Ivy Pepin | MIT Ener­gy Initiative
March 28, 2018

Daniel Kam­men is a pro­fes­sor of ener­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Berke­ley, with par­al­lel appoint­ments in the Ener­gy and Resources Group (which he chairs), the Gold­man School of Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, and the Depart­ment of Nuclear Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing. Recent­ly, he gave a talk at MIT exam­in­ing the cur­rent state of clean ener­gy inno­va­tion and imple­men­ta­tion, both in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly. Using a com­bi­na­tion of ana­lyt­i­cal and empir­i­cal approach­es, he dis­cussed the strengths and weak­ness­es of clean ener­gy efforts on the house­hold, city, and region­al lev­els. The MIT Ener­gy Ini­tia­tive (MITEI) fol­lowed up with him on these topics.

Q: Your team has built ener­gy tran­si­tion mod­els for sev­er­al coun­tries, includ­ing Chile, Nicaragua, Chi­na, and India. Can you describe how these mod­els work and how they can inform glob­al cli­mate nego­ti­a­tions like the Paris Accords?

A: My team, the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry has worked with three gov­ern­ments to build open-source mod­els of the cur­rent state of their ener­gy sys­tems and pos­si­ble oppor­tu­ni­ties for improve­ment. This mod­el, SWITCH , is an excep­tion­al­ly high-res­o­lu­tion plat­form for exam­in­ing the costs, reli­a­bil­i­ty, and car­bon emis­sions of ener­gy sys­tems as small as Nicaragua’s and as large as China’s. The excit­ing recent devel­op­ments in the cost and per­for­mance improve­ments of solar, wind, ener­gy stor­age, and elec­tric vehi­cles per­mit the plan­ning of dra­mat­i­cal­ly decar­bonized sys­tems that have a wide range of ancil­lary ben­e­fits: increased reli­a­bil­i­ty, improved air qual­i­ty, and mon­e­tiz­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, to name just a few. With the Paris Cli­mate Accords plac­ing 80 per­cent or greater decar­boniza­tion tar­gets on all nations’ agen­das (sad­ly, except for the U.S. fed­er­al gov­ern­ment), the need for an “hon­est bro­ker” for the costs and oper­a­tional issues around pow­er sys­tems is key.

Q: At the end of your talk, you men­tioned a car­bon foot­print cal­cu­la­tor that you helped cre­ate. How much do indi­vid­ual behav­iors mat­ter in address­ing cli­mate change?

A: The car­bon foot­print, or Cool­Cli­mate project, direct­ed by Dr. Chris Jones in my RAEL lab, is a visu­al­iza­tion and behav­ioral eco­nom­ics tool that can be used to high­light the impacts of indi­vid­ual deci­sions at the house­hold, school, and city lev­el. We have used it to sup­port city-city com­pe­ti­tions for “California’s coolest city,” to explore the rel­a­tive impacts of life­time choic­es (buy­ing an elec­tric vehi­cle ver­sus or along with changes of diet), and more.

Q: You touched on the top­ic of the “high ambi­tion coali­tion,” a 2015 Unit­ed Nations Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence goal of keep­ing warm­ing under 1.5 degrees Cel­sius. Can you expand on this move­ment and the car­bon neg­a­tive strate­gies it would require?

A: As we look at paths to a sus­tain­able glob­al ener­gy sys­tem, efforts to lim­it warm­ing to 1.5 degrees Cel­sius will require not only zero­ing out indus­tri­al and agri­cul­tur­al emis­sions, but also remov­ing car­bon from the atmos­phere. This demands increas­ing nat­ur­al car­bon sinks by pre­serv­ing or expand­ing forests, sus­tain­ing ocean sys­tems, and mak­ing agri­cul­ture cli­mate- and water-smart. One path­way, bio­mass ener­gy with car­bon cap­ture and seques­tra­tion, has both sup­port­ers and detrac­tors. It involves grow­ing bio­mass, using it for ener­gy, and then seques­ter­ing the emissions.

This talk was one in a series of MITEI sem­i­nars sup­port­ed by IHS Mark­it.