June 2009 Archives

As part of President Obama's efforts to improve energy efficiency the White House announced new efficiency standards on fluorescent and incandescent lighting yesterday.

"I know light bulbs may not seem sexy, but this simple action holds enormous promise because 7 percent of all the energy consumed in America is used to light our homes and our businesses," said Obama. "Between 2012 and 2042, these new standards will save consumers up to $4 billion a year, conserve enough electricity to power every home in America for 10 months, reduce emissions equal to the amount produced by 166 million cars each year, and eliminate the need for as many as 14 coal-fired power plants."

Obama directly linked raising the US economy's productivity to energy efficiency in his speech, announcing that a $346 million program in the stimulus bill to improve the development, deployment, and use of energy-efficient technologies in residential and commercial buildings would be speeded up.

"By adopting [available] technologies in our homes and businesses, we can make our buildings up to 80 percent more energy efficient—or with additions like solar panels on the roof or geothermal power from underground, even transform them into zero-energy buildings that actually produce as much energy as they consume," he said.

"We can remain the world's leading importer of oil, or we can become the world's leading exporter of clean energy. We can allow climate change to wreak unnatural havoc, or we can create jobs utilizing low-carbon technologies to prevent its worst effects. We can cede the race for the 21st century, or we can embrace the reality that our competitors already have: The nation that leads the world in creating a new clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st century global economy."

This was the third event on energy that the White House had organized in the last three days, and another event with Obama and Energy Secretary Steven Chu is scheduled for today. The new energy push comes after the House of Representatives passed a climate change bill on Friday and the Senate starts working on passage of its own version of the bill.

Paul Guinnessy

On Friday, the Democrats narrowly won passage in the House for the 1200-page American Clean Energy and Security Act by a 219-212 votes—two votes more than required. The bill calls on the US to cut production of greenhouse gases by 17% of 1990 levels by 2020 and 83% by mid-century. Currently US greenhouse gas emissions are rising on average by 1% each year.

Despite statements on both sides of the aisle insisting that they want to combat climate change, a number of Republicans and Democrats have been mounting a rear-guard action to weaken the bill, particularly in its long and convoluted passage through the House Energy and Commerce committee.

The outcome depended on locking in the so-called "Blue Dog Democrats" and the number of moderate Republicans—despite pressure from republican leadership to kill the bill.

President Obama personally called a number of representatives to get passage of the bill after it looked like it wouldn't pass the chamber. On Thursday he called it "a vote of historic proportions ... that will open the door to a clean energy economy" and green jobs." Obama did not mention climate change in his speech, but the dangers of US "dependence on foreign oil." More than forty Democrats, concerned about being labeled tax hikers in next years district elections, still voted against it. Only eight Republicans voted for the bill.

The bill—proposed by Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA)—works by finally putting a price on US carbon emissions through a scheme called a cap-and-trade system. The emissions "cap" is decreased each year, and emitters are allowed to "trade" their emissions for cash to allow for some flexibility in meeting CO₂ targets. Energy intensive industries such as aluminum smelters, and users of fuels such as coal and oil are encouraged to switch to more efficient cleaner energy sources through these techniques. House builders are encouraged to build more energy-efficient buildings as part of the initial construction plans.

Passage was not guaranteed as Republicans tried to tar the bill. Minority leader John Boehner (R-OH) misleadingly stated on numerous occasions that the average family would have to pay an additional $3100 per household toward their energy costs. "Democratic leaders are poised to march many moderate Democrats over a cliff ... by forcing them to vote for a national energy tax that is unpopular throughout the heartland," said Boehner.

However, the Congressional Budget Office projects average costs of $175 a year per household by 2020.

Another report—from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE)—actually suggests consumers come out ahead as appliances and household electronics become more energy efficient.

To ease these cost concerns and obtain passage, the bill was altered through negotiations with Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN) to provide extra money for the agriculture sector—a major greenhouse gas emitter—and to lock in House votes from the rural districts.

But the impression that the public is against this bill could be wrong. Fifty-two percent of the US public support cap-and-trade legislation, and 75% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions, says a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Cost to the average household is a distraction from the true goals of the bill—limiting climate change. The increasingly compelling scientific analysis suggesting that climate change is happening at a much more rapid rate than scientists had previously predicted, puts concerns over the cost of the program (if implemented correctly) into the background as the costs of doing nothing are increasingly being viewed as potentially catastrophic.

The Senate—where the Obama administration will have to put a lot of support behind the bill—has yet to act on the measure. Obama in his weekly address hailed the bill and stated that he was looking forward for the Senate to clearing passage ""so that we can say, at long last, that this was the moment when we decided to confront America's energy challenge and reclaim America's future."

Paul Guinnessy

The Iranian-American Physicists (IrAP) network group has released a letter condemning attacks on academics and students in Iran.

"During the last week, members of the Iran security forces in plain clothes have attacked universities and many student dormitories in Iran.

In one of the dormitories in Tehran, several students have been killed. In solidarity with the university professors and students in Iran, the Iranian-American Physicists (IrAP) network group board of directors wishes to express its outrage and condemn such violent attacks on the universities and student dormitories."

IrAP President Mostafa Hemmati
Arkansas Tech University
on behalf of the IrAP board of directors

FYI: House passes bill funding NASA, NSF, and NIST
On a largely party line vote, the House of Representatives passed the FY 2010 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Bill. Tensions over the way in which amendments were allowed to the bill resulted in hours of delay and 53 roll call votes—a record—and no changes to the overall funding levels for NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

ElBaradei calls for Iran dialog
Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), says the best way to convince Iran to drop its nuclear ambitions is to engage with its administration, regardless of who is in power.

FYI: Scientific and academic organizations urge visa reforms
The American Institute of Physics and five of its Member Societies—Acoustical Society of America, American Association of Physics Teachers, American Astronomical Society, American Geophysical Union, and American Physical Society—have joined other scientific and academic organizations in urging reform to the visa process for scientists. The letter, sent to the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Department of State, provides recommendations on how to improve procedures.

A Senate bill that would add roughly $1 billion to a longstanding research set-aside program for US small businesses has drawn opposition from a coalition of nearly 100 organizations who mainly represent the academic research community.

In a 23 June letter, the groups urged senators to oppose a bill to reauthorize the Small Business Innovation Research program that was approved 18 June by the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship. The Senate measure (S.1233) would raise the amount that the 11 largest federal R&D-funding agencies must withhold from their external research budgets, from a current 2.5% to 3.5%, to support R&D proposals from small businesses. At its current rate, SBIR pays for about $2 billion of R&D grants to hundreds of businesses employing 500 or fewer workers.

“We recognize the benefits of the participation of small businesses in scientific research,” the groups’ letter stated. “However, a mandatory increase in the SBIR allocation across agencies will necessarily result in funding cuts for the peer-reviewed research conducted by other organizations.”

On Wednesday, the House Committee on Science and Technology approved its version of the SBIR reauthorization bill, which would not alter the current SBIR allocation. Assuming passage in both chambers, the bills would need to be reconciled by a House-Senate conference committee. Without reauthorization, the SBIR program is set to expire on July 31.

The two bills also differ on the eligibility of SBIR awards to small businesses that are majority-owned by venture capital firms. The Senate measure would allow the National Institute of Health’s SBIR to award up to 18% of its grants to such majority-owned businesses, while other SBIR agencies could award no more than 8% of their totals. The House bill would allow SBIR awards to small businesses that are majority-owned, provided that no single VC firm owns more than half of the business.

SBIR grants are of two types: Phase I awards of up to $100,000 support a 6-month study of the technical merit and feasibility of an idea or technology. In Phase II, awards of up to $750,000 are available over a period of up to two years to support R&D work and evaluations of commercial potential. A Phase I award is a prerequisite for a Phase II grant. There is no limit on the number of Phase II awards, and serial awardees are not uncommon.

A second, much smaller program known as Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) offers similar-sized, two-phase grants to small firms funded through a 0.3% set-aside on the external research budgets of the five largest research-funding federal agencies. STTR is meant to encourage the transfer of technologies to small businesses from federal laboratories, universities and nonprofit research insititutions. Both House and Senate bills would retain the current STTR allocation.

David Kramer

Signaling the importance of resolving the nuclear waste issue to the future of nuclear energy, President Obama has nominated a single individual to perform both functions at the Department of Energy. Warren “Pete” Miller, a long-time senior official at Los Alamos National Laboratory, was named by Obama to become assistant secretary for nuclear energy, and director of the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management.

Both appointments require Senate confirmation. OCRWM has managed the long-stalled DOE effort to build a repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. But the Obama administration intends to scrap the controversial project and look at other options for dealing with the waste from the country’s 104 operating commercial reactors, as well as the high-level radioactive wastes that were generated by DOE’s nuclear weapons production.

The various options are to be reviewed by a blue-ribbon committee whose members have yet to be named. Energy Secretary Steven Chu has said there is plenty of time to figure out a new course of action, and he has indicated that the administration is open to reprocessing spent fuel, provided that a new technology can be developed that does not produce separated plutonium, as do the processes used by Japan and France. Miller, who retired from LANL in 2001, has most recently been a part-time professor at Texas A&M University.

A blue-ribbon committee has held its first public meeting on the future of NASA’s human spaceflight program.

The 10-member panel, chaired by retired Lockheed Martin chairman Norman Augustine, is to present its recommendations to President Obama in late August.

Last week, it heard competing proposals for getting a new US launcher and crew vehicle capability into place as quickly as possible.

NASA’s current plan, known as Constellation Systems, is expected to cost $35 billion and be ready to carry astronauts into space by March 2015. That would leave a five year gap after the space shuttles are retired next year in which NASA will have to pay the Russian Federal Space Agency to ferry US astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

But United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of the Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin, proposed an alternative in which the Delta IV Heavy rocket used to carry satellites into orbit for the military and other customers could be upgraded for astronauts and be ready in 2014.

A third plan known as Direct, would shift components of the space shuttle into a new series of rockets. That option would also be cheaper and faster than the NASA plan, its advocates said.

Finally, SpaceX, which has won funds as part of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) project, to develop an unmanned cargo vessel called Dragon to deliver supplies to ISS, has a proposal to adapt its Falcon IX rocket for human spaceflight, in a three-to-four year timeframe.

Meanwhile NASA has announced delays to the next two space shuttle flights as they attempt to track down a hydrogen leak on the launchpad.

David Kramer

Background documents

Summary of past human space flight reviews.

NASA's Constellation program review.

United Launch Alliance's Delta IV Heavy proposal.

Aerospace Corp. study of EELV vs. Ares.

Direct launcher proposal.

Side-mounted shuttle proposal.

Space X COTS proposal.

Energy and climate change remained front and center last week, as the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources finished weeks of work and approved a mammoth energy bill that seeks to accelerate the introduction of new clean energy technologies.

The measure would require utilities to produce an increasing proportion of their electricity from renewable sources, beginning at 3% in 2011, and growing to 15% in 2021. Utilities producing fewer than 4 megawatt-hours per year are exempted from the “renewable standard.”

The Senate bill would revamp the existing Department of Energy loan guarantee program, establishing a “Clean Energy Investment Fund” to be used to support more technology deployments. The legislation also creates a new entity housed in DOE—the Clean Energy Deployment Administration—that would provide financial expertise to help create an attractive investment climate for the development and deployment of clean energy technologies.

Other provisions would encourage improvements in energy efficiency improvements by industry and by consumers, and speed the development of a new “smart grid” to accommodate widely distributed electricity generation from renewable sources such as wind and solar.

Opposites attract

With the Democrats' energy and climate bills gaining traction, House Republicans introduced their alternative to the 946-page climate and energy bill that was approved along party lines in a key committee at the end of May.

The GOP bill would promote expansion of nuclear power as an alternative to mandatory limits on carbon dioxide emissions that are proposed in the climate change measure approved by the Committee on Energy and Commerce in May.

Introduced by Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN), the bill would establish a goal for 100 new US reactors to be built over 20 years. It would also provide incentives for domestic and offshore oil production and allow drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has indicated she wants the House to vote on the Democrats' bill before the 4 July recess.

David Kramer

Budget crunch for ExoMars mission
ESA officials at the Paris Airshow this week have told Daniel Clery of ScienceInsider that one of the main components of Europe's ExoMars mission—a static base station called Humboldt that would study Mars’ atmosphere and seismology—will be cut.

Research parks feel the economic pinch
Science parks, which have proliferated in recent years, face an uncertain future as the recession affects government budgets, university endowments and private investments—all of which science parks often depend on says Heidi Ledford in Nature.

Various: Japan, a major emitter of greenhouse gases and an important player in the global warming debate, announced last Wednesday that by 2020 it intended to reduce emissions 15 percent from 2005 levels says the New York Times. The goal immediately criticized as inadequate by environmentalists and industry officials.

Meanwhile, Xie Zhenhua, China's special representative on climate change says that China's adoption of energy efficiency targets is "achieving remarkable progress."

China has reduced its energy consumption per unit of GDP by 1.79 percent, 4.04 percent, and 4.59 percent respectively for 2006, 2007, and 2008, which strongly suggests that by 2010, China would have met the 20 percent cut in emissions set by the national government in 2005 Xie adds.

However the Chinese economy has grown on average by 15% per year over the last five years, indicating that China's CO₂ emissions have increased despite improvements in efficiency.

China must be far more ambitious in tackling climate change if the international community wants to prevent calamitous levels of global warming, suggests David Sandalow, US assistant secretary of state for energy.

Sandalow said the continuation of business as usual in China would result in a 2.7C rise in global temperatures by 2050 even if every other country slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 80% writes in the Guardian.

"China can and will need to do much more if the world is going to have any hope of containing climate change," said Sandalow, who is in Beijing as part of a high-level negotiating team that aims to find common ground ahead of the crucial Copenhagen summit at the end of this year.

The news is not encouraging says climate consultant Elizabeth Balkan. " Amassing all the parts from the past week, it appears that China is no more willing to commit to reductions than it indicated previously, while the US may be backing away from this request altogether," she summarizes. "If this is the case, the ground on which meaningful climate commitments may be achieved...may not yield the favorable results hoped for by many."

Paul Guinnessy

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has announced that Canada will get out of the medical isotope business when Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.’s 52-year-old National Research Universal reactor at AECL’s Chalk River laboratories is closed sometime around 2016.

The NRU is Canada's only research reactor and produces 33% of the international supply of medical isotopes and acts as a neutron-beam research hub—more than 400 scientists makes use of the facility.

The loss of the medical isotopes in particular, is causing controversy.

Two replacement reactors for producing isotopes called MAPLES were canceled last year after the project went over budget and failed to pass design inspections.

The age of NRU has meant the facility has frequently broken down, which is why AECL had proposed building a replacement. That has now been stopped too. "I don’t think anyone is looking at giving a couple of billion dollars more to AECL at this point for a new project," said Kory Teneycke, Harper’s communication director in a press conference.

This is a “horribly short-sighted” decision says Dominic Ryan of McGill University’s Centre for the Physics of Materials in an interview with The Canadian Press. Ryan argues that reducing an investment in Canada's nuclear program will limit opportunities to get involved in the nuclear boom.

Paul Guinnessy

EPA chemical database rules a political hazard, critics say
The Obama administration promised to end political meddling in scientific decisions, says Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten in the LA Times, but some critics argue that the White House is breaking this promise in the field of assessing the danger of industrial chemicals.

Guidelines issued by the Environmental Protection Agency last month carve out a role for White House officials—which could give presidential aides the ability to influence scientific deliberations.

Steven Chu: As seen by Rolling Stone magazine
Writer Jeff Goodell provides a detailed profile through the life and times of Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu. While a high proportion of DOE's $65 billion budget goes to nuclear weapons, Chu has been concentrating more on nanotechnology, biofuels, efficient building designs, and thin film solar panels. Chu says in the piece that he expects carbon dioxide levels to go pass 450 parts per million to 550 parts per million.

Nearly two years ago 28 scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) went to court to block implementation of new background security checks at the lab. If they didn’t agree to “volunteer” to the checks they would be fired. On 4 June the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in their favor. Background check The new checks were based on Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, which stated that all employees at federal facilities, including contract workers, must undergo the checks by the end of 2007. At the time of the lawsuit, JPL physicist Robert Nelson—who is one of the plaintiffs and is leading the Cassini mission to Saturn—said that NASA'S version of HSPD-12 is unduly invasive and "is an invitation to an open-ended fishing expedition." HSPD-12 violated their right to hold personal information private, said Nelson, and constituted an unreasonable search under the 14th Amendment. NASA was requiring all its employees to disclose where they have lived; their school, medical, bank, and criminal records; previous employment; and illegal drug use over the past five years. Employees also had to waive their privacy rights and give permission to the government to obtain additional information about them from other sources. JPL's internal website had an "issue characterization chart"—since taken down— that indicated that security officers would be looking for a "pattern of irresponsibility as reflected in credit history ... sodomy ... incest ... abusive language ... unlawful assembly." It also said homosexuality could be a security issue under some circumstances. Although many workers complained about the checks, only the JPL staff took legal action against them. In 2007, William Jeffrey—who headed NIST when that organization set the standards for HSPD-12—said that only a fingerprint and a few other details are required as a background check. "There is no requirement for the review of the financial or medical history of any federal employee or contractor," he wrote in response to a query from Representative Rush Holt (D-NJ), who had been contacted by the JPL scientists. Jeffrey's letter also states that former NASA administrator Michael Griffin has wide discretion in how he implements HSPD-12. "Some other agencies have elected to do nothing at all in response to HSPD-12," Nelson wrote. The June ruling The federal government had previously lost one ruling on the case—which had ruled unanimously in favor of the JPL employees—and had appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court to overturn the injunction issued last year against NASA and the California Institute of Technology. The votes,in denying the appeal, was not close. Writing for the majority, Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw noted that JPL is traditionally an open facility that has thousands of visitors and foreign scientists. "The success of their scientific mission, which has been operating since 1958 without background checks, is renowned," Wardlaw wrote in rebuffing the Justice Department's claim. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr now has 60 days to decide whether to appeal the Ninth Circuit's ruling to the Supreme Court. Paul Guinnessy

The countries behind the €1.4 billion European Spallation Source (ESS) have finally picked a site to build it: Lund, Sweden.

"The decision on where ESS should be built has been eagerly awaited by the thousands of European scientists whose research depends so crucially upon neutrons," said Peter Allenspach, Chairman of search commmittee.

"Three extremely good candidates, Sweden, Spain and Hungary, proposed excellent sites to host the ESS. Each of their campaigns strongly emphasised both the strategic importance of ESS for European science, and the urgency to build ESS in light of the new American and Japanese spallation neutron sources."

"Unfortunately, it has always been realised that only one of the three candidate sites could ultimately host ESS. In this respect European Research ministers recommended that the ESS site should be in Lund in Sweden. Spain has already graciously pledged to exploit the expertise and momentum it has gained in the last three years by signing an agreement to help ESS-Scandinavia deliver the ESS that Europe needs," said Allenspach.

"We hope that Hungary will similarly follow this initiative and actively bring its expertise to the ESS table. In this way there is potential for all three serious site contenders to benefit from their dedication and commitment over the last few years."

Related Physics Today links
Germany Reviews Big Physics Projects, Triggers Furor over Spallation Source (November 2002)
European Spallation Source: Dead or Alive? (April 2003)
Scattered countries revive hope for European Spallation Source (June 2008)

Prime Minister Gordon Brown reshuffled and replaced some members of his cabinet earlier today. The UK cabinet runs government.

Two years ago as part of a shakeup of the public education and industry sector the government created the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (DIUS) which would control the majority of UK science funding. By creating one department focused on science research and graduate education, the government hoped to increase science's visibility, both within the treasury department—which controls the purse strings—and among the public. The unit was run by John Denham.

This experiment is now over. Under the reshuffle DIUS has been merged with the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. The new entity, which will be run by Peter Mandelson, is called the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (DBIS). It will "create a single department committed to building Britain's future economic strengths" says a press release from 10 Downing Street.

The release also states that DBIS will put "the UK's Further Education system and universities closer to the heart of government thinking about building now for the [economic] upturn."

Not everyone is convinced this is a good idea. Martin Doel, CEO of the Association of Colleges, said that "in the middle of a recession and with less than a year to run to an election it's unhelpful to introduce this degree of change in terms of ministerial responsibility."

Nick Dusic of the Campaign for Science & Engineering warns that "science and engineering research and skills contribute to business and economic growth, but their contributions to the UK are also much wider. Lord Mandelson needs to clearly signal that investment in science and higher education will not be re-directed to support industrial priorities. There needs to be a consultation about developing strategies to commercialize science, which should include a proper debate about the implications of focusing research funding."

Dusic's concern is based on the reasons for creating DIUS in the first place. During the 1980s and 90s research funding was based in the Department of Trade and Industry, an agency similar to the new DIUS, and frequently subjected to financial fluctuations based on priorities elsewhere in the department.

"The department [DBIS] has a wide remit so it is more critical than ever that the science budget is ring-fenced so that is protected from spending problems in other areas," he says.

Paul Guinnessy

Policy highlights from Science, Nature, and AIP's FYI

As Research Funding Declines, Chávez, Scientists Trade Charges
Science’s Barbara Casassus investigates the status of science in Venezuela as disaffected scientists say they fear that science funding is becoming more politicized, and declining after broad cuts in funding for research institutes. Recently President Hugo Chávez called on his newly appointed science minister, Jesse Chacón Escamillo—who has scant scientific credentials but has been close to Chávez—to "put the screws" on "feeble scientists" to get better results.

Critics say that research is being mismanaged, and that the government has fired, demoted, or blacklisted dissidents.

The European Parliament and its impact on science-related policy
"You can do more for environment legislation in Brussels [at the European Union parliament] through parliamentary committee work than you can in any national parliament," says Chris Davies, a European MP.

"Although it has no tax-raising powers, it can get things done," writes Nature’s Alison Abbott. "And more than any of the other institutions of the EU, it can allow elected individuals to make a difference: personal enthusiasm counts."

The status of DoD science and technology programs
A hearing by a subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee provided an overview of the scientific and technological opportunities and challenges facing the Department of Defense and the science community. Among the most important messages: the need for S&T policies and budgets to adjust to changes in today’s battlefields, and to anticipate future war fighting needs says AIP’s Richard M. Jones.

NNSA frozen as Nuclear Posture Review 2010 beckons
Jones also reports on the House hearing on the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) which runs the US nuclear weapons complex. Funding for nuclear weapons is flat while the Obama administration decides what to do with the NNSA. There has been some proposal to move the group from the Department of Energy to the Defense deparmtent.

Chairman Peter Visclosky (D-IN) opened the May 21 hearing by describing a changing threat environment and the importance of the forthcoming Nuclear Posture Review:

The Chair for the subcommittee that hosted the hearing, Peter Visclosky (D-IN) is quoted as saying “The national security requirements for a 21st century nuclear force, in a threat environment driven by smaller but very serious multiple threats, are very different from the national security requirements of our legacy nuclear force, which was driven by the bipolar environment of the Cold War. We need to transition to a 21st century force as soon as is economically and technically possible. I urge the Administration to focus on this transition with a clean-sheet approach, free of reflexive ties to the policies of the past. We are waiting for the Nuclear Posture Review to set the framework of this transition.”

Paul Guinnessy