Green Tech

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Department of Energy plans to establish research centers modeled on Bell Laboratories to spark the development of disruptive energy inventions.

Chu delivered the Compton lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Tuesday, where he told academics and local green-tech business people that the world needs technology breakthroughs in energy to hedge against high fossil fuel prices, to improve national security, and to mitigate the effects of climate change.

During his talk, Chu singled out a number of energy technologies that demand more research, including batteries, solar cells that convert sunlight into electricity, bio-energy, and capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground. Buildings equipped with sensors and better building material, for example, could be 80 percent more efficient, and synthetic biology could coax microbes into producing gasoline from plants, Chu said.

Energy secretary Steven Chu delivering the Compton lecture on research at MIT.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

By pursuing these low-carbon technologies, researchers will undoubtedly invent technologies that will lead to different applications, much the way the development of the transistor for communications at AT&T's Bell Labs led to the computer revolution, Chu said.

"There's going to be very exciting science that will come out of this. And just like Bell Labs, where you wanted to deliver some goods in the end, but boy there is going to be a lot of very fundamental stuff you have to develop along the way," he said. "So you can have a Nobel prize and save the world at the same time."

The Energy Department's budget will balloon in the near future, with $37 billion from the federal recovery act coming in the next two years, on top of its existing $26 billion budget. There will be money dedicated to basic research, but Chu said that he intends to promote applied energy research as well with the creation of eight "innovation hubs."

These hubs will be modeled on three existing bio-energy research centers, but expanded to include centers for batteries, building science and other areas, Chu said. His 2010 budget calls for $280 million to create these hubs.

The three centers have adopted a Bell Labs-like structure where people work on different areas and there is meant to be collaboration with industry as well, he said. At Bell Labs in the past, managers were top-notch scientists which helped the lab to make decisions quickly and develop many basic technologies, such as the photovoltaic solar cell and the laser, Chu said.

"A lot of the best research started as mission-oriented, applied research," he said. "Even when they worked on commercial applications, the research led to other inventions."

Basic versus applied research
In response to a question from a student, Chu said that the DOE does not at all intend to shy away from basic science research. President Obama in March called for doubling the amount of spending on basic science over the next 10 years to address the need for new energy technology and spur economic development. The Energy Department has also created DARPA-E, an agency modeled after the defense agency that led to the creation of the Internet.

But the amount of money that the U.S. spends on R&D is tiny in relation to the trillion dollars spent on energy every year, Chu said.

"Energy of the future will certainly have to be more high-tech, so in a high-tech industry what you typically do is invest on the order of 10 percent or more of sales in R&D," he said. "Well, 10 percent of a trillion dollars is $100 billion a year. That's a lot of money and we're really investing a couple billion, so the scale is not proportional to what is needed."

A slide from Steven Chu's speech on research at MIT.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

That influx of money to the Energy Department, for both research grants and loans to companies seeking to bring new technologies to market, has people concerned in industry that the money will not be well spent.

Chu acknowledged that this is a serious challenge for the Energy Department. In an effort to streamline the bureaucracy, he has made some organizational changes including a board established to efficiently vet loan and grant applications.

In addition, Chu said that in the coming weeks he will be sending letters to university teachers and students asking for their help in assessing the merits of research applications.

"This is a huge load on the system and we need the best help we can get," he said. "The quality of reviews has to go up. It's very important we get it right."

Earlier on Tuesday, Chu held a press conference in Boston to announce the award of $25 million to a research center for testing wind turbine blades in Charlestown, Mass.

Economic growth
Chu started his talk reviewing the latest data on the effects of climate change, which is happening as fast as--or even faster than--scientists have predicted.

Polar ice cap coverage is decreasing and the rate of sea level rise has accelerated over the last two decades. In British Columbia, 2006 data showed that 40 percent of pine forests were killed by pine bark beetles, fewer of which are killed by winter frosts because of warming temperatures.

In addition, there is growing awareness of potential tipping points, such as the release of methane from permafrost in the tundra. "We're getting close to where it's a very nervous time," he said.

But Chu is hopeful that the world can move to sustainable energy because of the breakthroughs scientists have achieved in the past. The so-called green revolution allowed people in the middle of the 20th century to get more food from the same amount of land.

He said he is a strong believer that investments in science and technology are also the best way to spur economic growth.

"I'm a big believer in the fact that science and technology will be a cornerstone, if not the cornerstone, for how America will prosper in this century, so what we're investing now is nothing," he said.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--With hearings on an energy and climate bill scheduled to begin next week, "energy czar" Carol Browner on Monday said the Obama administration favors regulating greenhouse gases through "comprehensive legislation" rather than through the Environmental Protection Agency.

Carol Browner, assistant to the president on energy and climate change, speaking at MIT on Monday.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

Browner spoke at a summit at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology hosted by Massachusetts Rep. Edward Markey, who chairs the Energy and Environment subcommittee of the House's Energy and Commerce Committee. The committee two weeks ago released a draft of energy and climate legislation that provides incentives for efficiency and renewable-energy technologies.

Following a Supreme Court decision two years ago, the EPA is moving to determine whether it can regulate greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act. But Browner, who is assistant to President Obama on energy and climate change, said a law that combines energy policy with climate policy is a more effective approach.

"It is the strong preference of the administration that we secure legislation. There are things that can be done that won't quite work within the existing law," she said in response to a question after her speech.

"We need to be looking at all of the issues that make up our energy future, that give us the kind of clean-energy jobs and give us energy security and ultimately reduction in greenhouse gases. We think that is best achieved in legislation," she said.

Proposals in the energy and climate bill, called the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 (PDF), could have a direct impact on green-technology companies.

The bill, sponsored by Markey and California Rep. Henry Waxman, proposes a national mandate for renewable energy at utilities, efficiency standards, and the creation of a cap-and-trade system through which industries can buy and trade carbon emissions permits. Some of these permits would be auctioned off, creating a fund to invest in clean-energy technologies.

In a press conference on Monday during the summit, Markey said the possibility of the EPA regulating industries over greenhouse gas emissions "becomes a real factor in negotiations."

"I think it becomes a real factor because industries across the country will have to gauge for themselves how lucky they feel if they kill legislation, in terms of how the EPA would treat them," Markey said. "There's greater flexibility in the legislative process to deal with the myriad issues that arise."

The ACES bill calls for emissions permits to be auctioned as a way to establish a price for carbon. However, some of those permits would be given away to heavy-polluting industries, such as steel and paper, in the short term to remain competitive internationally, Markey said.

The bill also proposes a system through which proceeds from the auctions will be used for investments in energy research and to provide discounts to consumers, if there is a rise in electricity prices from the regulations.

Markey said the goal is to have the House vote on the bill before its August recess and to have it signed into law by the end of year, before the next round of climate negotiations in Copenhagen.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Congressional hearings will begin next Tuesday on an energy and climate bill that backers say will spur innovation in clean energy technologies and use the marketplace to put a price on carbon dioxide emissions.

One of the bill's sponsors, Massachusetts Democrat Rep. Edward Markey, hosted a forum on clean energy policy and climate change at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday where he announced the planned hearings.

Two influential figures in the Obama administration--Carol Browner, assistant to the president for energy and climate change, and John Holdren, the director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy--also delivered speeches at the event, arguing for a sustained commitment to green technologies for economic and environmental reasons.

On the whole, speakers drew a picture of U.S. energy policy in the midst of profound change, driven by concerns over the economy, national security, and the environment. At the same time, they noted the daunting technical and political barriers to a transition to a low-carbon energy industry.

"The energy challenge we face is actually a more difficult challenge than putting a man on the moon was," said Holdren. "We have to do things that pervade our whole economy, not just of this country but around the world, in order to get it done to the degree that is required."

In his talk, Holdren summarized the latest climate science, saying that climate change is happening faster than predicted in previous scenarios done by the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

He said significant harm from climate change is already happening, such as effects on agriculture from changes in monsoons, more flooding from extreme precipitation, and pest population explosions that are affecting the timber industry in the U.S.

"Tipping points" that lead to rapid climate change, such as rapid ice-sheet disintegration in the poles and the release of gases trapped in permafrost, could "occur sooner rather than later," he said.

John Holdren, the director of the president's Office of Science and Technology Policy, speaking about energy and climate policy at MIT Monday.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

The most important technologies needed to mitigate climate change are efficiency, carbon capture and sequestration, advanced vehicles running on better batteries and fuel cells, and much cheaper solar cells.

He also said that the U.S. should develop approaches to nuclear energy that minimize risk from nuclear wastes. Work on nuclear fusion should also continue as well, he said

The options for policy--many of which have a positive economic impact--include removing barriers to the "low-hanging fruit" of efficiency technologies, such as improving consumer education and removing incentives for less efficient products, he said.

Subsidies for high-emitting energy sources should be removed and there should be continued government funding for research and development, he said. Other effective options to reduce the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere include slowing the rate of deforestation and modifying agriculture practices.

Large-scale geoengineering projects designed to cool the Earth could "conceivably" be done, he said, repeating an assertion he first made last week.

Energy investments
The stimulus package passed earlier this year had $59 billion in direct spending and tax incentives around energy efficient and clean energy, including plans to install 40 million smart electrical meters, loan guarantees for large wind and solar farms, and the installation of new transmission lines to carry renewable energy.

The Obama administration has also boosted spending on research and development, a move that MIT president Susan Hockfield said "represents the best strategy for long-term economic recovery and growth."

Two weeks ago, Markey and Energy and Commerce Committee co-chairman Rep. Henry Waxman presented a draft of the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The proposed legislation seeks to send "a clear signal that the U.S. will be the leader, not the laggard, on clean energy technologies," said Markey.

Speakers at a symposium on clean energy policy at MIT. From left: Cambridge Energy Research Associates Chairman Daniel Yergin, Director of the MIT Energy Initiative Ernest Moniz, Assistant to the President on Energy and Climate Carol Browner, MIT President Susan Hockfield, and Rep. Edward Markey.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET)

He said three members of the Obama administration--Energy Secretary Steven Chu, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood are scheduled to testify at hearings on the bill next week. The goal is to have the House vote on the bill before its August recess, and to have a bill signed into law this year before the next round of international climate negotiations in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Officials from fast-growing countries India and China have told him and other members of Congress that they expect the U.S. to lead on reducing greenhouse gas emissions because the U.S. is a large polluter. The U.S. is responsible for 25 percent of global oil consumption but has only three percent of the population. "We can't preach temperance from the barstool," he said.

Policy challenges
Passage of a bill, however, that includes both energy provisions and climate regulations, is expected to be difficult. Residents of states that rely heavily on inexpensive but polluting coal for electricity have balked at the potential increase in electricity costs from putting a price on carbon emissions.

The bill intends to raise tens of billions of dollars by auctioning off polluting permits which can be traded in a cap-and-trade system. The money will be use to invest in energy technologies. There are also provisions to provide relief to people who see higher energy bills, and there are short-term exemptions for heavy-polluting industries, Markey said.

In her talk, Browner put current climate and energy policy initiatives in the context of previous environmental crises, including acid rain and the hole in the ozone layer.

In previous cases, there were people who said that regulations to address these problems would be too expensive or that the technology wasn't available. But in each instance, industry was able to find technical solutions, she said.

"For many years, we had a debate that somehow we had to choose between a healthy economy and a healthy environment. History has shown that we don't have to chose and the two are intrinsically linked," Browner said.

Battery material made by Gerbrand Ceder and Byoungwoo Kang could lead to quicker charging portable devices.

(Credit: Donna Coveney/MIT)

Engineers at MIT have made a breakthrough that could translate into smaller, lighter, and faster-charging lithium ion batteries, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced Wednesday.

Gerbrand Ceder, the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT; aided by Byoungwoo Kang, a graduate student in materials science and engineering, have made a small battery that can be fully charged or discharged in 10 to 20 seconds.

A detailed explanation on how they did this has been published in the March 12 issue of Nature, but here is a brief recap of what they essentially accomplished.

While lithium ion batteries have high energy densities, they are also known for their inability to gain and discharge energy quickly. That is why it commonly takes hours to recharge the battery on a plug-in electric vehicle.

Electric vehicle proponents have been struggling with this battery issue, some coming up with clever ways around it. Better Place, for example, came up with the idea of drivers saving time by swapping-out discharged car batteries for fully charged ones at electric vehicle stations.

Ceder and Kang experimented with the way lithium ions move in and around lithium iron phosphate, a material commonly used in lithium ion batteries. They worked with it to develop a new surface structure that gets ions to move more quickly from one place to another. They compare their project to building a beltway that goes around a city to avoid traffic, but has tunnels that let you drop in to exactly where you need to be.

"The ability to charge and discharge batteries in a matter of seconds rather than hours may open up new technological applications and induce lifestyle changes," according to Ceder and Kang's paper in Nature.

In addition to being significantly faster, batteries made with their material degraded much less than usual lithium ion batteries after repeated discharges and recharges during testing. Because of that, they believe their batteries could be made with less material making them lighter and smaller.

Because their invention is not a completely new material, but rather a change to the way it's structured, the researchers said in a statement that their material could be implemented into commercial batteries within 2 to 3 years.

Even after a massive jolt from the U.S. government for green technologies, investors are tempering their expectations.

Consulting company KPMG on Tuesday is expected to release results of a survey that reflects the conflicted feelings of many venture capitalists.

The societal forces toward clean energy--including energy security and climate change--continue to gain momentum. But the financial crisis has hit the clean-energy industry so hard that even the recently passed stimulus plan cannot completely reverse its course.

"There is no doubt that the green-tech sector remains an attractive investment area, but the lack of available credit and the difficult economic environment has investors operating in a cautiously optimistic fashion," Brian Hughes, KPMG partner, said in a statement.

KPMG said it expects the level of green-tech venture investment will grow in 2009, one of the few technology sectors that will. But the survey showed that investors and entrepreneurs are far less optimistic than they were last year.

In September, 93 percent of survey respondents said they expected investment to increase. In a similar poll in February, the percentage of people who thought green-tech investment would rise slipped to 53 percent, with 26 percent forecasting a decrease.

Data from the survey also reflects the changing attitudes toward government involvement in energy technology.

Just over 90 percent of respondents expect that federal funding for green tech will increase and 93 percent said that there will be more "public/private partnership activity."

At the MIT Energy Conference on Saturday, some speakers said that government policies need to change significantly for the green-tech industry to scale beyond niche status.

For example, Ford Motor's director of sustainable business strategies said that the automaker is increasingly looking to collaborate on advanced technology development, calling the U.S. government the "biggest venture capitalist out there."

Also at the conference, Lux Research President Matthew Nordan said that there would need to be a "fairly radical rethink" of utility regulations for storage to become widely used, which would allow for more use of wind and solar power.

Investors queried by KPMG said they expected that renewable energy, such as solar and wind, as well as energy storage and efficiency will be the areas to receive the most funding this year.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--The outpouring of technology innovation in green technologies could be stymied without healthier financial markets and significant changes to government policy.

Numerous speakers at the MIT Energy Conference on Saturday said the economy and current regulations are barriers to cleaning the energy industry fast enough to mitigate the effects of climate change.

"We see technology innovation completely unprecedented, certainly in my memory, in the technology sector," said Ernie Moniz, MIT professor and director of MIT's Energy Initiative. "We also heard (today) that to get scale-up in time will take more. It will take policy innovation...and business model innovation."

To stabilize greenhouse gas emissions in the next 20 years, the energy industry needs to start investing now in a range of technologies, including renewable energy, efficiency, and underground storage of carbon dioxide, different speakers said.

The problem, though, is that the energy industry moves slowly and is influenced by political lobbying, Moniz said, creating a "large inertial system" that takes time to change.

Also, the meltdown of the financial markets has made building new renewable-energy projects, such as wind farms or solar plants, very difficult. That has created a situation where the government needs to take a more active role in clean energy, argued Theodore Roosevelt IV during a panel on policy. Roosevelt, the great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, is managing director at Barclays Capital and an outspoken conservationist.

"We now have in financial markets something equivalent to an overloaded electricity grid...We have something close to a blackout" because banks are afraid to lend money to other financial institutions, he said. "If we want to see investments in alternative energy, Uncle Sam is going to have to put some money into these."

As a "good Republican and good investment banker," he is wary of government involvement but he said the current situation demands the federal government take the lead on energy projects with industry and possibly states sharing some of the investment risk.

"Diversification of our energy is a good goal in itself. It's prudent risk management. Climate change...we need to try to rise to that challenge," Roosevelt said.

Room for auto start-ups?
The pace of "decarbonizing" the transportation industry is also threatened by the economy, argued John Casesa, the managing partner at Casesa Shapiro Group and a leading auto industry analyst. The recession has dramatically cut revenues at large automakers, a situation that is likely to slow the pace of technology innovation.

"I think it's unstoppable. There's been a societal change in terms of the demand for clean energy," Casesa said in an interview. "I also think, though, that some of this stuff that might have been quickly accepted is going to face a longer adoption cycle because of the economics."

For example, if the large incumbent automakers were allowed to go into bankruptcy, there would be a "big hole to fill" for smaller companies with new technologies, he said.

Casesa predicted that by 2020, the internal combustion engine will still be the dominant powertrain, with electric cars remaining a small percentage of cars.

Hard questions on policy
On policy, many speakers endorsed the basic idea of putting a price on carbon emissions. The Obama administration has called for a cap-and-trade system where big polluters have to purchase permits to emit carbon dioxide. The idea is that the auction will generate revenue that can be used for clean-energy infrastructure and research. Allowing permits to be bought and sold is a market-based mechanism for settling on a price for carbon emissions, say advocates.

"The president has it right: let's do a price signal," said Wayne Leonard, the CEO of utility Entergy, who argued that the United States should take the lead on climate change in global negotiations.

Leonard said that there should be an increase in government-funded research in technology to store carbon dioxide underground at coal plants, called carbon capture and storage.

He warned, though, that carbon regulations will push up the price of electricity.

U.S. Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), who delivered a keynote talk at the conference, said that creating regulations to restrict carbon dioxide emissions, even if they do increase the price of electricity, is more prudent than inaction.

In an interview with the media after his talk, Inslee said that there are already a number of economic problems being caused by climate change, such as a drop in agricultural production in California because of the drought. Also, in the history of regulation, businesses have complained that the cost of compliance would be too high but, in the end, found technical and business solutions, he said.

"Innovation gives us the possibility that there won't be" an increase in electricity prices from carbon regulations, he said.

Regulations, like those in California that give utilities incentives to be more energy-efficient, could also mitigate increases in the electricity rates, he said. "Even if the per-watt rate went up, your monthly bill may not go up--that's the ultimate issue," Inslee said.

There are legislative efforts under way to pass an energy bill this year that would create a national requirement for renewable energy at utilities. Carbon regulations could also be voted on this year. The exact details on how these policies are structured will make a big difference on how quickly new energy technologies will be adopted, say observers.

"One must say, (we are) only beginning to address the really hard questions on policies," said MIT's Moniz.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Utility company American Electric Power (AEP) plans this year to place equipment in residential areas capable of storing a few hours of electricity, one of the first tests of distributed storage on the power grid.

Ali Nourai, AEP's manager of distributed energy resources, calls the storage program a potential "game changer" for the utility industry. Nourai spoke during a panel on grid energy storage at the MIT Energy Conference here Saturday.

"The key for distributed energy is not because it's cheaper. The key is national security--we don't have a huge storage (device) that can be blown up," Nourai said.

The storage units would be the size of a relatively small "backyard transformer," each wired to provide enough electricity for four to six houses, he said. Together, those storage units could provide back-up power to neighborhoods during outages and potentially for other applications, Nourai said.

"Aggregated, hundreds of these units controlled (by AEP)...effectively do the same as one big storage unit," he said. "It's closer to the load, and it has the potential to (create) competition on price."

AEP is one of the few electric utilities in the U.S. that has already deployed storage on the electricity grid, which is very expensive. The utility, which operates in Midwestern and Southern states, started three years ago with a one megawatt sodium sulfur battery. It now has six megawatts worth of storage in three locations using this technology, Nourai said.

In these cases, AEP can do "peak shaving" in which it draws on the stored electricity during peak times, such as the middle of hot summer day when air conditioning loads are high. Because the stored energy supplies electricity to the grid, the utility doesn't need to pay for electricity at high peak-time rates.

Although this has proved to be a viable application, speakers on the energy storage panel said that the high cost of batteries and other storage technologies makes it difficult for utilities to justify investments in the technology.

Because of the high cost, energy storage devices need to be used for a number of applications to generate sufficient revenue, the speakers said. For example, a large battery could provide back-up power, do peak shaving, and be used to stabilize dips in grid signal frequency.

"At the end of the day, it's going to be cost that drives acceptance of storage on the grid," said Gary Colello, CEO of Premium Power, which makes a zinc bromide fuel cell that provides short-term storage to utilities in the U.S. and Canada.

This is a large megawatt storage device already on AEP's grid. Click on the image to see a photo gallery of power grid storage technologies.

(Credit: AEP)

Another problem is that current utility regulations are structured around utilities making investments in power generation. "Without a fairly radical rethink of utility regulations, to get the mass movement of energy storage beyond a handful of utilities--it's not going to happen," said Matthew Nordan, the president of consulting firm Lux Research.

AEP's Nourai said the regulators need to be educated on the different values that energy storage can provide. Some of those are economic, like providing back-up power, whereas others are societal benefits because they help the environment. For example, storage makes bringing renewable energy sources onto the grid more feasible.

Wind, solar forcing the issue
The growing interest in renewable energy, in fact, is what prompted AEP to explore energy storage in the first place, said Nourai.

"Our business was being threatened by something that everybody loves--renewable power," he said, noting that the amount of solar power from its customers grew from kilowatts to megawatts over the past five years. "We love it, too, but we have no control over it. (Customers with solar) could turn off megawatts of power or not maintain it."

Wind and solar energy are also variable, meaning they can't deliver electricity as reliably as a fossil fuel power plant. Energy storage, through batteries or compressed air storage, is one way to deal with that variability.

To deal with the projected increase of renewable energy, utilities need a "buffer" in the form of storage so that it can control the flow of electricity onto the grid in a managed way, Nourai said.

Although the basic technology for energy storage hasn't changed in decades, interest has peaked substantially in the last few years. Nourai said that five years ago, only engineers went to energy storage conferences; now half of the attendees are venture capitalists and politicians. The energy storage session at the MIT Energy Conference was standing-room only.

For its distributed storage plans, AEP said that just four hours of back-up power could address 90 percent of the outages the utility has to deal with. "When (storage) is closer to the customer, it's more reliable," Nourai said.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--Lars Josefsson is the CEO of an electricity utility and a self-described climate activist.

He leads Vattenfall, a Swedish state-owned utility that has set a goal of making its power generation carbon-neutral by 2050. He delivered the opening keynote address at the MIT Energy Conference here on Saturday.

Lars Josefsson, CEO of Swedish utility Vattenfall, speaks at the MIT Energy Conference.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET News)

Vattenfall, which means waterfall in Swedish, already gets 22 percent of its electricity from renewable sources, largely hydropower and offshore wind in Sweden, and an additional 31 percent from nuclear energy.

In the utility industry, Vattenfall is well know for being the first to test carbon capture and storage technology at a coal-fired power plants outside Berlin, Germany. When European electricity markets were deregulated earlier this decade, Vattenfall acquired power companies in Europe that rely on coal.

Vattenfall has worked with consulting firm McKinsey on an influential study that examines the most cost-effective technologies for reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere.

Through that work, Vattenfall, like others, have determined that pumping carbon dioxide gas underground at coal-fired power plants--so-called clean coal technology--is necessary to stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations at 450 parts per million. The current concentration is approaching 400 parts per million and was under 300 parts per million before industrialization, said MIT president Susan Hockfield in her conference introduction on Saturday.

Sequestering carbon--an expensive and experimental technology that is still not done at commercial scale--is part of of an economywide transformation that will need to happen to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations, Josefsson said. If businesses and policy makers wait 10 years to pursue low-carbon technologies, achieving the 450 parts per million target will not be possible, he said.

"This is not a small correction. It's a total redesign of society and the way it's been. It's a totally new infrastructure and for that, you need time," he said. "We think in 40 years, we can change everything as a power company--it's a question of how and in what order."

The company is on a path to reducing its carbon emissions by 3 percent from 2008 to 2010. It projects that it can cut emissions by 50 percent from 1990 levels by 2030 by investing in offshore wind, ocean power, biomass, new nuclear power, and carbon storage at fossil fuel plants, Josefsson said. Those same technologies will allow it to hit its carbon-neutral target by 2050.

At its site in Germany, Vattenfall has found that the oxyfuel technology being tested can effectively cut carbon dioxide emissions by 100 percent by pumping gases underground through pipelines. But it's not clear that this can ever be done economically, Josefsson said.

He argued that the cost of developing carbon storage technology should be shared by government and industry.

"Companies with shareholders and boards cannot take such a loss to get a gain in 20 years. This is a perfect example of a public-private partnership," Josefsson said. "Things will not happen by themselves in the time required if we don't get that match" between industry and government.

In the U.S., there are no functioning carbon-capture facilities. The Department of Energy pulled funding for a research project in Illinois called FutureGen last year. In the Obama administration's stimulus plan and budget, there is $3.4 billion set aside for research in "low-carbon coal technologies," such as carbon storage at coal power plants.

Abatement strategies
To address climate change, the world's economies need policies that manage the "cost and speed of change" to low-carbon technologies, Josefsson said. He mentioned specifically the need for a carbon cap-and-trade system designed to put a price on emitting carbon dioxide.

The European Union has set a goal of three 20s by 2020: 20 percent more efficiency, 20 percent renewable energy, and 20 percent emissions reduction. The government of Sweden recently proposed increasing the country's renewable energy output to 50 percent of power generation.

Josefsson said the McKinsey study found that the cost of emissions abatement by 2030 is about half of 1 percent of global gross domestic product. That's about as much money as a $10 change in the price of oil, which the global economy has shown it can absorb, he said.

Vattenfall CEO Lars Joseffson shows results from a McKinsey study on how to reduce carbon dioxide concentrations and continue economic growth.

(Credit: Martin LaMonica/CNET News)

"It's not a question of money. It's not a question of technology. It's a question of leadership and policy. That is what is in short supply," he said. He argued that businesses need to take an active role in dealing with climate change, not just policy makers.

During her introduction, MIT's Hockfield said that energy technology has "the most immediate potential by far for catalytic innovation" to help revive the troubled economy.

Asked why energy technology cannot change as fast as information technology, Josefsson said that entrenched investment in energy industry means that things move slowly.

"The energy system is such a big system and the inertia so enormous and the investment in it so enormous that the time to change, even if you had innovation, is also very long. So it's not a quick fix," he said.

Eleanor, a solar-powered vehicle that MIT will compete with in the 2009 World Solar Challenge

(Credit: MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team)

Calling any vehicle Eleanor is a bit cheeky, considering that it evokes the image of brawny Ford Mustangs made famous in the movie "Gone in 60 Seconds." In this case, it may even be ironic, since the car the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team is referring to is solar-powered, rides on three wheels, and tops out at 90 mph.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's latest competitor in the upcoming 10th World Solar Challenge couldn't be more different than its namesake. Its Eleanor is low slung, highly aerodynamic, and covered by 6 square meters of silicon solar cells that generate 1,200 watts of electricity. Onboard the car is a 6kWh lithium ion battery pack that stores enough power to travel from New York to Boston without the sun, or about 250 miles at around 55 mph.

But on a sunny day, the solar car can run nonstop at a cruising speed of 55 mph, and calculations show that it can reach 90 mph.