April 30, 2013
Dear Board Member,
Our April update features a Thought Leader Series piece by Ellen Stechel, Deputy Director of ASU's LightWorks, Managing Director of LightSpeed Solutions, and a Senior Sustainability Scientist at ASU's Global Institute of Sustainability. In her piece, Stechel explores a secure, sustainable energy future using liquid hydrocarbon.
Please feel free to email or call us with any questions or comments about this briefing.
Best regards,
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A Thought Leader Series Piece
 By Ellen B. Stechel
Note: Ellen B. Stechel is the Deputy Director of ASU's LightWorks and Managing Director of LightSpeed Solutions, communicating global efforts of leading scientists and researchers working towards sustainable transportation energy based on liquid hydrocarbon fuels from the sun.
A network of issues buried beneath the strategic and economic importance of petroleum and the increasing concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide is complex; however, until addressed, no measure of global sustainability will be obtainable.
If we accept that, any solution to such issues yield lower net carbon emissions by 50-80 percent, then despite obvious advantages, alternative fossil fuel pathways cannot be the ultimate solution for transportation.
The economics of carbon
A stable policy environment to level the playing field and allow time for low-carbon options to develop, deploy, and decrease costs through experience, learning, scale, and innovation is necessary, but insufficient.
Higher carbon fuels from Canadian tar sands; coal or gas-to-liquids projects; and natural gas switching (with modest carbon reductions) rapidly entering the transportation sector may block market penetration of low-carbon innovations, discouraging investment in emerging technologies. Long-lived assets could "lock-in" a high-carbon transportation infrastructure and all but eliminate viable options for transitioning to a low-carbon future.
Innovation policy that enables a balanced portfolio of promising options would stimulate development of viable possibilities by focusing on solving the problem as opposed to choosing a limited set of specified approaches, thereby excluding opportunities for novel solutions, including hybrids, integrated systems, and new concepts.
Read more »
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