Grappling Daily with Hot-Button Environmental Issues
Economist Richard Newell is Dedicated to Examining Options for Reducing Human-Caused Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Monte Basgall
Richard Newell’s research is as topical as today’s headlines.
As the Nicholas School’s first Gendell Associate Professor of Energy and Environmental Economics, he grapples daily with hot-button issues such as:
How much would it cost to switch from a petroleum-fueled to a hydrogen-fueled world?
Can carbon dioxide in power plant emissions be captured and kept from reaching the atmosphere so it can’t contribute to global warming?
Can environmentalists, regulators and the marketplace agree to meaningful strategies to mitigate climate change before it’s too late?
Newell’s search for solutions draws upon his interdisciplinary training in engineering, philosophy, public policy and economics, and more than 10 years as a Washington, D.C., analyst.
“The environmental and economic risks associated with global climate change are substantial and scientifically well founded,” he says. “From an economic perspective they justify policies that support mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases immediately. The question is: How much and what type of action?”
To help policymakers and stakeholders arrive at an answer, Newell has focused much of his work on a major faultline in the energy debate— the cost and the workability of various proposed options for reducing human caused greenhouse gases.
“There’s a reason why we emit a lot of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions now,” he says. “That’s because it’s the cheapest way to produce energy. It’s not because companies like to pollute, but because people want the cheapest energy possible.
“We now have an energy system that is very heavily dependent on fossil fuels with greenhouse gas emissions,” he says. “It’s like a supertanker: you can’t turn it around on a dime. There is a limit to how fast you can transition the system.”
In an article published in 2005 by Resources for the Future, the economic think tank where he worked prior to joining the Nicholas School faculty in 2006, Newell noted that to provide enough hydrogen to fuel all light-duty vehicles would require 12 times current production levels. And to obtain that hydrogen by splitting water molecules with electricity would cost seven times the energy equivalent of gasoline.
Storing the hydrogen—even in compressed form—would require about four times more space than a conventional gas tank. That volume could be reduced several times if the hydrogen was chilled to hundreds of degrees below zero, but that would take about 30 percent of the hydrogen’s available energy. And technologies to burn the hydrogen in fuel cells or even in modified internal combustion engines also face hurdles.
“Widespread, cost-effective use of hydrogen will come only when the very large cost and technical barriers that now exist are removed,” Newell’s article concluded. “Each aspect of the hydrogen system—from production, to distribution, storage and use—faces a cost disadvantage several times that of competitive alternatives.”
Such scholarly authority and painstaking attention to detail have been the hallmarks of Newell’s career.
photo captions: Sidebar: Richard Newell; melting ice caps; classroom instruction; does nuclear energy offer solutions?