We are all lab partners in a large science fair project, and it doesn't seem to be going well.
That was the gist of a presentation last month by Daniel Schrag, who runs Harvard University's Center for the Environment. Our project, he said, involves suffusing the Earth's atmosphere with increasing amounts of carbon dioxide every year. And, as lab partners, we haven't yet decided whether we're going to keep going or try to limit the CO2 spit out by power plants, cars, and factories, said Schrag, who also shared data that carbon levels in the atmosphere could triple by the end of the century. (Conservative bloggers regularly tar Schrag as an alarmist.)
After his talk, Schrag joined a panel discussion with two clean-energy entrepreneurs and a Wall Street analyst, in which all the panelists concurred that the Bush administration would probably veto efforts to try to put the brakes on our country's C02 joy ride. This could occur despite a Senate bill intended to put caps on greenhouse gas emissions beginning in 2012 and a warn ing last month from the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that coastlines, large populations, and vast numbers of animal species are in danger.
"Major national climate change is going to have to wait for a new president," says Dan Reicher, who served as an assistant energy secretary in the Clinton administration. "And even then, there will be some period of time before legislation is adopted."
Start-ups, venture capitalists, municipalities, corporations, and ordinary citizens are starting to fill the federal government's leadership vacuum. Some steps are small - but I expect them to get more significant given time.
Entrepreneurs and venture capitalists first. Last year, venture capitalists invested $883 million in "clean-tech" companies in the United States, which are working on more sustainable ways to generate electricity, and $1.2 billion globally, according Dow Jones VentureOne and Ernst & Young.
Locally, GreatPoint Energy Inc. in Cambridge has raised more than $130 million to develop a process to convert coal into natural gas. GreatPoint plans to "sequester" or trap the carbon dioxide produced by the process and possibly even resell it to companies that use large quantities of it (often in oil and gas exploration).
General Compression is exploring ways to store wind energy as compressed air, turning it into electricity on demand. "I can get two to three times the price for a kilowatt hour of electricity if I can sell it when customers want it and not when the wind happens to blow," says David Marcus, chief executive of the Cambridge company.
There's also a Cambridge start-up called MakeMeSustainable.com, aimed at helping individuals analyze (and ideally, reduce) their energy consumption.
And venture capitalist Bob Metcalfe says his firm, Polaris Venture Partners, is about to invest in a start-up with a new approach to making solar cells. Metcalfe has already put money into GreenFuel Technologies Corp., a company that hopes to use algae farms to recycle carbon dioxide.
"I'm not coming at this from the Al Gore school of climate change," says Metcalfe, who has been using solar power since the 1980s and recently traded in his 12-cylinder Mercedes for a Mini. "My view is that we need to solve the world's need for cheap and clean energy."
Individuals organizing their neighbors into grass-roots groups also are making progress. In Hull, two wind turbines, erected as the result of partnership between a group called Citizen Advocates for Renewable Energy and the town's utility, produce enough electricity to power about 1,000 homes. Hull is now exploring the possibility of putting up as many as four more turbines in town-controlled waters about a mile into the harbor; that project could become the country's first off-shore wind farm. In Falmouth, Medford, and other communities, citizen groups are trying to erect wind turbines of their own.
Some companies also are showing leadership. When Genzyme Corp. opened its new corporate headquarters in 2004, it became the largest office building to receive a platinum certification from the US Green Building Council, attesting to the tower's energy-efficiency. And last month, Varian Semiconductor Equipment Associates Inc., which sells equipment to microchip makers, got the green light from the Gloucester City Council to put up two wind turbines at its headquarters there. The turbines will cover about 65 percent of Varian's annual electrical needs.
But perhaps the best corporate poster child is Google Inc. With help from Watertown-based battery-maker A123 Systems, Google has been acquiring plug-in hybrid vehicles for its corporate fleet. The cars are Toyota Priuses and Ford Escapes equipped with a second, high-capacity battery. By charging the battery using a wall outlet when the vehicle isn't in use, the souped-up Priuses can get upward of 70 miles per gallon.
And last Tuesday, Google committed to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to hire energy analysts to explore ways it might produce a gigawatt of power using such renewable sources as solar, wind, or geothermal heat.
"We've got to accelerate technological innovation in clean energy, we've got to put smart policies in place at all levels, and we've got to have adequate capital to make the massive changes that are going to be required in our new energy infrastructure," says Reicher, who now serves as director of climate-change initiatives for Google.org, the company's philanthropic operation.
We need more leadership from companies such as Google and Varian, start-ups, venture capitalists, towns, and citizen groups. It's time to set audacious goals and work to hit them.
Scott Kirsner can be reached at kirsner@pobox.com.
