I would be remiss in not pointing you to a blockbuster paper by Amory Lovins from September that I’ve only just now read.   I scanned his article in Grist at the time in which he thoroughly debunks Stewart Brand’s support for nuclear power.  Here are the four myths he shatters:

• variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not “baseload”—able to run all the time;
• those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they’re environmentally unacceptable;
• all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and
• nuclear power’s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

If Amory Lovins were Barack Obama’s Secretary of Energy, we’d be more than halfway home to solving the climate crisis.  Instead, we have Steven Chu’s nuclear boondoggle.  (In Chu’s defense, though, I have to say that the political “thinkers” in the White House are pushing nukes too because they think they’ll “win votes.”)

Read Lovins’s paper because it shows us how manifestly successful renewables and energy efficiency are now and how much more they can be.

John Kerry gave a speech this past week in which he said that he is “on a short track” to introducing climate and energy legislation that can be passed.  Kerry said he’d been working with key administration officials and Senators to create a package.  In a Reuters article on this, Carol Browner is quoted as saying “…the work that is going on up on the Hill is moving at a nice speed.”  Reuters also noted the obvious:  “Washington’s ability to produce a domestic law mandating carbon reductions on industry will have a significant impact on whether negotiations on the international track will succeed.”

Kerry is articulate and passionate about climate change.  “Why do you need to price carbon? Because you need to create a signal in the marketplace where businesses have a certainty about where the marketplace is going over 20, 30, 50 years so they begin to invest accordingly and you begin to move your market in wholesale fashion towards the kind of new investments, new jobs and the adjustments we can make.”  That’s why most of the Fortune 500 companies that have a stake in this - either because they’re GHG-emitters or they’re poised to increase their value by investing in clean tech, or both - have been hammering on Congress to get this done.

Will it be cap-and-trade?  Maybe not, according to the “Washington Post” yesterday:  Senators to propose abandoning cap-and-trade.  “Power plants would face an overall cap on emissions that would become more stringent over time; motor fuel may be subject to a carbon tax whose proceeds could help electrify the U.S. transportation sector; and industrial facilities would be exempted from a cap on emissions for several years before it is phased in. The legislation would also expand domestic oil and gas drilling offshore and would provide federal assistance for constructing nuclear power plants and carbon sequestration and storage projects at coal-fired utilities.”  The nuclear power component is a sop to the GOP.  (It’s also, in my opinion, hugely bad policy.  But then some smart analysts, like Dave Roberts at Grist, think nukes are an acceptable price to pay for climate legislation - as they won’t get built at the end of the day.)

Like John Kerry, Al Gore lost a presidential election to George W. Bush.  (What a distinction.)  But also like Kerry, Gore is articulate, passionate and steeped in the science, economics and politics of climate and energy.  He has an op-ed in today’s “NY Times” in which he notes Kerry’s effort and that a draft bill is forthcoming - as soon as next week perhaps.  The op-ed covers a lot of important ground, including addressing the brouhaha over the science.  (Gore’s latest book, Our Choice, does a phenomenal job of looking at and explaining the complexities of climate change and our energy future.  I’ve been using it this semester in both of my climate change classes at NYU.)

Gore says in his op-ed that the “pathway to success is still open”  and “begins with a choice by the United States to pass a law establishing a cost for global warming pollution.”  A “price on carbon.”  That’s what industry and finance have been calling for, along with the President of the United States, the US House of Representatives, top economists, the European Union, the UNFCCC, the IPCC, top science academies - pretty much the entirety of the community of key policymakers on climate and energy.  Earth to the US Senate:  Let’s get on it.

The Department of Energy has announced substantive backing in the form of loan guarantees for an exciting concentrated solar power (CSP) project in California.  The plant will generate 400 MW of electricity using the same “power tower” approach I saw when we were on vacation in Spain this past August.  For backing this project, I can almost forgive Stephen Chu and Barack Obama for enabling more nuclear boondoggles by guaranteeing billions in loans for power plants.  (But not quite.  Not incidentally, a friend who is very much an energy industry insider indicated the other night that he thought that new nuclear plants wouldn’t get built in the US.  Why?  The financing is not there.  And he’s a fan of nuclear power.  This further eases my distress at the DOE loan guarantees for nukes.)

This article from today’s edition of DOE’s “EERE Network News” highlights this power tower technology and financing breakthrough for the US.  The BrightSource solar power complex in Ivanpah, CA, will use thousands of flat mirrors, or “heliostats,” to concentrate the sun’s heat onto a receiver mounted at the top of a tower, water is boiled into steam by the heat, the steam drives a turbine, et voilà:  lots of juice.  Enough for 140,000 California homes.

Another excellent bet is on track further south in California.  This “EERE Network News” article looks at a 750 MW proposal that would put 42,000 dish/Stirling systems, called SunCatchers, on 10 square miles of land in the desert.  SunCatchers are also a CSP technology.  Tessera Solar, the developer, has ambitious plans for California and elsewhere in the world.

There are other CSP projects coming to fruition in California, Spain and elsewhere.  The Desertec initiative for North Africa and the Middle East is particularly exciting.  If we’re smart, we will exponentially increase our willingness to exploit the world’s solar hotspots for power.

Just a quick note:  A former student of mine jumped in the other day with some comment about the recent nuclear power announcement from the White House.  Here is her take and my response.

For a stunningly strong and incisive analysis, go to Kate Sheppard’s article yesterday at “Mother Jones.”  One of the several eye-opening insights is this one:  “The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated in 2003 that the risk of default on loan guarantees is ‘very high-well above 50 percent.’ Yet in a call with reporters on Tuesday, [US Energy Secretary Steven] Chu said he had not heard of that CBO study.”

Steven Chu is a very smart guy, but he’s too tunnel-visioned on nuclear power.  Barack Obama is an even smarter guy, but he needs to start thinking outside the political box more and realizing that renewables and other clean tech are the way forward.

I’ve been looking at energy and environmental policy for many years and I’m usually happily surprised when things take a smart turn.  Even thoughtful, progressive policymakers like Barack Obama, though, wind up making bone-headed calls.  Obama offers nuclear plant loan guarantee, as the FT reports, is one good example.

I’m, to put it politely, less-than-sanguine about nuclear power and have been for forty years.  But I’m not going there now.  It’s a beautiful sunny day with snow on the ground in the Big Apple, and I’ve had a productive morning, and I want to look at something good.

Biofuels policy, in the EU and US, has been, as I heard Jeffrey Sachs once describe it, misguided.  Likely so, but, at the end of the day, the power of the farm lobbies in Europe and America can, and often do, trump good policy.  Nevertheless, folks actually concerned about poverty, energy use, the waste of public money on wasteful subsidies and other matters, have managed to make their voices heard.

The Europeans have been throttling back on the most misguided of their biofuels policies for a couple of years.  As the “NY Times” notes here “European governments agreed in December 2008 that only biofuels that reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent compared with fossil fuels should qualify for meeting the trade bloc’s current goal.”  The article reports, though, on further flies in the ointment for European biofuels, namely the fact that land-use changes that are effected to grow crops for biofuels greatly exacerbate their environmental impact.  (See studies, for instance, referenced in my post Are Biofuels A Bummer?)   New studies about to be published by the European Commission will add more fuel to the fire - pun intended - and may well necessitate even more circumspection on whether biofuel production really does what it’s  intended to do:  reduce GHGs.

Meanwhile, EPA has finalized new regulations for the National Renewable Fuel Standard Program.  “For the first time, some renewable fuels must achieve greenhouse gas emission reductions - compared to the gasoline and diesel fuels they displace - in order to be counted towards compliance with volume standards.”  That’s smarter, certainly, than making the problem worse.  The NYT calls these new regs Sensible Rules for Ethanol in an editorial.  “Despite pressure from farm state politicians, the Environmental Protection Agency has taken an important step to ensure that biofuels help rather than hurt the environment.”

There’s also the issue of biofuels putting enormous upward pressure on food prices, as well as pushing GHGs in the wrong direction.  Paul Krugman had a characteristically penetrating column on this that I noted here.  Krugman wrote “Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels.  The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a ’scam.’”

The miracle of this is that critical policymakers like EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson actually get it.  What a concept.

I’ve written about nuclear power here a number of times.  To be upfront with you:  I’ve been an opponent for almost 40 years, since long before Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.  I have seen very little along the way to change my views.  In the light of the specter of climate change, I’ve tried to be open-minded.  However, there are still too many negatives.  In teaching my class on climate change this summer, I used an excellent paper from the Union of Concerned Scientists:  Nuclear Power in a Warming World.  Among the concerns they flag - and they don’t close out the option by any means - are the safety of operations, defending against sabotage, nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, and waste.

In reading the paper, I was reminded of a very near miss that happened at the Davis-Besse unit in Ohio in 2002.  “Cooling water had indeed leaked-most likely beginning in 1995, and this leakage had corroded a large hole through the reactor vessel’s head. Only a thin stainless steel veneer-less than one quarter-inch thick-had prevented a loss-of-coolant accident more serious than that at Three Mile Island in 1979. Had the corroded reactor vessel head ruptured, the loss of cooling water would likely have led to both a reactor meltdown and a containment failure. [My emphasis.] Davis-Besse was designed for a loss-of-coolant accident, but its two key backup systems were seriously impaired.  The debris created by fluid jetting through a ruptured vessel head would likely have blocked and disabled the pumps needed to cool the reactor core and containment, triggering a reactor meltdown and failure of the containment barrier.”  (For more on this, see the paper itself, page 17.)

I just wanted to flag an article here from Dave Elliott a professor of technology policy in Britain:  Nuclear power - dead end, or in with a chance?.  The paper comes via the excellent environmentalresearchweb.  He makes the argument that it’s difficult to have nuclear power and renewables.  (This is an argument I made to a British nuclear power official a couple of years back.)  In any event, Elliot summarizes his brief eloquently here:

“What’s the best bet for the future? An energy source with limited resource availability and major waste and security implications? Or a range of new technologies based on natural energy flows, with no emissions, no wastes, no fuel resource limits, no fuel price rises, and no security implications, unless that is we start squabbling over the wind and solar resource around the planet?”

Senatus Populusque Romanus - The Senate and the People of Rome.  The old Roman Senate was, on paper, representative of the people.  Because the US is a representative democracy, the US Senate was meant, up to a certain point, to perpetuate this same principle.  It was, however, certainly less representative, from Day One, than its coequal legislative branch, the House of Representatives, in that its fundamental composition belies the principle of one person, one vote.  Moreover, Senators were, for more than 120 years until the 17^th amendment to the Constitution, selected by the legislatures of the states they represented, hardly a process conducive to expressing the “will of the people.”  I have opined on the inherently undemocratic nature of the Senate before.  The Senate is the body in which the powers of the special interests have always found the greatest solace and succor.

Why have I subjected you to this junior jeremiad on the failings of the Senate?  It is because much of the fate of the American government’s response to the global climate crisis lies in the tender mercies of these 100 persons.  The Senate, as recounted in Robert Caro’s extraordinary Master of the Senate: The Years of LBJ, Vol. 3, managed to hold up the progress of civil rights legislation for decades.  I don’t think it’s going to be quite the protracted struggle with this critical issue as it was with civil rights but it’s going to be tough.  The People’s House, the House of Representatives, managed, just barely, to pass less-than-perfect but still landmark climate and energy legislation at the end of June.  Now the ball is in the Senate’s court.

At an environmental finance conference I attended earlier in June, there was much discussion of the legislation and its prospects.  Eileen Claussen, the President of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, had some thoughts.  She noted the considerable and several pressures on Congress to get to some concrete solutions, sooner rather than later.  The US Climate Action Partnership, for instance, is spearheading the efforts of many major industrial corporations to get Congress to act.  The Obama Administration is certainly a powerful determinant.  (Some commentators say the White House is not being sufficiently assertive.)  There is also the pressure from the many local, state and regional initiatives that have been driving progress on energy and climate, among them the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), the 27 states that have mandated a renewable energy portfolio (RPS), and the US Conference of Mayors Climate Protection Center.  There is the overwhelming body of science and there is the body of public opinion.  I would add to this list the strong support of a significant portion of the American labor movement - see the critical work of the Blue Green Alliance.

Claussen said that she calculated that there were 36 yes votes on the Democratic side of the aisle in the Senate (+ Al Franken now) and 23 “iffy” Democrats.  She said there were 14 possible Republicans, with nine already having backed some precursor of climate change legislation plus five who have been sounding positive.  She said that nuclear power would have to be a component of the legislation that comes out of the Senate to garner enough votes there.  That, in my opinion, is most unfortunate as I regard nuclear, along with CCS, to be among the most expensive and wasteful blind paths that we can take.  (The CCS provisions in Waxman-Markey are also lamentable.)

There were some pessimistic prognoses on the passage of legislation from others at this conference, like David Hunter of the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA) who said there was no chance for 2009, it was possible for 2010, but likely in 2011.

There are many, many people watching Congress and hoping to influence its progress toward strong climate and energy legislation.  Among the expert observers is the venerable World Policy Institute.  Its president, Jonathan Lash, identified this as one of the Environmental Stories to Watch in 2009.  In Lash’s analysis, there are a “Gang of 16″ Democrats from states heavily reliant on coal that will be at the core of how things play out in the Senate.  Lash notes “The United States Senate was designed by the Constitution to reflect regional issues, that’s why each state regardless of population has two senators and that means that this geographic distribution of coal dependence is an essential political fact as we think about what legislation can pass, and a reflection of why I said at the beginning environmental legislation comes from the middle-in this case the physical middle of the country.”  (Lash is more tolerant of the political disparity inherent in the Senate’s design than I am, clearly.)  See this slide show (slides 9-18) to get a visual sense of some of the numbers and the politics.

Here’s some more inside baseball on the Senate from the “Washington Post.”  It reports that Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader, who has said he wants to have climate change legislation passed this year, can count on 40 to 45 votes on the basic premise of cap-and-trade.  Beyond that, “Supporters are targeting a pool of roughly two dozen lawmakers — including about 15 of Reid’s Democrats — who will determine the legislation’s fate.”  Barbara Boxer, the smart, strong and progressive chair of the Environment & Public Works Committee, held the first of a series of hearings last week with four top Obama administration officials testifying on behalf of robust climate and energy legislation.  In her opening statement, she said:  “I believe that this Committee, when the votes are eventually taken on our bill, will reflect our President’s attitude, which is ‘Yes, we can, and yes, we will.’”  Other hearings are forthcoming.

Although Boxer had targeted a bill to be prepared and voted on by her committee before the August recess begins, she has now announced that this won’t happen until after Labor Day.  Grist reports here on this development and that Harry Reid has also “…bumped his deadline for committee action on a bill back by 10 days to Sept. 28. By that date, he wants all six committees with jurisdiction to have concluded markup of their components of a climate plan. Reid said he pushed the date back to give legislators more time to work out differences over the bill.”  Is this a good thing or a bad thing?  Grist quotes the Sierra Club as saying the delay provides “…a huge organizing opportunity, both here in D.C. and in the field.”  EDF says “It gives senators more time to review and understand the historic bill just passed by the House. It signals a serious intent to seek agreements on key issues going forward.”

NPR takes a long look at the “…withering opposition from Republicans. They say it will cost consumers too much and hurt American business.”  As Boxer said in her statement from July 7^th, “Today, I expect you will hear fierce words of doubt and fear and worse from the other side of the aisle regarding our legislative efforts to move forward with clean energy jobs legislation. This is consistent with a pattern of ‘No, we can’t.’”  That is to say, based on the nearly monolithic Republican opposition in the House, it’s no surprise that Republicans in the Senate are going to come at this with all guns blazing, as its leadership will direct.  However, there are a few Republicans, like the two Maine Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, who, like almost all New Englanders, have a long and deep regard for the environmental ethic.  They will not be marching in lockstep.

As one famous New Englander wrote, there are “…miles to go before I sleep.”

The “NY Times” reports today on the massive cost overruns of a nuclear power plant at Olkiluoto in Finland and, in the end, the uncertainty of the date of its completion, testing and operation - if ever.  The article reports that the difficulties with this flagship in the new generation of nuclear plants is making the American nuclear industry nervous.  “…early experience suggests these new reactors will be no easier or cheaper to build than the ones of a generation ago, when cost overruns - and then accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl - ended the last nuclear construction boom.”

Full disclosure:  I have had an aversion to nuclear power for decades.  I read Poisoned Power in 1971 and have seen precious little since then to change my mind about this pernicious technology.  I thought then and I thought now we can do better.  See some further thoughts here and here on nuclear power.  I wrote recently at this post about hearing the CEO of the largest nuclear power operator, Exelon, call for caution on proceeding with expansion until the waste storage issue is resolved.  I noted there:  “For a really in-depth and smart analysis from folks who’ve been studying nuclear power for decades, see Nuclear Power in a Warming World from the Union of Concerned Scientists.”

I just wanted to flag what I thought were some pretty good items out and about in the media lately.

China and Climate Change - One of the go-to guys for progressive economics, Paul Krugman, has a column today, Empire of Carbon, that is both pessimistic and optimistic.  (Boy, do I know that feeling when it comes to climate change!)  The bad news is that China is going to swamp the climate system with its coal-generated CO₂ if it stays on the trajectory it’s on now.  China doubled its output from 1996 to 2006, making it the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases last year.  Krugman gives a good précis here of the arguments that China makes for not changing course.  But, if the US, EU and other big developed economies throttle back our emissions - and there’s reason to believe it’s happening and will continue to happen (see last post below, among others) - then the Chinese and the other rapidly industrializing nations should have no excuse not to get on board.

The good news, according to Krugman, is “…that the very inefficiency of China’s energy use offers huge scope for improvement. Given the right policies, China could continue to grow rapidly without increasing its carbon emissions.”  Can you say renewables and energy efficiency?  It’s all there, just for the taking.

What if China and others don’t play ball?  “Sooner than most people think, countries that refuse to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will face sanctions, probably in the form of taxes on their exports.”  I think China will play ball.  For my reasons for thinking this, see China and Trade here.  As Krugman puts it:  “It’s time to save the planet. And like it or not, China will have to do its part.”

(For more on China and climate change, see the FPA blog on China.)

More on Cap-and-Trade - See this recent column from Krugman and this editorial from the “NY Times.”  Both are unequivocal in support of cap-and-trade.  Krugman notes “…a commitment to greenhouse gas reduction would, in the short-to-medium run, have the same economic effects as a major technological innovation:  It would give businesses a reason to invest in new equipment and facilities even in the face of excess capacity. And given the current state of the economy, that’s just what the doctor ordered.”

The Smart Grid - Here’s a great article from the “Financial Times” on the intersection of the smart grid and information technology.  There are huge business opportunities and the IT folks are all over that.  As the reporter says, “An unlikely marriage is being consummated. On one side is a monolithic industry, cautious, highly regulated and focused on ubiquity, reliability and affordability. On the other is an aggressively competitive sector with rapid product cycles and an insatiable hunger for innovation.”  It could turn out to be the proverbial “marriage made in heaven.”

Geoengineering - This is one of my least favorite of the red herrings being brought to you today by concern over the looming climate change crisis - see also nuclear power and carbon capture and storage (CCS).  A recent story in the FT series on Climate Change focused on this approach:  “altering the Earth’s systems.”  Giant sunshades in space, seeding the atmosphere with sulfur, making clouds at sea - all ideas, among others, that are advancing, in spite of the incredible costs involved and the potential to wreak even more havoc than the warming these schemes are intended to abate.  I was a little surprised - and alarmed - to learn that White House science advisor, John Holdren, said recently that geoengineering should not be “off the table.”

The pursuit of geoengineering is a considerable distraction to us in seeking to make the transition to a zero-carbon, sustainable world economy.  As Alex Steffen, the guiding hand at Worldchanging, wrote in February:  “Our goal should be to cool the planet in ways that reinforce and restore the resilience of its natural systems.”  In a book I’ve just reviewed, one of the authors says:  “If our goal is to produce a sustainable society, then to a certain extent, we will eventually need to mimic (and possibly enhance) natural systems.”

Speaking of Nukes … - I often watch some of the excellent C-Span programming during my lunch break.  (Am I a policy nerd or what?)  I just caught Exelon CEO John Rowe at the National Press Club talking about his company’s main product:  nuclear power.  According to their website, “Exelon operates the largest nuclear fleet in the United States, the third largest commercial nuclear fleet in the world, and is generating nuclear energy more efficiently than ever.” Mr. Rowe seems like a genuinely thoughtful and nice fellow.  One thing he said caught my attention:  Until we have a plan in place to store waste in the long term, then we ought “to go slow” on expanding nuclear power.  (These comments appear toward the end of the video, during the Q&A.  Start around 51:25.)

Waste is but one of several major concerns about nuclear power.  For a really in-depth and smart analysis from folks who’ve been studying nuclear power for decades, see Nuclear Power in a Warming World from the Union of Concerned Scientists.  I used this as a reading in my climate change class and it’s informative and useful.

Obama’s Team, Continued - Climate experts get key US posts is the headline from the BBC.  John Holdren, a physicist, Harvard professor, and director of the Woods Hole Research Center, has been named Obama’s top science advisor.  Holdren is a passionate advocate of early and decisive action on warming.  See also this from Woods Hole on the announcement in which Holdren says:  “None of the great interlinked challenges of our time - the economy, energy, environment, health, security, and the particular vulnerabilities of the poor to shortfalls in all of these - can be solved without insights and advances from the physical sciences, the life sciences, and engineering.”

Obama also named marine biologist Jane Lubchenco to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an agency that has critical importance in how we monitor the environmental changes that are occurring.  She is a professor at Oregon State and another outspoken member of the scientific community on the issue of climate change.  See her webpage here.   (Coincidence that Michelle Obama’s brother is the basketball coach at Oregon State?  Probably.)

Further Thoughts on Poznan - There were several important developments at these UNFCCC meetings worth noting.  (See here and here for previous posts.)  The road to Copenhagen will yet be tortuous and stony, but, for one thing, the idea of intensified efforts on “reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation” (REDD) has taken hold.  We are not only diminishing the capacity of forests to sequester carbon in cutting them down, but burning them increases carbon dioxide.  (I’ve written about forests a number of times at the blog.)

REDD is a full-tilt assault on the problem and there are victories being won aside from the more deeply energized commitment won in Poznan.  Brazil has made the battle against rainforest destruction its own and that has incalculable value in setting an example for others.  I heard Stephan Schwartzman from EDF speaking this past week at a webinar about this and other REDD-related matters.

Another milestone occurred in the launch of the Adaptation Fund.  Bloomberg News put it this way here:  “Poor countries at the United Nations climate talks in Poland may win approval to tap into a $990 million fund as early as next month to cope with the damage of global warming, their biggest victory in 11 days of debate.”

Another of the main developments was the firm commitment to an arduous work plan for the coming year.  See this summary from the Pew Center on Global Climate Change and the comprehensive coverage from the UNFCCC, which includes webcasts, and all the documentation.  Finally, listen to Yvo de Boer, UNFCCC executive secretary, at his final media briefing.

Smart Grid, Green Buildings - Further to my notes below on the smart grid, see Intelligent Buildings Meet the Smart Grid from “GreenerBuildings News” and the accompanying articles.  As Rob Watson, the executive editor, notes “Today, we recognize that a network of decentralized, building-level services connected through the grid results in a much more robust, and sustainable, alternative than the autonomous Earthships of yesteryear.”

In a related story, from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, titled Report Details Potential of Combined Heat and Power in US, we learn that if the US had 20% of generating capacity coming from CHP by 2030, we would realize a 60% reduction of the projected increase in carbon dioxide emissions.  I heard an energy consultant once say that not having CHP as a standard should be construed as criminal behavior.  You can see why.

Renewables Beat the Old Energy - In another item from the always excellent RenewableEnergyWorld.com, we get that a study from Stanford gives quantitative reasons why nuclear, coal and biofuels are very much the wrong path if we want “to improve energy security, mitigate global warming and reduce the number of deaths caused by air pollution”  You can read this important paper here, at “Energy & Environmental Science.”  (See also my reference to a terrific article, “Exajoules of Hope,” at a post from August.)