Thursday, September 30, 2010

Chunks

After the election, the Obama administration will roll out energy legislation, if not cohesively, at least in chunks.

That was the take-home, for those of us in the energy-and-climate business, from a recent full-on interview in Rolling Stone.

I could go for some chunks right now.

Of what, though?

Knowing the folks advising him, some of them at least, and knowing the proposed policy as declared before 2008 by Holdren and others, it will be chunks designed to address various carbon stabilization wedges.

Here's Obama, from the interview, providing hints:

"When I talk to [Energy Secretary] Steven Chu, who, by the way, was an unsung hero in the Gulf oil spill — this guy went down and helped design the way to plug that hole with BP engineers — nobody's a bigger champion for the cause of reducing climate change than he is. When I ask him how we are going to solve this problem internationally, what he'll tell you is that we can get about a third of this done through efficiencies and existing technologies, we can get an additional chunk through some sort of pricing in carbon, but ultimately we're going to need some technological breakthroughs. So the investments we're making in research and development around clean energy are also going to be important if we're going to be able to get all the way there."

No comments: