Dr Michael A Levi is the David M Rubenstein Senior Fellow for energy and the environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). His research interests centre on energy, climate change, nuclear arms control, and international security. Dr Michael Levi will be a speaker at the Singapore Energy Summit.
Q1. IEA's Chief Economist Dr Fatih Birol believes the "door to 2 degrees Celsius may be closing" soon. Is this something you subscribe to, and how can governments balance the twin challenges of climate change with energy security?
Michael Levi: The basic sentiment that some of the most ambitious goals for mitigating climate change are becoming increasingly implausible strikes me as correct. But I don't think it's right to think of this as "the door to 2 degrees" slipping away. The sorts of emissions targets that diplomats tend to talk about, such as halving emissions by mid-century, are only tenuously connected to the 2 degree target in any case. It's more useful to observe that we're increasing the risks of an ever warmer world through our inability to take strong action on climate change. There's no question that that's true.
Balancing climate change and energy security requires a case-by-case approach. Not every policy needs to be a "win-win". But it's important to avoid developments that are potentially catastrophic for one side of the equation or the other. We'll need to end up with different balances in diverse areas such as unconventional oil, coal-fired electricity, and nuclear power.
Q2. Recently, you blogged about why methane doesn't matter, particularly if the world is focused on limiting climate change to the 2 degrees Celsius warming target. Is gas, particularly unconventional gas, the way to go as a bridging fuel?
ML: First a clarification: I don't think that methane doesn't matter. It certainly does. I do believe, however, that methane leakage from natural gas production isn't a first order matter when deciding whether more natural gas is a good or bad thing. The focus of that judgment should be on the economic benefits and climate impacts.
Gas can play an important role as a bridge fuel, but it's essential that the bridge have two sides. Simply replacing coal with gas won't do the trick--the medium- and long-term emissions are too high. If gas can displace coal, and then itself be displaced by zero carbon options, then that will be valuable. Replacing coal with gas also has important benefits for public health.
Q3. What do you imagine the world would be like without nuclear power? Can we truly live without nuclear power, and do you hold with WWF's forecast that the world's energy needs could be met almost through renewables by 2050?
ML: Anyone who says they know what is possible in 2050 is kidding themselves. What we need are options; if we're lucky, some will be able to provide us with low-carbon energy on a massive scale. Could we do without nuclear in 2050? Perhaps. I wouldn't want to bet all of our energy investments on it, though.
Q4. While there has been a lot of innovation and development in the clean energy space, it is still a long way from replacing dependence on traditional fossil fuels. In your opinion, what else needs to be done--by both the public and private sectors--to push this along?
ML: Only the private sector has the scale of resources that will be required to commercialise game-changing energy innovations. But they can't, or at least won't, do it alone. Government has a critical role to play, both in creating markets for low-carbon energy and in supporting innovation directly. Perhaps the trickiest part of this equation is dealing with the so-called "valley of death" between research & development and full commercial deployment. Supporting technologies through this stage requires government support for individual companies, something governments don't have a great track record of doing well.
The alternative, though, is to take a big risk that the private sector won't deliver. Faced with twin risks, I'd like to see governments at least try to play an active and constructive role in this part of the innovation process.
Q5. Even as Asian economies continue to boom, energy consumption is growing apace--particularly for China and India--causing a strain on energy resources. Are there lessons from Europe and/or the US that Southeast Asia can learn from in terms of lowering its carbon emissions through low-cost, even no-cost, energy efficiency and conservation measures?
ML: Simplicity is king. US automobile fuel economy standards have been powerful drivers of greater efficiency, but added complexities have almost invariably led to inadvertent loopholes that undermined their effectiveness. Today, US car makers build thousands of flex-fuel vehicles and sell them in states where no ethanol is available. They do that because a quirk in US fuel economy standards allows them to avoid improving their vehicles' fuel efficiencies as a result.
It's also worth observing that no-cost policies can only get you so far. Even if the US adopted all of the efficiency policies that are in place in Europe, America's emissions would still be too high. Dealing with emissions doesn't have to be prohibitively expensive, but it isn't free, either.