JOINT COMMITTEE ON CLIMATE CHANGE AND ENERGY SECURITY AND JOINT COMMITTEE ON COMMUNICATIONS, ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES debate -
Thursday, 8 Jul 2010

Energy Policy: Discussion with United States Under-Secretary for Energy

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

It gives me great pleasure to welcome Dr.Kristina M. Johnson, Under-Secretary for Energy in the United States Government, to this joint meeting of the Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security and the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources. Some members of our committee met the Under-Secretary on a previous occasion and were hugely impressed with her mastery of her brief and her enthusiasm for her work. Our former Chairman, Deputy Barrett, has spoken a good deal about Dr. Johnson since that meeting. We are privileged to have her here today for a discussion on energy-related matters.

It is well known that Dr. Johnson has deep roots in Ireland through her grandparents and through her studies at Trinity College, Dublin, where she undertook a post-doctoral fellowship during a three-year stay in the early 1980s. I see from newspaper reports that during her current visit she went back to Trinity College to be conferred with an honorary doctorate in science. I congratulate her on that achievement. I understand that during her stint in Trinity College in the 1980s she was a member of the ladies football team which defeated Holland. Even after she completed her studies she was known to come back to Ireland to play in county tournaments. I understand she was asked in 1987 about her possible availability for the World Cup but she had to let the chance go. Here in Ireland we have just about recovered from our failure to qualify for the 2010 World Cup due to the unfortunate energy shown by an opposition player when he used his hand, and the non-usage of technology.

Dr. Johnson has gone on to a very distinguished career in the fields of education, business and research. Among the awards she has received in recognition of her work are an induction into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2003, the Society of Women Engineers lifetime achievement award in 2004, and the John Fritz medal in 2008, which is widely considered the highest award in the engineering profession, previous recipients of which include Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison and Orville Wright. I note that Dr. Johnson holds some 45 United States patents and has served on the boards of many large multinational companies.

It is a great honour for our joint committees that Dr. Johnson has taken the time from a very busy schedule to discuss energy-related matters of mutual interest to our two countries. It is a great pleasure for me and for my fellow Co-Chairman, the Chairman of the Joint Committee on Communications, Energy and Natural Resources, Deputy Nolan, to welcome her. I invite Dr. Johnson to address the committee.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

It is a pleasure to be home again. I appreciate the opportunity to visit and to stimulate what I hope will be an open dialogue between us on how our countries can continue to work together to achieve a clean energy economy. I thank the Co-Chairman for his extensive notes on my background. I do not know how he dug up some of that information but it was great.

In terms of the history of energy in the United States, for our first couple of hundred years our primary source of energy was wood. We then had approximately 70 years where the main fuel was coal, which was replaced for the next 70 years by oil. Now we are faced with replacing our oil for transportation, heating and so on with a new fuel. The question is what that fuel will be. In facing that question our two countries have many factors in common, one of which is that we both expend quite a lot of money to import petroleum. We are both looking for new ways to fuel our energy future and, at the same time, reduce our export deficit. We ship about $300 billion overseas for oil. Divide that sum by 300 million people and it equates to about $1,000 per person. Is that another vote?

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

Yes. Perhaps Dr. Johnson will continue for about two more minutes and then we can suspend.

Deputy Liz McManus

Can we not provide pairs?

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

Will Deputy Peter Kelly check with the Whip's office for three pairs?

Deputy Simon Coveney

I will check my party Whip's office.

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

I apologise for the delay.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

It is okay because it is important.

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

We have been told that we are going on holidays tonight but we have business to do.

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

We will suspend for a few moments to sort out the problem.

Sitting suspended at 3.20 p.m. until 3.40 p.m.

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

I apologies for the interruption. Perhaps Dr. Johnson will continue. We will have a short question and answer session when she is finished. We shall try to finish the meeting before 4.10 p.m. when the next vote is due.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

I thank the Co-Chairman. Our Administration has set three goals in the area of energy policy for the coming years. First is an 83% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 with an interim goal of 42% by 2030. Second is to create a clean energy economy and, in this regard, we have been doing numerous calculations on the number of jobs per megawatt of new generation in clean energy. Third is energy security, which I had spoken a little about before the suspension. Both the United States and Ireland export a considerable amount of dollars and euros in exchange for petroleum, so finding new ways to facilitate human transport without having to depend so heavily on oil and petroleum is something we are actively pursuing.

In order to achieve our greenhouse gas goals, energy security goals and jobs goals in the new economy, we need to be very strategic and focused. In this context we are looking at several special programmes by means of which we can accomplish those goals without a decline in our income per capita. I have found that Ireland is unique internationally in being the only country whose income per capita has increased while its energy use per capita has decreased. That is interesting because some of the rhetoric around this debate has been that clean energy will wreck our economy.

Ireland has shown how a country can continue to improve economic well-being while reducing energy intensity. In order for the United States to accomplish its target of an 85% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 we will have to follow Ireland's lead in seeking at least a stabilisation of our gross domestic product while we decrease our energy intensity.

That will be a challenging job which we are approaching from multiple perspectives, three of which I will comment on. One is that it will take an energy portfolio, so we need first to be efficient with every electron we generate. Every electron we save is two less electrons we do not have to generate. In other words, energy efficiency and conservation gets us a good portion of the way. If we can continue to grow our economy but not use more energy in the period 2010 to 2050, we are looking at a saving of 20% to 25% through energy efficiency means.

The second focus will be on de-carbonising our electrical generation sector in order to decrease the amount of carbon we use. That is not unlike Ireland with its focus on wind, especially offshore wind, and moving to natural gas which is less carbon intensive. Our third focus relates to coal, a resource of which the United States has the most known reserves. It is a question of using our natural resources but doing do so in an environmentally sound way. We must find ways to capture the carbon that is given off and-or storing and reusing it. Those are the three main strategies — pushing energy efficiency, decarbonising our electrical sector and using that electricity to generate hydrogen or electricity to power our automobiles, and seeking ways to capture and reuse carbon dioxide that is generated from coal.

Since no one economy can pay for all of that, it is important to have international partnerships where we can learn from each other so that we do not have to replicate our efforts in order to obtain the same information. The Internet is vital in this regard in allowing us to review best practices in other jurisdictions. The transparency of that information will be very important. We are interested in the memorandum of understanding between our two countries that is going forward and in looking at ways we can work in partnership in regard to energy efficiency, conservation projects, storage, offshore wind and so on. We face similar challenges and I look forward to working together to solve them.

Co-Chairman (Deputy Michael Fitzpatrick)

I will hand over to my Co-Chairman, Deputy Nolan.

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

I thank Dr. Johnson for her presentation. I now invite questions from members.

Deputy Simon Coveney

I welcome Dr. Johnson and hope she feels at home, which is how she has described Ireland. I am aware that we are tied for time and I do not wish to prevent my colleagues from having an opportunity to ask questions. What is Dr. Johnson's view on the impact of the discovery of shale gas on gas prices in the United States? I understand that is a major issue in the United States as well as in Europe. How does she expect that to impact on what is now, for the first time, the divergence of pricing between coal and gas? People are excited at the possibility of gas being a bridge between where we are now and where we need to be in 20 or 30 years' time when there will have been a dramatic shift away from a reliance on oil towards renewables.

In terms of the climate change agenda — and we know the United States President is very serious about that — many people were disappointed that more progress was not made at Copenhagen towards an international agreement led by the United States. Will Dr. Johnson give her view on where we are at as we approach the build-up to the next round of talks? Unless we have international agreement on a valuation for carbon or some form of carbon trading system, different parts of the world will be working in isolation, which will lead to carbon leakage and businesses moving to jurisdictions where carbon is cheaper and so on. That is certainly not in the interests of the developed world.

I am frustrated that we do not have more time for this discussion but I will conclude with a final question. One of the greatest challenges we in Ireland face in terms of the promotion of wind energy is to put the infrastructure in place to facilitate it. The placing of AC lines overground on pylons causes huge difficulties for local communities. I understand there are some interesting projects in the United States where that type of infrastructure has been put underground. I am interested in Dr. Johnson's view from an engineering perspective on what is possible in terms of putting infrastructure underground so that we can facilitate the massive shift towards wind power that we are trying to facilitate in this State.

Deputy Liz McManus

It is a great pleasure to meet Dr. Johnson again — although it seems odd for a young woman to be called that — and I welcome her to the meeting. A delegation from this committee met her in Washington some time ago. It seems a long time since that visit, although it is not really that long, but the circumstances were very different because there was an enormous amount of focus on climate change legislation. The political mood at that time seemed to be that despite great difficulties, there was enough concentration on the issue for one to be confident that progress would be made, with Copenhagen acting as a type of catalyst in that regard. Unfortunately, all of that turned out to be something of a flop and we are now in a very different scenario.

Certain developments have taken place in the meantime which, although awful in themselves, I had hoped would assist that agenda. I refer in particular to the BP oil spill. I would have expected such a dramatic environmental disaster to give rise to a political shift towards the green economy agenda. I am aware that the United States President is promoting the idea of energy reform, but I get the impression from this distance — I may be wrong — that this is not happening and that public consciousness is not sufficiently engaged on the issue.

Dr. Johnson referred to three of the pillars of United States energy policy. Energy efficiency is the key and is something that we have not fully grappled with. Perhaps Dr. Johnson could talk a little about how the US is making that transformation. How much progress has the US made in the decarbonisation of electricity and carbon capture? My last question is on electric cars. We have talked a little about Ireland being a test bed for electric cars and it would be interesting to explore that idea a little more.

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

We must suspend. I am conscious that Dr. Johnson has an appointment with a Minister at 4.30 p.m. and ask members to return immediately after the vote.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

These are fabulous questions and I look forward to responding to them.

Sitting suspended at 3.50 p.m. and resumed at 4.05 p.m.

Chairman

As Deputy McManus had concluded, I ask Dr. Johnson to respond.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

I made some notes in order but I will be brief to allow time for more questions.

In terms of using Shell gas, instead of, say, some of our older coal-fired plants that are highly polluting as a resource, that can result in lower carbon emissions in the future, as long as those plants are centralised and we can do carbon capture in them, that makes a great deal of sense. They will not become what I would call stranded assets as long as we are successful at getting carbon capture, sequestration and storage working. Using them in a more distributed sense, which is also being proposed, and I am just talking about electrical generation in terms of combined heat and power, becomes more difficult expense wise than capturing the CO2 in a distributed sense. If it is expensive and we want to do it centrally, there is hope of capturing that.

We are trying to figure out if we should focus on 2030 and hitting the interim goal but, if we do that, will that prevent us from hitting the 2050 goal because we have invested so much in this particular asset?

The other aspect is natural gas that can be used in transportation, which we are quite excited about for the larger transportation — the work trucks — because those will be hard to electrify and operate in other ways. We will focus our bio-fuel strategy on that as well as on the use of compressed gas in the transportation sector. It is another arrow in our quiver, so to speak, and something in which we are quite interested. People tell me that until the price stabilises or there is a price signal on carbon, it will be difficult to know if the private sector will come off the sideline and invest.

On a related comment, which is quite right, if there is not a price signal, different countries may act in isolation but CO2 does not hover with little flags over any one country. We all own it and therefore we must figure out a way to create a global effort to solving a global problem.

The other question both members asked me was about the Copenhagen conference. I may be called a born optimist but the Copenhagen conference raised a great deal of consciousness around the world, particularly in the United States. It is something that we focused on and went to quite serious about, coming away with perhaps more than we did, but we were successful in showing it is a priority for our President. It is a priority for our Secretary of State. They both went there to try to encourage countries to come together to talk about a global response to a global threat. That is very positive and it shows the importance of it for our Administration.

Fuelled with that, we are very passionate about getting an energy and climate Bill through this session. We are working with Congress and the Administration to see whether we can make that happen. I am very optimistic that we will get legislation. I cannot predict its extent as it is going through the process but it will be a step forward and it will give the price signal that we need to give in order to move forward on all fronts of the three agenda items I mentioned.

Deputy Dinny McGinley

This is my first meeting of this committee. I will follow my colleagues and welcome Dr. Johnson. It is an honour and pleasure to have her here.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

Thank you.

Deputy Dinny McGinley

I do not have any specialist questions but I have one on something which the whole world is speaking about at present, which is the fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico and BP. How does Dr. Johnson see that working itself out and the environmental implications of this terrible tragedy?

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

Allow me to be the first to welcome the Deputy to your new committee.

Deputy Dinny McGinley

It is the first meeting for both of us.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

Yes, hopefully not the last meeting for either of us.

It is a disaster and what we have learned is that from an engineering perspective — and I am an engineer — there is more we can do in safety, security and back up for when things malfunction in offshore oil that we apply quite readily to the nuclear industry. The ability to handle rare but high impact incidents in nuclear power has to be at 100%. One has to plan for how to prevent something that might happen from causing harm. The nuclear industry has very detailed safety safeguards and security processes that have stood the test of time in the US for 30 or 40 years. We need to apply those same safeguards and standards and do research on what that would mean for offshore oil also. This is something we can contribute to the offshore oil industry.

On a broader point, the President has said that we need a portfolio of solutions to a clean energy economy. A total of 85% of US energy is fossil based and 15% is low carbon, mainly nuclear and hydro with some solar, geo and biomass. If we are to have 85% low carbon and 15% carbon, using that 15% for things we do not know how to do with petroleum efficiently like fly planes, heavy trucks and other such transportation, we will need oil. We will need to know how to resource oil that is nearer to us to balance trade and reduce the $300 billion that we send out of the country for petroleum. We need to get it right. We need to be able to do this in a safe, secure and environmentally sound manner. The Department of Energy will be looking at doing research in this area and working in concert with industry to be safe in how we approach it.

Senator Maria Corrigan

I have a comment rather than a question. I join with colleagues in welcoming Dr. Johnson. It has been a fascinating meeting. I have had a little bit of an advantage because the Seanad did not have a vote so we were able to have a chat while the Deputies were away voting. The world is at a critical juncture with regard to the area Dr. Johnson covers. Perhaps the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico gives everybody an opportunity to crystallise the challenges. I wish Dr. Johnson well.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

Thank you very much.

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

I thank Senator Corrigan for being brief.

Unfortunately, there is another division. It is dreadfully unfortunate that the timing of Dr. Johnson's visit coincided with important legislation in the House and that it has been interrupted. I know I speak on behalf of all committee members when I state that for that we are truly sorry.

As a small token of our appreciation I present Dr. Johnson with a book on the history of Leinster House. As she has been to Ireland and has spent so much time in Trinity I hope she finds it interesting as it is a neighbouring house to there.

Dr. Kristina M. Johnson

Thank you very much. It is perfect and I appreciate it.

Co-Chairman (Deputy M. J. Nolan)

Some housekeeping must be carried out by the Joint Committee on Climate Change and Energy Security.

The joint committees adjourned at 4.15 p.m. sine die.