Presentations
A new report by the President''s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), concludes that projected growth in energy usage worldwide could be "potentially disastrous" for the environment and calls for greater public and private investment by the United States in clean energy technology.
John P. Holdren, Chair of the PCAST Energy Panel, presented the report, entitled Powerful Partnerships: The Federal Role in International Cooperation on Energy Innovation, with Vice President Al Gore at a White House event on August 2.
Holdren, Director of the Belfer Center''s Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program, said, "The world faces more severe air pollution, greater oil insecurity, heightened threat of global climatic changes, and increased nuclear proliferation risks unless we increase investments in international cooperation on clean energy technology and efficiency now."
The panel found that world energy demand is likely to soar in the next century to four times today''s level. Reductions in projected energy demand would not happen, the panel said, unless innovation to increase energy end-use efficiency and to improve energy supply technologies is both rapid and global.
Overall, the report finds that the choices the U.S. makes today on research, development, and deployment opportunities will influence the evolution of the global energy system for many decades and have a tremendous impact on efforts to fight global warming, air pollution, oil insecurity and other problems energy use will cause.
The PCAST panel which produced the report identified four sets of initiatives to help address these problems, requiring an additional government investment of about $250 million per year in FY2001, increasing to $500 million more per year in FY2005.
The report was prepared in response to a request from President Clinton to identify ways to improve the U.S. program of international cooperation on energy R&D to best support our nation''s priorities and address the key global energy and environmental challenges of the next century.
The PCAST panel responsible for the report is made of a diverse group of experts from industry, academic, and non-governmental organizations with a variety of backgrounds and perspectives. Holdren noted that the PCAST panel report was generated with the help of intensive interaction with the Belfer Center project on "Energy R&D Policy for a Greenhouse Gas Constrained World."
Please visit http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/EOP/OSTP/html/p2epage.html for information about Powerful Partnerships and for copies of the report.