The following are notes from Session I at the Climate Change conference.

Solving Global Warming: It Can Be Done, Daniel Lashof (National Resources Defense Council)

If we act now, we only need to reduce 3.2% / year.

Limit global warming to about 2 degrees above current — the limit of what is sustainable.

A delay of 10-15 years requires emissions to be reduced *much* more rapidly (8.2% year) which would be disruptive, if not even impossible.

Need to cut US Emissions 60% in 50 years.

Six major components to solving the problem.

1. Cornerstone of any solution: energy efficiency. We can reduce energy consumption by 40% which will reduce 540M tons of CO2.It can be done: California has achieved this. Their energy usage / capita is about 40% lower than national average.
2. Cut “stationary fuel demand” (heating fuel) by 40%.
3. Raise passenger vehicle fleet efficiency to 54 mpg by 2056. Cuts 270 M tons.
4. Double heavy truck fleet efficiency to 13 mpg by 2056; improve aircraft efficiency 30%; cut travel 10% by smart growth. Cuts 230M tons.
5. Use clean energy for 30% of electric demand and biofuels for 40% of transport demand. Cuts 390 M tons. Plug-in hybrids allow you to decarbonize fuels.
6. Capture C02 from coal plants. Cuts 320M tons.

Efficiency will provide the majority of the emissions offsets in the short term.

Efficiency will play a cornerstone role.

National bills pending in the Senate: Kerry-Snowe, Sanders-Boxer, McCain-Lieberman all get into reasonable ranges.

Cities are the Answer, Doug Foy (DIF Enterprises)

New York: Reduce carbon footprint by 30% by 2030 while still adding 1M people. They will add parks so that all residents are within 10 minute walk of a park

The Kendall Foundation and Cambridge is launching a $100M investment program on energy efficiency. Focusing on the city as an aggregator. The Cambridge Energy Alliance will be announced soon.

Even if we build every new building LEED platinum certified, we wouldn’t solve the problem we have to address the buildings we have.

Pursuading corporations and financial players to be climate leaders, Mindy Lubber (CERES)

Efficiency is the most cost effective way of solving the climate change problem.

TXU: Proposed to build 11 coal fired power plants. Example of a company that failed to pay attention to the risks of its business. Wall Street caught up to it. Elevated awareness on Wall Street. Major financial firms starting to consider “carbon risk exposure” as part of
their analysis of companies.

Bank of America is going to lend $20B to all sorts of energy efficiency programs. Also set goals of reducing carbon emissions by 9% by 2009. They see opportunity here and it is part of their long term business strategy.

The “clean tech” investment space has been growing rapidly.

Carbon Down, Profits Up: Business Leadership on Climate Change, Allison Hannon (The Climate Group)

DuPont has reduced their CO2 emissions 60% over 1990 levels and saved $4B

97% of companies use energy efficiency as the primary way of addressing this since it goes directly to their bottom line.

Alcoa has saved $20M through energy efficiency

Pfizer saved $30M annually and reduced their emissions by 201,000 tons through energy efficiency.

British Sky Broadcasting provides a carbon calculator to every subscriber built in to their set top boxes. Will eventually also provide energy usage meters in the set top box so consumers can measure energy usage of various appliances.

Starbucks is working with their renewable energy supplier to provide Starbuck’s 800 top suppliers discounts on renewable energy.

Why?

• Energy efficiency allows you to save money.
• Attracting new, climate conscious, consumers.
• Public relations
• Risk management

Q&A Session

• Are there green porfolios that people can invest in?There are not many right now, but in the next year or two more will be emerging. There are some retail products for socially responsible investing. KLV has a Global Climate Index. The WilderHill Clean Energy Index. There will be more and more products available as we move forward.
• What is the future of PV?The market for PVs is continuing to expand, but most of the markets remain in offgrid applications. PVs currently remain quite a but more expensive than other options like wind and biomass. Places like Florida and the Southwest U.S. may also have strong PV. Whereas wind is ready now.
• What about the issue of food?The average peach travels 3,000 miles. We’ve gotten spoiled into thinking that you can eat a strawberry any time of the year. While that is true, you pay a very high carbon price for it. Foods grown and eaten close to home are an important part of the solution.
• What about the issue of land use change (deforestation, etc.)?The best thing we can do for open space protection is to have cities succeed because it pulls the pressure off the landscape. The average home in Massachusetts is built on 1.1 acres. Cities are much more efficient from a land use perspective. The real solution is to grow our communities much more sensibly.
• What can States do?We can make our urban schools better. The failure of our urban schools is the great civil rights challenge of our age. One of the reasons we move to suburbs is because of their schools.

  We completely abandoned the rail system. China is growing 1 “Manhattan” / year, but is building out the rail system to support this.Government investment in capital expenditures is a critical part of the solutions.

  We built a transportation system that causes this problem. Developers think that they can buy cheap land in remote locations and then get the states to build roads there. One of the only solutions is for the states to stop building roads to these places.

  Go back to your towns and get them to change their zoning rules to rebuild town centers again.

• Should we be making energy more expensive to affect peoples behavior?We should all recognize the choices we are making.

  The average car winds up being the equivalent of a $100,000 mortgage (between the car payments, gas, maintenance, etc). We should charge for insurance by the mile.If you factor in transportation costs, it may actually be cheaper to live in Manhattan than Phoenix.

  If we put caps on emissions, then you start to put cost into the equation.

• Why weren’t businesses doing this before if it always cost effective?In some cases (like in Germany), companies have responded to regulations.In terms of the climate change consumer, companies were not aware that there was this market that they could tap.There is a lot of new pressure coming from shareholders, suppliers, and consumers.

  There were certainly companies that recognized a long time ago that
  they could save money through energy efficiency.

  The threat of regulations is a key piece as well. The threat of regulations is a huge motivator. For example if you look at TXU, their business model would have been very profitable if you do not believe that we will regulate emissions. On the other hand, if you think we will be regulating emissions, their strategy was a bad idea.
  For example, Boxer and Bingham came out and told companies that they should not expect to be grandfathered for their existing emissions. This radically effects the planning of things like TXU.