Articles by Joseph Romm

It’s getting closer

Green Car Congress translated a story that appeared in the Japanese press:

Toyota Motor Co. will obtain permission from Japan's Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport by the end of July for the testing of a prototype plug-in Prius on public roads.

Toyota will be the first car maker to obtain permission for a plug-in hybrid test in Japan. After completing the road tests, Toyota will start building a way to market the model by leasing them to public (government and municipal) offices.

According to the report, Toyota is testing a lithium-ion battery pack in the plug-in. Earlier this year, Nikkei Business speculated that Toyota would introduce the plug-in at the Tokyo Motor Show in November.

One of their readers offered a "slightly different" interpretation:

Announces development plans

Plug-ins are on the way! We've said it many times, but then we aren't the world's leading auto maker. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Toyota's revelation Tuesday that it will develop a new "plug-in hybrid" - which uses a wall socket at night to charge and relies on an electric motor to go many miles before sipping any gasoline - could presage a major shift in automotive technology, some industry analysts say.

Detroit's Big Three have each said the technology is being looked at - after years of outright dismissal. But Toyota's announcement was more significant because the company is presumed to have the technology to actually bring such cars to market, they say ...

On Tuesday, the president of Toyota's North American subsidiary, Jim Press, said the company is looking at developing a plug-in vehicle that can "travel greater distances without using its gas engine." The technology would "conserve more oil and slice smog and greenhouse gases to nearly imperceptible levels."

The latter claim assumes, of course, the electricity is greenhouse-gas free, which it will have to be if we are to avoid catastrophic global warming (though even running on current grid electricity, a plug in is much cleaner than a regular car).

Looks like we may have a race for the first practical, consumer plug-in between Toyota and G.M.

Targets can be troublesome things. If they're set for some distant future date, the target setter may not live long enough to see if they've been met. Interestingly, much discussion about tackling climate change anticipates having achieved something by the middle of this century. What's the target? Both the European Union (EU) and, at a national level, the United Kingdom have focused on a CO2 emissions cut of at least 60%, which is intended to reduce average global warming by 2°C. (The June G8 summit also spoke of an emissions cut of 50% globally, but only in the context of exploring such a goal and with no greenhouse gas stabilization target in mind.)

What are the chances of meeting the 2° objective? Not likely, according to Malte Meinshausen of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, who presented the scientific evidence in a report of the 2005 Exeter climate change conference and who's been quoted since, both by UK government economic advisor Sir Nicholas Stern and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. His analysis of 11 climate sensitivity studies of the effect of global CO2 atmospheric concentrations on temperature shows that settling for a 60% cut in atmospheric CO2 (which corresponds to 550 parts per million by volume) leaves a probability between 63 and 99% of missing the 2°C target. Both the UK and EU proposals indicate that their emissions reduction targets might be toughened. Perhaps, like an athlete attempting the high jump, we are warming up at lower heights first. But scant evidence supports that luxury. Not only must we reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, we need a timetable that reduces the risk of positive feedbacks and sink failures that could lead to runaway catastrophic climate change.

In a democracy, it is difficult to convince voters that they should take actions, especially expensive ones, to avoid an as yet largely unseen and unquantifiable danger. How do you base a policy that is likely to have significant economic impacts on model data and forecasts that some might regard as guesswork? We only need to recall the false economy of not spending taxpayers' dollars on building up the New Orleans levees to realize how actions taken today could avert a long-range problem. Delay, combined with the risk that skeptics may accuse the Al Gores of this world of "crying wolf," could make tougher policies harder to adopt later.

In setting a UK target, the government must also ask what the United Kingdom's share of the burden is. Its national target must necessarily relate to reductions in other countries, including the developing world, where industrial growth to alleviate poverty is increasing emissions, as foreshadowed in 1992 by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. We cannot make a random national calculation and throw it into the global pot of targets; rather, we have to determine what the global need is and figure out how to distribute it -- a calculation that must combine science with justice. A successful global climate change framework will have to pay as much attention to the latter as to the former; countries such as China and India will be more inclined to budge if developed countries fully embrace their own responsibilities. Why should anyone sign an agreement that cements their own disadvantage?

The UK government is the first to take on this challenge, with publication of the draft Climate Change Bill in March of this year. Its leadership carries the responsibility to get emissions targets right. The final bill needs to make explicit the formula used to arrive at any target that government sets. That formula should tell us not only the size of the cake but also how we calculate our share of it. The draft bill proposes a figure that cannot be explained in terms of either criterion. If it did, that would surely boost confidence that the result is designed to solve the problem faster than we're creating it. I suspect I have set myself a target of living until I'm 97 to see what transpires.

This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

No, not like that

No, I don't mean that the home of crab cakes and Orioles is suddenly adopting Hollywood-style divorces -- although the state's unusual flag (pictured here) certainly suggest the state likes to be different.

Rather, the state is embracing the same smart electric utility regulations that has enabled California to be a leader in energy efficiency for three decades. As the Washington Post reports today:

In a bid to cut energy use, Maryland yesterday became just the fourth state in the nation to approve a plan that removes the incentive for electric utilities to sell more power in order to make more money.

In a rate case ruling issued yesterday, the Maryland Public Service Commission endorsed an approach known as decoupling, which ensures that utilities do not lose revenue if customers use less electricity.

Kudos to Maryland. "Decoupling" may seem like an arcane subject, but he is in fact one of the single most important climate solutions available -- one that can achieve significant emissions savings while lowering people's energy bills. The story goes on to explain how decoupling works:

Ante up

Colin Challen, a member of Parliament and chair of the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group, has a good editorial in the latest issue of Science (sub. rqd). He makes a key point that is often missed in the debate:

Not only must we reduce anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions, we need a timetable that reduces the risk of positive feedbacks and sink failures that could lead to runaway catastrophic climate change.

We are "playing climate change poker," as Challen says, fighting not just to avoid the consensus prediction for climate change, but the plausible worst-case scenario, which is far worse. That's why even a 60 percent cut in emissions by mid-century may not be enough, and many are pushing for an 80 percent cut.

The entire editorial is reprinted here: