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CEEN 590 Sustainable Energy as a Social and Political Challenge

CEEN 590 Sustainable Energy as a Social and Political Challenge. Today’s agenda. Engineers point to socio-political reasons Why challenge is so formidable (Victor) Carbon lock-in science-policy dilemma Mooney (2).

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CEEN 590 Sustainable Energy as a Social and Political Challenge

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  1. CEEN 590 Sustainable Energy as a Social and Political Challenge

  2. Today’s agenda • Engineers point to socio-political reasons • Why challenge is so formidable (Victor) • Carbon lock-in • science-policy dilemma • Mooney (2)

  3. Gregory C. Unruh, “Understanding carbon lock-in,” Energy Policy 28 (2000) 817-830. • Delucchi, M.A. and Jacobson, M.Z., “Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transportation costs, and policies,” Energy Policy 39 (2011) 1170–119. Read sections 4 and 5 only. • Chris Mooney, “The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011, • Chris Mooney, "Do Scientists Understand the Public?" American Academy of Arts and Sciences, June 2010. • David G. Victor, Global Warming Gridlock, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Chapter 2, “Why global warming is such a hard problem to solve.” (on-line UBC Library

  4. Delucchi, M.A. and Jacobson, M.Z., “Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part II: Reliability, system and transportation costs, and policies,” Energy Policy 39 (2011) 1170–119. Read sections 4 and 5 only. • David G. Victor, Global Warming Gridlock, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Chapter 2, “Why global warming is such a hard problem to solve.” (on-line UBC Library • Gregory C. Unruh, “Understanding carbon lock-in,” Energy Policy 28 (2000) 817-830. • Chris Mooney, “The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science,” Mother Jones, May/June 2011, • Chris Mooney, "Do Scientists Understand the Public?" American Academy of Arts and Sciences, June 2010.

  5. A vision of clean energy system “We suggest producing all new energy with [water, wind, and solar] by 2030 and replacing the pre-existing energy by 2050. Barriers to the plan are primarily social and political, not technological or economic. The energy cost in a WWS world should be similar to that today” Jacobson, M.Z., Delucchi, M.A., Providing all global energy with wind, water, and solar power, Part I: Technologies, energy resources, quantities and areas of infrastructure, and materials. Energy Policy (2010),

  6. Victor’s 3 central political challenges • Very deep cuts to GHG emissions are required • Long residence time of CO2 in atmosphere – given rate of emissions stock is hard to reverse • Costs immediate, benefits uncertain and distant in time • “time inconsistency problem” • Global nature of problem creates spatial inconsistency: local costs, global benefits

  7. Hoberg’s version: Why climate action is so hard politically

  8. Victor’s 3 myths about policy process • Scientist’s myth: scientific research can determine the safe level of global warming • Environmentalist’s myth: global warming is a typical environmental problem • Engineer’s myth: once cheaper new technologies are available, they will be adopted

  9. Path Dependence

  10. Sustainable Energy Policy

  11. Sustainable Energy Policy

  12. Evolution of technical systems • Increasing returns result from • Scale economies • Learning economies • Adaptive expectations • Network economies Sustainable Energy Policy

  13. Techno-institutional complex • Not discrete technological artifacts • Complex system of technologies embedded in a powerful conditioning social context of public and private institutions • Technological systems – technological lock-in • Institutional lock-in • Private organizations • governmental Sustainable Energy Policy

  14. Sustainable Energy Policy

  15. Sustainable Energy Policy

  16. Obama State of Union http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZdEmjtF6HE at 12:00 – 17:00 Sustainable Energy Policy

  17. Trying to overcome lockin • by 2035, 80% of America's electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all - and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen • We need to get behind this innovation. And to help pay for it, I'm asking Congress to eliminate the billions in taxpayer dollars we currently give to oil companies. I don't know if you've noticed, but they're doing just fine on their own. So instead of subsidizing yesterday's energy, let's invest in tomorrow's. Sustainable Energy Policy

  18. Science and Politics

  19. Mooney • Deficit Model: “You just don’t understand” • more information will resolve conflicts and produce appropriate policy response • Members of the public strain their responses to science controversies through their value systems • Social science helps explain how this works

  20. Motivated reasoning (Mooney) • motivated cognition: unconscious tendency to fit processing of information to conclusions that suit some end or goal • biased information search: seeking out (or disproportionally attending to) evidence that is congruent rather than incongruent with the motivating goal • biased assimilation: crediting and discrediting evidence selectively in patterns that promote rather than frustrate the goal • identity-protective cognition: reacting dismissively to information the acceptance of which would experience dissonance or anxiety.  • Daniel Kahan, “What Is Motivated Reasoning and How Does It Work?, Science and Religion Today May 4, 2011.

  21. The politics of science: Classic view: separation Science (facts) Politics (values) Truth

  22. Politics of Science:Recognition of “Trans-science” Jasanoff and Wynne 1998

  23. Politics of ScienceConstructivist View Politics Science

  24. Politics of ScienceConstructivist View (when pressed) Politics Science

  25. Politics and Science • Policy reflects value judgments, but embodies causal assumptions • Causal knowledge frequently very uncertain, undermining power of science • actors adopt the scientific arguments most consistent with their interests • “science” becomes a contested resource for actors in the policy process, by lending credibility to arguments • the body of credible science bounds the range of legitimate arguments, but only loosely

  26. Politics and Science (cont) • Scientific controversies are frequently more about underlying value conflicts • e.g., conservation vs. development

  27. A continuum Regulatory Science: Scientific assumptions adopted for the purpose of policy-making Regulatory Science Politics Science

  28. Regulatory Science Approach • Some causal assumptions are better than others – science helps • Some policies are better reflections of society’s distribution of preferences than others -- democratic institutions help • Avoid: political decisions made by scientists and scientific judgments being made by politicians • Prefer: transparent justification for decisions • Reveals boundary where scientific advice ends and value judgments begins • Promotes accountability

  29. Next week • Formal governance

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