Sustainability Professor Daniel Kammen gave a captivating overview of the complex journey to achieving global climate and development goals at a colloquium on April 3. The talk, co-sponsored by the Institute for Climate and Sustainable Growth and the Mansueto Institute for Urban Innovation, covered Kammen’s extensive work in the climate and energy fields as well as a look at greater challenges and successes around the world.
Daniel Kammen is the James and Katherine Lau Distinguished Professor of Sustainability at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the Department of Nuclear Engineering. Kammen’s work, which spans endeavors in academia, NGOs, government and industry, addresses the intertwined goals of confronting climate change and furthering international development.
Kammen began with a scientific overview of climate change and stressed the need to go carbon negative before the end of the century. “We need a sign change, not just a percentage change,” he said. In the absence of adequate government action on climate initiatives, Kammen said, decarbonization requires significant private sector investment.
But as we recognize the urgency of meeting climate goals, we can’t ignore the necessity of supporting international development, Kammen said. While he said he has seen great advances in clean energy technology during his many decades in the field, a failure to focus on social good prevented them from realizing a greater global impact.
“We are finally making satisfactory progress on the science and innovation side of climate and sustainable systems,” Kammen said. “We are in a disaster when it comes to the social science side of the equation.”
Yet, Kammen said that the problems of climate and social good are in fact easier to solve when combined. He described a number of projects he led as director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory that involved the application of new renewable technologies for pragmatic social impacts. These include improvements to charging networks for electric taxis in Shenzhen, China and the development of a sustainable “EcoBlock” neighborhood in Oakland, California.
On the international development front, he pointed to the United Nations’ seventeen Sustainable Development Goals, which he said the world “is not on pace to meet.” While Kammen was a Senior Advisor for Energy and Innovation at the US Agency for International Development, he helped launch the Health Electrification and Telecommunications Alliance, a Global Development Alliance that brings electricity to medical centers in rural Africa with mini solar grids. The project has expanded to 11 countries and is on pace to reach its goal of electrifying 10,000 health clinics by the end of this year.
In terms of domestic advancements, Kammen pointed to state- and local-level successes in clean energy development. In California, broad deployment of solar power provides so much power that the price of electricity can go negative at times, Kammen said — and Texas is on pace to soon eclipse California’s solar production. California has exported clean energy at peak solar production every day for months, with the surplus lasting for up to six hours in the middle of the day, he said.
Looking forward, Kammen pointed to improvements that can further maximize renewable energy, such as bidirectional EV charging and the development of new batteries made of recyclable, ethically-sourced materials.
