Cleaning Up the Global Energy System

Nicolas: Hello, my name is Nicolas Wittstock, and I will be your guest host for today’s episode of Talking Policy. Clean energy technologies are potent tools to mitigate threats from climate change, but the creation and increased use of these technologies also remain a very political challenge.

To explore the importance of clean technologies and related public policy, I am joined today by David Hart, a longtime science and technology policy scholar with a specific focus on clean energy. David is currently a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and with us today. Hello, David.

David: Hey, Nic. Great to be here.

Nicolas: Yeah, it’s very great to have you here. So, David, give us a sense, why do we need clean energy and climate technologies? What do we even talk about when we invoke these notions?

David: Well, I thought we ought to talk about why we need energy because it underlines everything here. So we need energy for a lot of reasons.

First of all, we have to fulfill our basic needs as human beings. We need shelter, we need comfort, we need nutrition, and all of these things require energy. It’s so important that the United Nations, for instance, in its sustainable development goals, has identified energy access, access to what they call affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy to be one of their fundamental goals for humanity. But even when we get beyond these basic needs, for instance, we want information, to become creative, to learn things in order to expand our own potential as human beings. That requires energy too, right? All of our information technology requires energy, and I’m sure we’ll talk about artificial intelligence, and the energy that that’s gonna require.

So all that is to say that, while we face a challenge from climate change—because our way of getting energy now contributes to it—we can’t get out of the challenge simply by using less energy. We’re gonna have to use energy for lots of things, and all forms of energy are messy. They’re all “dirty,” you could say, in one way or another. So for instance, our original source of energy as human beings was to burn wood, or biomass more generally, and a billion or so people still do that today, which is bad for their health, and it’s bad for the natural environment, and it’s also incredibly inefficient. So moving people from biomass to forms of fossil fuel, that would be cleaner. And you could say that’s clean energy for that group of people, in a way. So I think we have to think about clean in context. It’s not the same definition for everybody in the world.

Nicolas: Right. Give us a sense of what would fall under this rubric of clean energy more broadly? You’ve said it depends a little bit on where you’re coming from, but it seems that right now, if we’re invoking this notion of clean energy, green energy, climate, technology, what typically is it that people are talking about here?

David: Yeah, so usually when we’re talking about clean energy, especially if we’re in the United States, in Europe, we’re talking about energy that has lower carbon dioxide emissions. So when we burn fossil fuels, it creates carbon dioxide, and that’s a gas that’s not very abundant in the atmosphere. And so by burning a lot of fossil fuels, we’ve added to the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and that in turn creates the greenhouse effect, and that’s making our planet a little bit warmer every year; eventually, with lots of consequences for society.

Nicolas: Yeah. I think it’s important to make it clear here, right, that the way in which we’re talking about clean energy technologies or climate technologies, this is really an important area of technological innovation. I think this is maybe somewhat novel framing of the issue for some people at times. Would you agree with that?

David: For sure. So, energy as a field, certainly it’s been an area of innovation for as long as humans have been around. So we used to have candles, now we have light bulbs, and that’s innovation.

But innovation in energy, especially energy production and energy generation, has moved very, very slowly, and it’s starting to accelerate now, as the needs of, uh, cleaning up our energy system have grown. So I do think innovation is an old story in energy, but it’s one that’s gotten new momentum recently.

Nicolas: Right. And of course, you know, the big reason for that is the need to respond or mitigate certain threats emanating from climate change in one way or another. Or to clean up the effects of the increased need for energy in local environments, whatever that may look like.

But you were also mentioning that there’s an increased need for energy emanating from other industries, right? So this pursuit of new energy technologies, if you will, is not exclusively driven necessarily by climate action.

David: Yeah, that’s right. There has long been a link between economic activity and energy use, and while that connection is getting less tight, it’s still there.

So in order to do the things that we want to do as humans, we’re going to need energy. So I think we need to think about both clean and abundant energy. Both of those are really important and innovation, I think, is the primary way we get to that goal.

Nicolas: Yeah, most sort of immediately, right now in the United States, people have been talking about whether or not the grid has the capacity to really be delivering enough electricity to satisfy the increased demand from data centers and increasing use of AI that’s building an enormous amount of electricity demand, right? So like, this is really related to other emerging technologies that are going to raise the aggregate demand for energy across the board.

You could argue, to a certain extent here, the capacity to which these new industries can deliver economic growth is in part constrained by a cheapness of energy, abundance of energy, as you were putting it.

David: Yeah, I think that that’s right, although, for instance, with artificial intelligence, I think there’s a wide range of estimates as to how much energy it’s actually going to need. We don’t know that for sure, nor do we know exactly how much demand for artificial intelligence there is going to be.

So we’re in the midst of a big hype cycle around that, which may pan out to need a lot of energy, or it may not, but there’s no question that without the availability of low-cost energy, we can’t take advantage of a lot of economic opportunities that would otherwise be available, and that’s true around the world.

A big part of that in the United States and developing countries is the electricity system, because it’s the most promising source of energy that can also be clean. So whereas with fuels, it’s almost inevitable that they are going to  cause pollution, whether local or global, with electricity there’s the potential to produce that energy without that pollution, and it’s also an extremely flexible source of energy. But it requires this huge machine, what we call the power grid, to deliver that, and that is presenting a lot of challenges.

Nicolas: Yeah, that’s a great way of putting it.

I was curious, how did you get personally interested in the technology aspect of energy, of climate change? What’s your personal background here?

David: Sure. So, I have been interested in technology and its impact on society since I was in college. I went through a period of teenage depression and despair when I thought the world was going to end, and I came to the realization that technology might provide an important way out of that.

I’ve learned a lot since then, that technology is not this magic wand that solves all problems, but I still believe it’s a big part of the solution. So I wound up getting a PhD in science and technology policy. My disciplinary background is political science, but I’ve always worked in the policy sphere, and I started working on climate when I was in graduate school. Over the last 20 years, I was pulled into questions related to energy and climate, and have really focused in on innovation, which I think was an underdeveloped theme in that policy area, so it’s been my professional career, first as an academic, and now more recently in the public policy world. I spent a year at the White House working on this under President Obama. And, in the last 10 years, especially in the think tank world where we’re not just doing research, but we’re trying to do research that can really be applied in practice.

So, when I was really diving into the think tank world, in about 2016, President Trump had just been elected for the first time. And there was a big threat to the research development budget of the Department of Energy, which is the biggest source of funding for research in this area. So a number of non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, and think tanks organized to try to protect that budget, and that was quite successful working through the Congress with a bipartisan consensus to make sure that the budget wasn’t cut, and in fact, we were able to expand it. So that led to a project going into the 2020 campaign to lay out the opportunities to grow the budget, not just defend it, but really expand it to meet the challenges of the current era.

And that was about not just spending more, but also spending money in different ways. And in particular, one of the areas I worked on was public-private partnerships, especially to build very large projects, and that led ultimately to the creation by the Congress, under the Biden administration, of an office within the Department of Energy called the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations. So this is a mechanism for public and private funders to put together big pots of money for really big projects, whether they’re new nuclear plants, new kinds of steel plants, and so on. So that was the biggest thing that I’ve contributed to, and I’ve added, you know, in smaller ways especially over the last few years.

Nicolas: That’s amazing. Yeah, I think you’re definitely right that in this field, in the academic sense, but also in the policy field related to these questions, the focus on innovation is definitely still underemphasized. But at the same time, as you were mentioning, on the policy side in the federal government, there’s been quite a lot of movement on this issue, especially over the last four years.

What do you see as the main current obstacles in this space? This is quite a broad question, I realize that. But when we talk about, you know, generating more clean energy, where are the main barriers, currently?

David: It’s a really big question, and it depends a little bit on which of the sectors that we’re talking about. So, carbon emissions come from a variety of different sectors. We usually divide it up into the power sector, so the electricity system; [the] transportation sector, which would include both heavy duty transport like planes and trucks, but also cars; and then the industrial sector, so that’s anything that is made that requires a lot of energy, like steel, cement, chemicals.

So let me talk a little bit about the electricity sector, because that’s, in many countries, the biggest, although it has recently declined relative to the transportation sector in the United States. But there, I think we have two sets of challenges. One you mentioned already, which is unlocking the potential of the grid to provide clean energy to people. One of the biggest, fastest growing sources of energy is solar and wind power. These technologies, as far as their generation potential, have really matured a lot in the last 10 years. So we have really cheap, we have really durable, we have really reliable solar panels. But one of the problems is: those solar panels are most effectively used in places where it’s sunny, and that’s not where we’ve traditionally been generating our electricity in the past. So that means we have to change where the wires go, so they can get from the source to the user. And that has been very difficult in the United States for a lot of reasons. Our electricity system is regulated in a very complicated patchwork, and it’s very hard to build long, big power lines. So that’s been one set of barriers.

The second has to do with the nature of that renewable resource, because the sun only shines part of the time, the wind only blows part of the time, so you need other resources to fill in the gaps. That could be batteries. It could be so-called base load power sources, like nuclear power or fossil fuel generation with pollution controls on it. Those technologies are, by and large, still needing to be developed. And that’s where these large demonstration projects come in, but they are really expensive. They’re difficult to plan, difficult to build, and we’re still sort of in the early stages of those demonstration projects.

So, on the putting mature technologies on the grid, the big challenge is the grid itself: getting it to work better, taking advantage of the full potential. And on the new generation side, these complementary resources, the real challenge is getting those technologies themselves up to speed.

Nicolas: Yeah, let’s maybe explore this point a little bit when it comes to mature technologies. Of course, wind and solar are only part of those technologies that are relatively mature at this point, but I think it’s an interesting question to really drill down in. It’s, I think, often a little bit unclear what people mean when they say things like solar energy is the cheapest form of electricity that can currently be generated. Like, what does that mean exactly? Who pays what, at what point? And if that is so, why are there still problems in scaling that technology? Could you speak a little bit more to, like, in what sense is the transmission and storage of that energy such a big problem here?

David: Yeah, so this is a super challenging question, because of the nature of the grid itself. It’s a really complicated machine. As I said, it can be viewed as one giant machine. So electricity moves at the speed of light, and the biggest challenge in running a power grid is balancing that supply and demand instantaneously, all the time. So if you have resources like solar power systems or wind systems that can vary, you know, moment to moment, day to day, that is a real challenge for balancing the grid. So, when we talk about solar power being the cheapest source, that’s for building the capacity to generate power, but its actual value on the grid depends on all those other moment to moment fluctuations that are happening.

And, obviously, some of this we can predict. We know when the sun is going to go down, and so we can plan for that and build complementary resources for that. But those resources also have to be paid for, and if they’re sitting around idle most of the day, you still have to pay for them. So to figure out the true cost of solar energy, it depends on the system cost as a whole, and so it’s a little bit misleading to say solar is the cheapest. It might be the cheapest, and it probably is the cheapest in a lot of circumstances, but in other circumstances, it doesn’t necessarily provide a lot of value.

Nicolas: Yeah, and for those technologies to really become a more widespread contributor to U.S. energy, you really need to make sure that you can deliver it where it needs to be at any given point, right? That might mean bigger investment in the capacity to deliver electrons, but it might also mean that you need to be able to store electricity for a relatively long period of time.

David: Yeah, that’s right. And I think it’s worth broadening the scope here to think about the whole world, because of course, the U.S. is just a tiny fraction of global emissions.

And when we look forward, in the next 75 years that make up the rest of this century, the vast majority of new emissions are going to come from countries that are relatively poor today. So we have to think about how their electricity systems are going to develop and what their needs are, and they’re somewhat different from ours. But all of them will face this real challenge of balancing the grid, meeting all the needs that everybody puts on the grid at any particular moment, whether it’s industrial users, whether it’s consumers, whether it’s you know, big loads that come on all of a sudden, or small loads that kind of accumulate over the day. So, this electricity challenge is everywhere in the world.

Nicolas: Right. So, to retain the global focus that you just started there’s another area in which I think the language around clean energy often gets a little bit imprecise. What I’m talking about is things like global technology leadership, or something like that, in clean energy. Like, it’s, I think, often argued that the U.S. has basically abrogated leadership when it comes to things like solar, right? A lot of people argue that that’s basically dominated by Chinese manufacturers.

I guess what I’m trying to ask you is, like, what does it mean to be a global leader in these technologies? What would it mean to be a global leader in the second generation of technologies that you were mentioning earlier, right, that aren’t mature yet? Why should this maybe be a priority for U.S. science, technology, and innovation policy, and what are the stakes here?

David: Yeah, so let’s talk about innovation a little bit and what we mean by that term. So a lot of people think of innovation and science as the same, but I don’t think that they are. Science is about discovering how nature works and generating facts and truths from the experimental method. And that can lead to very powerful insights that let us do things differently, in society. But the process of converting those insights, that knowledge, into something useful, that’s the innovation process. And there’s a lot more to it. There’s engineering, there’s fitting the new device or software into its context. So society has to participate in that process. And we, as users of technology, are joining the innovation process in a way all the time, just by using our technology. So when we think about innovation leadership, it can’t just be about generating new facts about the world. It has to actually make a difference. And here, we’re talking about making a difference in reducing emissions.

So in some ways the United States has led the world. If you look at our emissions profile, for instance, we have substituted natural gas for coal in the power system, and that’s made a big difference in our emissions. And that was a process of innovation that the United States did lead. But in a number of other fields, the United States, and other countries, have done pioneering science, but they didn’t really convert that science into innovations that made a difference in society. So the biggest examples here would be solar photovoltaic cells (solar PV), and lithium-ion batteries. A lot of the pioneering work around those technologies was done in the U.S. and in Europe. And those countries did take the initial steps to turn them into innovation. So the early uses of solar photovoltaic cells were on satellites, because you can’t really send a diesel generator into space, so you had to find ways to produce electricity for the satellite, and the PV cell was great. But going from that very niche use to kind of widespread use, that’s where China has really stepped in and mass-produced these technologies in ways I think that many people found surprising. Certainly, if we were to talk about this with energy technology experts 20 years ago, they would never have expected that solar panels could be made at the cost that they’re being made now. And that is, really, thanks to Chinese innovation. So in those areas, I think China has taken leadership.

And I don’t think that any one country should lead in everything. It’s not a matter of energy dominance. I don’t agree with that concept, but I do think the United States has an awful lot to contribute, and it hasn’t fulfilled its potential to contribute to innovations that will transform the rest of the world. So we should do that. And I think there is some competition between the U.S. and China, and other countries as well, that is important for both tackling the climate challenge, but also for the future of our economies and societies.

Nicolas: Absolutely. Could you give us an example of a, you know, not-yet-mature technology, and how the U.S. could lead in that space?

David: Yeah, so an example would be next generation batteries for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are starting to really take off, and this is an area where China has led the world. And as we talked about before, there are multiple reasons for that. Yes, it does help cut carbon pollution from combustion vehicles, but it has also allowed China to reduce its local air pollution, and they’ve also gotten somewhat free from imports of oil and of cars and to join the global car industry. But electric vehicles don’t fulfill all our needs. Now, they can certainly improve, and one of the big ways that they can improve is through better batteries.

So, those of you who have electric cars know that the batteries don’t last as long as a typical gas car would, and they take a lot longer to charge than filling up your gas tank, and they can vary in their quality of their output—like if it’s really cold out, batteries don’t last as long or perform as well.

So there’s a lot of margins to improve batteries. And because this industry is still sort of in its early days, there’s an opportunity to kind of challenge China for leadership in electric vehicles. And we do think it’s going to be a big growth industry of the next 30 or 40 years.

And then on top of that, you have to think about our existing industry. So automobile manufacturing is the biggest manufacturing industry in the United States. Also true, I think, in Germany, Japan, Korea… a number of other important countries. So if China were to come in and just dominate this industry, those domestic industries would be damaged. So we have a lot at stake, and I think this kind of innovation is the way we compete and gain back that market share that we might otherwise lose.

Nicolas: Yeah. And as we mentioned, right, like batteries integrate with some of these other technologies that we’ve been discussing as well, right? And making them essentially more implementable, if you will, at scale… or scalable, maybe that’s a better word.

David: Yeah, absolutely. So batteries can also be used on the power grid. Many of the same kinds of batteries that are used in electric vehicles can be tweaked a little bit and used to balance the power grid. In fact, you could use batteries in electric vehicles for that purpose as well. If you have, you know, thousands or millions of electric vehicles hooked to the grid, they could, if they are developed properly, also help balance the grid, because when they’re sitting in your garage, they could be either pulling power off the grid or sending power to the grid without you needing to even be involved.

Nicolas: Before we turn to the more recent policy developments, could you elaborate a little bit more on what some of the second order benefits would be if the U.S. were to somehow focus more on trying to lead in these new technology areas?

David: Yeah, and I think that’s important because we know that while people are worried about the climate, it isn’t necessarily their biggest concern. They’re concerned about jobs; they’re concerned about their local healthcare. And so I think in order to really make progress on climate in the United States, and in many other countries, it needs to be connected to more immediate concerns.

So challenging in these important areas of economic growth, that also benefit the climate, is a way of building, I hope, a durable political consensus around innovation policy in the U.S. I also think that being present in important global industries gives countries a way to exercise geopolitical influence. You know, we have a bigger presence in countries where we can export technologies and ideas and cultural icons, you know, and some of these vehicles can, for instance, become sort of a shorthand for the United States.

Tesla, for instance, was the pioneer in electric vehicles. Now, maybe this starts to get us towards the current moment, but you know, not so long ago, Tesla was seen as kind of a great American innovation around the world, and combined information technology and electric propulsion in ways that no other car company had done before. And so if you are out of these industries altogether, in addition to whatever money you might make, also prestige and trade are reduced. So those are other reasons for the U.S. to be worried about these growing industries of the future.

Nicolas: Absolutely.

Help us to contextualize some of these recent policy developments that we have been previewing indirectly here and there. The current administration has at least openly declared to be much less interested in some of these technologies that we’ve been discussing, but at the same time, I think the Department of Energy hasn’t been as strongly affected by some of the recent… let’s call ’em “shakeups” of federal agencies.

And it appears that they’re relatively set, at least so far, right? It’s extremely early days. We’re recording this at the end of March, 2025. Who knows, I might be proven wrong tomorrow, but it appears, at least for the moment, that a lot of the work that the Department of Energy has been engaged in over the last few years, at minimum, seems to be ongoing. Curious to hear what your assessment is of the current situation.

David: Yeah, so let me begin with a couple of caveats.

The first one is that the administration hasn’t fully laid out its policy. So I think there’s still a lot still to be determined as to what the administration actually wants. And the second is to say that the president and the executive branch don’t make all the decisions in our system. And as we saw, in the first Trump administration, Congress can have a big influence, and Congress is in the midst of sorting out what it wants. So I don’t think we know the answers. It’s a moment of great uncertainty.

That said, it’s very clear that the president himself—and I think the president will dictate policy in these areas—is hostile to certain kinds of technologies. In particular, he seems to have declared war on electric vehicles and on wind power. And these may relate to his personal views, his personal experiences, it’s a little bit unclear. But that leaves an awful lot of territory still to be determined.

The Energy Secretary, his name is Chris Wright, his background is in the oil and gas industry, especially unconventional natural gas. But he’s very knowledgeable about a number of other technologies, including nuclear power, including geothermal power—so that’s power pulling heat from the earth and using it to drive electricity generation. So there may be important areas where the U.S. has been making progress that it will continue to make progress, whether it’s through Mr. Wright’s interests or because the Congress demands it. So I think we don’t know exactly what the mix will be. I think we know that the mix will change. And there are some areas that are going to fall back for sure.

But it’s also an opportunity to kind of reevaluate what we got right and what we got wrong in the last four years. And hopefully we can save some of those things that we got right while fixing the things that we got wrong.

Nicolas: Yeah, that’s a very diplomatic way to put it.

The momentum for mature clean energies, specifically wind, solar, over the last two, three, four, five years has been very positive, in terms of deployment in the United States. Do you think it’s plausible that that is reversed anytime soon?

David: I don’t think it’ll be reversed. I do think it can slow down, but a lot of it is being driven by cost. And even with some of the incentives that might be withdrawn, the cost can still be very attractive.

The second thing to say about it is that a lot of these investments are made at the state and local level. So it’s those governing structures that matter, not the federal structure.

And I do think, on the progressive side, the climate movement has been more focused on what the U.S. mix is, and less focused on what the global mix is than it should be. So let’s not get too hung up on some year-to-year changes in renewables deployment in the United States, if that’s not really where the ball game is going to be determined.

Nicolas: Yeah. I wanted to zero in on something that you mentioned earlier that I think our listeners would be interested in.

So how come there is a congressional interest in pursuing some of these programs? This is not necessarily, I think, something that is particularly widely appreciated, right? That Congress has actually pushed back against attempts to cut some of these programs in the past and has very actively pursued them.

And, to a large extent, this is a bipartisan effort, which could become important in the future, right, as you say. Even if there might be efforts to pare some of these things back, there could very well remain significant interest within Congress to keep these programs alive or even expand them. Where is this interest coming from?

David: There are a lot of different motives, but let me just focus on two of them.

So one is a genuine policy interest in energy security, and in some cases, in the risks of climate change and how do we mitigate those risks? So there’s kind of a policy interest in developing energy innovation to address those challenges.

And the Russian invasion of Ukraine, by upending the global energy system, I think has really refocused people’s attention on energy security. Although the United States is now a big oil and gas producer, it still imports a lot of energy. It is vulnerable to those international risks. So there’s a genuine interest in managing that risk, and obviously, among many, including many Republicans, addressing climate. So that’s kind of the higher order interest, and it is genuine, and it’s pretty widespread in the Congress, although obviously, not every member.

And then there’s the more material benefits that members of Congress derive from this kind of spending. They actually have employees of the Department of Energy or its contractors in their district. So one of the biggest assets the Department of Energy has are the national laboratories, which Nic, you know well. These are really large installations, for some states they’re a major source of employment and economic activity.

So a place like New Mexico has two of these Department of Energy Labs, the Los Alamos Lab and the Sandia Lab, and so the senators from New Mexico are really worried about those laboratories. And many of these facilities are in states that are represented by Republicans. Tennessee is a great example, [which] has the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. It’s a huge source of jobs, a huge source of economic spinoffs. And while Tennessee is a so-called red state, it has Republican senators, and many representatives in the house as well, those representatives are really interested in continuing this investment.

Nicolas: So maybe you could close on a bit of an outlook of what the kind of science, technology, and innovation policies would be, that have so far not been focused on enough, when it comes to clean energy in the United States specifically?

David: Yeah, so I think there’s a number of different important agenda items. The first is: for mature technologies, innovation is never over. So it’s true that solar is cheap and easy to use, but it can get better, and we have to keep continuing to improve those mature technologies. Whether it’s efficiency standards for home water heaters or home heating systems, we have to keep working on mature technologies, making them better. Now, that’s mostly a private sector role, but the government can push those companies along and it should do that.

We also need to work on the next generation of emerging technologies, and in many cases, that involves more than just funding science. It’s also about creating markets that can grow, and that’s where demonstration projects come in. That’s where these tax incentives, that are oriented at the early adopters, that’s where the next generation is going to grow.

And then we have to keep working on sort of far out ideas that might pay off, whether that’s fusion, whether that’s solar power from space, you know, we have to be taking big bets and continuing to work at the frontier. So I think we need all those things operating in parallel to have a truly effective clean energy and climate policy.

Nicolas: Absolutely. David Hart, thank you so much for being part of Talking Policy.

David: Thanks for having me.