Top energy experts debunk their false assertions and misleading statements about energy efficiency

Proponents of large energy-efficiency rebound effects fail to prove their case.

Advocates of the thesis that “rebound” effects will offset much, most, all, or more than all energy savings from increasing end-use efficiency””a thesis popularized by David Owen’s recent and controversial New Yorker article””were asked in an early-2011 email exchange to illustrate their proposed rebound mechanisms with a hypothetical numerical example. Jesse Jenkins from the Breakthrough Institute obliged them. Jim Sweeney (Stanford) and Amory Lovins (Rocky Mountain Institute) then pointed out specific apparent errors whose correction would reduce Jenkins’s calculated rebound by about 10-20-fold (to a few percent, consistent with their own estimates). Further, the macroeconomic effects that Jenkins and his fellow-advocates had claimed were very large turned out in his example to be very small. Yet neither Jenkins nor his co-proponents rebutted the Sweeney and Lovins critiques. Jenkins now wants to abandon rather than uphold his own example, and big-rebound proponents appear to have withdrawn from the conversation. They insist that their economic calculations prove they’re right, no further proof is required, and the effects they posit are too complex for a numerical example to reflect. This behavior invites the inference that they won’t defend their sweeping claims because they can’t, and that inference will strengthen so long as they fail to do so. The exchange upholds the strength of the scientific process in clarifying understanding and exposing error, although it remains to be seen whether this goal is shared equally by both sides of the conversation. Asked for comment, Lovins quoted Harvard biology professor E.O. Wilson: “Sometimes a c oncept is baffling, not because it is profound but because it is wrong.”

That’s the conclusion Jon Koomey says journalists might well draw from a for-the-record email conversation between The Breakthrough Institute and leading energy experts.  I repost his entire 8-page discussion below.  It makes for fascinating reading and reveals better than anything I’ve seen just how TBI operates.

Koomey, ever the scientist, even has an “abstract,” which reads:

An e-mail conversation about whether “rebound” effects that offset energy savings are big or small reached a critical stage when a numerical example meant to demonstrate big rebounds came under decisive technical criticism””and wasn’t defended.

Recently, the Breakthrough Institute launched a major attack on energy efficiency.  They used talking points that right-wing think tanks have pushed for years (see The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism: Heritage even opposes energy efficiency).  This shouldn’t be terribly surprising to longtime followers of TBI.  After all, last year they partnered with a right-wing think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, to push right-wing energy myths and attack the most basic of clean energy policies, a clean energy standard.

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I am interested in your thoughts on the term “climate cranks.”  Of course, I like any phrase that uses a figure of speech, alliteration in this case.  But I tend to think “cranks” is too mild.  Cranks don’t have a multimillion dollar fossil-fuel-funded campaign behind them.  Some cranks may seek to block efforts to preserve a livable climate, but only hard-core pro-pollution anti-science deniers and disinformers can achieve that immoral goal.

Mark Hertsgaard has an outstanding new book out, “HOT: Living Through the Next 50 Years on Earth.”  What follows is an article he wrote today for the Politico.  At the end is a piece with more on the book and the campaign against the climate cranks.

Will it take the Republican Party as long to accept modern science as it took the Roman Catholic Church? The church waited 359 years to admit Galileo was right “” the earth does move around the sun. Not until 1992 did the Vatican officially withdraw its condemnation of the man Albert Einstein called the father of modern science.
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The oil-soaked American Enterprise Institute is very concerned that President Barack Obama is promoting clean energy investment. AEI pundit Kenneth Green and his research assistant Hiwa Alaghebandian are worried about reducing our dependence on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels with new clean jobs, they write, based on “the troubling European experience with green energy and job creation.” Green lists “four European countries that went hog wild for renewables, while singing the praises of green jobs: Spain, Italy, Germany, and Denmark,” and cites studies that purport to show the countries “all tried and failed to accomplish positive outcomes with renewable energy”:

THE SPANISH STUDY: “In March 2009, researchers Gabriel Calzada Alvarez and colleagues at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos released a study examining the economic and employment effects of Spain’s aggressive push into renewables.”

The study, “Study of the Effects of Employment of Public Aid to Renewable Energy Sources,” was written by an Exxon-funded right-wing think tank, Instituto Juan de Mariana, then promoted by the Koch Industries propaganda network.

It was thoroughly debunked and eviscerated for elementary methodological flaws by the Spanish government, the Wall Street Journal, the Center for American Progress, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in 2009.

THE ITALIAN STUDY: “A study performed by Luciano Lavecchia and Carlo Stagnaro of Italy’s Bruno Leoni Institute found an even worse situation.”

Like the Spanish study, “Are Green Jobs Real Jobs? The Case of Italy” was published by a right-wing think tank, the Bruno Leoni Institute, founded by the Koch Industries-supported Carlo Lottieri. The institute argues that global warming is a hoax. Their study proudly states that it “followed the methodology employed by Calzada et al.” and thus has the same crippling methodological flaws.

THE GERMAN STUDY: “In a study of the effects of Germany’s aggressive promotion of wind and solar power, Manuel Frondel noted that the German feed-in law required utilities to buy solar power at a rate of fifty-nine cents per kilowatt-hour, far above the normal cost of conventional electricity, which was between three and ten cents. Feed-in subsidies for wind power, he observed, were 300 percent higher than conventional electricity costs.”

Like the Italian and Spanish studies, the “Economic Impacts from the Promotion of Renewable Energies, the German Experience” was produced by a right-wing think tank, RWI Essen. Unlike his counterparts, Dr. Frondel also opposed Germany’s much costlier coal subsidies and supports cap-and-trade systems. Frondel concedes that the feed-in tariff created Germany’s world-class solar and wind industries, but predicts that they will disappear, so the subsidies will have turned out not to be worthwhile. He also notes a reality for Germany that does not apply to the United States — the feed-in tariffs are complementary policies to high fuel taxes and the European cap-and-trade system, which he supports.

THE DANISH STUDY: “The US Energy Information Administration tells America’s children that “Denmark ranks ninth in the world in wind power capacity, but generates about 20% of its electricity from wind.” That sounds impressive, but is it true? Not according to CEPOS, a Danish think tank, which issued a 2009 report entitled Wind Energy, the Case of Denmark.”

Like the Italian and Spanish studies, “Wind Energy: The Case of Denmark” was produced by an oil-funded right-wing think tank, CEPOS. The “study” was “paid for by an American think tank with close ties to the coal and oil industries,” the Institute for Energy Research. The president of IER, Thomas J. Pyle, is a Koch Industries lobbyist. The study makes the bizarre claim that, although Denmark produces 20 percent of its electricity through wind power, because it sells some of that electricity to its neighbors, it doesn’t count as Danish electricity. This oil-funded hit piece has been repeatedly and thoroughly debunked for having basic methodological flaws by numerous Danish energy experts and NRDC economists.

Even the chief economist of the American Petroleum Institute, John Felmy, has admitted that the green economy creates jobs. Green investments protect the planet, save lives, and strengthen the economy, no matter what language you speak.