This grant provides two years of support for the continued production and improvement of the Columbia Energy Exchange podcast series, produced by Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy (CGEP). Launched in 2015 and hosted by veteran energy journalist Bill Loveless, the 30-minute, weekly podcast features in-depth, one-on-one discussions with top thought leaders in the energy sector. The podcast series has featured an impressive network of leaders from across the energy system, including former government agency heads from the United States and abroad, CEOs of energy companies involved in a wide range of industries (oil, gas, electricity, nuclear, and renewables), and top analysts from energy think tanks, consultancies, and NGOs. Past guests include former Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, Canada’s Minister of Environment Catherine McKenna, Chevron CEO John Watson, and the World Bank’s Head of Energy Riccardo Puliti. The podcast series also features research results from CGEP-affiliated scholars and its weekly release schedule enables CGEP to address topical and relevant energy issues as they rise in the public discourse. Sloan grant support will provide funds for the production of 50 episodes of the series over each of the next two years, allow CGEP to produce transcripts of each episode, and enable necessary technical improvements to upgrade the podcast’s audio quality.

Many analyses examining the transition to a low-carbon energy system in the United States identify carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) technologies as critical in order to make progress toward deep decarbonization. These technologies have proven difficult to develop and scale, however, and much uncertainty remains about the durability and longevity of policies and incentive structures designed to demonstrate their feasibility. Funds from this grant support work by David Victor and his team at the University of California, San Diego to examine the economic, political, institutional, and technological barriers that are impeding the development of CCUS technologies. First, the team will survey the literature and develop a typology of canonical CCUS technology features being used in different CCUS demonstration facilities, such as the adopted method of carbon dioxide sequestration or the planned industrial use of the carbon dioxide byproduct. They will then select a set of demonstration plants that represent a broad array of different CCUS features to study, conducting semi-structured interviews with a wide range of industry leaders, government representatives, scientists, engineers, and non-governmental actors involved in these projects. Their analysis will focus on the regulatory, institutional, and technological barriers and opportunities that have shaped the development of CCUS technologies to date with the aim of extracting relevant lessons that can be learned as this suite of technologies moves ahead. At the end of the project, the UCSD team will organize a structured workshop to review the research results and share findings with the broader community of researchers and practitioners.

There is a growing debate in the energy and environment community about the role to be played by geoengineering as a response to climate change. Solar radiation management (SRM) technologies, which involve injecting aerosol particles into the atmosphere to cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight, are increasingly central to these discussions. SRM technologies may be developed quickly, have the potential to be relatively inexpensive, and could be easily scaled. However, SRM research and its associated deployment raises many underexplored concerns related to moral hazard, technological uncertainty, unintended externalities, and potential irreversibility. In particular, little is known about the public’s understanding of SRM technologies, their potential concerns, and what procedural and governance safeguards might be put in place to allay them. A multidisciplinary team of scholars at Arizona State University (ASU) proposes to conduct a series of public dialogues with the aim to better understand public views on the development, and deployment of SRM technologies. First, the ASU team will conduct an initial framing and design workshop with subject matter experts to develop rubrics for discussing SRM technologies with the public. Next, they will hold two forums, one in Arizona and the other in Boston, each involving over a hundred members of the lay public. Trained social scientists will lead structured focus groups that will inform participants about SRM technologies and solicit their views and perspectives. Multiple forms of qualitative and quantitative data will be collected throughout the process, including pre- and post- event surveys and interviews. A final expert workshop will then integrate and assess collected data and present findings to policymakers and the research community.

Researchers Tanya Heikkila and Chris Weible from the University of Colorado, Denver plan to undertake a research project that will examine the role played by different stakeholders and policy actors in contributing to the degree of conflict and concord surrounding the siting of energy infrastructure projects. Heikkila and Weible will examine stakeholder coalitions formed during the planning, permitting, and approval stages of various energy infrastructure projects, including renewable energy projects (wind farms and large-scale solar installations), transmission lines, and pipeline build-outs. They will first identify a variety of recently proposed large-scale energy infrastructure siting projects. They will then focus on a select set of each project type, representing a diverse array of stakeholder coalition characteristics, for more detailed study. Projects under study will include not only successful siting projects but also those that were terminated or abandoned due to stakeholder opposition. Heikkila and Weible will then interview key stakeholders and policy actors involved in the siting of each project and conduct detailed textual analyses of media coverage and public records related to permitting decisions.