“Not only scientists and environmental activists call for action on climate change, but also military leaders understand that our common security hangs in the balance.”
President Barack Obama, Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize, December 10, 2009.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced yesterday that it would reorganize its climate services so it can provide Americans with more information on how climate change could affect trends such as drought and sea level rise. As part of the reorganization, NOAA announced a new climate services website, http://www.climate.gov:
With the rapid rise in the development of Web technologies and climate services across NOAA, there has been an increasing need for greater collaboration regarding NOAA's online climate services. The drivers include the need to enhance NOAA's Web presence in response to customer requirements, emerging needs for improved decision-making capabilities across all sectors of society facing impacts from climate variability and change, and the importance of leveraging climate data and services to support research and public education. To address these needs, NOAA embarked upon an ambitious program to develop a NOAA Climate Services Portal (NCS Portal). Our goal is for the Portal to become the "go-to" website for NOAA's climate data, products, and services for all users.
I want to focus particularly on NOAA’s response to the “emerging needs for improved decision-making capabilities across all sectors of society facing impacts from climate variability and change.” Dr. Jay Gulledge and I have been exploring these emerging needs in our forthcoming Lost in Translation report. What is clear is that there is not a lack of data, but simply a lack of data that is useful to stakeholders who need the information presented in a form that can help them make decisions as they relate to the impacts of climate change.
With Friday's forecast calling for twenty inches of the white stuff, to be followed shortly thereafter by a chance of Four Horsemen, there was only one thing I could think of that would compliment DC's Snopocalyptic impending doom: attend a presentation on the U.S. Navy's strategic interests and game plan—not being a sports fan myself, that's pretty much the only Superbowl reference you'll get—for the Arctic. The Arctic Roadmap event was hosted by fellow D.C. think tank, the Stimson Center.
Beginning with a short talk by Director of Task Force Climate Change, Rear Admiral David Titley, the event then followed with a panel discussion with Caitlyn Antrim of the Rule of Law Committee for the Oceans (a joint host of the event), John Bellinger, former State Department Legal Adviser, Major General Richard Engel, USAF (ret.), Director, Climate Change and State Stability Program in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and Amit Pandya from the Stimson Center.
Here are my main takeaways from Real Admiral Titley's talk:
The biggest natural security news through the long D.C. snowpocalypse weekend involved coverage of two energy-important elections, one now held and the other to come later this year. Opposition candidate and former Prime Minister Viktor F. Yanukovich claimed a win yesterday in Ukraine’s race for the presidency, while Venezuela is gearing up for fall elections. Both races will come to have some serious importance for energy geopolitics.
There was a battle of fossil fuel backgrounds at play between the two main candidates in Ukraine’s election: Yanukovich was a former coal industry exec, while his opponent, current Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, was a natural gas baroness before taking on energy issues in elected office. The domestic energy politics in this election heavily involved which candidate could form better relations with Russia on natural gas and seal a better deal for Ukraine. Yanukovich has stated that he supports “the creation of the gas transportation consortium, with Russia as a supplier, Europe as a consumer, and Ukraine as a transiting country.”
It seems as though improved natural gas relations with Russia would be on that country’s agenda regardless of which candidate prevailed, but a few more energy similarities and differences are noteworthy as well. The Kyiv Post reported that:
Both Tymoshenko and Yanukovich believe Ukraine, site of the world's worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl, could gain energy security through the development and construction of more nuclear power stations. Tymoshenko wants to speed up exploration and extraction of oil and gas on the Black Sea shelf, to shore up Ukraine's energy security, while Yanukovich wants to modernise the coal industry, that could fuel much of steel production – key to the economy.
Whoa, there. We’ll see what actually happens – Russia will surely have a say in what actually unfolds.
And though the next ballots aren’t cast until September, speculation is already beginning about the direction of Venezuela’s political winds, as they are being influenced by resource concerns. Time reports that Hugo Chávez is experiencing much disenchantment from his public in no small part due to water and electricity shortages. It further reports that Chávez:
…blames water and electricity shortages on a drought caused by El Niño. A report released at Christmas by one of the state electricity companies predicted a national collapse within 120 days if drastic measures were not taken…To alleviate drought, Chávez has turned to Cuba for "cloud seeding" technology. He has also instituted unpopular water and electricity rationing to ensure the country's hydro-electric dams are not drained before the rains come in June.
Geoengineering, Chávez? Me thinks you have some energy and water policy choices a bit more straightforward and effective than cloud seeding. Wait…Cuba is cloud seeding? Looks like it was when I had the swine flu, but I totally missed that gem.
President Obama released his Fiscal Year 2011 budget this week. In keeping with his State of the Union message to foster a new energy economy with investments in clean energy infrastructure and energy efficiency and innovation, the president has asked Congress to authorize investments in basic energy sciences - including doubling the funding for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy's Office of Science and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. President Obama also asked Congress to authorize funds to study climate change, including how climate change could affect the economy (specifically businesses, farmers and ranchers).
Photo: A Senate Budget Committee staffer distributes copies of the president's FY2011 budget. Courtesy of flickr user talkradionews.
I thought it would be super fun to spend a Wednesday night comparing the intelligence community’s threat assessment language on climate change from last year and this year (pdf links, both). It turned out to be more useful than I’d guessed it would be.
First, categorization. The 2009 assessment places energy and climate change under the umbrella topic of “Environmental Security,” along with global health and demographic changes. “Regional Impacts of Climate Change” is its very own section this year. (Energy is considered in the regional/country-specific sections, and is a sub-section under “The Changing Threat to the Global Economy.”) This likely just reflects the National Intelligence Council’s work in the past year to analyze specific regions with greater fidelity.
Next, placement. In 2009, the Environmental Security section was the last topic before the conclusion. In this year’s assessment, it is fourth-to-last. Take that, health challenges, state and non-state intelligence threats, and international organized crime!
On leadership: the 2009 assessment specifically discusses a U.S. leadership role in international climate diplomacy:
Multilateral policymaking on climate change is likely to be highly visible and a growing priority among traditional security affairs in the coming decades. We observe the United States is seen by the world as occupying a potentially pivotal leadership role between Europe, which is committed to long-term and dramatic reduction in carbon emissions, and a heterogeneous group of developing states wary of committing to greenhouse gas emissions reductions, which they believe would slow their economic growth. As effects of climate change begin to mount, the United States will come under increasing pressure to join the international community in setting meaningful long-term goals for emissions reductions, to reduce its own emissions, and to help others mitigate and adapt to climate change through technological progress and financial assistance.
The 2010 assessment points only to the climate-related leadership of India:
Yesterday was full of fun with the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the FY2011 budget. Here are the natural security-related exchanges from the transcript, beginning with Secretary Gates confirming that DOD is indeed working on alternative energy:
Senator Begich (D-Alaska): I'm trying to rapid-fire these, knowing my time is limited. Do you still -- in your DOD presentation of the budget, do you still have a very robust -- another issue separate -- alternative renewable energy program? I know that's been a big plus, to be very frank with you, with the military. You have been leaders in this area. Are you still fairly in your mind aggressive in this arena?
Sec. Gates: Yes.
* * *
In this line of inquiry, Senator Jeff Sessions seems quite concerned with fuel costs. Rather than drilling Admiral Mullen on this point, he could refer to page 87 of the QDR, which states that “DoD must integrate geostrategic and operational energy considerations into force planning, requirements development, and axquisition processes. To address these challenges, DoD will fully implement the statutory requirement for the energy efficiency Key Performance Parameter and fully burdened cost of fuel…”
Senator Sessions (R-Alabama): With regard to our procurement of major weapons systems, I know that the Department of Defense, Admiral Mullen, has focused on life- cycle cost. And I guess you would agree that things such as fuel and maintenance are important factors to evaluate if you're going to evaluate the cost of a weapons systems over a period of years.
Adm. Mullen: Yes, sir.
Senator Sessions: I know we did that on the tanker aircraft, and in fact, fuel and that sort of things are counted as evaluating that aircraft. Are you -- should that be applied to a procurement program like the Littoral Combat Ship, that the cost of fuel over its lifespan, should that be accounted for?
Adm. Mullen: I've long been concerned about lifecycle costs; I think, Senator Sessions, you know that, long before now. And the secretary pointed out, and I think very importantly, in his opening statement, that the programs that he cut last year actually had some lifecycle value, focused on about $330 billion. As far as what's in an RFP and what it's going to be focused on, that's something that I really can't comment on if that RFP is --
Senator Sessions: Well, I don't know, we've got our RFP in the Littoral Combat Ship that I'm told does not have factor for fuel costs.
Adm. Mullen: But you know more about it than I do. I haven't seen it.
Senator Sessions: Well, if that's so, would you be willing to look at it and ask questions, if that's a wise decision?
Adm. Mullen: Again, I've -- as I've said, I've been -- long time I've been concerned about lifecycle costs. Actually, one of the, I think, weaknesses of the acquisitions system is typically the line is not involved in it. The uniform side is not involved in it. So I'm not involved from that -- from that point of view --
The President released his Fiscal Year (FY) 2011 budget yesterday alongside the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR). (For a solid analysis on the budget and the QDR, check out my colleague and officemate Travis Sharp’s policy brief, Vision Meets Reality: 2010 QDR and 2011 Defense Budget.)
In last week’s State of the Union Address, President Obama’s message centered on the economy and creating new jobs in 2010. The president pointed specifically to fostering a new energy economy with investments in clean energy infrastructure and energy efficiency and innovation – investments that would generate new jobs for Americans while reducing our dependence on foreign oil and contributing to our national goals for mitigating climate change.
Not surprisingly, the president’s FY 2011 budget puts money behind these initiatives. To get a sense of what is in the budget to support these goals, the section on investments in scientific research from the budget overview is worth quoting in full:
Investment in science and basic research is critical to long-term economic growth. That’s why the Budget invests $61.6 billion in civilian research and development, an increase of $3.7 billion, a 6.4 percent increase, and an amount that continues the commitment to double funding for three key basic research agencies—the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy’s Office of Science, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. This funding includes $1.8 billion for research in basic energy sciences to discover novel ways to produce, store, and use energy to address energy independence and climate change and $300 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, to accelerate game-changing energy technologies in need of rapid and flexible experimentation or engineering. (emphasis mine)
Interestingly, the president emphasizes through the budget the need to better understand climate change and the impacts that it could have on our economy, security and nation as a whole: “While climate policies are developed and investments in clean energy technologies are made, investments to understand the impacts of climate change are also crucial.” The budget outlines several possible consequences from climate change, including that “Coastal areas, floodplains, and water systems will all be affected by the changing climate, and it is vital that we understand the potential effects of climate change so businesses, farmers, ranchers, and the entire Nation can prepare for them now.” (This need to better understand the impacts of climate change and to translate those impacts into economic, political and social consequences is, in fact, the focus of our ongoing Lost in Translation project.) Nevertheless, it is important to note that the president is putting money behind the study of climate change: “That is why the Budget invests $2.6 billion to deepen our understanding of climate change and its impact.”
The United States made an initial pledge to reduce greenhouse gases 4% by 2020 in a letter sent to the United Nations. How are we going to do it? Last week made clear that nuclear is likely to be touted as a significant part of the solution.
President Obama’s State of the Union support for “building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” was one of the few propositions that drew loud applause from the Republican side of the floor; he again emphasized in meeting with House Republicans two days later that they see eye to eye on coal and nuclear energy investments. And later in the week, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that the administration was forming a commission to study options and make recommendations on a real solution to the country’s nuclear waste, to be chaired by Lee Hamilton and Brent Scowcroft.
Notably absent in the President’s speeches was a sense of scale. With the past decade’s talk of a “nuclear renaissance” and responses that such a buildup would have its limits in terms of adding capacity much beyond replacing those reactors coming offline, I’m interested in seeing what the President’s vision looks like in more detail. Or even whether it is a solid vision that involves nuclear goals and timelines, or simply incentives and conditions to better encourage more nuclear production. Further news last week covered new breakthroughs in nuclear tech, which we’ll need in either case. One of the most interesting came from a group of scientists from Northwestern, who have discovered a new process for filtering radioactive cesium out of nuclear waste allowing other materials to escape.
The Hill points out this morning that the nuclear industry crowd is pumped about Secretary Chu’s budget request, which would triple the current level for nuclear loan guarantees. It also reminds us that nuclear will be a major part of the narrative should the president push for climate legislation soon. An article this weekend in the Boston Globe also reminds us that many older plants have issues such as leaking pipes and collapsing cooling towers – and many of this country’s will likely be coming offline over the next few decades. Coupled with all the recent news of technical advances for the next generation of reactors, in addition to questions of expected scale I’m wondering how the pacing of adding nuclear capacity and incorporating new and improved technologies will play out.
Big news! DOD announced its greenhouse gas reduction targets (for non-combat activities, of course) today. This is great news. My follow on questions are how the responsibility for implementation will break down, and how they'll be measuring the reductions. Not impossible questions, but I think important ones. For example, will all installations have to meet a certain percentage reduction, or can facilities easily able to dramatically cut emissions compensate for those where it's more difficult because of the unique activities and personnel levels there? Will the services have different targets? I'm sure officials far more knowledgeable than I have long since thought these questions through. Can't wait to learn more details. (H/t to Tom Ricks for pinging this to us. On a Friday afternoon we were starting to slow down a bit.)
From the DOD press release:
The Department of Defense (DoD) announced today that it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from non-combat activities 34 percent by 2020. The department set the target in keeping with a recent executive order signed by President Obama that seeks to have the federal government lead the country by example through improved energy and environmental performance.
Today’s announcement is part of a broader effort by DoD to improve its energy security. The target for DoD includes the department’s more than 300,000 buildings and 160,000 fleet vehicles. Buildings and fleet vehicles account for about one quarter of DoD’s energy consumption but nearly 40 percent of its greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to reducing the demand for energy at its facilities, the department is shifting to more reliance on renewable energy sources. Many installations are already well underway with energy-saving improvements.
According to The Los Angeles Times, the Air Force Real Property Agency has agreed to lease 3,288 acres of land at Edwards Air Force Base to Fotowatio Renewable Ventures to stand up a massive solar array project that is estimated to have a production capacity of up to 500 megawatts. The project would be the largest energy Enhanced Use Lease for the Department of Defense, and the largest solar project in the United States. Construction is slated to begin in 2013.
Photo: Edwards Air Force Base. Courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.
Last night President Obama delivered his first State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. (A full transcript and video of the speech are available, courtesy of the White House.) While watching last night, I was curious how the president would mention energy and climate change, given that the major theme of last night’s speech, as one would suspect, was the economy.
It was interesting, though not at all unexpected, that the president discussed energy and climate change in the context of creating new jobs and building a clean energy economy. With jobs to top the president’s agenda in 2010, he emphasized that “We should put more Americans to work building clean energy facilities and give rebates to Americans who make their homes more energy-efficient, which supports clean energy jobs.”
“We need to encourage American innovation,” the president said, “And no area is more ripe for such innovation than energy.” President Obama even made the case by highlighting last year’s investments in clean energy: “the North Carolina company that will create 1,200 jobs nationwide helping to make advanced batteries; or in the California business that will put a thousand people to work making solar panels.” Additional investments to help shore up our independence from foreign oil included “opening new offshore areas for oil and gas development…continued investment in advanced biofuels and clean coal technologies.” President Obama even declared that building a clean energy economy meant “passing a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” This kind of federal investment in energy innovation is important to increasing energy security to be sure, but implementation is going to be key here (see our 2009 workshop report on just that). And much of that implementation will be up to market conditions and individuals that may not be acting in concert with the president’s bold plans.
The full CNAS team attended our awesome colleague Abe Denmark’s event yesterday at the Newseum that focused on his just-released edited volume, Contested Commons. The event featured Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Gary Roughead, USN; Vice Chief of Staff of the U.S.
The tragedy of human suffering in the wake of the recent earthquake in Haiti generated an outpouring of public and private support (PDF). In short order the movement to the ports and airfields of Haiti began, as relief workers and multinational troops surged the western front of the Island of Hispaniola with aid. What soon became apparent was that Haiti, already plagued by poor infrastructure, had become a logistical nightmare: Even with the influx of aid, hospitals vital to the relief effort(including those left standing and those erected in the field) have been virtually paralyzed due to an electrical grid that is in some places only temporarily functional, and in other places non-existent.
Securing adequate energy has been paramount for workers responding in Haiti, a priority driven home by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she declared in Port-au-Prince on January 16 that she and Haitian leaders “discussed the priorities of restoring communications, electricity and transportation.” Without reliable access to electricity, the effectiveness of additional aid for medical treatment and recovery operations can suffer. So I decided to scan the news for indications of how energy is being provided.
Efforts to restore electricity in Haiti have been largely executed through an influx of gas-powered generators. Engineers have already attempted to triage energy distribution, providing what they could for the most pressing needs. In an effort to provide the fuel necessary to keep the generators running, the UN World Food Programme has shifted focus from foodstuffs to securing “an estimated 10,000 gallons, or nearly 38,000 liters, of fuel per day,” according to a recent U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) report (PDF). However, according to that document, USAID workers soon found that the fuel feeding the generators can raise other concerns:
as additional gasoline becomes available, roads have become more congested, hampering delivery of relief items. In addition to resulting in delays, the USAID/DART notes that traffic congestion increases security concerns, necessitating trucks to increase speeds and ensure that contents are not visible.
The relief effort’s current appetite for fuel has been somewhat staved off as solar panels and other self-sustaining sources of energy find their ways onto Haitian soil amongst the mountains of food and medical supplies.
Christine Parthemore and Will Rogers released their working paper, Promoting the Dialogue: Climate Change and the Quadrennial Defense Review, this morning. The working paper provides observations on how the Department of Defense incorporated climate change into the 2010 QDR and some possible outcomes of that process. "When the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is sent to Congress on February 1st, it will offer an unusual opportunity to shift how the national security community views climate change," write Parthemore and Rogers.
To learn more about the "Promoting the Dialogue" project, click here.
We often hear the argument that energy and climate policy should focus on efficiency in the near term, leaving switching to more sustainable energy sources to the future. Yesterday, a New York Times article on Idaho showed the benefits of doing just that: the utility has been paying citizens to cut their energy use, and this has until recently obviated the need to build new power plants.
Bill Gates has apparently heard a lot of that policy prescription as well, and last week he blogged this response (cross-posted to Huffington Post):
Should society spend a lot of time trying to insulate houses and telling people to turn off lights or should it spend time on accelerating innovation? If addressing climate change only requires us to get to the 2025 [emissions] goal, then efficiency would be the key thing. But you can never insulate your way to anything close to zero [emissions] no matter what advocates of resource efficiency say. You can never reduce consumerism to anything close to zero.
Gates declares that we need both, but emphasizes that there’s not enough emphasis on energy innovation. I’ve got to agree with him on this one, in part because of the U.S. experience after the 1970s oil crises. You can now find dozens of books from the late 70s and early 80s proposing energy innovation that never quite came to fruition. Energy prices dropped, incentives shifted, Reagan took Carter’s solar panels off of the White House. There was a great focus on efficiency and conservation back then as well. We set and later raised fuel economy standards, and as vehicles became more energy efficient we began driving more and more SUVs. Without significant focus on innovation now, I fear that when another energy crisis hits in 20 or 30 years, scholars will again look back at all the books from the 2000s on cleaner energy futures that never came to be and scratch their heads at how little change had occurred.
Yesterday, CNASer Commander Herb Carmen and I were lucky to witness Navy Secretary Ray Mabus and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack singing a memorandum of understanding on biofuels and renewable energy. Citing national security, economic and environmental rationales for increasing domestic energy production and innovation, the two departments agreed to cooperate to advance the president's energy and climate agenda. Loved the symbolism. Loved the explicit linking of security, environment and economy. Loved the corncob pen from Iowa that Sec. Vilsack gifted to Sec. Mabus. We'll be watching for news of how this partnership is working in practice. Have a great weekend everyone!
