This gives me some hope, thank goodness!

Looking at the probably outcomes of the CapNTrade legislation from the 2009/2010 senate, I’d become truly demoralized – but you’re right we don’t need that to be the driver to fix things, its time has passed already.

I think the wedges idea is a good way of presenting the solutions and once explained is a good graphical way of getting the public on board.

However, I’m wondering how likely you think CCS will be ready in time?

Most of the techs in the wedges are more or less in use at reasonable scale (perhaps Plug-in hybrids and biofuels less so), but I’ve not yet seen a large scale (1000MW) successful CCS plant on an existing coal plant. Nor perhaps a with potential to retrofit.

I know there are examples in Norway or in oil recovery where similar is being performed, but do any coal plants have the tech full tested and running? And if not, how likely do you see it happening?

I’m from Victoria, Australia, where 90% of our electricity is from brown coal (lignite) power plants. Our historical reliance on brown coal means the state (and Fed) Govt is desperate for CCS to work, but signs aren’t great so far…

Also, David Benson above, here’s another rather efficient solar tech. The manufacturing plant is being built in melb at the moment. With a 2MW demo ready by end of 2012.

http://www.solarsystems.com.au/the_technology.html

I do agree with Earl, however, that the graphic isn’t ideal — in addition to his observation, they don’t appear to have scaled the wedges, and I think that’s an important part of the message.

But the meat of th article is great —

I would love to see the 14 wedge version of this article in Scientific American or some other broader ciruclation magazine that reaches a general audience. It’s too important to leave to the scientists — and Nature.com –or Nature Reports – Climate Change :good as it is — doesn’t reach the educated lay person.

I don’t believe the average person has the slightest clue about what we’re in store for if we don’t act, and what it will take to address climate change. Moreover, i believe that showing people it can be done will help mobilize them … and a factual presentation like the 14 wedge strategy will do that.

Do we really need the nukes?

Was a graphic showing 11 25-year wedges, followed by another set starting in 2040 too busy or something? Busy or not, that’s what you are really proposing.

“Inventors: Solar Dish Could Revolutionize Energy Production”

http://www.livescience.com/ environment/ 080619-solar-power.html

In brief, I sang the praises of command and control versus cap and trade. I haven’t read the Nature piece yet but I have the impression your approach involves a bunch of subsidies to clean technologies. If so, I am yet to be persuaded about that. I suggest it would be better to establish emission limits and mandate markets for the output of clean plants and let the markets work. Maybe some of each is necessary?

My final point I’ll copy from my email.

If the US is going to be a leader in controlling GHGs (instead of waiting until there is a global treaty requiring all nations to march forward with us in lock-step), we should adopt an approach that gives us the most rhetorical power in future negotiations with China, India, Russia, Brazil, etc. The idea of national emission caps sounds to developing countries like economic growth caps, which they naturally resist. I suggest they might be more receptive to arguments for plant-level technology-based standards such as a best available control technology requirement or a minimum efficiency standard. For example, if we in the US have started retrofitting CCS technology and have legislation putting other facilities on a time-line to adopt it, we would be in a strong moral position to insist that other nations should also adopt this proven technology. In these developing countries there will be constituencies favoring state-of-the-art technology just because it is state-of-the-art; it’s a point of national pride. Also, the issue will be framed as why the money should not be spent to apply an available fix to a particular substandard pollution source; that is at least one step removed from, and less appealing than, the let-us-grow argument. Importantly, it also blows away the technical infeasibility argument. And it may help such nations more easily resolve their own internal political struggles about which constituency’s emissions should be reduced and whose should be given a pass.

This proposal arises in part from my experience in 1975-76 in Morocco. I was there trying to sell a license for the Tosco oil shale technology to the government. The question of capital costs naturally came up, and I suggested (not proud of this now) that Tosco’s design for a plant in western Colorado included costly pollution control equipment and processes that the government of Morocco could chose to exclude. I was surprised when the Minister of Mines immediately took that off the table. He said it would be unthinkable to build a plant in Morocco that was any dirtier than a world class plant.

This very summer, we can see the Chinese government desperately wanting to keep its air pollution from ruining the Olympics and being a worldwide embarrassment. There will be clean air and anti-GHG constituencies arising in China, India and elsewhere, especially as they gain greater access to information about how people in the developed world don’t have to wear gas masks on the streets. We can help that bottoms-up process by creating extremely clear examples of what they could do differently.

Keep up the good work!