[House Hearing, 110 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
INVESTING IN THE FUTURE: R&D NEEDS TO MEET AMERICA'S ENERGY AND CLIMATE
CHALLENGES
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
SELECT COMMITTEE ON
ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
AND GLOBAL WARMING
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
__________
Serial No. 110-48
Printed for the use of the Select Committee on
Energy Independence and Global Warming
globalwarming.house.gov
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-958 WASHINGTON : 2010
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing
Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC
area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC
20402-0001
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ENERGY INDEPENDENCE
AND GLOBAL WARMING
EDWARD J. MARKEY, Massachusetts, Chairman
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon F. JAMES SENSENBRENNER, Jr.,
JAY INSLEE, Washington Wisconsin, Ranking Member
JOHN B. LARSON, Connecticut JOHN B. SHADEGG, Arizona
HILDA L. SOLIS, California GREG WALDEN, Oregon
STEPHANIE HERSETH SANDLIN, CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
South Dakota JOHN SULLIVAN, Oklahoma
EMANUEL CLEAVER, Missouri MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee
JOHN J. HALL, New York
JERRY McNERNEY, California
------
Professional Staff
Gerard J. Waldron, Staff Director
Aliya Brodsky, Chief Clerk
Thomas Weimer, Minority Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
----------
Page
Hon. Edward J. Markey, a Representative in Congress from the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, opening statement............... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 3
Hon. Jay Inslee, a Representative in Congress from the State of
Washington, opening statement.................................. 5
Hon. Emanuel Cleaver II, a Representative in Congress from the
State of Missouri, opening statement........................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 7
Hon. Jerry McNerney, a Representative in Congress from the State
of California, opening statement............................... 8
Witnesses
Dr. Susan Hockfield, President, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology..................................................... 8
Prepared statement........................................... 12
Dr. Stephen Forrest, Vice President for Research, University of
Michigan....................................................... 16
Prepared statement........................................... 18
Answers to submitted questions............................... 78
Dr. Daniel Kammen, Professor, University of California at Berkley 31
Prepared statement........................................... 34
Dr. Jack Fellows, Vice President, University Corporation for
Atmospheric Research........................................... 48
Prepared statement........................................... 50
Answers to submitted questions............................... 84
INVESTING IN THE FUTURE:
R&D NEEDS TO MEET AMERICA'S
ENERGY AND CLIMATE CHALLENGES
----------
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2008
House of Representatives,
Select Committee on Energy Independence
and Global Warming,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:10 a.m. in room
2175, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward J. Markey
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Markey, Inslee, Cleaver and
McNerney.
Staff present: Ana Unruh-Cohen and Jonathan Phillips.
The Chairman. Thank you all for being here at the hearing
that we are going to have today on Investing in the Future: R&D
Needs to Meet America's Energy and Climate Challenges in the
Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.
America is a Nation of innovators. From the Founding
Fathers to the YouTube creators, our country has always
cultivated entrepreneurs with an idea about the next big thing.
Since World War II, the Federal Government has recognized that
it is in the Nation's interest to invest in fundamental
research and development to help keep the economic engine of
innovation running.
Today, we are confronted with challenges to our national
security, our economic security and our environmental security
that all stem from our over-reliance on fossil fuels. The
imperative to move to a clean, renewable energy system is
clear. The need for robust science to guide our way is obvious.
Because of past investments in energy and climate research
and development, we have the tools and technologies to begin
tackling the climate crisis now. Energy saving technologies
abound. Alternative energy sources are looming. Wind, solar and
geothermal energy sources are taking market share away from
fossil fuel. Hurricane tracking and forecasting helped us
prepare for the arrival of Gustav, Hanna and now Ike. But in
order to achieve the significant reductions in carbon dioxide
necessary to avoid truly catastrophic climate change and
respond to the serious impacts that we can no longer avoid, we
must invest in further research and development.
The United States once led the world in the development and
production of renewable energy technologies. Just as the United
States once led the world in broadband technologies. After
years of neglect, we are now losing these races, struggling to
stay close to our competitors in Japan, Europe and even China.
The bitter truth is that now we are buying technology from
abroad that in many cases were developed here in our own
universities. In 25 years, U.S. energy R&D has fallen from 10
percent of total R&D down to 2 percent. Instead of building our
R&D endowment, we have been slowly chipping away at it. This
trend must be reversed.
Some have argued that it is premature for the United States
to adopt a domestic cap on global warming pollution because we
lack the technology to achieve it. That view is wrong as a
factual matter, but, more fundamentally, it reflects a view of
America that I do not recognize. As we have heard at numerous
Select Committee hearings, technologies exist now that will
allow us to make tremendous progress. Enacting legislation will
provide a driver for the deployment of the existing technology
and an incentive for the development of new technology.
America is a can-do nation. We answered the call to put a
man on the moon, to crack the human genome, to build a national
information infrastructure. With the resources generated by a
cap and invest system, we can increase our energy and climate
R&D investment.
Climate legislation will also send a strong signal to our
most vital resource, our Nation's students. As we have seen
here on Capitol Hill and today's witnesses from our top
universities can attest, young people today are bursting with
ideas on how to bring about the green energy revolution. When I
was a student, the Soviets' launch of Sputnik made us all want
to study science. The government responded with significant
investments in R&D and trained the next generation of
scientists and engineers.
Once again, there is a threat from above us, the dangerous
build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It is time for us
to respond to that threat and unleash America's creative genius
on this global challenge.
We heard the delegates at the Republican convention chant
``drill, baby, drill''. What the Nation should really be
chanting to our students, scientists and engineers is ``dream,
baby, dream''. And in order to make these dreams a reality, we
must increase our investment in energy and climate research and
development and adopt the policies to make it clear that the
green energy revolution has begun.
That completes the opening statement of the Chair. We now
turn to recognize the gentleman from Washington State, Mr.
Inslee, for his opening statement.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Markey follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
The title of this hearing is Investing in the Future: R&D
Needs to Meet America's Energy and Climate Challenges; and I
frankly can't think of a more important hearing or a more
pathetic situation in the United States when I consider our R&D
budget. We are investing I think less than one-sixth trying to
save the planet Earth than we did trying to get to the moon.
And, you know, Stephen Hawking said we should prepare to go to
other planets. I would prefer just to save this one, and I
think we can even do it cheaper.
I had some good news and bad news. A couple of weeks ago, I
went out to Golden, Colorado, and looked at the National
Renewable Lab there, which is a great place. It was really
intriguing, saw some amazing things. Saw two plug-in hybrid
cars parked underneath about a 15-by-20 PV cell array, and the
two plug-in hybrids could be powered by 8 hours apiece just on
that array that could fit on top of your rooftop. It was pretty
encouraging to see the amazing things going on there.
But what I noted about the National Renewable Energy Lab
was that it was about the size of a small junior high school.
It would fit into the janitorial locker of the Pentagon, and it
was sort of the focus of the Nation's efforts to save the
planet from, you know, potential doom due to global warming and
all the security threats we have. And it really put in
perspective to me how sad our R&D budget is.
Just--if I could hold up this chart here.
This is a comparison of the charts showing the R&D budget
for our Defense Department, showing, from 1960, the spike up to
about $84 billion. This is the R&D budget for our security
issues, which is obviously important.
The middle chart shows our R&D budget in health care that
has gone up from, you know, 1 or 2 in '60 up to about $28
billion now.
And then you compare it to our entire energy budget--this
budget is not just for clean energy but our entire energy
budget for everything, dirty coal, everything else. It is now
at about $3.5 billion, 20 times less than our DOD budget. And
arguably the best thing we can do for our security is rid
ourselves from foreign oil. And yet we have this pathetically
small--it has actually gone down since the mid '80s. You can
see this decline from here to here.
So even though we have this triple threat--security, global
warming and job loss--we have a pathetic R&D budget; and this
has to be ramped up exponentially, I believe, to take advantage
of the technologies that are now in pre-commercialization
stage.
So I think this is a very timely hearing. We have a lot of
work to do, and we have got to have a source of funding for
this R&D program. Thank you.
The Chairman. Great. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from Missouri, Mr.
Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
There has been a great deal of discussion, certainly on
Capitol Hill, with regard to the need for encouraging the
utilization of renewables like wind and biomass and solar. And
the tragedy--and I think my two colleagues have already
mentioned--is that the R&D spending has been abysmal, and I
think one of the roles that this committee should play is
continuing to sound the alarm in addition to securing as much
factual information as possible.
Martin Luther King in 1966 said, it may well be that the
greatest tragedy of this period of social transgression is not
the noisiness of the so-called bad people but the appalling
silence of the good people. It may be that our generation may
have to report that our generation did not do what it should
do. We need to speak louder as the children of light than the
children of darkness.
And so I think that we must continue to call out what we
see as a diabolical misdirection of our Nation. We are not
spending the kind of money that we need to spend on research
and development. If we are, in fact, serious about saving this
planet--and I am. I have children, and I want all of them to
have children, and I would like for them to have children--then
I think we need to do what is necessary. There is no nation on
this planet with the capability of doing what the United States
can do. We are simply not doing it.
So I yield back the balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Cleaver follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Great. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
McNerney.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to welcome the very distinguished panel here this
morning, discussing an issue that I feel very strongly and
passionately about. I spent my entire career in the new energy
technology business, and I had the opportunity and privilege of
participating in the development of wind energy technology from
its very infancy into what it is now, a successful business. So
I see that as an example of the kind of opportunities that are
available for our young men and women who get involved and are
willing to do the hard work that it takes to master these
sciences.
In order to inspire them, we need to be willing to spend
the money here in the Federal Government. We have authorized a
doubling of R&D budgets over the next 10 years, but the
appropriations aren't following those authorizations. So we are
not meeting from the Congress, from the United States
government, we are not meeting our responsibilities. And we
need to have a panel of such experts to convince us to do that.
So please feel free to say what needs to be said. Inspire our
young people to participate, and let's get the show on the
road. Thank you.
The Chairman. I thank the gentleman.
All time for opening statements has been completed.
I would now like to recognize our first witness, Dr. Susan
Hockfield, the President of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. During her time at MIT Dr. Hockfield has encouraged
collaborative work across traditional discipline boundaries in
order to pioneer new areas of interdisciplinary study and keep
the Institute at the forefront of innovation. She has won many
awards.
It is our honor to have you with us here today. Doctor,
whenever you are ready, please begin.
STATEMENT OF SUSAN HOCKFIELD, PRESIDENT, MASSACHUSETTS
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Ms. Hockfield. Thank you, Chairman Markey, members of the
committee. On behalf of the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, I am grateful for the chance to highlight the
overwhelming importance of funding basic energy research. I
will echo the comments of all of yours and my own.
As you know, since before World War II, MIT has served the
Nation as an honest broker on complex technical issues and also
as a source of breakthrough research. In the past year, as part
of the MIT initiative on energy, we have delivered landmark
reports on coal, nuclear and geothermal energy, which have
helped to inform congressional action. Our faculty is now
preparing similar reports on cap and trade policy, on solar
energy, on natural gas, on nuclear infrastructure and waste
disposal and overall energy technology policy, as well as
continuing our pioneering work on technologies that will help
make those options real.
Today, however, I am here to talk about the research
funding required to achieve an energy revolution.
We all know the United States is tangled in what we call a
triple knot of difficult problems. First, we have a shaky
economy that has been battered by volatile energy prices, a
loss of good jobs and threats to our global technology
leadership. Second, we face a geopolitical situation weighed
down by issues of energy consumption and security. And, third,
there is mounting evidence that global climate change is upon
us.
Each knot is daunting on its own, and the three are
profoundly tied together. Fortunately, I believe that we have
the power to loosen all of these knots at once, with a dramatic
new level of Federal investment in energy R&D. If one advance
could transform America's prospect, it will be having a range
of clean, renewable and low carbon energy technologies ready to
power our cars, our buildings, and our industries at scale,
while creating jobs and protecting the planet.
If we want to own those future technologies, there is only
one path; and it is research. Yet in the last several decades,
Federal funding for energy research has dwindled to the point
of irrelevance. In 1980, 10 percent of Federal research dollars
went to energy; and today, when we really need energy answers,
it is an embarrassing 2 percent. From 1980 to 2005, the major
OECD countries also diminished their investments but at an
average of 39 percent. But in the U.S. our cuts were more
drastic. We reduced R&D support by 58 percent.
And we cannot count on private industry to do the job
either. Since 1980, research investments by U.S. energy
companies paralleled the drop in public research. By 2004,
corporate R&D stood at just $1.2 billion in today's dollars.
And while this level might suit cost-efficient, mature
technologies around fossil fuel-based energy, it is wildly out
of step with any industry that depends on innovation.
Pharmaceutical companies invest 18 percent of their
revenues in R&D. Semiconductor firms invest 16 percent. Even
the auto industry invests 3.3 percent. But U.S. energy
companies invest less than a quarter of 1 percent of revenues
in R&D. With that level investment, we can't expect an energy
revolution. And while we would--and we do--welcome a recent
surge in venture funding for green technologies, the fact is
that venture money flows not to revolutionary research but to
near-market-ready ideas, the very end of the ``D'' in R&D.
What is the lesson here? It is a simple one. It is that
while industry must support development and commercialization,
only government can prime the pump of research. Congress funded
the basic research that spawned the IT revolution and the
biotech revolution. Today, to spark an energy revolution,
Congress must lead again.
Now why should you or the taxpayers believe that this
investment will work? It is because the same kind of research
investment has paid off so spectacularly before. I could call
on any number of examples, but let me just give you one.
Over the past 30 years, Congress has allowed the NIH--has
supported the NIH to invest $4 per year per American in cardiac
research. That investment has cut death from stroke and heart
attack by 63 percent. Imagine the same payoff measured in
electric cars, safe nuclear technology or a smart new grid. The
potential here from the economy to global security to the
climate is absolutely boundless.
Yet of course we are not the only ones to have noticed. If
we fail to make major strategic investments in energy research
now, we will swiftly forfeit the advantage to our competitors.
From China and India to Germany and Japan, other countries have
the money and the motivation and they are chasing the
technology almost as fast as we are. We must make sure in the
energy technology markets of the future we have the power to
invent, produce and sell and not the obligation to buy.
So how much should we invest in energy R&D? Let's start
with how much or, frankly, how little the Federal Government
spends today.
We saw your charts, Congressman; and I will say--just
repeat it with some numbers.
The total depends on which programs you count. But
recognized authorities put the number for 2006 at between $2.4
and $3.4 billion. Just to scale that for comparison, it is less
than half of what our major pharmaceutical company spends on
R&D every year, less than one half of every company's
expenditures. In today's dollars, it is about 2 percent of the
total price of the Apollo program.
A range of experts, including the business-led Council on
Competitiveness, reports Federal energy research must climb to
3 or even 10 times the current level. In my view, the Nation
needs to increase energy R&D sharply, moving promptly to triple
the current rates and then increasing further as DOE builds the
capacity to translate basic research to the marketplace.
To establish firm funding guidelines, I believe that
industry, government and universities must come together to
create a detailed energy R&D roadmap. Speaking for MIT and I
know for other research universities, we would be honored to
help design a strategic plan.
Let me close with a short vignette.
In 1940, when Germany invaded France, President Roosevelt
had a visit from a man named Vannevar Bush, who was then Chair
of the National Advisory Committee on Aeronautics and was
formerly Vice President and Dean of Engineering at MIT. His
message to President Roosevelt was simple. For America to win
the war, it had no choice but to make aggressive, focused
investments in basic science.
The case was so compelling, President Roosevelt approved it
in 10 minutes. From radar to the Manhattan Project, the
investments in innovation that decision unleashed were the
military tools that won the war. What is more, that same
Presidential decision launched the enduring partnership between
the Federal Government and the Nation's great research
universities, a partnership that has vastly enhanced America's
military capabilities and national security. It has launched
many of our most important industries, produced countless
medical advances and spawned virtually all of the technologies
that define our modern quality of life.
Vannevar Bush's essential insight was his appreciation for
the value of basic research in powering innovation. I believe
that we stand on the verge of a global energy technology
revolution; and the question before us is, will America lead it
and reap the rewards? Or will we surrender the advantage to
other countries with clearer vision?
Today, as we face the deeply linked challenges of economic
insecurity, energy insecurity and global climate change, we
should see in this little bit of history a profoundly hopeful,
practical path to America's future through rapid, sustained,
broad-based and intensive investment in basic energy research.
Thank you very much.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Hockfield, very, very much.
[The statement of Ms. Hockfield follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Our next witness is Dr. Stephen Forrest, who
is the Vice President for Research at the University of
Michigan. He is a physicist by training. He has made many
important contributions in the area of communications,
semiconductors and, more recently, highly efficient lighting
appliances.
We welcome you, sir. Whenever you feel comfortable, please
begin.
STATEMENT OF STEPHEN FORREST, VICE PRESIDENT FOR RESEARCH, THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
Mr. Forrest. Thank you, Chairman Markey.
Transforming our fossil fuel economy into one based on
renewable carbon-free solutions is a national priority of the
highest magnitude. Solutions to this problem are not simple,
and there is no single path to energy security, reduce carbon
emissions and low energy costs. Nevertheless, America's
research universities, homes to the highest-risk innovation and
discovery, are ready and eager to join in a partnership with
government and industry to solve what is the largest single
problem confronting us in the 21st century.
Unfortunately, the U.S. has not responded proportionately
to the magnitude of the crisis. Today, alternative energy
research is only .02 percent of our GDP. In comparison, for
example, to Japan, where it is four times that amount. In fact,
only 1.6 percent of all Federal R&D goes to energy research.
To put this in perspective, the past 5 years of the DOE
budget, which includes money that goes for the large network of
national labs, has averaged $8.9 billion, compared to $28.1
billion for the NIH and $73.5 billion for defense. This is
remarkable considering that the immense U.S. energy industry, a
nearly $2 trillion industry, is bigger than either health or
defense. Given how underfunded we are at the present and how
unprepared we are to meet the urgent challenges facing us, we
can only conclude that Federal investments are not nearly
enough.
DOE itself has been crucial to advancing energy research.
Its network of national labs has long guided energy research to
our Nation's immense benefit; and initiatives like, for
example, DOE's solid state lighting program, which supports
both industry and academia, already has produced successes that
will soon make the very inefficient incandescent bulb obsolete
for interior lighting.
However, to face today's crisis, DOE's programs must be
enlarged to include new initiatives that encourage
collaboration and truly promote the transformation of our
energy economy. It will take more than just increased funding.
We also need better policy to make it easier and more efficient
to collaborate across these sectors, to make collaboration both
streamlined and nimble.
Even Michigan, with a manufacturing economy under siege,
can show what great opportunities we have before us. Innovative
partnerships between universities, government and industry are
showing a clear path to win-win situations. We can come up with
energy solutions and strengthen economies.
Michigan and the Great Lakes regional economies are rooted
in the heavy manufacturing base that fueled America's greatness
in the last century. We now can build on that to find new
answers to our energy challenges.
Look at the auto industry, for example, where fuel costs
and carbon emissions dictate that the automobile must be
reinvented. Internal combustion engines will give way to cars
powered by electricity and hydrogen. This change will not only
solve energy problems. It will also spawn new business and a
new economy.
My home State already is moving ahead to change our
economic base to one focused on knowledge and energy
industries. The Governor's Centers of Energy Excellence matches
companies, universities and training facilities so that
research innovations can make it to the market.
Therefore, to augment DOE's expertise and strengthen the
drive for alternative energy, we must make two policy changes:
fully fund the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy, or
ARPA-E, and establish a network of discovery and innovation
institutes.
Last year, Congress established ARPA-E, an independent
agency at DOE, to serve as a critical bridge between
universities that are the incubators of new ideas and
companies. Establishing ARPA-E is truly a milestone, but we
must move quickly to fund it to the recommended level of $300
million. We have already lost too much time in our race to
create a secure and clean energy future.
Discovery and Innovation Institutes, recommended by the
National Academy of Engineering, represent a second way to
address multidisciplinary energy challenges. DIIs bring Federal
agencies, research universities and industry together as
collaborative R&D labs. DIIs will be regional, ensuring that
they will draw on local strengths to work in a system that
seamlessly spans from basic science to commercialization. And
since it takes more than just science and innovation to build a
sustainable energy infrastructure, DIIs can also be equipped to
address socioeconomic and policy issues. This approach can
provide unique training grounds for the next generation of
technologists and leaders.
So the time to act decisively is upon us. Our national
security, the sustained health of the economy, and our
environment depend on our success in this mission.
Thank you.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Forrest, very much.
[The statement of Mr. Forrest follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. I would now like to recognize our next
witness, who is Dr. Daniel Kammen. He is a professor at the
University of California, Berkeley, and the Director of the
Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory. His work focuses
on the analysis of national and international energy policy. He
is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
and he has been working closely with the State of California as
they implement their groundbreaking climate legislation, AB 32.
We welcome you, Dr. Kammen. Whenever you are ready, please
begin.
STATEMENT OF DANIEL KAMMEN, PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF
CALIFORNIA-BERKELEY
Mr. Kammen. Thank you very much. It is an honor to speak.
And I do have some slides if they could be put up.
First of all, it is an honor to appear before this
committee. I can't think of a more vital task, and I am
delighted with the attention and innovative approaches that the
committee has been working on. I would like to start with a few
key findings and then move from there to some of the details of
what has taken place and what has not taken place in crafting
our national energy plan.
The first and perhaps most troubling finding is that the
global rate of decarbonization of the economy, which had been
progressing at about 1 percent per year for the past three
decades, over the last 8 years has now stalled. In fact, we
have seen a flat line in the sense that the global economy has
not been improving in its ability to generate dollars of GNP
and gross world product without producing carbon. This is a
critical issue, and the lead economies must take a role in
reversing this trend if we have any hope of meeting our climate
goals. That is a vital first part of the story.
The second piece is that public money alone will not solve
and will not even begin to solve the climate problem. But,
pardoning the analogy, it is vital that the public sector prime
the pump in this area. There are a number of features, both in
terms of the actual dollars spent and their impact on the
private sector, for which we have a great deal of data, that if
the public sector does not play a major role in this area, the
private sector cannot move ahead in the ways that it needs to
do.
There are powerful examples. We have already heard about
the story in the national health field where a concerted
effort, a planned effort to double the Federal NIH budget over
about a decade resulted in a far larger increase in private
sector investment. In fact, while public sector moneys doubled,
the stability and the path demonstrated resulted in a factor of
11 to 12 increase in the private sector money.
We have not seen any plan comparable to that in the energy
field; and, in fact, a colleague of mine noted that what this
means is that we will likely live long enough to see the error
of our ways.
So a vital issue has been left before us. In the
semiconductor field, where the United States was demonstrably
trailing Japan, coordinated public-private sector effort
resulted in SEMATECH that charted a new course and in fact led
to a whole range of innovations, so powerful in fact that the
public money was effectively no longer needed; and this carried
through at the private-sector effort with a range of
innovations and a vital part of the overall story.
The key message in this is that without a plan, without a
plan that coordinates energy efforts and ties it to our climate
needs, it is impossible for even a set of well-crafted
individual programs to get us where we want to go. No matter
how good a job one does with a particular effort on a subset of
nuclear or solar or biofuel technology, without that vision it
is impossible to carry these things through in times of budget
stress and in crises when money is needed for further areas.
That is the single most critical part of the story, and
that is why it is so critical the bill you proposed and the
versions go forward that lays out a climate plan and ties the
energy investments to it.
We have already heard about how critically small the energy
investment has been as a part of our overall economy; and, in
fact, the energy field is investing at roughly 1/10 the average
rate of reinvestment of revenues back into research of the
economy overall. And as the President has already mentioned, we
have already seen higher levels in biotech and other areas,
where investments at 10 to 15 percent of total revenues have
been put back into some of the areas of biotech. This is the
sort of investment that is possible in the energy area; and, in
fact, this is the sort of investment that is critical in the
energy area to meet the goals ahead of us.
We have a number of key things that we have done relatively
quickly. Right now, we have a relatively poor program to
transfer technologies from our national labs and from some
universities into the public sector. We have had times in the
past where various arrangements like credas have been
successful in bringing these technologies to the market, and we
need to unleash that potential again.
We also have a wide range of international initiatives
where the United States could profitably partner, both in terms
of technology research and development sharing and in outreach
and dissemination. There are important opportunities for the
U.S. in India, the U.S. in China, United States and Europe to
move ahead. And in fact the most compelling message you will
hear when talking to European leaders is how critical it is for
the United States to re-engage and to reap the lion's share of
the benefits in this area.
This is not a selfish endeavor. This is one where we
critically must see those investments.
And I will highlight one item on this final slide. This
shows the composite aggregate growth rates in investment in
clean energy when you look at Europe, North America and Asia.
It is notable not only that we are seeing high rates in other
parts of the world, but in fact the rates have increased in
Europe, and in Asia are far outstripping the current investment
rates in the United States. This is a shame, and this is bad
for our economy.
We see the world's largest wind company in Denmark, a
country of 5 million. The next Google of wind, of solar, of
fuel cells should all be U.S. companies. We actually have the
technology innovation centers, Silicon Valley, Route 128, the
Austin area, areas evolving in the Detroit area are all primed
to do this. But without that strong Federal signal that public
moneys and public investment and universities will focus on
these areas, you send a very mixed message to industry that we
will move ahead in these areas.
So I urge us to use as the basic part of this equation the
need to push dramatically ahead on funding as all of us, I
believe, are advocating for, but also to set the critical
policy environment where a price for pollution will be part of
the equation, where efforts will be targeted at lowest-cost
programs, not at pet programs, and a program where the Federal
Government will take the lead by beginning to do carbon-based,
cost-effectiveness analysis of Federal programs both on the
research side and on the deployment side. And it is vital to
link those two parts of the equation.
While the Vannevar Bush story is an awesomely powerful one
and we cite it for good reason in many situations, the
immediacy of climate change now dictates that we highlight
equally the R&D side and the deployment side. If we don't focus
on both, it will be impossible to achieve our climate goals.
Thank you very much for the chance to address the
committee, and I look forward to the question and answer
period.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Kammen, very much.
[The statement of Dr. Kammen follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. Our final witness is Dr. Jack Fellows. He is
Vice President at the University Corporation for Atmospheric
Research. He worked in the White House Office of Management and
Budget, where he oversaw the budget and policy issues related
to NASA, NSF, Federal-wide R&D programs that helped initiate
the U.S. Global Change Research Program.
We welcome you, sir. Whenever you are ready, please begin.
STATEMENT OF JACK D. FELLOWS, VICE PRESIDENT, UNIVERSITY
CORPORATION FOR ATMOSPHERIC RESEARCH
Mr. Fellows. I would like to thank the committee for this
opportunity to testify today, also; and I commend the committee
for your tireless efforts on this important topic, including,
Chairman Markey, your introduction of the recent iCAP
legislation.
As you said, my name is Jack Fellows. I am the Vice
President of a nonprofit consortium of over 70 universities
that are very interested in this hearing. Every member of the
committee actually has one of my university members either in
your State or in your district.
I will respond to the steering committee questions in just
a minute, but I want to emphasize that my responses are based
on a community document that provides advice to the next
administration and Congress on making our Nation resilient to
severe weather and climate change. It was created by eight
organizations that represent thousands of experts in the
public, private and academic weather and climate enterprise,
and I have submitted that document as a part of my testimony.
Our 50 States are battered by billions of dollars of
weather and climate-related damages and losses each year, and
it isn't clear how these impacts are going to change as the
climate changes. I am talking about floods, tornadoes,
hurricanes, drought, sea level change; and adapting to these
changes will be crucial for economic and social stability and
in particular making water, food and energy supplies reliable
and sustainable into the future.
Our country has made substantial investments to improve
weather and climate tools and information, and we have made
tremendous progress over the last 40 years. We are very
grateful for this support. But due to the complexity of this
problem and years of declining budgets, these community
partners who wrote this document are concerned that our Nation
does not have all the tools we need for an effective energy and
climate strategy. In particular, one that helps local and
regional decisionmakers deal with climate change, one that
supports the implementation of carbon emissions reduction
proposals like iCAP and one that helps actually build a
prosperous, carbon-free economy, including making forecasts for
green industries like wind and solar.
Our ability to provide the right scale and type of
information in these areas is hampered by the lack of key
observations, computing, research and modelling and effective
coordination. Regardless, a lot of local and regional
decisionmakers are moving forward with inadequate information
in the face of substantial climate feedback, uncertainties that
may prove very costly to civilization--for example, how quickly
the polar ice caps are actually melting.
Given the urgency of the situation, the community partners
have actually provided this document to the Obama and McCain
campaigns and also collected nominations for weather and
climate positions in the next administration.
Let me address the questions that the committee gave me.
The first one was, what are the current Earth observing and
climate modelling investments and how do they compare to the
past and with other countries?
There is really no effective inventory of these activities
in the U.S. right now. That is one of the recommendations of
the community document, to create that kind of inventory.
There is something called the Climate Change Science
Program that provides the best estimates that we have. This is
a program that involves 13 Federal agencies and we hope has
about $1.9 billion appropriated in 2009. In my testimony, I
actually provided a funding history of the Climate Change
Science Program, but a brief summary, the funding is roughly
back to where it was in the early 1990s. So whatever gains we
have made over the last couple of decades, we have lost. I am
not familiar with the current funding in other countries right
now, but in the past it has been roughly equivalent to the U.S.
investment.
The other question you ask is what investments are needed
to meet our energy and climate challenges now?
These community partners are making recommendations in the
areas of observation, computing, research modelling, societal
relevance and leadership and management. And in that document
it includes a budget table with specific program and budget
estimates that total $9 billion over the next 5-years, well
within the kind of $7 to $9 billion that the iCAP legislation
is trying to raise for domestic climate adaptation activities
each year.
Third and fourth question I was asked is, what policies are
needed to optimize these investments and what should be the
private, public and academic roles in this effort?
The community partners provide an entire section in our
document on leadership and management recommendations and how
these three sectors ought to work together. Leadership will be
a key ingredient to optimize these investments, and that is why
the community partners are actually collecting nominations for
leadership positions in the next administration.
This section also includes a set of policy and management
approaches that build on proven management tools that were
available in the 1990s, and that includes a climate leader at a
level equivalent to the President's national security and
economic advisors, an effective interagency coordination and
oversight mechanism, an annual integrated weather and climate
program and budget review and evaluation mechanisms to make
sure that we are making progress toward our goal.
That concludes my remarks, and thank you very much for the
opportunity to testify.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Fellows, very much.
[The statement of Mr. Fellows follows:]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
The Chairman. The Chair will now recognize himself for a
round of questions.
Dr. Kammen, do you believe that we have adequate
technologies to begin reducing global warming pollution now
even as we increase our investment in R&D in the years ahead?
Mr. Kammen. I do very strongly believe that we have an
adequate base to begin. We clearly have areas where we need
research, a number of individual technologies on the balance
between investing in efficiency now and some of the low-carbon
technologies in the long run. But as a platform to begin that
process today in the economy that base exists, and yet we need
to bring much, much more of it to market than has been the case
in the past.
The Chairman. Dr. Hockfield, could you respond to the same
question? Do we have adequate technologies today to make a
significant beginning?
Ms. Hockfield. We have adequate technologies to make a
significant beginning. What we feel is that we have important
things we can do in the near term. But in the mid term and the
long term, we have got to invest aggressively to improve those
technologies to make them more economic and more efficient. But
we certainly can begin today, and I think we have to start
today.
The Chairman. Let me ask you this, Dr. Hockfield. What is
the interest level of students at MIT with this issue?
Ms. Hockfield. The interest level is deafening. Just as one
example, our students are wildly enthusiastic about it. We
can't give them enough. We have a student-led energy club that
was established just 3 years ago, and now it is over 700
members. This is largely a graduate student organization, and
it was established by graduate students across all of the
different schools at MIT who recognize that, in their desire to
be energy professionals, they are committed to working in the
field, that their educations that they were receiving in the
department of mechanical engineering or in their MBA program at
the Sloan School of Management was insufficient to make them
well-educated energy professionals. And so they have linked
resources across the entire Institute to educate one another
about all of the things they will need to be powerful advocates
and powerful facilitators of a bright energy future.
The students' interest is absolutely deafening, and one of
my fears is that if we don't fund the kind of research that
will fuel innovation, these very brilliant students will see
that a bright future actually lies elsewhere, even despite
their passion for solving what I believe is the greatest
challenge of our era.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Hockfield.
Let's talk a little bit about the R&D budget in terms of
how it compares to past R&D budgets and just kind of get your
sense across the board of what needs to happen. Does it need to
be increased from a doubling to a tenfold increase in order to
deal with the magnitude of this challenge? Could each of you
give us a sense of what you believe is the most appropriate?
Mr. Forrest. If I can jump in, I would like to go back one
step and talk about climate change and energy and then get--
and, if I may, then go to that other question.
But the issue of do we have enough tools for climate change
and pursue energy at the same time I think is a vital one. It
is not an either/or proposition. We have to take them both on.
We do have the tools. And the best analogy I can give was in
the Second World War. We didn't have a choice to say will we go
after Germany or Japan? It was both. And that is the same
situation we have today.
In terms of the budget, I think the overwhelming opinion of
this panel--I can certainly speak for myself--is that we are
woefully underfunded. So if we talk about a 10 times increase,
yes, but we also have to also build the capacity. So you can't
do it overnight.
We have a very large reservoir of student interest, as
President Hockfield has mentioned; and I think that we just
have to really get on with it right away and start to fund some
of these institutes, ARPA-E, for example, and just start moving
up that chain as rapidly as we can. But certainly I think the
numbers would justify a tenfold increase.
The Chairman. So the NIH budget is approximately $30
billion a year?
Mr. Forrest. Yes.
The Chairman. Research on health problems. Is that the
scale that you think we should be talking about, Dr. Hockfield?
Mr. Forrest. Yes. Certainly the level of intensity of the
problem is every bit as much as what we are tackling with
health; and when we really cut the numbers for the DOE right
down to what is going into science, it is about $1.5 billion.
The Chairman. Dr. Hockfield, do you agree?
Ms. Hockfield. Whether it is $1.5 or $4.5 billion, it is
vastly insufficient. And I think you have drawn the comparison
that I immediately go to as a life scientist, which is a
comparison with the NIH budget. The NIH budget is close to $30
billion, and that is a lot of money. But we have gotten a huge
bang for that buck.
Just think about it. I gave the example of heart disease
and stroke. Look at AIDS. In the beginning of the 1980s, this
was a disease that had no cure. It was a death sentence, and we
projected that every hospital bed in America was going to have
an AIDS patient in it. This was a very tough problem. A new
disease. We didn't understand anything about it. We have turned
it, through investments, into a chronic manageable disease. The
costs to health care savings are 140 times the investment in
research dollars, and that doesn't even begin to account for
the economic benefit of these people being in the workplace.
We can do the same thing around energy, and it will fuel--
you know, Federal investments can fuel an innovation economy
that will be good for everyone.
Now we talk about how much money. You know, I say three
times right now. Let's do that immediately. And whether it is
10 times, you know, over a 10-year period or it gets to the NIH
budget level, I think it has to. These are problems that we can
solve, and we know how to solve them.
And it will have the added benefit of, you know, fueling
the young people of America. Right now, we kind of wring our
hands over our young people's lack of interest in science and
engineering and mathematics. Well, when I was growing up, it
wasn't that I had an abstract interest in these things. I had a
real interest in these things. Because we are going to win the
race to the moon.
And I think we could power up our young people today with
the same kind of enthusiasm for solving these energy and
climate challenges. Not to mention the building of new
industries that would come out of it, as we have demonstrated
so many times in the past. This is America's gain. We should be
able to win it this time.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Hockfield.
My time is going to expire. I apologize to you, Dr. Kammen.
But there has been, unfortunately, a 16 percent reduction
in the NIH budget over the last 4 years as well. So we really
do have to change the whole approach that America is taking not
only to energy but health and other issues, because these are
the real threats to ordinary American families, much greater,
actually, than the likelihood that a terrorist will come to
their hometown. These are the issues that are actually going to
impact their families' futures.
My time has expired. The Chair recognizes the gentleman
from Washington State, Mr. Inslee.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
I would like to ask about how to structure this imminent
exponential increase in R&D that we will imminently obtain
maybe in March next year, I hope. One of the concerns I have is
structuring it so that R&D goes into stovepipes, into favorite
programs, which is a thing I think we want to resist. And I
would just like your comments. Maybe I can start with Dr.
Kammen about that.
Would it be an issue right now, frankly, about whether to
create a revenue stream that would fund just R&D just in coal
sequestration, which I have heartburn about because I don't
think we should limit R&D to any one particular technology. We
should have a broad-based recognition that some of these
technologies will succeed and some of them will fail, and we
should not put our eggs in any one basket. Dr. Kammen, any
comments?
Mr. Kammen. I very much appreciate the chance to address
that, because this is a critical issue. The lessons from the
NIH budget increase were that you did need to ramp it up in a
way that industry and universities could absorb it. Our time
constant in academia is actually about 4 to 5 years for a
doctoral student to come to fruition. And then in the industry
side it is actually often another 4 or 5 years for them to
become technologies in the market. So this tripling is a good
starting point. In our papers, we actually advocate a 5 to 10
percent increase based on the climate challenge.
But this issue of stovepiping is a vital one; and, in fact,
we have had a series of interesting individual program areas in
the Department of Energy, at EPA, et cetera, but we have not
had the kind of cross-technology comparisons that you are
speaking towards. And by far the most effective tool we have
now is to examine technologies in batches. There are things
that are nearer term, where a carbon cost effectiveness can be
performed. But there are also areas which are further off,
higher payoff, high risk, where we are going to need to have
some areas where we look at with longer-term missions.
The most important lesson we have seen from past efforts is
that, for both the near term and for the longer term ones,
stability and a plan is the most important future. The private
sector cannot ramp up in the broad set of areas we need if we
don't see that stability. So the long-term budget increase is
part of the story. And targeting individual ones early on,
especially those already have a large market share, has not
proven to be an effective use of money in the past. And so
targeting money in the coal area is a concern, as it would be
in targeting a number of others.
So I urge the committee to look at this broad portfolio
approach and to use that to evaluate not only individual
technologies but those that have critical synergies. We have
seen efforts where wind and natural gas can work well together,
and so structuring incentives on the deployment side to draw
those technologies into the market is critical as well.
So, again, pushing on the policy and it is research-based
at the same time is the best way to bring these technologies
broadly into the market and to re-energize a number of U.S.
firms to become leaders in these areas.
Mr. Inslee. Dr. Hockfield.
Ms. Hockfield. I want to emphasize this idea of approaching
a portfolio of technologies. We can't choose winners now. We
don't know what they are going to be; and we have to invest
money, you know, in a number of technologies.
One of the problems is this kind of research is done across
a number of Federal agencies. So how can we bring them together
to get appropriate synergies and reduce unnecessary redundancy?
I think it is important to enter into a very rapid
strategic planning energize that pulls in government, industry
and universities to set out a game plan; and I hope that there
will be some kind of Federal counsel around these energy issues
bringing in the relevant agencies, not just DOE but DOD, NIH,
NSF, EPA HUD, you know, around building standards. And I don't
know who might chair this council of secretaries, but perhaps
it could be co-chaired by the President's science advisor and
the Secretary of Energy. But some way of integrating approaches
not just within a single agency but across agencies.
Mr. Inslee. I think that is an important way to think about
it.
One quick question: To get to this plateau where we need to
do this major ramp-up of R&D, it takes some political
throwaway. We have got some great ideas floating around. We
need some political throwaway, frankly, to get Congress and the
executive branch--we need a combination of--a new Vannevar Bush
having these conversations with the next President and Members
of Congress. But we need a lot of people around here.
I just wonder, maybe Dr. Fellows, do you have any thoughts
about how to develop a real consortium, you know, nationally
between academia and the industry? How do we build a real
movement to get this job done, as happened in the health care
industry that really developed a uniform, you know, strategy to
get this job done.
Mr. Fellows. Well, you know, it is happening at various
scales. The rest of my day I am spending up here on the Hill
with the American Geophysical Union on a congressional visit
today to talk about these various issues.
But the document I mentioned in my testimony was written by
these eight organizations that represents thousands of experts
in both the public, private and academic sectors of the weather
and climate community. So it is starting to happen, and we are
writing these documents and providing them to leaders like
yourselves to try to build these coalitions. In our community,
we have about 20 years of multiple agencies working together;
and there is some good history here on how these kind of
integrated programs can be done. But leadership is key, and
getting the right leaders and the right kind of political focus
on here is step one.
Mr. Inslee. Thank you.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
Unlike President Kennedy, who had Jerome Wiesner, became
president of MIT, or President Roosevelt, who had Professor
Bush come in, it is unclear that this President Bush knows the
name of--much less has ever met with--his own science advisors.
So there is a stark difference historically in terms of the
relationship with this subject.
Let me turn now and recognize the gentleman from Missouri,
Mr. Cleaver.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Hockfield, you may have already at least partially
answered this question. But I am wondering what are the most
important emerging technologies of which we should be aware and
what are ways in which we can best support these efforts?
Ms. Hockfield. The incredibly accelerating demand for
energy--it is great now. It will probably double by 2050--
demands that we pursue a portfolio of technologies. The current
technologies that we are using are not going to, you know, go
out of phase tomorrow, and we have to work very hard to
increase their efficiency and their economy while we can
develop the technologies of the future.
We have work going on at MIT across a range of
technologies. We believe that nuclear is going to be an
important piece of the energy equation in the future. We are
very, very excited about the opportunities around solar, wind.
Geothermal, a technology that was about to be put to bed except
for the MIT geothermal report came out about a year and a half
ago and happily rescued that at the last moment.
There are a number of technologies; and, frankly, I believe
there are technologies we don't know about today because we
haven't unleashed that engine of innovation that comes out of
basic research. So I don't think we can make that step yet.
There are enormously exciting things right on the horizon.
There are exciting things in hand that just need further
development. But it would be desperately premature to pick any
one or a small set of them for development. We are going to
need everything we can get our hands on. The current
technologies have to be improved, and then we have to innovate
around the technologies of the future.
Mr. Forrest. If I could jump in on that, if you look at
what is price competitive today with fossil fuel in the
renewable sphere, the most competitive is wind. But the source
of energy which is unlimited out there is solar, and the thing
that is holding us back from solar right now is cost. It is the
cost per watt that you pay, which is--depends on how you do
it--it is between double and triple that of fossil fuel today.
But it is marching down at an extraordinary rate.
So if you look at solar, you look at biomass, you look at
energy storage which will transform the automotive industry,
you have several really strong incumbents that we can move
forward with. It is really just a matter of hitting price
points at this point.
Ms. Hockfield. Can I just add in the thing about storage?
Storage is absolutely critical for all energy technologies.
Solar, the price of photovoltaics may come down. But if we
don't have our hands around storage, that is going to be
problem. And one of the most exciting areas that I see going on
is new battery technologies. And it will be the cars of the
future. Actually, not such distant future. But it is going to
be critical to make solar and wind viable technologies.
Mr. Cleaver. Dr. Kammen.
Mr. Kammen. There are also technology areas that bring in
other areas of expertise. There is no question storage that is
important. There are some interesting efforts going on in this
area. But the basic backbone of this whole system is going to
be our transmission distribution system, and many universities
have allowed this area to lapse so there are in fact no power
electronics professors at a number of leading engineering
universities. That is a huge oversight, and it is a huge
mistake, because our renewable energy resources are not always
coincident with what exists today.
Mr. Cleaver. What can Congress do?
Mr. Kammen. There is a range of things. One is we need
better regulation with what the Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission does. We also need ties into what the National
Academy of Engineering does. Because the advances in power
electronics come in from work in a variety of areas, from
everything from what is going on with our cell phones to power
management issues, need to be applied to make the new grid that
we are going to build in some form anyway as flexible and as
smart as possible so it really becomes the clean energy
superhighway and not yet just another build-out of what we have
as --right now, we have quite an antiquated system. That one
requires an integration with people who think of themselves as
energy researchers and those people who think of themselves as
electrical engineering and controls folks.
Thankfully, this country has a large resource there, few of
which, however, have been applied right now to working on that
new grid. So this is again an area where basic research and the
application deployment are taught.
Texas had a historic recent vote to permit and to fund a $5
billion superhighway for wind power, essentially from west
Texas and eastern New Mexico into the population centers. And
that sends a strong signal. We need to get the basic research
so that the new version of the grid is up to the task.
Mr. Cleaver. So it would help probably if we had an
Environmental Protection Agency.
Mr. Kammen. It would definitely help if we were protecting
the environment and coordinating those efforts in what we do in
terms of land, in terms of Department of Energy, in terms of a
lot of the basic infrastructure. Even building and housing is
going to be tied in, because many of our homes and businesses
can, in fact, be power plants.
Mr. Cleaver. I am going to introduce a bill to create an
EPA because I think this country has long needed an
Environmental Protection Agency, and I think such legislation
should come forth in this Congress.
Dr. Fellows.
Mr. Fellows. Well, I wanted to add a perspective from the
climate community on priorities.
Our current climate models reproduce a history of the
climate quite well, and we can tell you whether a continent is
warmer or wetter. But I recently had the executive director of
the Colorado Public Health and Environment Department come and
visit. And he asked me for the precipitation and temperature
trends long-term in the Denver area. And our models are
operating on a grid cell size of 100 kilometers; at that level
you can't even see the Rocky Mountains, so I can't provide him
those kind of long-term precipitation and temperature trends in
such a small area.
One of our highest priority areas is to drive down that
modeling to a level that local and regional decision makers can
actually get the information they need to have to make plans
about water, food, transportation system, things like that.
Mr. Cleaver. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from California, Mr.
McNerney.
Mr. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Hockfield, I would like to get an idea--you are asking
for a fairly large amount of money--how you see that money
being allocated. One of the reasons I ask is because a concern
I have is, young students that want to go to graduate school
have to spend 5, 6 years after getting a degree, and they are
living at fairly low wages during this period. And even when
they graduate with a Ph.D., they are still facing years of
substandard wages compared to someone who just went for a
bachelor's degree into finance, for example.
One of the experiences I had lately was, a math professor
said there are plenty of math students now, there are more than
you can imagine. And that was the good news. But then he said,
they are all going to finance, which is not bad news, but it is
not what we need in this area.
So could you give me some idea of how you think we could
address that and similar problems?
Ms. Hockfield. I hate that we all sound like a broken
record, research dollars, research dollars, research dollars.
But one of the geniuses of the Vannevar Bush appeal to
President Roosevelt, and it was then articulated in Science:
The Endless Frontier, which set out the blueprint for the
American research enterprise, was that we created these
magnificent research universities that, at their best, really
do integrate research and education together. And frankly, most
of my faculty--not all of them, but most of them--could have
jobs in industry and be making twice, three times, in some
cases ten times what they are making. But they are so motivated
by this marvelous draw of invention-innovation, and being
around young people we really do put research and education
together.
So by investing in research, we are talking about investing
in graduate students, we are talking about investing in
postdocs. The reason that the students in mathematics and in
electrical engineering and computer science are going to Wall
Street when they come out of MIT is because that is where the
jobs are. When they look at their faculty who--Empower
Electronics is a great, I am so happy you brought that up, a
great--we have a couple faculty who are working in it, but
miserably funded.
So a smart young person is looking forward to a life of
what? There isn't a career track that they can proceed because
frankly there has been a roller coaster of energy research over
the last several years. It is funded, it goes away; it is
funded, it goes away. These people want a career where they
can--frankly, they will accept lower salaries.
Mr. McNerney. I heard some very bad news about the
University of California, in particular the math department
there. One of the finest math institutions in the world is
saying that next year they may not be able to accept new
graduate students unless they get additional funding. This is a
terrific tragedy for our country.
Ms. Hockfield. So part of the government's abdication from
the commitment that was set out in the Science: The Endless
Frontier blueprint was a real partnership between the research
university and government; and the government has abdicated
that through these reductions in research funding. And one of
the places where it hurt the most is in funding for mathematics
graduate education. It has become very, very difficult to fund
graduate students at a level that is commensurate with what
late-20-year-olds need simply to live at a reasonable level in
a place like Cambridge or New York City or in the Bay Area.
Mr. McNerney. One thing that might help is specific
academic programs that entice students in energy fields.
Could you address that, Dr. Kammen.
Mr. Kammen. Certainly.
Actually, we had a spate of developing these programs in
the 1970s during the last time we had this ramp-up of energy
funding. My program, the Energy and Resources Group, program at
MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Penn, or a number of the beneficiaries of
that, a number of these died out or withered away because of
this true desert of funding.
We now see students back in droves. When I came to Berkeley
from Princeton in 1998 there were 45 students in the graduate-
level energy class. We capped the class this semester of 320.
And to let you know, I have a huge problem finding qualified
teaching assistants because we have so swamped the potential
spaces.
So there is good news in the pipeline as referred to at MIT
as well; at Michigan and Texas it is all going on. But we
really do need to build out this business side, this
opportunity for them to go into, as a number of people have
mentioned and Congressman Inslee mentioned, the need for a
compact and the bones that could be offered out in the
political dialogue in D.C. And there is no question that one of
the advantages this field is showing right now is dramatically
higher job creation numbers than the same amount of investment
in fossil fuels.
Now, this is a transitory effect; it will not go on
forever. But at the moment we are trying to dramatically
increase the budget. The fact that we see three to five times
more jobs per dollar invested in the clean tech energy area--
and I am including energy efficiency that we have not mentioned
explicitly here, but it is vital to the equation, this job
dividend, green collar jobs, inner city jobs, as well as the
high-end jobs--is a critical benefit that we can capture. And
right now many of those jobs are going to Germany, Norway,
Portugal. So we are losing out. In fact, little Portugal just
set up a clean energy research investment fund larger than the
entire U.S. investment in this area.
Mr. McNerney. I see that my time has expired.
The Chairman. The gentleman's time has expired.
The Chair recognizes the gentleman from New York, Mr. Hall.
Mr. Hall. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And without giving away our ages, I would say Dr. Hockfield
has probably already acknowledged being in the same group that
I am in, which grew up during the Space Race. My father was
head of the design team that built a camera that took the first
live pictures from the moon when Neil Armstrong walked on the
moon. And my brothers and I got used to having a blackboard
over the breakfast table and solving equations that he would
scribble out for us while we were downing our cereal. We
benefited from a generation that pulled us out of the
Depression. The Greatest Generation, the end of the American
century that--the second half of which I lived through, the
generation that won World War II.
It took great determination and vision and hard work and
investment for that generation to win a war and for us to put a
man on the moon. But that wasn't all. Their effort was backed
up by the resources that put into place an incredible
investment at the time in pure research.
I just came back a couple weeks ago from Denver, and one of
the most exciting things that--maybe the most exciting thing
for me was not the political goings-on, although those were for
somebody who had never attended a convention before very
exciting, but I got to go to NREL, the Renewable Energy
Laboratories, to ENCAR, the Atmospheric Research Center, and to
NOAA's research center in Boulder. And in the space of 2 days I
saw the latest plug in hybrids, the latest solar, thin-film
photovoltaics that are 23 percent efficiency, which is the high
point they have achieved so far to my knowledge, and biofuels
that are being created from nonfuel sources like wood chips and
cornstalks and husks, not the corn kernels that are the food
everybody is worried about.
And then the next day, after seeing the good news, I got to
go to NCAR and NOAA and see what would happen to the planet if
we don't do anything. And to anybody who hasn't been there and
seen this, I highly recommend it, because I have already read
the statistics and I am a believer. And I have been working on
renewable energy issues for 30 years, and it was like being hit
over the head with a 2x4 to see the graphic demonstration of
what happens when the growing latitudes for food move into the
alluvial plain of Canada where there is no soil.
And I said to the director of NOAA, I guess we will go from
being a net exporter of food to being a net importer of food.
And his answer was ``Yes, but from where?'' And he pushed the
remote control to revolve that big globe they had up there and
showed that all continents are the same color red, all the
continents will be, if we do nothing, will be pushing the
growing latitudes toward the poles at the same time that we are
projected to have 12 billion people on the face of this Earth.
So we are looking at a situation that cannot be dismissed.
But the good news is that, at the same time, we do have the
technologies and we need to make the right choices.
Mr. Inslee covered some of the ground that I was going to
ask about in terms of making choices and stovepiping, and I am
particularly interested that we not favor some industries, as
we do. I mean, there are costs that are not included in the
kilowatt hour price that are charged for electricity generated
from nuclear and from fossil fuels, whether they be the cost of
wars in unstable areas of the world that have oil or the fact
that the taxpayer has subsidized the insuring of all nuclear
plants since the Price-Anderson Act.
And so I would prefer to see either a level playing field
or some kind of equal subsidies for renewables, but that is
just my opinion.
I am also concerned that I have been buying wind power in
my home at Dover Plains, New York, for several years. The
company that--the wind firm that I am buying it from was just
bought by a Spanish conglomerate, Iberdrola, a good company but
not an American company. So now my dollars are going for the
profit of a foreign-owned corporation.
And when I was in Colorado, I saw one of the largest new
photovoltaic installations there, built and installed by
American workers, but the solar cells were made in China. So if
we go from buying fuel from overseas to buying solar cells from
overseas, we are really out of the frying pan and into the fire
economically. And we are also not putting our brainpower to
work in the way that we should.
That is enough rambling from me, but I just wanted to ask
in terms of funding climate observation, to the degree that we
have a shortage of funds here, we will be looking at trying to
make a choice between preventing climate change or focusing on
mitigation to some extent, and also prioritizing renewables and
noncarbon-based sources of energy versus funding of further
climate investigation and focusing on localities and regions as
opposed to the bigger picture.
So perhaps, Dr. Fellows, maybe you would like to start
answering how you would prioritize those things.
Mr. Fellows. Well, in terms of observations, whether you
are doing mitigation or adaptation, you need observations. For
mitigation, you will be monitoring the carbon levels to see if
you are achieving them. For adaptation, it is more about what
are the processes that we need to understand to adapt to.
So it was--last year, in 2007, the National Research
Council actually produced a study that laid out all the
missions that--observational missions you need to take all the
vital signs of the United States. There are 17 of them. And
even in the document that I provided in my testimony, out of
the $9 billion those that fall in the next 5 years are funded.
So we have a very good road map of what kind of observations we
need for both mitigation and adaptation.
Mr. Hall. Mr. Chairman, if you would allow the other
witnesses to answer the same question, if they wish.
Mr. Forrest. One of the issues that I would like to bring
forward is that we are talking an awful lot about energy
generation. But there is a tremendous amount we can do with
conservation as well. And that also--and we can do that
immediately. Interior lighting takes up 20 percent of
electricity that is in the grid today. And we are still using
an incandescent bulb which is basically a heater that gives off
light as a byproduct.
There are other sources. In the automotive domain, we can
do hugely better.
So these are very quick responses that we can actually
implement within a matter of a few years, and that will really,
I think, change also the growth of carbon in the atmosphere at
a real rate. We should never take our eye off the ball of
conservation. There are a lot of solutions there.
Ms. Hockfield. Can I just add a little bit of reflection
about energy research?
We are talking about funding energy research and ramping it
up very rapidly. I would just add caution that it should not be
too clever. There are a lot of technologies that are almost in
reach. And we very much want to move those along and get them
implemented. But I believe that one of our government's major
responsibilities and one of the important reasons why we have
done so well in so many new industries is that we have invested
in basic research, the kind of research where, when you embark
on it, you don't know what is going to come out of it. There
will be new technologies coming along in the future only if we
invest in basic research today.
So let us--I am very enthusiastic about funding research
that will deliver technologies for tomorrow and 5 years and 10
years from now. We have got to be thinking about what we need
to put in place that we are funding the technologies 50 years
from now. And that has been the brilliance of, frankly, DARPA,
the NIH, in funding early research that nobody could have
predicted exactly where it was going to come out, but has been
so, so important for the Nation's success.
Mr. Kammen. A critical part of the story that we have to
come back to again and again is that even if we get to this ten
times increase in the Federal money, which is certainly the
goal that the papers in my lab have cited, it is going to be
the private sector investment far--many times that that we are
going to need. To do that we need to send a number of signals
that this area is both stable, as we have described, but also
we have opportunities now to help balance this field out.
A number of States have adopted so-called loading orders
benefiting clean energy, energy efficiency and the low carbon
sources before they would authorize new fossil fuel production.
That sends a strong signal.
A number of other utility areas have engaged in a process
of decoupling the revenues from more electricity sales with
their overall profit based on a mechanism that allows a
forecast of sales and the amount you get paid per kilowatt hour
to vary to that target. That encourages conservation, it
encourages low-carbon forms of energy.
So we have a number of mechanisms that aren't going to be
seen as strictly research spending that can dramatically expand
the industry's interest, ability and rewards for going to the
clean area. That is really why at the legislation level we
critically need to tie these at all points, back and forth.
One last point on this is that we have effectively
frittered away the last 20 years or so of knowledge of the
climate change story. The details are still coming in, but the
basic story has been known for some time. And many of these
technologies have been ready together.
We need to pull on the market as well as pushing on the
research side. And many of those market pulls do not require
dramatic amounts of added money. Some do, like a better grid.
But coupling clever policy tools and this much expanded R&D
base really does send the signal that industry needs to make
this a new national priority.
Mr. Hall. Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
The Chairman. Thank you. The gentleman's time has expired.
What I am going to ask now is for each you to give us your
best minute and a half summary of what you want the Congress to
remember about this issue as we move forward in putting
solutions in place. And we will go in reverse order.
We will begin with you, Dr. Fellows.
Mr. Fellows. Thank you, Chairman.
Well, from our perspective, we really see this as
civilization standing at a serious crossroads. We have a lot of
uncertainties that we are facing.
Mr. Hall, I have sat with Sandy McDonald before and looked
at that large globe in NOAA. One of the big concerns we have is
helping local and regional decision makers deal with energy
issues, with water, with food issues to reduce some of the
uncertainties.
Another really scary one is, civilization has been putting
about 6 or 7 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere. There are
thousands of gigatons of carbon frozen in the Arctic. As the
Arctic heats up--and it will heat up quite a bit more than the
rest of the world--how quickly would that be released. If it is
released quickly, it could be the end of civilization.
That is a kind of uncertainty that we don't fully
understand. I am not saying it will happen, but we don't
understand it.
So the kind of research investments that we are talking
about in this community document addresses those type of
issues.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Fellows.
Dr. Kammen.
Mr. Kammen. First, energy is a $1 trillion industry in this
country. We import $700 billion of that. And so what we are
calling for here is a very small down payment, a very small
brain trust to manage that huge industry.
It is exactly in keeping with the amount of effort we would
need in this area. And the fact that we do have such an
important diversity of energy research topics and researchers
ready to go should give every Member of Congress and the Senate
the motivation to stick with the plan to develop these carbon
and energy plans and to bring them forth and to recognize that
poll after poll of Americans says that clean energy and secure
low-carbon power is something that people want. They need the
political leadership and they need the vision that this is
going to be a plan.
We lack that plan, we lack that go-to-the-moon sort of
mentality right now. That is the vital lesson that will bring
all of the science technology base broadly into the market.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Kammen.
Dr. Forrest.
Mr. Forrest. To me, it is really just simply a matter of
priorities. As a Nation, we have great wealth and we can set
our priorities almost at will if we choose to. And I can't
think of a higher priority. Everything is at stake here. Our
national security, we are currently buying our energy from our
least best friends in the world, primarily. It is a question of
a clean environment. What are we leaving for our children? What
are we leaving for generations to come? And finally it is an
issue of economic leadership in our standard of living.
Really it is the issue of the 21st century. If America does
not seize this as a top priority, as perhaps the top priority,
we will lose our position inevitably in the world; and it is
going to happen very quickly. So I don't think that we have
time to lose. I think that, responding just a wee bit to Mr.
Inslee's question of where do we get the political heft to
throw this forward, I think there is a rising chorus of voices.
It may not hit today in full, or even tomorrow, but it has got
to hit within the next year or two, because if we don't set
this as the priority--I can give you one example.
Germany has set this as a national priority to get off of
the foreign oil addiction and so on, and they have invested
through their tax structures and so on in large growth in their
solar industry. It is just one example, but they have set the
priorities, and they are on their way. We need to get on our
way.
The Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Forrest.
And Dr. Hockfield you are cleanup.
Ms. Hockfield. So we have all articulated the deeply linked
challenges of economic insecurity, energy insecurity and global
climate change. What we have been advocating for is a massive
powerful important investment in research universities. These
kinds of investments have a double return. We produce
innovations and innovators. And what we are asking is, please,
help us unleash the power of America's innovation economy to
turn this global energy challenge into a wonderful energy
opportunity.
Thank you so much for holding this hearing.
The Chairman. Well, thank you. It is our honor to have such
a distinguished panel. And this is going to be a very important
panel in terms of the information you have given us as we
formulate the plan for January and February of 2009. We are
clearly at a point where the debate for President is revolving
around this issue.
And as I said in my opening, ``drill, baby, drill'' is not
a long-term strategy for the United States with 3 percent of
the oil reserves. We need to unleash this technological genius.
That is our strength, and that is always what has led to the
United States being the dominant power in the world. And if we
don't tap it, then we will become ever more dependent upon
those who not only are weak in technology but are strong in our
weakness.
And that is something that ultimately, I think, can only be
remedied by unleashing all the young people at universities you
are finding want to solve this problem.
So we thank each of you for being here today.
The hearing is adjourned. Thank you.
[Whereupon, at 11:35 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]