Energy and Climate Policy

  Should the government require automakers to improve the fuel economy of new vehicles each year? If so, at what pace should such improvements proceed? Responding to those questions, this week Michael Levi and I released a peer-reviewed discussion paper urging the next administration to maintain President Obama’s planned Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. We argue: “The recent fall in oil prices could undercut the rationale for stringent standards because when gasoline is cheaper, consumers do not save as much on fuel costs when they buy more fuel-efficient vehicles. Ahead of a mandatory federal review of the policies, we modeled the costs and benefits of CAFE standards under lower oil prices than Barack Obama’s administration assumed when, in 2011, it enacted rising standards through 2025. We find that the stringency of the standards, as currently planned, can maximize net benefits to society even under lower oil prices, assuming that U.S. government estimates of the costs of efficient technologies are correct. Moreover, we identify three benefits that federal agencies did not previously consider that make stringent CAFE standards attractive under low oil prices. We also find that climate change risks are more significant in justifying strong CAFE standards than they were in 2011." Writing in Vox, Brad Plumer provides a terrific overview of our paper and adds detail on why automakers are likely to push the next administration to relax the standards when federal agencies review them in 2017: “That review could prove contentious. So far, automakers have coped with the rules just fine, technology-wise. They’ve reduced the weight of the vehicles by using lighter materials like aluminum, and they’ve deployed technologies like gasoline direct injection and cylinder deactivation to improve the efficiency of their engines. Yet some companies are insisting that meeting the post-2020 standards could prove far more arduous.” Automakers may be right that continuing to design even more efficient vehicles will be more expensive than anticipated, perhaps because they have already harvested the low-hanging fruit of technology enhancements. And they may conclude that as oil prices have fallen, so has consumer demand for higher mileage vehicles, eroding the justification for designing efficient but expensive models. But relaxing CAFE standards when oil prices are low would doubly damage U.S. efforts to reduce oil consumption and curb greenhouse gas emissions. First, major automakers would fail to invest in efficient technologies for conventional gas-powered vehicles. And second, in the absence of fuel economy standards that induce innovation that is transferable across vehicle designs, low oil prices will chill investment in alternative transportation options, including electric and hydrogen vehicles. CAFE Standards Direct Innovation Toward Efficiency Gains Historically, automakers avoided investing in efficiency even while oil prices rose for the better part of the 1990s and 2000s. That is not to say that they did not innovate—on the contrary, automakers invested heavily in boosting the performance of new vehicles, increasing torque and horsepower to sate consumer demand for more powerful cars. But fuel economy languished as CAFE standards stagnated (see figure 1 from our paper, below). Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) Standards versus Actual Fleet Fuel Economy Now that oil prices have plunged, automakers would be even less likely to market an efficient fleet of vehicles. This is because current pump prices heavily influence consumer buying decisions. As a result, the recent plunge in oil prices has led to national sales of less efficient light trucks—including SUVs and minivan—overtaking sales of more efficient passenger cars. If not for federal mandates, automakers would likely tailor their new vehicle offerings to satisfy customer demand for less efficient vehicles. Innovation Helps Alternative Vehicles Even More Than Conventionals Some argue that fuel economy standards, rather than a more comprehensive carbon price policy, actually hurt alternative vehicle technologies rather than help them. For example, David Livingston at the Carnegie Endowment contends: “Even when successful, vehicle standards are incomplete solutions. As they become more stringent over time, they make traditional internal combustion engines more competitive by using new materials and technologies to increase fuel mileage, in the process rendering new alternatives such as hybrids or electric vehicles less desirable on the margin.” Although I think fear of such technological lock-in is justified in some cases, fuel economy standards probably do more to help than hurt the competitiveness of alternative vehicle technologies. First, CAFE standards offer attractive bonus credits for automakers who sell alternative designs, including electric vehicles. Second, almost every technological advance that improves the efficiency of a conventional vehicle will also improve the efficiency of hybrid vehicles,  at present the most competitive alternative to fully gasoline powered vehicles. Finally, efficiency improvements that carry over to electric vehicles (e.g., lighter construction materials) benefit their competiveness far more than that of gasoline powered vehicles. This is because lighter and more aerodynamic electric vehicles require smaller batteries, making the car even more lightweight, efficient, and cost-competitive. These improvements can be crucial to advance alternative vehicle designs that otherwise would struggle to compete for investment when oil prices are low. Earlier this year, Michael and I convened a diverse group of academics, policymakers, and private sector experts  to investigate the effects of low oil prices on clean energy investment. Within the transportation sector, we learned that current low oil prices matter substantially. Advanced biofuels companies are struggling, and consumer demand for alternative vehicle technologies has fallen, denting the investment rationale in non-gasoline powered vehicles. In a market that does not value greenhouse gas externalities, a lack of a policy buffer could leave clean technologies at the mercy of an unforgiving oil market. Although low oil prices can provide windfall savings in the near term for consumers, they can jeopardize the long-term investments that the United States must make to reduce reliance on oil. In our discussion paper, we have shown that upholding President Obama’s CAFE standards is justified because their economic benefits outweigh compliance costs more so than any more lenient standard. But in addition, CAFE standards play an important and more difficult to quantify role as a source of policy certainty shielding clean innovation from oil market uncertainty.

This was originally posted by my colleague and co-author Elizabeth Economy on CFR’s Asia Unbound blog. Liz is the C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at CFR. It seems like a distant memory now, but just one month ago, the international community was lauding China for stepping up its commitment to address climate change by pledging to initiate a cap-and-trade system for CO2 by 2017 and contributing $3.1 billion to a fund to help poor countries combat climate change. Now, however, the talk is all about the release of a new set of game-changing Chinese statistics on coal consumption. A New York Times headline blared: “China burns much more coal than reported, complicating climate talks.”  And the Guardian reported: “China underreporting coal consumption by up to 17%, data suggests.” What does all this mean? The short answer is nothing good. Here are just a few of the implications: Chinese statistics are as unreliable as ever. China analysts, myself included, often say, “We don’t necessarily trust the statistics, we just look at the trend line.” This coal consumption recalculation, however, means that even this somewhat weak effort at analytical credibility no longer holds. Seriously, how does one ignore six hundred million tons of coal consumed in just one year? There have been some terrific articles on the problems with Chinese statistics over the past month by Gwyn Guilford and Mark Magnier. And there was a great report by Bloomberg that laid bare the metrics that different economic analysts use to arrive at their calculations of Chinese gross domestic product (GDP), some of which use data such as rail traffic and electricity production. Unfortunately, China’s massive coal gap suggests that even these analyses are relying on questionable data. Assuming that Chinese industrial production and manufacturing statistics are accurate, the dramatic increase in coal consumption that is now reported suggests that the gains in Chinese energy efficiency, as well as the reductions in energy intensity (the amount of energy consumed per unit of GDP), that have been touted over the past decade are much less than assumed—or perhaps they are nonexistent. China’s pledge that its CO2 emissions will peak around 2030 is suddenly much less significant than it was one year ago—and even then many analysts argued that it wasn’t significant enough. After all, we are now dealing with a baseline of CO2 emissions that is substantially higher than we originally believed. The question now is whether China will adjust its commitment to meet its newly revealed contribution to the problem. It is now all the more important that whatever steps China commits to take to mitigate its contribution to climate change are in fact realized. Doubts already have been swirling around China’s promise to implement a cap-and-trade system and to ensure that 20 percent of all its energy derives from renewables by 2030. China needs to put these doubts to rest. Once you head down the rabbit hole of what is fact in China and what is fiction, it is very difficult to crawl back out again. If one is looking for a light at the end of the tunnel, however, let me suggest two: first, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) had already released statistics on Chinese coal consumption in September that suggested that China had underreported its coal consumption by 14 percent during 2000-2013. It also, however, suggested that coal consumption was nearly flat in 2014. If the EIA is right on that score, then there may be some merit to all the reporting that China is turning the corner on its coal consumption, and the world could see a plateau in CO2 emissions (albeit at a much higher level) earlier than 2030. Second, the mere fact that the Chinese government actually reported the change in coal consumption is a positive. The timing of Beijing’s announcement, right before the Paris climate talks, may be unfortunate. However, greater transparency from a government that thrives on opacity is always welcome.

Nestled in the foothills of the Rockies in Golden, Colorado, the Energy Department’s  National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) was established in 1977 to help bring new energy technologies to market. Today it is one of seventeen national laboratories overseen by the Energy Department and the only one whose sole focus is renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development. I spent a full day touring the facilities and interviewing researchers working on a range of solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies and on integration of clean energy into the electricity grids of the future. Here’s what I learned: 1. NREL is unique in the solar research ecosystem—that’s a bad thing. Originally christened the Solar Energy Research Institute, NREL is best known as the gold standard of solar technology. One researcher remarked to me, matter-of-factly, “We are the best in solar PV there is.” It is easy to see why. Cutting-edge research on myriad solar technologies is co-located on one campus, and basic science, economic modeling, manufacturing development, and systems integration are all neighbors. Around the world, just two institutions (Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems and Japan’s National Institute for Advanced Industrial Science and Technology) come close to NREL’s breadth of solar activities... Unfortunately, limited resources constrain NREL’s ability to leverage its integrated research capabilities to commercialize promising technologies. For example, take NREL’s work on an upstart technology I’ve written about elsewhere—solar perovskites. In contrast to academic researchers’ obsession with making fingernail-sized devices that are highly efficient under perfect lab conditions, the researcher leading NREL’s perovskite work wants to scale up manufacturing of larger areas of solar perovskite coatings and achieve long-term stability in the real world. Those goals are ambitious and sorely needed, but with only three and a half researchers supporting them, they will be tough to achieve. Some major research universities (e.g., MIT) also house integrated research programs that help researchers fill the gaps between basic research and commercial success. But many more such centers are needed to institutionalize energy technology development. Prototype printer heads for inkjet printing perovskite solar coatings in a scalable manufacturing process. The process is contained inside a “glovebox,” into which researchers can reach, through the rubber arms, to interact with the process under a controlled atmosphere (Varun Sivaram). 2. Rapid solar PV market evolution means moving targets for researchers. Earlier this year, First Solar (the lone American panel maker in a Chinese-dominated industry) stunningly projected $1 per Watt fully installed cost for utility-scale solar installations by 2017 (this includes a major step-down in tax credit subsidies to solar power). If they achieve this cost, some of the research projects I saw at NREL may have to adjust their targets even lower. For example, an ingenious reactor to mass-produce NREL’s record efficiency solar cells has a long-term panel cost target of $0.70 per Watt. Because the panels are highly efficient, the remainder of the costs to complete the installation should be roughly 33 percent lower than with existing panels; still, even if this reactor were scaled up to produce solar panels in 2017, the fully installed panels would cost $1.10/W, already higher than the industry roadmap. As the leader in solar innovation, researchers around the world will look to NREL to clearly articulate the value of new solar technologies and why a combination of low cost, superior performance, and new applications is preferable to today’s race-to-the-bottom solar commodity market. The reactor (left panel) in which researchers created the world-record efficiency solar cell (46 percent efficient under concentrated sunlight) (Varun Sivaram). For four decades, NREL has compiled the record efficiencies of solar cells and published them in a chart (right panel) that is consulted around the world (U.S. Department of Energy). 3. Reliability in the real world makes and breaks solar PV technology. At NREL’s Outdoor Test Facility (OTF), rows and rows of solar panels endure the rain, snow, and even hail that Golden, CO hurls at them. Out in the field, all sorts of unexpected things can go wrong, and NREL partners with companies who want to learn about the failure modes that could plague their technology. My tour guide pointed out the rooftop shingles coated with a flexible solar panel—although the panels still appear to work, the ensuing leaks from poking wires through the roof had doomed the product and the company. Later, I saw panels which had worked fine for the first year but whose sealing material had gradually given way to attacks by moisture, which now eroded the power-producing material itself. The take-home lesson was that exciting technologies in the lab still have a long way to go to demonstrate the twenty-year reliability that the market demands. As we snaked around the rows of the OTF, two words came to mind: “testbed” and “graveyard.” One First Solar test setup had been in operation for over two decades and still produced 80 percent of its original output—the data from this test had emboldened First Solar’s investors and helped the company achieve its current success. But I also passed dozens of failed relics, sober lessons from the heady days when capital poured into new solar startups that have since expired. NREL’s Outdoor Test Facility (OTF) hosts solar panel test setups from industry partners for multi-decade reliability studies (Varun Sivaram) 4. Standards, not new technology, are crucial for integrating clean energy into electricity grids. At NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF), researchers shared their views about the challenges and opportunities from modernizing the U.S. electricity grid to integrate new energy technologies. Specifically, ESIF is interested in integrating distributed energy resources (DERs), which include solar panels but also other decentralized ways to make or save energy (e.g., fuel cells, batteries, efficient appliances). In theory, DERs can improve the efficiency of the electricity grid, reduce electricity consumption, and save ratepayers money while also maintaining grid reliability. But in practice, this is complicated by the proliferation of DERs made by different vendors to different specifications and operated without much regard for their effects on the grid, positive or negative. The solution could come from emulating the successful IT industry. There, a robust set of standards have enabled different pieces of hardware to operate seamlessly with software applications, a design feature known as “interoperability.” In much the same way as a computer language employs a concept called “abstraction” to send generalized instructions to diverse hardware, the electricity distribution grid is in need of a standard language, or “common semantics” to coordinate the diverse DERs that will connect to the grid in the coming years. ESIF hopes to create a set of standards that enables such a language and ensures DER interoperability; more federal support would be helpful to accelerate this work. Indeed, the gains from system-level innovation, according to several ESIF researchers, dwarf the expected gains from new energy technology—“we have all the technology we need” was a refrain I heard often. Two of the “Smart Homes” that ESIF has set up to simulate the integration of homes packed with internet-connected, energy-efficient appliances into the electricity grid (Varun Sivaram) 5. A decentralized grid poses serious cybersecurity threats that require immediate attention. As grids integrate more DERs, shifting from a centralized to a decentralized model, there are two opposing effects on grid resilience. The physical resilience of the grid to failure improves, because the strategic value of central power stations and bulk transmission lines decreases as more power is generated and saved closer to the customer. However, the cybersecurity risk actually increases with decentralization, because access points for malicious hackers proliferate—imagine a hacker accessing a mobile phone to breach a home energy system to attack a utility distribution substation, etc. The root cause of the opportunity to efficiently coordinate DERs—their increasing connectivity via the Internet—is also the source of increased cybersecurity risks. Fortunately, these are not new problems, and their solutions are well catalogued. Enterprise IT best practices have long incorporated “role-based access” protocols, in which a proliferation of users on a network does not compromise the network’s integrity, because of walls that isolate decentralized users from the rest of the system. I learned from researchers at ESIF that electricity utilities are far behind other enterprises in their IT practices, and that an immediate culture shift is imperative if grid decentralization is to reduce, rather than enlarge, resilience risk. The contrast between ESIF and the solar research facility was striking to me. ESIF, by decades the younger of the two, was manned by researchers intent on modernizing the century-old utility business model. On the other hand, the solar researchers I met brought decades of experience in solar PV and had a long-term research orientation, at odds with the quarterly target obsessions of a solar industry that is rapidly reducing its costs. But to label the two facets of NREL as its future and past would be a mistake. New solar technologies will be essential to displace fossil fuels, and NREL plays a crucial role in advancing solar PV research and methodically preparing new technologies for the field. Coupled with the next-generation grid that ESIF envisions, tomorrow’s energy systems may look fundamentally different from today’s. I am grateful to the staff of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory for their openness and hospitality, including: Bryan Hannegan, Greg Wilson, Jen Liebold, Tami Reynolds, Jim Cale, Martha Symko-Davies, Erfan Ibrahim, John Geisz, John Simon, Matt Beard, Joe Berry, John Wohlgemuth, Jao van de Lagemaat, and Paul Basore.

What caused the big oil crash of 2014? If you said the U.S. oil boom or Saudi strategy, you’re only partly right. As I argue in a new essay in the July/August issue of Foreign Affairs, if you want to understand current energy developments and future prospects – whether you’re talking about oil or gas or coal or renewables, and about economics or security or environment – you need to pay attention to Asia. Here’s a deep dive into one of the facts I mention in the article. (There’s nothing this technical in the actual piece!) The chart below shows Asia and Oceana oil consumption over the last fifteen years along with U.S. government projections for the next year or so. (All data is from here.) From the end of 2009 through the end of 2012, consumption increased by an average of 1.36 million barrels a day each year. From the end of 2012 through the end of 2014, in contrast, consumption was essentially flat. Why does this matter? The Energy Information Administration estimates that global production exceeded global consumption by about 1.8 million barrels a day during the fourth quarter of 2014. That glut is why oil prices crashed. Had Asian oil consumption growth maintained its pre-2012 pace over 2013 and 2014, global consumption (all else equal) would have been 33.6 million barrels a day in the fourth quarter last year – 2.7 million barrels a day higher than it actually was. There would have been no oil glut and no price crash. Even if Asian consumption had grown at half its previous pace, the production surplus would have been small. These claims remain true even if one excludes 2010 (which featured recovery from the financial crisis) and 2011 (when Japan imported more oil to cope with the Fukushima disaster). Oil consumption is only one way in which Asia remains central to global energy despite all the headlines generated by changes in the United States. This link to my Foreign Affairs article should get you free access for a while. I welcome readers’ thoughts.

What will tomorrow’s solar panels look like? This week, along with colleagues from Oxford and MIT, I published a feature in Scientific American making the case for cheap and colorful solar coatings derived from a new class of solar materials: perovskites. In this post, I’ll critically examine prospects for commercialization of solar perovskites, building on our article’s claim that this technology could represent a significant improvement over current silicon solar panels. We argue: Perovskites are tantalizing for several reasons. The ingredients are abundant, and researchers can combine them easily and inexpensively, at low temperature, into thin films that have a highly crystalline structure similar to that achieved in silicon wafers after costly, high-temperature processing. Rolls of perovskite film that are thin and flexible, instead of thick and rigid like silicon wafers, could one day be rapidly spooled from a special printer to make lightweight, bendable, and even colorful solar sheets and coatings. Still, to challenge silicon’s dominance, perovskite cells will have to overcome some significant hurdles. The prototypes today are only as large as a fingernail; researchers have to find ways to make them much bigger if the technology is to compete with silicon panels. They also have to greatly improve the safety and long-term stability of the cells—an uphill battle. We wanted to write for a popular science magazine, with a general audience in mind, to share an exciting story of scientific discovery that has largely been confined to specialist journals. Indeed, for solar perovskites to overcome the odds stacked against an upstart clean technology breaking into the market, we believe the academic, private, and public sectors really need to pay more attention to each other. The lack of awareness by the clean energy industry about solar perovskites, despite the commotion in the scientific community, demonstrates how scientific research can proceed in a bubble. Following the big announcement of a highly efficient solar perovskite from our research group in Oxford, hundreds of laboratories around the world jumped on the perovskite bandwagon, in many cases abandoning their research into other solar technologies. The race among labs to publish record solar efficiencies in the top journals involved international intrigue—the UK banded with Italy, trading records with the Swiss-Chinese coalition, and everyone was eventually upstaged by the South Koreans when they reported a 20 percent efficient solar cell late last year (for reference, silicon solar cells have plateaued at 25 percent efficiency, a target solar perovskites should soon surpass). The excitement and drama reflect the gravity of the perovskite discovery—time will tell, but many of us believe this is the field’s biggest breakthrough since the original invention of the solar cell sixty years ago. Certified solar cell record efficiencies for silicon and perovskite technologies (date axis truncated to better show perovskite efficiency trajectory—silicon solar cells were invented in 1954; data from National Renewable Energy Laboratory) However, when I talk to industry executives at major solar manufacturers and developers, very few have even heard of solar perovskites. This does not bother scientists, many of whom narrowly focus on demonstrating a higher efficiency solar perovskite, even if it is a fingernail-sized cell that degrades in hours. Some might argue that a scientist’s value is in basic inquiry and complementary to industry’s expertise, and they have a point. But aloof regard for real markets from the ivory tower leads many academics to naïvely assume that a superior technology will naturally make the leap from prototype to profitability. In fact, broader feedback from professionals outside of research labs is integral to commercializing solar perovskites. Currently, solar perovskites can be worryingly unstable (although we’ve demonstrated longevity if they are properly sealed away from moisture). That’s a red flag for investors familiar with a mature, 50 billion dollar silicon solar panel industry in which every panel comes with a 25-year performance warranty. And because solar perovskites contain lead, a toxic element, any commercial product will need to undergo extensive safety testing, with which private industry veterans have experience. These professionals can guide research into the stability, safety, and real-world performance of solar perovskites, which are every bit as important as the efficiency under idealized lab conditions, the paramount academic metric. Elsewhere in the physical sciences, the transition from basic research to product development is better institutionalized. This is one of the reasons why I have argued that Moore’s Law for computer chips, which predicts rapid deployment of scientific advances, does not apply to the solar panel industry, whose products have improved at a comparatively plodding pace. Whereas in computer chip development there are established conferences at every step of commercialization from basic device physics to chip integration that bring together scientists and industry, advanced solar technology development is confined almost exclusively to the realm of academia. Fortunately, leading researchers in the United States and Europe are making a concerted effort to bridge the gap between academia and industry. For example, one of my co-authors and the leader of the Oxford research group, Henry Snaith, founded a company to tackle real-world deployment and commercialize solar perovskites. His strategy is actually to partner with the silicon solar panel companies, adding a perovskite coating on top of silicon to boost its performance. That approach seems prudent, because allying with powerful incumbents is easier than fighting them for market access. And through a partnership, his company will benefit from gaining access to experienced solar engineers, investors, and developers to guide the design and delivery of a compelling product. Solar perovskites on glass—researchers can vary the color and transparency of the coatings, enabling new applications (Plamen Petkov) My co-authors and I do hope our article will bring professionals in the solar industry up to speed on the latest research, but our target audience is even broader. We envision architects reimagining the aesthetics and functionality of windows, roof shingles, and facades; policymakers tweaking green building codes and incentives; and the military investigating the use of solar perovskite coatings to power forward deployed bases. These applications may seem far-fetched, and they are—solar perovskites are still a risky bet to succeed in a monolithic market. But if scientists continue to broadly communicate our progress, those odds can only improve. Read our feature, “Outshining Silicon,” in Scientific American’s July 2015 issue, here

On Monday, the Obama administration gave Shell conditional permission to move forward with Arctic oil drilling. The New York Times captures a common sentiment well in identifying this as a “tricky intersection of Obama’s energy and climate legacies”. The reality, though, is that this intersection isn’t nearly a fraught as many assume: decisions about offshore drilling in Alaska are indeed difficult, given the local economic and environmental stakes involved, but climate isn’t a central factor. I’m ambivalent when it comes to federal decisions on offshore Arctic drilling. The Arctic is a special place. I saw that first hand when I visited with the Coast Guard in 2008 – a trip on which I also learned how challenging oil spill response there can be. (I also learned that a buoy tender isn’t the ideal place to spend your first night ever at sea.) Opposing offshore Arctic oil development is a reasonable position. At the same time, with the right precautions, spill risks can be substantially reduced, though inevitably not eliminated. And there’s a federalism issue (perhaps not in the legal sense but in a more basic one): it’s easy to be strident in taking positions from Washington, DC, but this is a much more intimate economic and environmental issue for Alaskans – so presumably their preferences should have some special say. Navigating these tradeoffs is difficult. But throwing climate change into the mix as a central consideration lacks empirical foundation. (Perhaps that’s why that Times article doesn’t follow through on its headline’s promise.) Yes, at a global level, more oil production means more oil consumption, and hence greater carbon dioxide emissions and worse climate change. But more oil production in one place generally means less oil production elsewhere – that’s how markets and prices work – which substantially blunts the effect. Bill McKibben drills home the conventional wisdom in a Times op-ed, blaming Obama for “climate denial” by claiming that “you can’t deal with climate on the demand side alone”, backing that up by citing a study that was unable to identify any “climate-friendly scenario in which any oil or gas could be drilled in the Arctic”. True! Also true: that claim was based on looking at a whopping two scenarios. (From the original: “none [of the oil or gas] is produced in any [Arctic] region in either of the 2C scenarios before 2050”.) And, most important, the study never asked what would happen to emissions if the Arctic oil were put off limits. Had it done so, it would have found more oil production elsewhere, and minimal net emissions impact. What the study really found – and what is entirely reasonable – is that if the world gets serious about reducing emissions, oil prices will fall, and companies won’t want to develop most Arctic oil anyhow. That points to demand-side policy, denigrated by many who are painting the Alaska decision as climate apostasy, as critical. There is one theoretical exception. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, and a bunch of other oil producers could team up to jointly restrict oil production. That prospect, of course, makes U.S.-China-India-Europe cooperation to reduce emissions through demand-side policy look like a cakewalk by comparison. Navigating the local economic and environmental tradeoffs involved in Arctic oil development is difficult enough without turning every decision into a climate litmus test. And getting serious on climate change is plenty tough without pretending that playing fossil fuel whack-a-mole whenever possible will be effective in reducing emissions. We’ll have better policy, and better outcomes, if we don’t make every difficult energy and environment decision about climate change too.