SNRE Professor Rosina M. Bierbaum has contributed an essay on energy in the context of sustainability as part of the current issue of Daedalus, the journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The issue presents thinking from leading scientists on the question of how limiting the effects of climate change requires a substantial transformation of the energy infrastructure.

Bierbaum, the former dean of SNRE, co-authored the article with Pamela A. Matson, the Chester Naramore Dean of the School of Earth Sciences and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Professor of Environmental Studies at Stanford University. In addition to her SNRE appointment, Bierbaum is also a professor of Environmental Health Sciences at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health

“Today’s choices about energy production and generation will influence, both directly and indirectly, the trajectory of water consumption, food production, public health, national security, ecosystem services, and greenhouse gas emissions for years to come. These issues are linked to one another," Bierbaum and Matson write. "Efforts to address the energy challenge–or any other sustainability challenge–will be best served by a systematic and integrative approach, one that seeks to understand costs, trade-offs, and co-benefits across the range of critical concerns. Our choices about current and future energy sources need to be made in the context of the multiple goals of sustainable development. Indeed, the future of humankind and the planet depend on it.”

This volume of Daedalus, “On the Alternative Energy Future,” provides insights on topics such as public acceptance of new technologies, the factors that influence governmental support for clean energy and strategies for gaining international cooperation to achieve energy policy goals. The essays stress the need both to apply what is already known and to develop new knowledge to address the societal transition.

For example, authors highlight public trust, consumer choice, risk aversion, and policy/program design as areas where existing social science research can help design new energy programs. “Much of this understanding exists,” write Thomas Dietz, Paul C. Stern, and Elke U. Weber. “Our current challenge is to put existing theory and methods to use for more effective design and implementation of policies targeting fossil energy use.”

On the other hand, there are many issues that require more attention from researchers. “Powerful industrial enterprises exist to produce, transport, and use energy”¦and large government bureaucracies at local, state, national, and supranational levels have evolved to monitor the system’s operation and regulate its behavior,” writes guest co-editor Robert W. Fri. “If the energy system itself changes, then all these individual and institutional links to it will have to change too.”  The social sciences will be especially important for understanding how to address these and other societal changes.  The volume concludes with an essay that frames a social science research agenda focused on six broad topics that are important for future energy policy.

The volume is a companion to the Spring 2012 issue of Daedalus, which examined the nation’s history of underpricing energy relative to its societal costs. Essays in that issue recommended focusing on local benefits and employing regulatory rather than pricing strategies to build public support for cleaner energy. The issues are part of the American Academy’s ongoing project on the Alternative Energy Future, which is exploring how the social sciences can help to overcome behavioral and regulatory obstacles to the introduction of clean energy technologies. The Academy published a report on this topic, Beyond Technology: Strengthening Energy Policy through Social Science, in 2011.

Other essays in the new Daedalus volume include: 

• Robert W. Fri (Resources for the Future): The Scope of the Transition
• Hal Harvey (Energy Innovation; University of Chicago), Franklin M. Orr, Jr. (Stanford University) & Clara Vondrich (ClimateWorks Foundation): A Trillion Tons
• Jon A. Krosnick (Stanford University) & Bo MacInnis (Stanford University): Does the American Public Support Legislation to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions?
• Naomi Oreskes (University of California, San Diego) & Erik M. Conway (Pasadena, California): The Collapse of Western Civilization: A View from the Future
• Kelly Sims Gallagher (Tufts University): Why & How Governments Support Renewable Energy
• Thomas Dietz (Michigan State University), Paul C. Stern (National Research Council) & Elke U. Weber (Columbia University): Reducing Carbon-Based Energy Consumption through Changes in Household Behavior
• Roger E. Kasperson (Clark University) & Bonnie J. Ram (Ram Power LLC): The Public Acceptance of New Energy Technologies
• Robert O. Keohane (Princeton University) & David G. Victor (University of California, San Diego): The Transnational Politics of Energy
• Dallas Burtraw (Resources for the Future): The Institutional Blind Spot in Environmental Economics
• Ann E. Carlson (University of California, Los Angeles) & Robert W. Fri (Resources for the Future): Designing a Durable Energy Policy
• Michael Dworkin (Vermont Law School), Roman Sidortsov (Vermont Law School) & Benjamin K. Sovacool (Vermont Law School): Rethinking the Scale, Structure & Scope of U.S. Energy Institutions
• Stephen Ansolabehere (Harvard University) & Robert W. Fri (Resources for the Future): Social Sciences & the Alternative Energy Future

Print and Kindle copies of the Winter 2013 issue of Daedalus “On the Alternative Energy Future,” vol. 2 can be ordered at: http://www.amacad.org/publications/daedalus/13_winter_cover.pdf.

Copies of the Spring 2012 issue of Daedalus “On the Alternative Energy Future,” vol. 1 can be ordered at: http://www.amacad.org/publications/daedalus/12_spring_cover.pdf.

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