David Goldstein and Graeme Sweeny

The energy and global climate crises are upon us. Over the next 50 years and across the globe — governments, NGOs, corporations, banks, venture capitalists, institutions, entrepreneurs, and others — will spend trillions upon trillions of dollars seeking solutions.  The trillion-dollar questions we seek to answer are: Which of these solution paths is worth pursuing?  Whi ch are a waste of time and resources?  Which are non-trivial an d which trivial?  Which are achievable and which are resource-wasting mirages?  Which combination of viable solutions will deliver needed results faster, more efficiently, and more sustainably?

Prof. and Mrs. Neal Lane

Our Solution — Global GreenPrint — began the process of clarifying and separating breakthrough approaches from trivial ones, and determining optimal paths to success.

Prof. Ernest Moniz and Dr. Bill Frazer

The Aspen Science Center, using the successful results-based methodology employed in our Science & Media Summit, gathered a non-partisan, multi-national, multi-lateral group of the most pre-eminent scientists, leaders, and policymakers from each critical subset of the energy puzzle.  Together, we:

• Identified the most productive paths to success, necessary interrelationships, obstacles/issues, alternative strategies, and other considerations.
• Separated out the non-trivial from the trivial.
• Helped guide policy based on a non-partisan, multi-national, multi-lateral expertise.
• Set the global stage for climate change now.

John Holdren, Kevin Ward,
and Rob Rosner

This summit produced an actual GreenPrint, with to-dos for our high-level participants.  We developed the summit, our  agenda, and our attendee list based on our proven methodology — combining expert science, careful convening, and skilled process.

Rich Ward and Hans Schellnhuber

• We held a closed-door session that resulted in a blueprint for optimal resource allocation and international efforts to deliver more energy, less CO2.
• We held a public Findings Forum at the Aspen Institute Ideas Festival featuring 4 panelists from our closed-door session to discuss the results of our Global GreenPrint Summit

Step-by-Step: A Snapshot of a Solutions Summit

Participants

John Holdren — Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Co-Chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) Nominee; Harvard Kennedy School - Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy; Director of the Science Technology and Public Policy Program; Director, Woods Hole Research Center

Steven Koonin — Under Secretary for Science in the Department of Energy; Chief Scientist at BP; On leave, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the California Institute of Technology.

Kristina Johnson — Undersecretary, DOE; SPIE member and Provost of Johns Hopkins University

Leena Srivastava — Executive Director of TERI and Senior Vice President of TERI-NA (The Energy and Resources Institute, North America); Board Member of the Research Advisory Committee of the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, Japan (IGES); Lead Author for Working Group III of the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Hans Joachim (John) Schellnhuber — Director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research; Visiting Professor at Oxford University.

Ernest Moniz — Director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative; Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Physics and Engineering Systems at Massachusetts Institute of Technology; Member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology; Former Under Secretary of Department of Energy

Robert Socolow — Architect of the 7-wedge model; Co-Director of the Carbon Mitigation Initiative at Princeton University; Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University.

Neal Lane — Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University; Senior Fellow of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy; Former Director of the National Science Foundation; Former Assistant to the President of the United States for Science and Technology and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under President Clinton.

Robert Rosner — William E. Wrather Distinguished Service Professor in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago; Former Director of Argonne National Laboratory and Former President of UChicago Argonne.

Nate Lewis — George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology; Editor-in-Chief of the Royal Society of Chemistry Journal, Energy & Environmental Science; Principal Investigator of the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials Resource Center.

Hal Harvey — President and Chief Executive Officer of ClimateWorks Foundation.

Jane Long — Principal Associate Director at Large and Fellow of the Center for Global Strategic Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Former Associate Director for Energy and Environment Directorate at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

S. Julio Friedmann — Director of Carbon Sequestration Project at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Marvin Odum — President of Shell Oil Company.

Graeme Sweeney — Executive Vice President Future Fuels and CO2 of Shell International.

Bob Epstein — E2 Co-founder; New Resource Bank Board Member; NRDC Trustee.

Gary Holden — President and Chief Executive Officer of ENMAX, Canada.

David Goldstein — Co-Director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Energy Program.

Richard Ward — Shell Group Sustainability Strategy and Plan Manager.

Dan Reicher — Director of Climate Change and Energy Initiatives at Google; Cofounder of New Energy Capital Corp.; Former Massachusetts Assistant Attorney General for Environmental Protection; Former Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council; Former Special Assistant to Energy Secretary and Former Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy under Clinton.

The Aspen Science Center Team

The Original Goal: Develop the Greenprint

The Summit's organizing principle was to convene leading energy scientists, policymakers, economists, NGOs, private sector VCs, and administration officials in a Solution Summit with the goal of identifying and optimizing “critical path” energy strategies for the administration in the lead-up to COP 15.

The larger hope was to create a small but vital network of leaders committed to doing whatever would be required to achieve significant real-world progress in the quest for our “more energy/less carbon” future, with the premise that collectively this network could achieve solutions on a scale greater than the sum of the parts.

The meeting was held under the Chatham House Rule to enable free and frank discussion.

The Revised Goal: "How can this group deliver the most value to the Administration?"

Since several Administration officials were in the room, each with a clear perspective on what was relevant and useful to the administration, it was clear that the most productive course was to ask each of them, “how can this assembled group be of most value to you, individually and collectively?

The administration officials clearly articulated what would be (and what would not be) a major contribution from this group, and we had our collective challenge clarified and delineated.

It was determined that there were several valuable deliverables that we could produce:

1. Letter to Obama A letter of commitment and support from the group to Obama acknowledging the urgency of immediate action and specifying tangible commitments and contributions that members were ready to make.
2. Technology Demonstration Projects—The administration has committed significant funds to creating accelerated solutions to the energy dilemma. What are the optimal Technology Demonstration projects to undertake immediately to invest this money most productively?
3. Ideas for Follow-Up Projects —
   1. Senate Energy Bill-Wash DC briefings for Senators? Op-Ed/Media campaign? Web-based campaign?
   2. "The $15B Story" — which RD&D projects should the DOE fund to jump-start the Energy effort in an optimal way?
   3. Large-scale international public/private shared-risk, shared intelligence RD&D projects
   4. International Large-Scale RD&D Public /Private Partnership  (for the Hard and Risky area)
   5. CCS
   6. Natural Gas
   7. Forestry/CCS MultilateralPublic/Private"New Institution" that will  enforce the international Forestry/CCS  Cap & Trade or C TaxPlatform
   8. These all seem equally important to tackle, but we only want to get involved in the ones where we have a unique advantage (as a small, bi-partisan, unbiased, well-connected institution in Aspen) to be a catalyst and get results where other approaches have not delivered. For example, it seems the forestry carbon sequestration effort is well in hand, but that we can add value by convening a group that can imagine and give structure to the New International P/P institution that will define /monitor/enforce the CCS platform.
   9. “Message Framing” summit to determine how to best create urgency and knowledge among diverse constituencies
   10. International Best Practices — Why re-invent the wheel? Technology summit exploring international best practices in strategic urban design, retrofitting, solar, wind, grid, storage etc.
   11. “Plan B” — Adaptation strategies for 500+ ppm
   12. Blue Sky/Future Tech — One day wind prediction? Negative emission power plants? Paint-on solar panels? Closed fuel-cycle nuclear? 300 mpg vehicle? All-solar farming community with no fossil fuel inputs?

Success/Follow-on Steps

The joint letter to Pres. Obama has been completed and will be delivered to him in person shortly Our committee is in the process of producing the list of critical path Technology Demonstration projects for the DOE. This will be shared with the group prior to submission Various members are exploring the myriad projects that resulted from putting this resourceful group of individuals together for 2 days. For our part, the Aspen Science Center’s intent is to keep this network alive and vital, serving as a catalyst in any way we can.