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.

This summer the DOE Energy Information Agency released its study of the McCain/Lieberman Climate Stewardship bill, concluding that the largest single effect of these carbon controls would be the construction of 145 gigawatts of new U.S. nuclear capacity by 2030, more than doubling the existing 100 gigawatts. From the perspective of the early 1990's, today's resurgent interest in nuclear energy may appear surprising. This seminar will review what changed over the last 20 years that returned nuclear energy to broad public attention today, and will discuss the range of possible nuclear energy futures and their implications for security and the environment.

Per F. Peterson is Professor and previous chair of the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 1982. After working at Bechtel on high-level radioactive waste processing from 1982 to 1985, he received a MS degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley in 1986 and a PhD in 1988. He was a JSPS Fellow at the Tokyo Institute of Technology from 1989 to 1990 and a National Science Foundation Presidential Young Investigator from 1990 to 1995. He is past chairman of the Thermal Hydraulics Division (1996-1997) and a Fellow (2002) of the American Nuclear Society, a recipient of the Fusion Power Associates Excellence in Fusion Engineering Award (1999), and has served as editor for three journals.

Professor Peterson's work focuses on applications in energy and environmental systems, including passive reactor safety systems, inertial fusion energy, and nuclear materials management and security. His research interests focus on thermal hydraulics, heat and mass transfer, nonproliferation and nuclear security. He is author of over 100 archival journal articles and over 130 conference publications on these topics.

Scott Sagan (speaker) is a professor of political science and co-director of Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as a special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. He has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989), The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993), and with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W.W. Norton, 2002). He is the co-editor of Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James L. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000). Sagan was the recipient of Stanford University's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching and the 1998 Dean's Award for Distinguished Teaching. As part of CISAC's mission of training the next generation of security specialists he and Stephen Stedman founded Stanford's Interschool Honors Program in International Security Studies in 2000. His recent articles include "How to Keep the Bomb From Iran," in Foreign Affairs (September-October 2006); "The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signaling, and Safety in October 1969" co-written by Jeremi Suri and published in International Security in spring 2003; and "The Problem of Redundancy Problem: Will More Nuclear Security Forces Produce More Nuclear Security?" published in Risk Analysis in 2004. In addition to these works, Sagan is also finishing a collection of essays for a book tentatively entitled Inside Nuclear South Asia.

Paul Kapur (discussant) is a visiting professor at CISAC, on leave from the U.S. Naval War College, where he is an associate professor in the Department of Strategic Research. Before joining the War College in 2006, Kapur was visiting professor at CISAC and assistant professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. He also served as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, where he received his PhD in political science. His research interests include the strategic effects of nuclear weapons proliferation, deterrence theory, and the international security environment in South Asia. Kapur is author of Dangerous Deterrent: Nuclear Weapons Proliferation and Conflict in South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2007). His work has also appeared in journals such as International Security, Security Studies, Asian Survey, and Asian Security.