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News
Street Roots • Dec. 28, 2018-Jan 3, 2019
P H O T O IL L U S T R A T IO N B Y B A T U H A N T O K E R /IS T O C K
We don’t need to focus On every little solution; just a fe w
that work, says energy policy expert Hal Harvey
BY EMILY GREEN
S E N IO R S T A F F R E PO R TE R
e should listen to Hal Harvey.
Unless you’re a climate-policy buff,
W
you’ve probably never heard of him,
but he’s been effectively chipping away at the
climate change conundrum for decades.
He says if we stop plucking ideas from a
bottomless menu of half-baked solutions and,
instead, laser-focus our efforts on a handful of
the most effective fixes, we might actually have
a shot at avoiding complete climate calamity.
In 1991, when he was 29, Harvey co-founded
the Energy Foundation, a philanthropic
organization aimed solely at supporting policies
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Today, it
doles out about $75 million in grants aimed at
that purpose annually. In 1999, he helped
establish Energy Foundation China, which grew
to become one of China’s largest foundations,
helping to implement hundreds of energy
regulations. He was also appointed to energy
panels under presidents George H. W. Bush
and Bill Clinton.
In addition to other accolades, Harvey was
most recently awarded the U.N.’s 2018 Clean
Air and Climate Change Award, and he serves
as CEO of an environmental policy firm,
Energy Innovation, in San Francisco. Under
Harvey’s direction, the firm recently released a
free online tool, the Energy Policy Simulator
(visit us.energypolicy.solutions), which allows
users to design their own climate policy
packages and apply them to different markets
to see what effect they’ll have on carbon
emissions.
In Oregon, Harvey’s worked with former
Gov. John Kitzhaber, Renewable Northwest and
Climate Solutions, a nonprofit that pushes
clean-energy policies. Climate Solutions is part
of a coalition backing the Clean Energy Jobs
bill, a cap-and-invest carbon-regulating law that
failed in 2017 and 2018 but is poised for
passage next year.
Harvey’s climate strategy is straightforward,
and understanding its basics can help vested
interests worldwide determine what policies
they should be pushing.
Simply put, Harvey argues that if the top 20
greenhouse gas-emitting countries target four
sectors - electricity, manufacturing,
transportation and building - with a few proven
policies, humanity can achieve a 50 percent
chance of avoiding the 2-degree Celsius
increase in global temperatures that scientists
warn would spell disaster.
These policies include laws to improve
vehicle performance standards, carbon pricing
structures and enacting more stringent energy-
efficiency requirements in building codes.
It’s a plan he laid out in his new book,
“Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide
for Low-Carbon Energy,” and one that he
recently shared with a banquet-room-full of
climate activists at Portland’s downtown Hilton
during Climate Solutions’ annual dinner in late
November.
“It turns out there are a small number of
things you have to do to win on climate,” he
told the room, “and you have to do them
rapidly, and you have to do them correctly.”
Shortly before Harvey gave his keynote
address, he sat down with Street Roots to
discuss his book and how Oregonians should be
thinking about climate policy.
E m ily G reen : The policies you’ve laid out in
your book are practical ways o f reducing
emissions that will not eliminate modern
conveniences and will not slow economic growth.
What would you say
to someone who says,
“I f we rely on this
approach, we’re
digging our own
graves because we
need much more
drastic and faster-
acting policies ”?
C l One of the horrifying
things about climate
change is that the
people who cause
Hal Harvey: I m
ngpqf pi iffpr ¡p o o f
always in favor of
H ¡ U ^ l &UI i d l e d b l .
more serious and
Hal Harvey
speedy action. My
two mantras are
Go-founder, Energy Foundation
speed and scale.
These turn out to be
the policies that deliver the most reductions.
And the whole point of the book that we wrote,
and our work, is to make sure that when
people do expend political energy on climate
change, they push the things that are going to
make the biggest difference.
There’s a thousand options. I heard
yesterday somebody joke, “I heard if you
eliminate plastic straws, that eliminates 1
degree Celsius,” well that’s a preposterous
joke, but the point is if we are going to be
effective, we have to choose the most effective
policies and push them the hardest, we can’t
just do a little of everything. It won’t get us
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