DISCUSSION PAPERS
June 2009
"Biofuels and Certification"
By Henry Lee, Director, Environment and Natural Resources Program and Charan Devereaux
Liquid biofuels can provide a substitute for fossil fuels in the transportation sector. Many countries have mandated the use of biofuels, by creating targets for their use. If not implemented with care, however, actions that increase biofuel production can put upward pressure on food prices, increase greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and exacerbate degradation of land, forest, and water sources. A strong global biofuels industry will not emerge unless these environmental and social concerns are addressed.
July 2009
"Realistic Costs of Carbon Capture"
By Mohammed Al-Juaied, Mohammed Al-Juaied, Former Visiting Scholar, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2008-2009 and Adam Whitmore
There is a growing interest in carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a means of reducing carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. However there are substantial uncertainties about the costs of CCS. Costs for pre-combustion capture with compression (i.e. excluding costs of transport and storage and any revenue from EOR associated with storage) are examined in this discussion paper for First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) plant and for more mature technologies, or Nth-of-a-Kind plant (NOAK).
AP Photo
March 2009
"In-use Vehicle Emissions in China: Beijing Study"
By Hongyan He Oliver, Former Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2004-2009, Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, Mengliang Li, Kongjian Qin, Jianwei Zhang, Huan Li and Kebin He
China's economic boom in the last three decades has spurred increasing demand for transportation services and personal mobility. Consequently, vehicle population has grown rapidly since the early 1990s, especially in megacities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, and Tianjin. As a result, mobile sources have become more conspicuous contributors to urban air pollution in Chinese cities.
Tianjin was our first focus city, and the study there took us about two years to complete. Building upon the experience and partnership generated through the Tianjin study, the research team carried out the Beijing study from fall 2007–fall 2008.
Beijing was chosen to be our second focus city for several reasons: it has the largest local fleet and the highest percentage of the population owning vehicles among all Chinese cities, and it has suffered from severe air pollution, partially due to the ever-growing population of on-road vehicles.
AP Photo
March 2009
"Proposed Roadmap for Overcoming Legal and Financial Obstacles to Carbon Capture and Storage"
By Wendy B. Jacobs, Leah Cohen, Leah Kostakidis-Lianos and Sara Rundell
Many existing proposals either lack sufficient concreteness to make carbon capture and geological sequestration (CCGS) operational or fail to focus on a comprehensive, long term framework for its regulation, thus failing to account adequately for the urgency of the issue, the need to develop immediate experience with large scale demonstration projects, or the financial and other incentives required to launch early demonstration projects. We aim to help fill this void by proposing a roadmap to commercial deployment of CCGS in the United States.
May 2009
"Learning under Fire: The US Military, Dissent and Organizational Learning Post-9/11"
By Philipp Rotmann, David Tohn and Jaron Wharton
"After September 11th, the U.S. went to war with exactly the military it wanted; it planned to fight the war based on that military's strengths. The U.S. military that crossed the Kuwait-Iraq border in March of 2003 was the product of the past three decades of evolution, validated and accelerated by the unprecedented success of Operation Desert Storm. It was a military optimized to bring to bear all of the strengths of high-tech, advanced maneuver warfare that the American military establishment had mastered without equal. The equipment was state of the art and beyond, the training was the most-advanced in the world, the doctrine was the most mature and integrated it has ever been, and the Soldiers, Airmen, Marines, and Sailors the most capable in the U.S.'s history. Less than two years after the rapid overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the march to Baghdad was the fastest and farthest any military had ever conquered in the history of military operations."
May 2009
"Technology and International Climate Policy"
By Leon Clarke, Kate Calvin, James A. Edmonds, Page Kyle and Marshall Wise
This paper explores the interactions of international policy architecture and technology availability on the limitation of atmospheric CO2 concentrations to 500 ppm in the year 2095. We find that technology is even more important to reducing the costs of emissions mitigation when international policy structures deviate from immediate and full participation. We also find that the international diffusion of climate technology may be as or more important to domestic mitigation cost containment as domestic technology diffusion. We observe that near-term carbon prices reflect in a very direct way expectations about technology a half century and more into the future. We find that the policy architecture has a relatively modest effect on global emissions limitation pathways when compared with the impact of technology availability and observe that more rapid technology improvements reduce the relative influence of the policy architecture. Finally, we consider the implications combining CO2 capture and storage technology with bioenergy production, namely electricity production with negative carbon emissions.
April 2009
"Global Environment and Trade Policy"
By Jeffrey Frankel, James W. Harpel Professor of Capital Formation and Growth
Global environmental goals and trade goals can be reconciled. Globalization and multilateral institutions can facilitate environmental protection rather than obstruct it, if they are harnessed in the right way. Perhaps most urgent is that negotiators working on a sequel to the Kyoto Protocol agree on guidelines to govern precisely how individual countries can and cannot use trade measures in pursuit of carbon mitigation.
March 2009
Acting Against Atrocities: A Strategy for Supporters of the Responsibility to Protect
By Claire Applegarth and Andrew Block
The advent of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP) signals the international community’s commitment to ending genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, and serves as a declaration that state sovereignty will no longer be a shield behind which perpetrators of mass atrocities can hide. Despite achieving consensus for RtoP’s vision among UN member states in 2005, efforts to move RtoP from words to action have stalled.
March 2009
Afghanistan: Changing the Frame, Changing the Game
By Yll Bajraktari and Peter Roady
At a crucial moment, this paper analyzes the challenges the international community faces in Afghanistan and finds that five problems have crippled the effort from the beginning – ambiguous objectives, poor coordination, a mismatch of goals and resources, unrealistic expectations about centralized institutions, and inattention to regional dynamics. The authors offer practical, actionable recommendations that will help the international community achieve a positive outcome in Afghanistan and the region.
March 2009
"China's Fuel Economy Standards for Passenger Vehicles: Rationale, Policy Process, and Impacts"
By Hongyan He Oliver, Former Research Fellow, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, 2004-2009, Kelly Sims Gallagher, Senior Associate, Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group, Donglian Tian and Jinhua Zhang
This paper describes the Chinese experience in adopting fuel economy standards for vehicles. The lessons from China that are described in this paper can be highly relevant for countries that are experiencing or anticipating rapid growth in personal vehicles, those wishing to moderate an increase in oil demand, or those desirous of vehicle technology upgrades.
