ScienceInsider

by Eli Kintisch

The $150 million Clean Energy Research Center that the two superpowers agreed to fund this week represents no less than a revolution in the way the two countries think about joint research. There's plenty of warranted skepticism about whether the two countries, which together emit 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, will ever agree to actual cuts. But on energy research, Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao are entering new territory—and in some important ways, as it ramps up its energy research enterprise, China could lead the way.

The center, a virtual collaboration in which each country manages its own projects, is supposed to receive $15 million a year for 5 years from each country. By comparison, the U.S. Department of Energy now spends roughly $5.5 million on joint energy research with China. (The National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, for instance, spends only $500,000 per year on joint research with China.)

American scientists have shared their scientific and technological expertise with China for decades, but until now Chinese scientists have contributed only in-kind donations, mostly salaries, to joint energy studies. Now they'll be equal financial partners in the venture.

"That's intriguing," said NREL's David Kline. "Extremely significant" was how Mark Levine of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California put it. DOE's David Sandalow said the new partnership "reflects the strong Chinese interest in energy."

Paul Alivisatos has been named director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California.

Experts told a congressional panel today that the United States is losing its lead in spaceflight.

The Senate Energy Committee will explore the economics of the climate bill next Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the Navy prepares for global warming by envisioning an ice-free Arctic.

Did a classification error doom a fish called a slapper skate to near extinction?

Students at the University of California, Los Angeles protested ahead of a vote in which the Regents approved fee hikes.

Americans polled say they believe a cure for cancer will be found and aliens discovered before peace in the Middle East is reached.

by Eli Kintisch

Activists in polar bear suits or protesters standing outside of coal plants might get the public message on climate change across, but might there be more personal choices that activists can make to convey their point? Say, instead of protesting the use of coal power, why not refuse to use it?

The newest wrinkle in the grassroots climate change movement is out of Boston, where students in a group calling itself the Leadership Campaign have pledged to regularly hold "sleepouts" in tents instead of sleeping inside dorms whose electricity comes from coal plants. Last night, students and NASA scientist James Hansen were among several dozen roused from tents they had illegally pitched on the Boston Common, the park which sits in the center of the city. The Campaign explains its action:

Beginning October 25, students, religious leaders and community members from across the Commonwealth will refuse to sleep in their homes and dorms powered by dirty energy until the state adopts a policy to Repower Massachusetts with 100% Clean Electricity in the next 10 years, transforming our economy and eliminating dirty fossil fuels.

by Richard Kerr and Jeff Mervis

It was certainly striking in the telling. But the truth is another story.

Speaking to business leaders at a White House event last week on clean energy and the economy, Secretary of Energy Steven Chu was asked what he’s doing to improve energy efficiency at Department of Energy laboratories. Chu launched into a story of gross energy negligence at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), which he headed before coming to Washington, D.C.

Less than 2 years ago, Princeton agriculture expert Tim Searchinger published a paper in Science that sought to quantify how growing biofuels on cropland in the United States could lead to deforestation abroad. He estimated in some cases that indirect emissions could lead to a doubling of emissions associated with corn ethanol. Previously, researchers thought using the fuel could cut emissions by 30% since it would replace gasoline. Rarely do scientists have as immediate an impact on government policy. Since Searchinger’s paper was published, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, spurred by Congress, has been mulling whether to take so-called indirect land use into account when calculating the carbon footprint of biofuels for new regulations it is crafting, expected by December. Critics say Searchinger’s calculations were faulty and that uncertainties made it impossible to gauge their effects.

Right now, indirect land use related to biofuels isn’t included in proposed climate change legislation in the U.S. Senate, as well as proposed agreements that will be on the table in Copenhagen. In a recent policy piece published in Science, Searchinger and colleagues wrote that such a policy "erroneously treats all bioenergy as carbon neutral,” calling it a major "accounting error."

To discuss these issues, Insider conducted an e-mail conversation with Searchinger and John Sheehan, an expert on biofuels at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.

by Eli Kintisch

Dan Reicher, former assistant U.S. secretary of energy and now director of climate change and energy initiatives at Google, testified yesterday as part of the Senate climate hearings and mentioned an innovative tool Google recently announced: Google PowerMeter. It's an effort by Google to allow individuals to see constant energy-efficiency stats. "The power of that kind of information in helping you make efficiency choices is incredible," Reicher told ScienceInsider.

PowerMeter hopes to capitalize on the so-called Prius effect. The top-selling hybrid car, researchers have learned, saves energy not only because it switches efficiently between gasoline and electric power but also because of its conspicuous control screen, allowing drivers to see their real-time gasoline efficiency. According to a review by the U.K.'s DEFRA environmental agency of smart metering in people's homes, the Prius effect deployed at home could save up to 15% on energy bills.

Presenting data from a smart meter, Google PowerMeter sits on your Google homepage or handheld device and provides monthly, weekly, and hourly updates as to energy efficiency. "Give people feedback and it becomes a game," says Google's Ed Lu, an applied physicist who runs the program.

(Photo Credit: Google)

By Eli Kintisch

On Monday, the Department of Energy announced $151 million in grants for ARPA-E, its pie-in-the-sky, high-risk energy research program. Thirty-seven grantees got funded, and Energy Secretary Steve Chu said that the program would serve as a "bold, transformational" step and would "spur the next Industrial Revolution" of energy research. Three things about ARPA-E we've learned, and three questions that remain:

Energy Secretary Steve Chu is serious about shaping ARPA-E in the Bell Labs model. It's pretty rare that federal research managers will say publicly that they expect some of the work they are funding to fail. Usually, they support basic research that has value because it adds to the scientific literature, or they support commercial work that generally leads to products. ARPA-E is different: It supports potentially commercial work that may well crash and burn. As Chu sees it, the way to go is the Bell Labs model: Support a number of risky research projects run by highly talented scientists, and if one or two pan out, the whole effort is worth it.

There's a lot of pent-up interest in energy research, and it's coming from everywhere. 

by Erik Stokstad

President Barack Obama didn't launch any new initiatives in his visit today to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he highlighted clean energy technology and the need for climate change legislation. But he did wonder if he'd be able to leave the campus. "I understand a bunch of engineering students put my motorcade on top of building 10," he quipped. MIT has an archived webcast of his speech.

The U.S. House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill, H.R. 3585, that would require the Department of Energy to create a road map for solar energy technology development and to get more industry input. The bill requires industry grants to be merit-reviewed and increases the authorization for funding from $250 million to $550 million by 2015 (current appropriation is about $200 million). DOE would also have to establish an R&D program for recycling of solar panels. No companion bill has been introduced in the Senate.

Researchers in Germany released a study (PDF, auf Deutsch) yesterday showing how by 2050 Germany could reduce its emissions by 95% from its 1990 levels while maintaining its living standards. Renewable energy for electricity, traffic, and heating would do 60% of the job, the rest would come from industry, farming, and waste management.

After dodging a shutdown of its animal research, the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is proposing to hire a vice chancellor for research to manage grants and compliance with federal rules.

by Jeffrey Mervis and Adrian Cho

Watch out, Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—the U.S. is not quitting the race to find the famed Higgs boson just yet.

If all goes as planned, physicists at the last dedicated U.S. particle physics laboratory will get to run their particle smasher an extra year. The Department of Energy has requested money in its next budget to run the Tevatron Collider at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, in 2011. That proposal would give Fermilab researchers a shot at bagging a long-sought particle called the Higgs boson before scientists at the European particle physics laboratory, CERN, near Geneva, can spot it with the more-powerful LHC, which is supposed to finally start smashing particle in December.

"I'm behind it, and the Secretary [Steven Chu] is behind it, too," William Brinkman, head of DOE's Office of Science, told ScienceInsider this morning during a meeting of the office's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel in Washington, D.C. "There's a lot of competition" for the approximately $20 million that would be needed, says Brinkman, "but we think there's an opportunity for us to make progress, and we want to do it." The proposal is part of the department's budget request now being reviewed by the White House Office of Management and Budget prior to the submission of the president's 2011 budget request to Congress in February.

Physicists believe the Higgs boson is key to explaining how all particles gain mass—as Higgs bosons lurking “virtually” in the vacuum drag on all particles.

by Eli Kintisch

Results are out today from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy's yearly report card of states' energy-efficiency policies. No surprise: California leads the way, same as last year. Overall, states are adopting better standards; the average score rose from 15 last year to 17 out of 50. But the main problem with the rankings is that they include few data on actual energy saved.

Until now. This year the council included a new effort to look at state-by-state energy efficiency by analyzing household energy use per person. The biggest surprise: Texas was second only to Washington state in efficiency improvement between 1997 and 2006, the most recent data. The results say a lot about making policies actually pay off—and how far the U.S. has to go to improve its energy efficiency.