World Energy Exercise: Putting You in Control of Our Energy Future

Climate Interactive has developed the World Energy Exercise to provide a simulation-based experience to help deepen participants’ understanding of potential policy and investment scenarios to address our global energy challenges. Recently, Drew Jones led a version of World Energy for 100 energy graduate students at Stanford University. More on the event is here. The video below summarizes that event.

Plotting the Clean Energy Transition: Grad Students Use En-ROADS for New Insights

Stanford students debating energy policy with En-ROADS

Last week graduate students at Stanford University got a special treat. As part of the Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference, students in energy-related fields at Stanford got to play with En-ROADS, Climate Interactive’s latest simulator, which demonstrates how different energy policies could make a difference in the decades to come. Exploring whether the accelerated retirement of coal-fired power plants paired with subsidies in renewable energy will help us reduce our emissions better than a $50 price on each ton of CO2, is just one of countless policy configurations that the En-ROADS simulation lets users explore. The Energy@Stanford & SLAC conference was co-sponsored by Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy, SIMES, the Global Climate and Energy Project, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory and the Office of the Vice Provost of Graduate Education at Stanford.

C-ROADS Article Published in System Dynamics Review

The current edition of the journal System Dynamics Review, features an article by our team here at Climate Interactive on our simulation C-ROADS.

With over 700 users worldwide and counting, C-ROADS has improved the understanding of which national climate commitments will have an impact and what is needed for us to close the gap between maintaining a safe livable planet and crossing tipping points that may have dire consequences. Our latest publication on C-ROADS reviews its uses and capabilities and explains a little bit of its structure and design. If you are new to C-ROADS and would like a better understanding of what this simulation can do for you we recommend checking out this article in particular. C-ROADS is available for free on our website. On our website you will also find much more detailed information and resources for you to explore as well.

Read “Climate Interactive: The C-ROADS Climate Policy Model”

Our Three Big Impacts

By Drew Jones, Beth Sawin, and Stephanie McCauley

What has our impact been?

Eight people, dozens of partners, five years, and two simulation models — what does it add up to?

Here’s our informal assessment of how much of a contribution we’ve made to the global effort to curb climate change

Together with our partners, we see three big areas. We have:

Christiana Figueres with Beth Sawin at the UN Climate Talks in Bonn, April 2010

1. Kept things honest. Our mentor Dana Meadows operated out of the theory that societies will only find fundamental solutions to the challenges we are facing when the escape hatches of wishful thinking have been closed, and we’ve been working hard to follow her lead. When, in the first week of the Copenhagen summit, some global organizations began proclaiming that success was close at hand, we re-grounded our global audience in biogeochemical realities and watched the “spinning” subside, with global effects. When, during the Durban summit, some parties argued that current pledges were good enough to meet climate goals, we ‘ran the numbers’ with clarity and precision, providing solid backing to the young people and climate advocates who were questioning such easy assertions (view our Durban results blog post). More recently, when voices rose to declare an energy miracle or natural gas bridge solution to climate, while dismissing efficiency and renewables, we ran the numbers, changed minds, and noted that the words of key thought-leaders changed as well.

“[Climate Interactive’s] software speaks numbers, not spin – and in the end it’s the numbers that count.” — Bill McKibben in the UK Guardian

2. Improved policy design by top decision-makers. We have helped powerful leaders advocate for sound long-term policy. We have made John Kerry better armed with scientific insight, Jonathan Pershing more exact, China’s climate ministry more able to reach targets, EU’s Jacquie McGlade more clear, Bill McKibben more numerate, international analysts empowered, Hal Harvey supported by modeling, the media more informed and millions of activists grounded in solid science.

The hundreds of C-ROADS users can be found worldwide in more than 70 countries.

3. Motivated, inspired, and empowered, creating new possibilities (while avoiding manipulation and zealotry). We have motivated action and reduced emissions through the hundreds of thousands of global professionals and citizens who have taught others with our tools (C-ROADS, C-Learn online, Scoreboard, iPad Pathways app, Climate Momentum, Bathtub), shown others our videos (Beth Sawin on the Scoreboard, Drew Jones on TEDx, Travis Franck’s webinar, John Sterman’s lecture), led their kids through our first or second science museum interactive exhibits, or lived a successful global climate deal through World Climate, our mock-UN “serious game” played around the world.

Not bad for eight people, dozens of partners, five years, and two simulation models. Let’s see what is next.

Please be in touch if you’d like to support our emerging work.

Eileen Claussen on En-ROADS: We Have Our Work Cut Out For Us

Recently Drew Jones was down in Washington DC working with the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES) and their Business Environmental Leadership Council to explore future energy and climate scenarios through interactive “what if” testing. Lots of interesting dialogue unfolded with this diverse group. Eileen Claussen, President of C2ES, had this to say about our En-ROADS simulation, which helped ground Jones’ session in the dynamics of energy and climate systems:

The team at Climate Interactive have created a powerful educational tool in their En-ROADS model. At C2ES, we have experimented with the simulation both internally and with our Business Environmental Leadership Council, and the results have been both informative and illuminating.  It is easy to make assumptions about the contribution that certain sectors, actions or technologies can make to reduce global GHG concentrations – and this simulation demonstrates in real-time how one’s assumptions and mental models are not always correct.  En-ROADS teaches us that while it is still possible to avoid dangerous climate change, there are indeed no silver bullets to reach this goal, and we have our work cut out for us.

-Eileen Claussen, President, Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (C2ES)

Yvo De Boer at Rio+20 on the Importance of Adding Up Climate Mitigation Actions

In Rio. That’s CI’s Travis Franck and me with former UNFCCC chair Yvo de Boer. Asked him about the importance of adding up mitigation actions. He said:

“The goal of the UN climate convention is to prevent catastrophic climate change. Therefore, efforts must be measured against that ultimate goal to determine their adequacy. If we get commitments to NAMAs (nationally appropriate mitigation actions) from developing countries, we will need to quantify those actions against a national target and the global goals.”

Rio: More than Beaches and Diplomats

Credit: Ellie Johnston

While the negotiations for Rio+20 progressed, Drew and Travis of Climate Interactive were sharing analysis and facilitating a group that is exploring pathways to break through the climate impasse at the Rio Climate Challenge. This event, part conference, part workshop, went beyond a typical conference speaker series with hundreds of audience members listening to experts who drop in for their part and then scoot off to the next thing. The Rio Climate Challenge included a plenary hall where audience members hear from leaders in different areas of climate, like from Yvo de Boer, the former secretariat of the UN climate change negotiations. The unique part of this event was that speakers when not on stage are working together in a small group to develop a set of recommendations for the climate change negotiations and Rio+20.

Climate Scoreboard Helping the Leaders at UN Rio+20 Summit

Happy to see evidence of our tools getting around in places we never knew…

Elevator of Drew Jones’s hotel. Rio.

Drew: “Hi, how are you doing?”

Other guy: “Fine, heading to the Summit…. What organization are you with?”

Drew: “Climate Interactive.”

Other guy: “Oh, I know your work. I use your Scoreboard in my presentations. BAU, Goal, Current Pledges”

Drew: “Great, who are you with?”

Herman Rosa Chavez: “I’m Herman Rosa, the minister of the environment for El Salvador and lead diplomat here at the Summit. Thanks for what you all do.”

Thanks for using it to make a difference, Minister Rosa!

Climate Interactive Team Brings Powerful Simulations to Rio+20

Drew Jones, Travis Franck, and I will be in Rio de Janeiro in June to share Climate Interactive’s tools on climate and energy. There, at the Rio+20 conference and parallel events, we will join thousands in imagining the pathways to overcome the challenges facing humanity on our finite planet. We are seeking opportunities to share our simulations—particularly C-ROADS and En-ROADS—to support others in making the best choices for sustainability.

The Rio+20 Conference marks the twentieth anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, an event, which heralded in a set of new treaties to address our ecological challenges from climate change to biodiversity. While not so much a celebration of the anniversary of the first Rio Earth Summit—whose ambitious goals we have yet to achieve—Rio+20 will be casting an eye to the future. How do we create the future we want, a future where we live within the limits of our planet?

The tools that we have developed at Climate Interactive can help give this global conversation context. By looking at our global climate and energy challenges our simulations provide people the opportunity to explore the ways we can get to a world powered by low and zero carbon energy sources and where our business as usual trajectory does not lead to runaway climate change. We want to share our tools with your groups that are making a difference in this space. Connect with us if you’ll be in Rio in the coming weeks and let us know what you will do there.

“World Climate” Mock-UN Exercise Energizes Youth

Youngest “World Climate” players yet!

Climate Interactive’s Drew Jones led a class of eleven seventh graders from Hanger Hall School for Girls through the “Mock-UN” policy exercise where three teams represent country groups and negotiate a global climate deal. They learned the biogeochemical carbon system through the “Bathtub” analogy and improved their understanding of climate dynamics.