| Independently Powered Energy News

With the controversial $500 million BP-University of California, Berkeley, deal for a biofuels institute leading the way - and more money, much more money, about to flow to Berkeley - Dan Kammen is suddenly a desirable man. Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, who has a long list of other titles, has quickly gone from toiling in the obscurity of the academy to being akin to director of a new version of the Manhattan Project. "It is glamorous right now," Kammen said, handing me a week-old copy of the New Yorker Magazine in which he is featured in a story about Virgin Atlantic chair Richard Branson. (Branson is looking for lower carbon fuels for his jet fleet.) Even though the campus is winding down with the last of finals, Kammen is speeding up like a student cramming on six espressos. He says he never drinks coffee. That's probably a good thing. The Manhattan Project is not just a metaphor for a big brain/government push for nailing new technology. In fact, Kammen's mentor, John Holdren, was a member of the atomic project. And just like its predecessor, between the BP deal and new money coming down the pipe (he was coy on details), the Energy Laboratory is drawing young minds. In the mid-1990s when electricity deregulation was newsworthy, the intro to energy class had about 60 students, he recalls. Now, there are 200. "We can't find rooms big enough." While students might have the old "saving the world" zeal, Kammen is a pragmatist. Scientists have known for decades that global warming is a reality, but politicians have dithered, "making our job as hard as possible by waiting too long," he quips. "It's not a question of how to avert global warming, but how to get to a low-carbon economy fast enough so disasters are not as catastrophic." Yet, he doesn't have a favorite renewable resource. Wind, solar, biomass, and biofuels, should live in portfolio harmony. "Monopolies are bad. There is no economic leader and never will be," he says. "If we killed off all the oil executives and replaced them with photovoltaic executives, they?d hold on to their own monopoly. We need a diverse low-carbon economy." Nuclear power isn't the answer either, although it does have its perks, he says. One of those titles associated with Kammen?s name is professor of nuclear engineering. "I'm aggressively undecided, he says about nukes. "It is low-carbon, but it doesn't play fair." The industry can't seem to live without huge subsidies and there, no doubt, will be an accident sometime. But as a health threat, he doesn?t see nuclear posing anywhere near the illness and death rate that results from lung disease when coal is burned for power. Kammen is in the midst of the BP-public university biofuels institute debate. He's in a weekly phone conference with BP brass. He supports the tough questions about the proposed biofuels institute, but ultimately thinks Berkeley will be a positive influence on the oil capitalist's biofuels foray. "Hopefully the BP thing is the opportunity to do it right." Biofuels "really are an option. We could make a dent," he says, in liquid fossil fuel. However, Kammen cautions that the choice is "doing it in a way so it doesn't steal nutrition from the poor." He advocates biofuels as a way to break the chain of farmers' poverty in underdeveloped countries. "It's not a product like strawberries where if you don't sell it this week it rots. Biofuels can be stored." And with that storage potential, the market to pay farmers expands. Even though Kammen's an energy guy, he swears that world poverty is a far greater problem than global warming.

No Result