On Monday, June 13, 2011 at 4:15 p.m. in Panofsky Auditorium, Richard Morse of Stanford University will present a colloquium, "Addressing the 'Coal Renaissance' in a Post-Kyoto World."

Coal has been the world's fastest growing source of fossil fuel since 2000, contributing more to global primary energy supplies than any other source of energy.  Yet it is also the world's leading source of CO2 emissions.  As the Kyoto Protocol approaches its end in 2012 and global carbon policy is fragmented into regional efforts, efforts to mitigate global emissions will require taking a hard look at the realities of coal markets and developing pragmatic strategies that don't rely on carbon policy.

Richard Morse of Stanford's Program on Energy and Sustainable Development will discuss the outlook for global carbon policy, how international coal markets are evolving, and what strategies and technologies might realistically be used to reduce emissions from coal.   Discussion of carbon policy will include the latest developments in Europe, China, and the US, and analysis of international coal markets will highlight key issues for the future of Chinese energy consumption.  Arguing that renewable energy in its current state can only address the coal emissions problem at the margin, Morse will consider the portfolio of carbon mitigation options that can operate at scale, including carbon capture and storage (CCS).  Finally, in light of the recent nuclear tragedy in Japan, Morse will discuss with the SLAC community how to evaluate the relative risks of coal and climate change against the risk of nuclear catastrophe.

The talk is free and open to all.

Policies promoting ethanol and biodiesel production and use in the U.S., Europe, and other parts of the world since the mid-2000s have had profound—and largely unintended—consequences on global food prices, agricultural land values, land acquisition, and food security in developing countries. They have also created regional opportunities in the form of agricultural investments, crop yield growth, and booming farm economies. Rising incomes in emerging economies are generating increased demand for transportation fuels, thus stimulating further growth of the global biofuel industry. This seminar will explore the politics, economics, and global food security implications of the expanding biofuel sector. Several policy questions will be raised, including the role of biofuel mandates on food prices, the role of trade policies for stabilizing food prices in an era of increasingly tight demand, and the role of land policies and institutions for feedstock production and income distribution in the developing world.

Siwa Msangi, Senior Research Fellow in the Environment and Production Technology Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) will provide commentary. Msangi's work focuses on the major socio-economic and bio-physical drivers affecting agricultural production and trade, and their impacts on nutrition, poverty and the environment. Dr. Msangi manages a research portfolio that includes the economic and environmental implications of biofuels, and has coordinated the project Biofuels and the Poor in partnership with FSE.  

Biofuels videos: Roz Naylor talks food security and energy with Near Zero

What should food policy experts understand about future climate and how it will affect food security? What don't we know? What is the right balance between local and global scale investments in adaptation, between targeted adaptations and general resilience, and between climate variability and climate change? How well do current adaptation plans and institutions strike these balances? A discussion will follow led by Fatima Denton, Program Leader for Climate Change Adaptation in Africa (IDRC).

Roz Naylor will be lecturing on climate variability, rice production, and food policy in Indonesia as part of Brown University's conference on Climate Change and its Impacts. This conference will focus on changes in the supply of and demand for water in the 21st century, due both to changes in regional climate and to human population growth and development patterns. Major themes will include predicted changes in regional hydrologic cycles; resilience of existing social, economic, civil, ecological, and agricultural systems to likely changes; the potential of global and local institutions to increase the resilience of these systems; and what can be learned from one region to inform effective design of policies and water management structures in other regions. 

The conference is part of a larger institutional effort under the Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI). Throughout the Institute, participants will focus on developing interdisciplinary research through communication and joint development of projects.