, initially passed in 1978, has been amended several times to meet the changing goals of national energy policy and the evolving technologies we can employ to meet these goals.

Energy Policy Act of 2005

• mandates use of advanced meters to reduce electricity use in federal buildings by October 1, 2012;
• adopts 2004 International Energy Conservation Code (Supplement to 2003) - requires revised energy efficiency standards and 30% reduction in consumption of new federal buildings over previous standards;
• requires purchase of increasing percentages of renewable energy, beginning with 3% in 2005 to at least 7.5% in 2013 and after.

Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007

• requires 30% energy reduction in federal buildings by 2015 (relative to 2005 baseline);
• designates 'covered facility' criteria for federal agencies to follow when implementing evaluations of energy and water and assigning energy managers;
• requires 55% reduced fossil fuel energy in new federal buildings (and major renovations) by 2010 (relative to 2003 baseline) and then a full 100% reduction in fossil fuels by 2030;
• requires that federal agencies must ensure energy life-cycle cost effectiveness for major equipment replacements, renovations, or expansions;
• prohibits federal agencies from leasing buildings that have not earned the EPA ENERGY STAR label;
• calls for the establishment of high-performance green building standards for all types of federal facilities, as well as green practices that can be used throughout the life of a facility;
• appropriates funds and private financing for Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs); permanently authorizes ESPCs;
• directs the Department of Defense to evaluate the use of ESPCs for non-building uses;
• requires that federal agencies can only procure alternative fuels whose life-cycle greenhouse gas emissions are not more than conventional emissions from petroleum-based sources.

Inflation Reducation Act 

• "Extends credit for energy efficiency home improvements through 2032...Increases credit from 10% to 30%," adds annual $1200 cap instead of lifetime limits;
• provides subsidy for home energy audits;
• provides funding for states to establish HOMES rebate programs for whole-house energy retrofits, with special fudning available for low- to moderate-income indivuals;
• provides significant incentives for various aspects of electrification (electrical panel upgrades, high efficiency heat pumps and hot water heaters, and electric stoves);
• provides funding to help states establish programs to train contractors to install efficiency upgrades.

Some policies that may affect energy efficiency and conservation include:

• Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants may be used for "projects related to climate change and air pollution...including air pollution monitoring, extreme heat risk mitigation, resiliency and adaptation, indoor pollution reduction, and community engagement."
• Neighborhood Access and Equity Grants may be used to reduce GHG emissions;
• The Rural Energy for American Program (REAP) received $2 billion in funding "to provide competitive grants and loan guarantees to farmers, ranchers, and rural small businesses for renewable energy systems or energy efficiency improvements," and the federal cost share for grants increased to 50% from 25%.
  Source: Bipartisan Policy Center

Energy conservation policy is a great example of a form of energy policy that can be implemented with much success at the local level. Energy conservation translates to avoided energy costs, and local municipalities and other governments are highly motivated to reduce operating costs. Programs with a local scale are more easily relatable to people, and therefore often enjoy greater success.

This graph illustrates the types of energy conservation policies employed by 2,176 local governments that responded to the 2010 Sustainability Survey administered by the International City/County Management Association. You can download the full survey results.

Percent of local government pursuing specific energy conservation policies.

Click Here for Text Alternative of local government specific energy conservation policies

Percent of Local Government Pursuing specific energy conservation policies

Policy	Percentage of local government response
Energy audits of government buildings	62
Upgraded to higher energy efficiency lighting	55
Management systems to control heating and cooling	45
Purchase of fuel efficient vehicles	43
Higher energy efficiency heating and air conditioning systems	38
Traffic signals with improved efficiency	36
Streetlights with improved efficiency	30
Hybrid electric vehicles	23
Higher energy efficiency pumps in the water or sewer systems	23
Policy to only purchase energy Star equipment	16
Utilize dark sky compliant outdoor light fixtures	14
Installed Solar panels on a government facility	12
Fuel efficiency target for the government fleet of vehicles	11
Purchased vehicles that operate on compressed natural gas (CNG)	8
Generated electricity thorough municipal operations	7
Installed a geo-thermal system	6
Installed charging stations for electric vehicles	5

Credit: Urban Energy Policy Institute

One way the government can set prescriptive boundaries on energy consumption and signal development of more efficient technologies and products is through the adoption of efficiency standards and labeling. By establishing minimum requirements for a variety of energy usages (from utility companies to the DVD player you choose), they are driving the market to produce more efficient products. Labeling products empowers consumers to make more informed decisions about how the products they buy will impact their own electricity bills (and our climate!). Let's take a look at some of the efforts across the country to establish standards and provide labeling guidelines. Note that this list is far from exhaustive, and in addition to finding more examples domestically, a simple Google search will reveal countless international efforts underway to achieve similar results. The Collaborative Labeling and Appliance Standards Program (CLASP) does research on energy standards and labeling programs in the United States and elsewhere, and is worth checking out in this regard.

Energy Efficiency Resource Standards (EERS):

An EERS is similar to a Renewable Portfolio Standard in that it dictates a certain percentage by which a utility must reduce its energy use over time. These standards can be implemented in different ways, including through market-based systems of trading or the option to buy out and just purchase credits. Generally, the initial targets in the program are low and increase over time, allowing maximum flexibility for meeting goals. An EERS is an attractive approach to achieving real energy savings, because, instead of emphasizing the costs of the program, it focuses on the energy savings (and therefore avoided expenses). Many states have already implemented EERS programs, and several others have standards in development. 

While there is no federal EERS in place yet (several bills have been drafted, though), the patchwork efforts of states across the country represent a substantial portion of national energy use. If a federal EERS were to be enacted, states could continue to operate their state-level EERS programs in conjunction with the federal standard, and if state targets were higher, they could continue to work toward those goals.

Check out the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy site to learn more about initiatives in every state (also mentioned on previous page in regard to state conservation policies). The website also provides functionality for comparing state efforts against each other.

Labeling Products with Energy Efficiency Information:

Labeling products so that consumers can make informed choices about how the purchases they make will impact their utility bills and the environment is just one way to implement smart energy policies. Probably the most widely recognized labeling effort is that of ENERGY STAR.

There are two types of labeling utilized by the ENERGY STAR program with which you should be familiar.

The first is an endorsement label, and that's just this ENERGY STAR logo (at right) you have likely seen on a wide range of products. The label indicates to the consumer that this product is certified by the ENERGY STAR program. In order to earn the label, products must meet standards established by the EPA. In addition to providing energy savings, ENERGY STAR-qualified products must also provide comparable performance and features consumers expect out of that category of product.

Visit the ENERGY STAR website to learn more about how a product (or building, plant, or new home) can earn this label.

The second type of label you should know about is a comparative label. As the name suggests, this type of labeling allows consumers to evaluate the energy efficiency of multiple products before selecting one. This familiar yellow labeling scheme contains information on kWh/year used for this model of product vs other similar models, and also offers consumers an estimate of yearly operating costs for the product. This label is associated primarily with home appliances. The information printed on these yellow labels is based on standardized testing procedures developed and prescribed by the DOE. All ENERGY STAR qualified appliances are required to also carry this label.

An Energy Guide Label

Credit: EnergyGuide by Cjfrysinger from Wikipedia (Public Domain)

What is primacy?

Primacy is the act of coming first or foremost. So when we look at patchwork networks of energy policies spanning all geographic scales from the local level through the international community, it's important to understand how primacy is determined and how this influences the implementation of a policy.

The most common level of interplay between different geographic scales as it relates to primacy is that between the state and federal governments. As you've learned in earlier lessons of the course, many issues relating to climate and energy policy have yet to be fully addressed at the federal level, leaving states to lead the way with innovative policy. As the federal government 'catches up' to the states, what does that mean for the policies already enacted and implemented at individual state levels?

Let's look at tailpipe emission standards in California as an example of the battle for primacy:

California is the only state in the country with its own regulatory agency related to air quality, the California Air Resources Board. It was established in 1967 in the Mulford-Carrell Act and is a cabinet-level agency within the US EPA. Why don't any other states have a comparable entity? CARB was established before the Clean Air Act was passed at the federal level (in 1970). Other states are free to follow the CARB standards, but they do not have regulatory authority to establish any themselves - the federal act enjoys primacy over states in this matter.

While the federal government did recently update CAFE standards (which regulate passenger vehicle fuel economy), during the process, California decided they wanted to enact their own, more stringent Clean Car Standards, and 13 other states wanted to adopt them. As you might imagine, some vehicle manufacturers opposed this move (and challenged the ruling in court), recognizing that in order to stay competitive in these markets, their vehicles would need to progress to more stringent fuel economy standards more quickly than they initially considered under the federal standards because California and the other states constitute such a signifcant portion of the market.

The new standards began phasing in starting with model year 2009. To learn more about the proposed regulations, read this Final Statement of Reasons for Rulemaking from the Air Resource Board (updated February 2010).

The California tailpipe emissions example is one in which state primacy remained intact even with federal regulation. When discussions around emission trading on a national scale were circulating through the House and Senate, one of the primary concerns was whether state and regional programs would maintain primacy under a federal system, or if they would simply be absorbed. That case is a little different, though, because those regional emission trading programs were established with the consideration that, someday, a federal system would come along and take over. The smaller-scale programs were merely pilots or test cases to illustrate that greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced with a market-based approach driving technological innovation and private investment. The likely outcome would not be for state primacy to be maintained in a federal cap and trade emission trading program, but rather to have those programs be folded into the larger federal system.

The function of primacy as it relates to public policy can be sensitive. States strive to maintain autonomy, and in the case of environmental and energy legislation, often act in areas very important to their own interests if the federal government fails to do so. They spend considerable time and resources developing and implementing programs and, consequently, can be defensive then of federal regulation preempting their efforts.

We could probably devote an entire lesson to all the energy-related grants and incentives available to citizens and companies. Instead, let's pick just a few examples and work through how this type of energy policy is implemented.

While the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is by no means a 'typical' piece of legislation, let's take a look at it, specifically, because it called out several types of energy-related grant and incentive opportunities.

When ARRA passed, so too did all of the provisions built into it to drive clean energy development and stimulate new job growth in the energy sector. As a taxpayer and informed citizen, it's important for you to understand where your tax dollars are going and what sorts of activities they fund. With ARRA, energy funding reaches across the spectrum from installation and adoption of smart grid technologies to improved efficiency to innovative research into carbon capture. I encourage you to check out DOE's ARRA website to learn more about how the stimulus package benefited clean energy. Briefly, here's a general list of the types of activities funded through grants and incentives in this important piece of energy policy.

• Modernizing the Electric Grid - $4.5 billion
• Energy Efficiency - $12 billion
• Renewable Energy - $1.64 billion
• Carbon Capture and Storage - $3.4 billion
• Transportation - $2.85 billion
• Science and Innovation - $2.0 billion (including about $40 million in loan guarantees)
• Environmental Cleanup - $6 billion

ARRA was a rather high-visibility piece of legislation, given the tremendous investment of taxpayer dollars. And of course, we can't talk about ARRA funding for energy projects without talking about Solyndra, the failed solar energy company that received a federal loan guarantee, which was a talking point for years after it occurred. Learn more about the Solyndra story.

In addition to ARRA, there are many, many other opportunities available to citizens and organizations, and DSIRE is a very comprehensive repository of these programs. While the site is devoted primarily to state-level incentives, it also offers links to federal programs as well.

And as I'm sure you know, the Inflation Reduction Act provides a bevy of incentives and some loan guarantees. (But I'll let you do the research to find out more.)

We looked at several different types of policy earlier in this lesson. Enacting policy is only part of the puzzle to achieving a desired outcome. Enforcement mechanisms ensure that the policy is implemented and provide consequences for non-compliance. Let's take a look at the different types of enforcement mechanisms out there. The type of policy employed dictates the type of enforcement mechanism(s) necessary to keep the policy goals on track.

Generally, for the policy options we explored that are voluntary in nature (such as tax incentives, grant opportunities, and guidelines), there is no real need for any sort of enforcement mechanisms. But, for those policy options that have some sort of mandatory component (taxes, market based approaches, and standards), there needs to be a system in place to ensure that the policy is actually enforced.

Generally, the energy policy document itself will detail who is in charge of ensuring compliance with the policy. The policy may even create a new office or establishment for managing the oversight of the policy (for example - 1974's Energy Reorganization Act established the Nuclear Regulatory Commission).

Keep enforcement mechanisms in mind as you research your Research Project policy. Which group or groups work together (or against one another) to achieve its stated goals? Ensure successful monitoring and implementation?

Intended Consequences: These are the outcomes that are not only desirable but sought after in developing an energy policy. If we're looking at a policy to implement higher fuel economy standards on passenger vehicles to reduce gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, and the policy effectively forces automakers to comply with these new standards, that's an intended policy consequence.

Unintended Consequences: When policy makers (energy policy or otherwise) are crafting policy design to handle specific issues, they need to pay careful attention not just to the consequences they're intending to achieve with the policy, but also the ones that might come along as byproducts of the policy design. When we talk about unintended consequences, we're usually referring to a negative, unforeseen consequence of a seemingly well-intentioned policy design. For example, one of the most prominent cases of unintended consequences in a policy related to energy is the case of ethanol. Policies enacted to stimulate corn ethanol production in the United States in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependency on foreign oil have come under harsh criticisms for a host of potential unintended consequences such as food scarcity, increased greenhouse gas emissions, increased food prices, water and air pollution, and ecosystem disruption. And more ironically, some research has shown that using ethanol creates as many lifecycle emissions as gas.

There are however, some times when the unintended consequences of energy policy are beneficial. One example of this can be found in the case of policies instituted to reduce carbon monoxide emissions from car exhaust. Reductions in carbon monoxide emissions in car exhaust appear to have led to a decrease in carbon monoxide poisoning suicides. (Curious? Read Unsuccessful Suicide by Carbon Monoxide: A Secondary Benefit of Emissions Control and Suicidal Asphyxiation by Inhalation of Automobile Emission without Carbon Monoxide Poisoning to learn more.

Important concepts to take away from this lesson

In this lesson, we have looked at the various types of energy policies and have gone through examples of real-world implementation of these policies. As you can see, there's a complex web of mandatory and voluntary programs that comprise our national energy policy - having influence over everything from the gas you put in your car to the computer monitor you choose to purchase. The take-home message for this lesson is simple: Implementation of a successful energy policy (of any kind) requires significant forethought into the possible roadblocks to achieving stated goals and a clear delineation of who is responsible for what. It is important to anticipate criticisms and create policies that bridge gaps, not ones that are further divisive.

In the next lesson, we're going to step away from public policy and into the private sector to find out what companies are doing with regard to energy and climate policy and how their choices influence and are influenced by what is happening in the public sector.

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As a graduate of the Energy and Sustainability Program, and as an informed citizen, it will be important for you to understand the role of policy analysis in our lawmaking process. The ability to examine policy critically from a variety of frameworks and evaluate its effectiveness in achieving intended goals is a crucial skill for you to cultivate over time. In this lesson, you'll be exposed to a broad range of frameworks for policy analysis that will begin to prepare you for the Critique portion of the course's Research Project.

The process of analyzing policy can be summarized in the following 6 steps, as outlined by Carl Patton and David Sawicki in the 1993 book Basic Methods of Policy Analysis and Planning, Second Edition. Please also note that many other organizations and individuals have developed similar structured outlines, but this 6-step process works well in the context of our discussion of energy policy analysis. Feel free to explore other frameworks such as these (and many others).

• Keeney, R. L., & McDaniels, T. L. (2001). A framework to guide thinking and analysis regarding climate change policies. Risk Analysis, 21(6), 989-1000. 10.1111/0272-4332.216168
• Quade, E. S. (1982). Analysis for public decisions (2nd ed.). New York: North Holland.
• Weimer, D. L., & Vining, A. R. (1999). Policy analysis: Concepts and practice (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.

This process, however, can be approached from myriad perspectives, and we'll be exploring the validity of some of these perspectives in this lesson. As we go through the various frameworks for policy analysis, be thinking about these two broad categories:

Quantitative policy analysis is probably the broad subtype of policy analysis with which you are most familiar. Quantitative analysis is characterized by numerical data, mathematical numbers, and other systematic scientific approaches.

Example: Based on the emissions caps presented in the Waxman-Markey climate bill, we can expect an 83% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (relative to a 2005 baseline).

Qualitative policy analysis involves the consideration of factors that are less easily quantifiable into neatly defined categories and values.

Example: Semi-structured interviews with utility customers reveal a widespread misunderstanding of how energy consumption patterns in the home actually influence their bills.

As energy and climate policy professionals, you will undoubtedly encounter more quantitative than qualitative perspectives for energy policy analysis. Legislators need to know concrete facts as they try to make decisions about whether or not implementing policies is the right decision. Costs of programs, avoided costs saved, energy saved, emissions reduced, jobs created, jobs lost - these are all critical factors in the process of evaluating a policy. But, it's important to also consider the value associated with less quantifiable research, because when it comes to energy consumption, behavioral change matters a lot! With most estimates placing more than 40% of a building's consumption at the discretion of the users, understanding how people interact with and respond to the more quantitative factors in energy policy is an important (and arguably less well-understood) component of developing energy policies that are feasible, efficient, and successful.

Now we're going to look at several different perspectives from which we can analyze energy policy. As you explore these different frameworks, think about their individual strengths and how they might apply to your Final Project. The important thing to remember is that while each perspective brings value, they should not be used in isolation from the others. They intertwine in many ways and so relying on one but not the others provides an incomplete picture.

Geographic Analysis

Many facets of energy policy necessitate an in-depth exploration from a spatial perspective. Whether it is assessing the siting feasibility for wind or solar installations, or evaluating the sub-national level impacts related to a changing climate, geography plays an important role in energy policy. Much geographic analysis can be done utilizing geographic information systems to visualize spatially-contextualized data. An important note, too, is that geographic analyses enable policy analysts to explore other types of data (like economic, demographic, and environmental) and visualize the results over space and time.

Throughout the course, we've explored the various roles different scales of government play in the development and implementation of energy policies. In additional to analyzing policies to determine if the scale of implementation is most appropriate, consider the following:

• Virtually every aspect of energy policy we've discussed in this course is inherently geographical in nature. When we look at the types of fuels on which we rely to power our economy and our lives and the places from which we acquire them, we're analyzing energy policies from a geographic perspective. When we identify the mosaic of alternative energy solutions across the country, we're looking at the geographies of these places to determine which energy resources will work and which ones will not.
• While it's necessary to employ federal standards and mandates for some issues related to energy policy (like best available technologies and practices for emissions controls at power plants or permitting specs for natural gas drilling), other issues necessitate a specially tailored highly localized approach that can only be achieved at a small scale. Maine and New Mexico will have very different needs and opportunities when establishing programs for enhanced energy efficiency.
• The consequences of our energy policies have very real geographic implications as well. The natural gas boom happening in the northeast and out west is having very real impacts on those places. Short term economic boom, the creation of jobs in places that often need them badly, and environmental damages along the way are all part of the geographic landscape. On a longer horizon, the energy policies we employ today have very real consequences for our climate tomorrow, and the impacts of climate change could not be more geographic in nature. Coastal areas face concerns about rising sea levels and intensely destructive storm surges. Agricultural regions face changing growing seasons and suitable crops. Biologically sensitive rain forests face accelerated loss of biodiversity as plants and animals struggle to adapt to an artificially quickly changing climate.

The main thing to remember is that examining our energy policies from a geographic perspective enables us to holistically understand many facets of the consequences that policy may have.

Here are a few examples of geographic analysis of energy-related policies:

• Modeling the Effects of Appliance Standards through Geographic Analysis
• A Geographic Analysis of Wind Turbine Placement in Northern California
• Geographic Analysis of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System for a Grant Renewal EIS

Economic Analysis

Economic Analysis is probably the single most common type of policy analysis you'll find when it comes to energy policy. Remember back to earlier lessons and the discussions about whether or not the United States should adopt a comprehensive climate policy. Proponents of the adoption of climate policy (such as an economy-wide cap on emissions and emissions trading scheme) suggested analyses purporting that this would be the least costly alternative to reduce emissions while also generating revenue to assist low-income families with higher energy bills through energy efficiency improvements (check out the Pew Center's The Case for Cap and Trade). Opponents of the adoption of a mandatory emissions reduction scheme offered their own analyses painting a very different economic future - one marked by excessively high energy prices and the loss of manufacturing-related jobs as companies left the US to produce goods in unregulated countries.

There is no shortage of examples of economic analyses related to energy and climate policy. In addition to the few listed below, I encourage you to look for one related to your Research Project. Whether we like it or not, economic feasibility is probably the single most influential factor in whether or not a policy makes it through the implementation phase.

• CRS Report for Congress, Energy Tax Policy: An Economic Analysis by Salvatore Lazzari (2005)
• A great resource - links to EPA's economic analyses for the various climate policies in Congress over the past several years. I highly recommend you check out this site.

Political Analysis

Political Analysis of energy policy works hand in hand with economic analysis in terms of determining an energy policy's overall viability. As you've been learning throughout the course, energy policy inherently dictates winners and losers, and those actors with a stake in the outcome of a policy initiative will work hard to ensure their interests are protected. If you look through the various iterations of any energy policy from its initial draft form through the finalized legislation, you will undoubtedly find political concessions along the way. The give and take necessary to ensure enough votes for passage means tough compromises on both sides.

Life Cycle Assessment

Life cycle assessment is a concept that is gaining a lot more traction as we begin to evaluate things from a systems approach. The best example of this as it relates to energy policy is the debate over whether natural gas or coal is the 'cleaner' fossil fuel. If we are talking strictly about the combustion of the resource to produce energy, natural gas produces about half the greenhouse gas emissions that coal does (on a per Btu basis). But if we start to take a step back and analyze the entire process from exploration and extraction through waste management, we begin to see a different picture in which those disparities in emissions begin to disappear.

• Climate benefits of natural gas may be overstated

Systems Analysis

Systems analysis offers a more holistic approach to examining an energy policy by considering all of the various interconnected systems in which energy flow occurs. From resource extraction, to processing, to transmission, to consumption - the flow of energy crosses many geographic and economic boundaries, and evaluating an energy policy effectively needs to consider the systemic effects across them all. A systems analysis approach focuses on identifying alternative courses of action and considering unintended consequences across technological, economic, environmental, and political variables.

Some examples of systems analysis work related to energy:

• Stanford University's Global Climate and Energy Project is doing systems analysis research (as well as technology assessment)
• The Argonne National Laboratory's Center for Energy, Environmental, and Economic Systems Analysis (CEEESA) is doing work related to energy efficiency and renewable energy. You can check out a sampling of their projects on their website.

In addition to examining an energy source's (or policy's) economic, environmental, and political viability, policy analysts and lawmakers must also consider associated risks. Risk assessment involves looking at the potential loss and the probability that such a loss will occur. It's important to know that nothing is without risks (think about the list of potential side effects you get when you pick up an antibiotic at the pharmacy). But risk assessment plays an important role in formulating the political and environmental feasibility of any particular energy source.

With traditional fossil fuels, we tend to think of human health risks and environmental risks. The fuel sources are plentiful, well-understood, and relatively inexpensive. When we look at the risks associated with alternative energy sources, those risks involve decreased reliability of supply, higher costs, and the loss of jobs associated with traditional fue

A little while back I came across a really good article on the Huffington Post website by Aron Cramer, President and CEO of an organization called BSR that focuses on corporate sustainability issues. The article discusses the earthquake and tsunami in Fukishima, Japan and how events like that shape how we think about energy policy. It is also an example of systems analysis. Please take a moment to think about this article and reflect on how our energy policies ripple throughout society.

To learn more about the risks associated with nuclear reactors, check out the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission Fact Sheet.

Actual vs. Perceived Risk

There is an extensive body of literature regarding perceived risk and how that influences people's opinions on everything from energy sources to natural disasters. Understanding how information (or lack of information) shapes people's views on energy issues is key to identifying knowledge gaps and disseminating factual information to help them make educated choices. For better or worse, perceived risk - no matter how realistic or unrealistic it is - is equivalent in impact on individual perception of risk and thus should be considered in policy analysis.

The application of science into policy decisions related to energy and climate is extremely important. Climate change is a hotly contested political issue at all scales of governance, but is perhaps most visible at the federal level. Generally, committees within the House and Senate hold hearings about issues they're considering for legislative action (like energy and climate policy) where they bring in a range of experts to testify about the issues and to inform their development of policy. Certainly the selection of those 'experts' is a calculated and choreographed exercise in strategy to ensure that the suggestions they offer align with other political goals.

In the House of Representatives, the following committees work on policy related to energy and climate:

• Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
• Committee on Energy and Commerce
• Committee on Natural Resources

The relevant committees in the Senate include:

• Committee on Energy and Natural Resources
• Committee on Environment and Public Works
• Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

If you look at Congress over any significant amount of time, you can feel like you are on a see saw! What we saw during the 116th Congress (2019-2021), which focused in part on climate change mitigation, was a dramatic departure from the 115th and 114th Congress. These Congresses were a step backwards in many ways to revisiting the issue of whether or not climate change is a) occurring at all and b) anthropogenic in nature (we also saw a lot of this in the 111th and 112th sessions). The most recently elected 117th Congress is unfortunately deprioritizing climate issues. 

This wasted time and effort disputing virtually unequivocal science could be used to produce meaningful energy legislation to create skilled labor jobs, reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and propel us forward as a world leader in clean technologies. Clearly, the 2016 election drew a definitive line in the sand in terms of the direction energy and climate policy will take in the coming years. Things changed somewhat in 2018 and the 116th Congrss with the Democrats taking over the House, then dramatically in 2020 with the Biden Administration and a slim effective majority in the Senate (technically a 50/50 split, with the Vice President being the tie-breaking vote). It is difficult - okay impossible - to believe that the IRA or IIJA would have been feasible without this political dynamic. It is clear that who is in power matters significantly when it comes to policy priorities.

The recent IAC Report on the role of government seems particularly relevant to our discussion here, despite it being several years old now. What do we, and more importantly, what should we expect from our elected officials when it comes to integrating scientific understanding into our public policy?

While the later years of the Obama Administration brought forward such meaningful climate legislation progress like the Clean Power Plan and the US commitment to the Paris Agreements, prior to that, progress on large-scale environmental issues had waned considerably for several years, sparked in large part by the sharp economic downturn and recession. Environmental concerns became luxury issues, and were back-burnered for more immediately pressing needs in times of economic hardship. We can all understand and appreciate that to an extent but the challenge will be that the lines between immediate and future consequences of our environmental policies are becoming less clearly defined. Climate change is no longer a problem for future generations, it is our problem.

Have you watched much in the way of hearings and floor debates from Congress? It's as much a demonstration of theatrics and props as it is legislative concensus-building. Ylu may have heard about the infamous session during which JIm Imhoff famously throws a snowball as evidence that global warming is not occurring. That is the unfortunate reality of congressional hearings, and is something that impacts the political analysis of policies.

The theatrics come from both sides (though no Democrat has used a snowball as a prop), and I think it's important as we strive to be informed voters to observe how our elected officials on both sides of the aisle choose to conduct themselves in session and ensure it aligns with our own values.

When we talk about improving energy efficiency, there are two broad paradigms under which we might consider options for increased efficiencies. The first is a very engineering-centric perspective known as PTEM (which stands for Physical-Technical-Economic Model) which approaches energy efficiency from the perspective that new technologies are the only driver of greater efficiencies so long as they are economically viable. This often requires subsidization because emerging technologies almost always cost more than ones that have already established thmeselves in the market. When we think about this in the context of energy efficiency programs out there today, it makes sense - there are myriad rebate programs and tax credits that aim to reward increases in energy efficiency among residential and commercial users. The purpose of this is to make them less expensive than existing technologies and practices.

But if changing energy consumption were really this cut and dry, we would likely not be in the energy policy conundrum in which we find ourselves as a country today. Economics and numbers work quite well on paper, but people don't always behave in the most economically or technologically rational ways. We're people (not homo economicus), and our behaviors are often irrational and unpredictable, and that extends to our behavior related to energy consumption. Some experts suggest that nearly half of all actual energy use is based on operating behavior, not technologies in place. But changing behaviors is challenging - a seemingly much more daunting task than coming up with new technologies! Think about this - I could give you free LEDs - maybe I even install them in your home for you (and in fact many programs do this, including in Delaware). But how can I influence your decision to leave them on all day and night? This is a tough challenge, even with the economic incentive to conserve energy that we all understand as utility customers. People are creatures of habit, and it's hard to make them (well, us) change our ways for even economic benefits, much less those more tertiary benefits like avoiding catastrophic CO₂ levels in our atmosphere. this "overuse" of energy due to behavioral changes after efficiency measures are installed is called "the rebound effect." Some recent research suggests that economy-wide rebound effects often exceed 50% (!) and thus - among other things - can significantly compromise modeling of energy reductions due to decoupling efforts.

Another key consideration in the differences between PTEM and human behavior is the quantifiability. It is no surprise that approaches under the PTEM model are more easily verified. If you use this technology in this way, you can anticipate X savings on your utility bill. Quantifiable reductions are viewed as key indicators for the success of a program. Working with people in more qualitative ways to understand and influence their energy consumption patterns is much more challenging to quantify, and therefore harder to determine if it's working or not. The important thing you should take away from this discussion is that there is no one right or wrong way. Like much of what we've discussed in this course, energy efficiency improvements necessitate a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches to ensure maximum increases.

Important concepts to take away from this lesson

This lesson has been an exploration of the various perspectives from which we can approach policy analysis, and more specifically - energy policy analysis. We've learned that humans do not always behave rationally, that no one perspective for policy analysis can be the only analysis, and that our energy policies infiltrate all sectors of our economy and society, so a systems approach makes a lot of sense, and it's crucial that we inform the development of these policies with the best science knowledge we have available.

One of the core competencies of the ESP program is to develop strong analytical thinking skills, and this lesson was designed to prepare you with the tools you'll need to do this. A critical eye toward how our policy decisions today ripple through our lives tomorrow is a marketable skill you should continue to cultivate throughout your academic and professional career.

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Before we can dig into where things stand with the Paris Agreement or how likely it is to be successful moving forward, we need to take a stroll through the history of international (and eventually global) scale efforts to address climate change. We'll see that this is much more of an evolutionary process than a revolutionary one. First, a few important terms to note moving forward are:

1. IPCC: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This was created in 1988 with the intent "to provide policymakers with regular scientific assessments on the current state of knowledge about climate change and to prepare a comprehensive review and recommendations with respect to the state of knowledge of the science of climate change; the social and economic impact of climate change, and potential response strategies and elements for inclusion in a possible future international convention on climate," according to the United Nations. Essentially, this is the body that oversees all UN-sponsored climate-related research, or as they put it: "IPCC assessments provide a scientific basis for governments at all levels to develop climate related policies, and they underlie negotiations at the UN Climate Conference" (source: IPCC). See more about who they are here and what they do here. The IPCC provides the Assessment Reports and interim reports.
2. UNFCCC: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This was created in 1992 and is headquartered in Bonn, Germany. They perform a key role in international climate negotiations and are in fact the body that facilitated all major international agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement. They manage the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), which are the most consequential aspect of the Paris Agreement. They have full-time staff that host 2-4 negotiating sessions a year where they hash out issues related to the international climate negotiations. The most anticipated of these meetings is the Conference of Parties (see below). See this summary of what the UNFCCC does from the UN.
3. COP: Conference of Parties. This is the primary decision-making body of the UNFCCC. They meet every year, and include tens of thousands of participants (you can find a list of COPs here along with associated reports). The term COP is mostly used to refer to these annual meetings. The COPs are where they formally hash out international climate negotiations. The COPs result in reports on the progress of negotiations, though sometimes result in major agreements such as the Kyoto Protocol (COP 3 in Kyoto, Japan) and the Paris Agreement (from COP 21 in Paris, France).
4. AR: Assessment Report. Reports promulgated every ~5 years by the IPCC. They provide meticulously researched details about emissions, their impacts, and more. They summarize all relevant climate-related information under the IPCC purview. The reports are highly anticipated by global policymakers working on climate change-related policies. The most recent report was released in 2022, with the full Assessment Report (AR6) released in 2023. Each report is numbered - AR1 was in 1992, AR2 was in 1995, and so on.
5. INDCs and NDCs. Intended Nationally Determined Contributions and Nationally Determined Contributions. INDCs form the core of the Paris Agreement. Each country submitted its INDCs to detail how it would achieve their emissions reduction goals per the Agreement. Essentially, it is their plan to reduce emissions. After each country formally entered the Agreement, INDCs were referred to as NDCs. These are updated periodically, usually around every 3-5 years. The details in NDCs vary widely among countries. (More on this later.)

This infographic (which I broke into two separate pieces to make it easier to consume) was put out by The Climate Group around the time the Paris Agreement was forged. I can't find an active link for it on their site anymore, but I think it does a nice job of breaking up our decades of work on this problem to show the very slow pace at which things have moved historically and where the important jumps are in terms of how we think about tackling this problem. Let's take a look. (Please note that the terms "developed" and "developing" countries are used by the UN for these reports, and so will be used in the lesson as well.)

Credit: The Climate Group, 2015

Evolution of policy options

• When the UNFCCC was created in 1992, it 1) represented a much smaller subset of countries and 2) only encouraged voluntary actions.
• As the Kyoto Protocol started to develop, the UNFCCC started to establish binding targets for the developed countries but only had voluntary targets for undeveloped countries. (This ends up causing a lot of blame-game between the developed and developing economic powerhouses - in particular US vs China.)
• One of the takeaways of the Kyoto Protocol that we all need to be in this truly together. And so the Paris Agreement marks the first time that we're all in, and we're all beholden to targets. The difference? Countries get to set these targets themselves. (One aspect that has remained consistent is that there are no penalties for not reaching annual or long-term targets.)

Imagine this image below is a clock. (Click on the image to access a resizable version that is easier to see.) If you look at about 1 pm, you see that in the late 1980s, the UNFCCC is established.  It isn't until about 9 o'clock at that the Paris Agreement is adopted and here we stand somewhere around 10-11 o'clock or so, wondering where it will take us.

Credit: The Climate Group, 2015

The World Tries to Tackle Climate Change Together...Mostly

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and represents the first global attempt to implement emissions reduction targets for the purpose of address global climate change. For context, this was after the first and second assessment reports from the IPCC. (1990 and 1995, respectively. The first report was instrumential in creating the UNFCCC.) It established binding emission targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European Union. The Kyoto Protocol did not establish binding reduction targets for developing countries. Collectively, the targets represent a 5% reduction in greenhouse gas levels between 2008-2012 relative to 1990 as a baseline. The detailed rules for its implementation were finalized in 2001.

How does the treaty work?

Most of a country's required reductions must occur internally via measures such as renewable energ and energy efficiency. However, there were several additional measures which enabled Kyoto signatory countries to meet their targets. These additional measures had been designed to offer countries with compliance obligations a certain degree of flexibility in how they achieve their reductions, so as to help contain costs and encourage emission reduction projects worldwide. Note that some of these methods are used in many, if not most international climiate goals.

1. Emissions trading - countries who reduce their emissions by more than their established target are able to sell their surplus reductions on the carbon market. 
    
2. Clean development mechanism (CDM) - allows countries with emission limitation commitments to implement emission reduction projects in other countries . These projects earn credits (one credit per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent) which can then be sold on the carbon market and counted toward Kyoto compliance. CDM places a strong emphasis on sustainable development in conjunction with emission reductions and gives industrialized countries the opportunity to reduce emissions at a lower cost externally rather than generating all of their reductions within their own borders. CDM projects are subject to a strict verification and quantification process to ensure that the reductions for which someone earns credit are real, additional, and verifiable. Check out the CDM Rulebook to learn more about the verification process for CDM projects.
    
3. Joint implementation (JI) - allows countries under Kyoto commitments to achieve their emission reductions from projects in other countries also subject to emission reduction commitments under the Protocol.

The United States and the Kyoto Protocol

While the United States participated in the discussions and development of the Protocol and became a signatory nation, we have never formally ratified it and therefore have not participated in reducing emissions by our assigned 7% below the 1990 baseline.

• What went wrong? The Clinton Administration never submitted the Protocol to the Senate because of one dealbreaker - the lack of commitment to binding reductions for developing countries. Later, the Bush administration rejected the protocol. And while the United States did sign initially, because it was never ratified domestically, the targets are non-binding. In the years since the US backed away from the Kyoto Protocol, it ontinued to send delegates to the UNFCCC annual meetings but not to participate in conversations related to the Protocol implementation itself.
   
• Big pieces of the pie: In order for the Protocol to go into effect, countries representing at least 55% of the 1990 level emissions needed to ratify. As you can imagine, this was challenging without the United States' participation (representing a full 25% of global emissions at that time). However, in 2004 with Russia's ratification, the Protocol was set in motion. Here's a BBC article from February 2005, just after that 55% threshold was met, and the Protocol went into effect. I like this because it's a nice time capsule of what our global thinking was around international climate change action at that time.

The Intervening Years
 

Beyond Kyoto

As the initial 2008-2012 phase of Kyoto drew to a close, UNFCCC meetings focused on what would come next. In particular, the intervening COPs emphasized addressing two of the biggest shortcomings of Kyoto:

1. engaging the United States
2. holding developing countries to binding emissions reductions

​​​​These two shortcomings are very tangled, and it really became a contentious game of chicken. The United States did not want to commit to binding emission reductions until developing countries also face binding targets, citing economic disadvantage if it were regulated, but economies like China and India were not. The developing world, however, is looking for the United States to join the rest of the developed world and take leadership on this issue before they agree to binding targets. They want reassurance of financial support in meeting these goals, and expect the historic emissions giants to take some bigger responsibility for their share in the global problem. Who will blink first?

Below is a summary of the action(and inaction) of recent annual meetings leading up to Paris in 2015.

Applying Lessons Learned from Kyoto

Credit: Francois Mori. "1.5 DEGREES". Associated Press. December 11, 2015

Scientists and policymakers alike understood that 2015 was the year a new global climate treaty needed to be forged in order to start aggressively addressing emissions at a level commensurate with what the science was telling us about necessary reductions to avoid catastrophic impacts. 

And believe it or not, they came together and brought us the Paris Agreement.

Key Differences Between the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement

1. No differentiation between developed vs. developing - everyone agrees to binding commitments. Remember, this was a big sticking point for the United States going all the way back to the Kyoto Protocol. This aspect of the agreement is an important and historic step in international climate policy.
    
2. Countries set their own targets - these were called Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) in the Agreeement. After each country formally entered the Agreement, they are referred to as also referred to as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Each country submitted its INDCs as part of the Agreement to detail how it would achieve their emissions reductions goals per the Agreement. Put together as a whole, these pledges determine whether or not broader emissions goals will be met. Each country commits to self-reporting on their progress. This gives nations the flexibility to choose strategies that align with other strategic priorities and opportunities. These are the core of the Agreement because they outline how the emissions goals will be met. You can read more about INDCs from the World Resources Institute here and from the United Nations here.
3. Degrees not percentages - The Paris Agreement focuses on limiting warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius (relative to pre-industrial levels) by mid-century based on IPCC scientists collective recommendation that this is really the threshold for avoiding the more catastrophic and irreversible impacts of climate change.  It goes on to say more ambitiously that while limiting the warming to 2 degrees is good, containing it to 1.5 degrees is much better. This is further reiterated by the IPCC 2018 Special Report on 1.5 degrees. This WRI summary also explains how big of a difference just half a degree can make. Focusing the conversation around degrees instead of percentages serves to ground the policy more in the science that's guiding it than the politics of what countries think they can or cannot do. 
    
4. Financial support for developing countries - establishes a minimum annual commitment of $100 billion (from developed countries) in climate finance by 2020 to assist Least Developed Countries (LDCs) develop more sustainably and adapt to the impacts they're already committed to feeling. This is an fundamental step toward helping LDCs meet their climate goals, though it is likely inadequate, and even this target has not been reached (see here for some analysis from WRI). In addition, this is significantly less than the estimated $5.9 trillion of annual subsidies to fossil fuels. Further, funding that has been provided is possibly overstated. (For example, loans that incur debt are counted in full, and the debt payments are not considered.) Note that some of the $100 billion per year is an investment, not a donation, and ironically (and sadly) has contributed to more debt for already financially-strained budgets in low-income countries.

Nationally Determined Contributions - Are They Enough?

1. Lack of an enforcement mechanism. There is no penalty for not meeting targets or not having aggressive enough targets.
2. As detailed above, the specificity of how to reach goals may vary widely among participating countries.
3. The goals are not aggressive enough. In the most recent synthesis report, the UN determined that the updated NDCs taken as a whole would only reduce 2050 emissions levels by 70-79 percent, and further that they will only drop 5.2% by 2030 instead of the 25% required to be on a 2º C pathway or 45% to be on a 1.5º C pathway. The full synthesis report is available here and the key findings here.
   
   Credit: COP26 NDC Synthesis Report, 4 November 2021.

"Differentiation, Financial Support, and the Paris Climate Talks" (Stowe, 2015) - this provides a nice summary of some of the key differences between Kyoto and Paris, which are really key to understanding the possibility for more extensive success. "Is the Paris ruleboook sufficient for effective implementation of Paris Agreement?" (Sun, et al., 2022) provides a very detailed look at NDCs and whether or not the Paris Agreement is capable of reaching climate goals.

The Paris Agreement was signed in 2015.  What has happened in the intervening years? Where do we stand on our progress toward its goals?

Let's take a look first at the annual COP meetings that have occurred since then.

The Paris Agreement represents a landmark achievement in international policy. I remember watching John Kerry signing the Agreement, his granddaughter in his lap, and getting goosebumps. I guess I never really thought the world would come together and agree on anything to address climate change. I felt (and continue to feel) so full of hope and excitement. Think about it - we identify this existential threat and figure out a way to address it before it's too late. This is a story only Hollywood could tell, right?

Credit: US Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, signs the Paris Agreement with his granddaughter on his lap (2015)

Well, we don't know yet. No one of us has seen the entire script just yet. But here's what we do know. The Paris Agreement isn't enough to get us to where we need to be. Each year, the United Nations puts out what's called the Emissions Gap Report. This report gives a detailed look at the delta between where our emissions are, where they'd be heading with no policy intervention, and where we expect them to be with successful implementation of existing measures. Let's take a look.

Credit: United Nations Environment Programme (2024). Emissions Gap Report 2024.

The gap looks pretty daunting, doesn't it? We know that we want to keep warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius (relative to pre-industrial temperatures). We've already used up about a degree of that. We also know that the closer to 1.5 degrees we can contain that warming, the better off we are in terms of minimizing detrimental impacts. But as you can see, the delta is...well, it's big.

• unconditional NDC (nationally determined contributions) - these are the voluntary actions that countries have committed to that are totally implementable without external support
• conditional NDC (nationally determined contributions) - these go farther than the unconditional NDCs, but require some sort of external financial support (perhaps from the 'high ambition' bloc of countries) or are contingent on the climate-related policies other countries choose to implement.

Take note - that bigger zoom of it is just through 2030.  As we go farther out to 2050 and 2100, what happens is that the delta gets bigger. The longer we wait to take action, the more aggressive the action needs to be to achieve ever increasingly steep reductions.

But we can't let this graph discourage us from action. We don't have the luxury to throw up our hands and say nothing can be done. We have the tools, technology, and know-how to dig ourselves out of this emissions gap. The question really is - do we have the political will?

Important concepts to take away from this lesson

So, where will we go from here? It's hard to say. The good news is that the US intent to withdraw from Paris hasn't cascaded to other countries. Instead, it's inspired enhanced vigilance to pick up the slack we're leaving and solve the problem with or without us. One thing is certain though, the time to act is now. The other big question remains - will the US come (back) to the table and be part of the solution, or will we be served for lunch and let the rest of the world seize opportunities for expansion of cleaner technologies.

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