A major type of policy response to climate change is mitigating carbon emissions by putting an explicit or implicit price on carbon. While such policies have many attractive features and ought to be implemented as part of any climate protection regime, there are strong arguments for going beyond so-called "market based" instruments in attacking the climate change problem. One such argument is that even with a price on carbon, the private sector will systematically under invest in developing new low- or non-carbon emitting energy technologies from a societal point of view. This talk will briefly review the arguments for public support of advanced energy technology Research and Development (R&D) and then try to answer another set of challenges that emerge when it is decided to go beyond market forces by providing public support for energy technology R&D. In that case, the most fundamental questions to be addressed are how much to spend on R&D and what to spend it on.

John P. Weyant is Professor of Management Science and Engineering, a Senior Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and Director of the Energy Modeling Forum (EMF) at Stanford University. Established in 1976, the EMF conducts model comparison studies on major energy/environmental policy issues by convening international working groups of leading experts on mathematical modeling and policy development. Prof. Weyant earned a BS/MS in Aeronautical Engineering and Astronautics, MS degrees in Engineering Management and in Operations Research and Statistics all from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a PhD in Management Science with minors in Economics, Operations Research, and Organization Theory from University of California at Berkeley. He also was also a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. His current research focuses on analysis of global climate change policy options, energy technology assessment, and models for strategic planning.

Weyant has been a convening lead author or lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for chapters on integrated assessment, greenhouse gas mitigation, integrated climate impacts, and sustainable development, and most recently served as a review editor for the climate change mitigation working group of the IPCC's assessment report number four. He has been active in the U.S. debate on climate change policy through the Department of State, the Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency. In California, he is a member of the California Air Resources Board's Economic and Technology Advancement Advisory Committee (ETAAC) which is charged with making recommendations for implementing AB 32, The Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.

There is a consensus that we humans will need to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases substantially in this century if we are to avoid unacceptable modifications to climate and the biogeochemistry of the ocean. Hence the important question is: how are we to do that? The challenge, to change the world's energy systems, is a huge one, and there is no single, simple solution to it. We need to improve energy efficiency dramatically, move increasingly to use of energy resources that have low or zero net emissions of greenhouse gases (solar energy, some biofuels, wind, nuclear power, geothermal power, ...) or to the extent that carbon stays in the fuel mix, capture and store an increasing fraction of the CO2 that results. In addition, we will need research to create new energy conversion options for the future. This talk reviews possible pathways for substantial reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

Lynn Orr is the Keleen and Carlton Beal Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering and Director of the Global Climate and Energy Project at Stanford University. He served as Dean of the School of Earth Sciences at Stanford from 1994 to 2002. He joined Stanford in 1985. Previously, he was employed by the US Environmental Protection Agency in Washington, DC, Shell Development Company in Houston, and the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology in Socorro. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. from Stanford University, both in Chemical Engineering. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the Boards of Directors of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

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Speaker's Biography: Steven E. Koonin has served as chief scientist of BP, the world's second largest independent oil company, since 2004. As chief scientist, Koonin is responsible for BP's long-range technology plans and activities, particularly those "beyond petroleum." He also has purview over BP's major university research programs around the world and provides technical advice to the company's senior executives. In 1975, he joined the faculty of Caltech, became a full professor in 1981, and served as provost from 1995 to 2004.

Koonin is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. He has served on numerous advisory bodies for the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy and its various national laboratories. His research interests have included theoretical nuclear, many-body, and computational physics, nuclear astrophysics, and global environmental science. Koonin received his B.S. in physics at Caltech and his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from M.I.T.

Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar (speaker), with a PhD in political science from Stanford as well as a law degree from Yale, focuses his scholarship on how organizations cope with the legal responsibility for managing complex criminal justice, regulatory, and international security problems. He has published the leading academic paper on the operation of federal money laundering laws, and one of the most exhaustive empirical case studies of public participation in regulatory rulemaking proceedings. Recent projects address the role of criminal enforcement in managing transnational threats, the physical safety of refugee communities in the developing world, legislative and budgetary dynamics affecting the federal Department of Homeland Security, and the impact of bureaucratic structure on how institutions implement legal mandates. Professor Cuéllar is an affiliated faculty member at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a member of the Executive Committee for the Stanford International Initiative. Before joining the Stanford Law School faculty in 2001, he served as senior advisor to the U.S. Treasury Department's Under Secretary for Enforcement and clerked for Chief Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

David M. Kennedy (discussant) is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and winner of the 2000 Pulitzer Prize for his book, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War. Reflecting his interdisciplinary training in American Studies, which combined the fields of history, literature, and economics, Kennedy's scholarship is notable for its integration of economic and cultural analysis with social and political history. His 1970 book, Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, embraced the medical, legal, political, and religious dimensions of the subject and helped to pioneer the emerging field of women's history. One of his later books, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (1980), used the history of American involvement in World War I to analyze the American political system, economy, and culture in the early twentieth century. He is a graduate of Stanford University (BA, history) and Yale University (MA, PhD, American studies).