Publications

The Solyndra uproar and the International Trade Commission Dec. 2 decision to investigate Chinese solar panel manufacturers for dumping their products below cost in the United States threatens to distract us from what we need most: a proactive, long-term clean and sustainable energy strategy.

If you look beyond the partisan politics that have recently engulfed the solar industry, two irrefutable facts stand out:

New RAEL analysis of UC Berkeley's carbon footprint: 97% of emissions are indirect

RAEL, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Office of Sustainabilty, has developed a new hybrid life cycle model to estimate of the carbon footprint of UC Berkeley. Total emissions are 424,000 metric tons for the year 2008.

Direct emissions (Scope 1) are only 3% of the University's total carbon footprint. Indirect emissions from purchased energy (Scope 2) account for 37% of the total, with 60% from other indirect sources (Scope 3). The official UC Berkeley greenhouse gas inventory includes roughly 50% of the total carbon footprint.

Gigaton Throwdown Initiative
The Gigaton Throwdown Initiative was launched to educate and inspire investors, entrepreneurs, business leaders, and policy makers to “think big” and understand what it would take to scale up clean energy massively over the next 10 years. A unique group from the business community — investors, entrepreneurs, and executives — teamed up with leading academics for the throwdown. Th e team investigated what it would take to reach gigaton scale for 9 technologies currently attractive to investors.

To attain gigaton scale, a single technology must reduce annual emissions of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases (CO2e) by at least 1 billion metric tons — a gigaton — by 2020. For an electricity generation technology, this is equivalent to an installed capacity of 205 gigawatts (GW) of carbon-free energy (at 100% capacity) in 2020.

In 2007, more than $100 billion was invested in new renewable energy capacity, manufacturing plants, and research and development—a true global milestone. Yet perceptions lag behind the reality of renewable energy because change has been so rapid in recent years. This report captures that reality and provides an overview of the status of renewable energy worldwide in 2007. The report covers trends in markets, investments, industries, policies, and rural (off-grid) renewable energy. Many of the trends reflect increasing significance relative to conventional energy.

Renewable electricity generation capacity reached an estimated 240 gigawatts (GW) worldwide in 2007, an increase of 50 percent over 2004. Renewables represent 5 percent of global power capacity and 3.4 percent of global power generation.

Renewable energy generated as much electric power worldwide in 2006 as one-quarter of the world’s nuclear power plants, not counting large hydropower.

The largest component of renewables generation capacity is wind power, which grew by 28 percent worldwide in 2007 to reach an estimated 95 GW. Annual capacity additions increased even more: 40 percent higher in 2007 compared to 2006.

The fastest growing energy technology in the world is grid-connected solar photovoltaics (PV), with 50 percent annual increases in cumulative installed capacity in both 2006 and 2007, to an estimated 7.7 GW. This translates into 1.5 million homes with rooftop solar PV feeding into the grid worldwide.

Investment in energy research and development in the U.S. is declining despite calls for an enhancement of the nation's capacity for innovation to address environmental, geopolitical, and macroeconomic concerns. We examine investments in research and development in the energy sector, and observe broad-based declines in funding since the mid-1990s. The large reductions in investment by the private sector should be a particular area of concern for policy makers. Multiple measures of patenting activity reveal widespread declines in innovative activity that are correlated with research and development (R&D) investment—notably in the environmentally significant wind and solar areas. Trends in venture capital investment and fuel cell innovation are two promising cases that run counter to the overall trends in the sector. We draw on prior work on the optimal level of energy R&D to identify a range of values which would be adequate to address energy-related concerns. Comparing simple scenarios based on this range to past public R&D programs and industry investment data indicates that a five to ten-fold increase in energy R&D investment is both warranted and feasible.