For Immediate Release
July 15, 2022

The recent passing of Jaime Lerner in 2021 provides a timely moment to evaluate the legacy of Lerner and the city he had a major role in defining: Curitiba, Brazil. A new article by Deborah L. Bleviss makes the case that the innovative principles underlying the original design of the public transportation system remain as relevant today for Curitiba and cities globally as they were then.

Bleviss says Curitiba provides an important model for how to build an effective public transportation system.

“Applying the principles used in Curitiba will be critical to designing effective and widely used public transportation systems globally, an important component of any effective strategy to address climate change.”

Read The legacy of Jaime Lerner and Curitiba, Brazil in WIREs Energy and Environment published by Wiley Periodicals LLC in May 2022.

More than 30 years have passed since Curitiba and Jaime Lerner, the three-time mayor of the city, first became famous for the innovations that were implemented there, many environmental in focus. The most famous of these was the creation of a highly used and efficient public transportation system based on buses.

Many have sought to emulate elements of the innovation put in place in that city. In recent years, however, both the country and the city have been beset by political scandals, economic malaise, and social problems, which have adversely affected many of these innovations. As a result, some question whether Curitiba remains relevant today as a model for the rest of the world.

In the article, Bleviss argues that the innovative principles underlying the original plans are the:

• design of an efficient and hierarchical public transportation system that takes its users from their first mile of commute to their last mile;
• construction of an urban infrastructure that supports and enhances use of public transportation;
• establishment of an effective public–private partnership where the private sector owns, operates and upgrades the vehicles while the public sector plans and oversees the system;
• and creation of a metropolitan governance strategy when the needs for public transportation go beyond city borders.

State and local governments, along with civil actors, are transforming U.S. energy-climate-society relations according to the Foundation for Renewable Energy & Environment

For Immediate Release
June 14, 2022

New York — Despite national climate and energy policy failure in the United States, the American people, through their state and local governments and regional partnerships, have successfully passed impactful policies to lower national emissions, according to a new paper on the Foundation for Renewable Energy & Environment website.

“Communities are faster-acting and set higher targets than policymakers at the national level,”  said John Byrne, lead author. “Co-benefits such as jobs, local development, clean air and water are driving support for clean energy.  The political and economic support is proving to be resilient and enduring over the last 20 years. These polycentric initiatives have also shown that principles of justice, sustainably, and affordability can be met in the green economy.”

Read the paper, “American policy conflict in the hothouse: Exploring the politics of climate inaction and polycentric rebellion,” by John Byrne,  Job Taminiau, and Joseph Nyangon, which is published in the July issue of Energy Research & Social Science.

Byrne said the Foundation’s team has measured the effect of state and local government laws through 2030 and has concluded that their actions alone have reduced the national carbon footprint by 77 percent by 2030 compared to their absence.

The national cycle of policy conflict in the U.S. so far has only delivered the cancellation of a reliable U.S. climate policy, leading hopeful national policymakers to plead for cooperation with policy deniers. Alternatively, a network of counterparties—which the paper’s authors term “polycentric”—is finding success based on principles of social justice and moral responsibility to mobilize social change.

“We offer supporting empirical evidence of the power of this polycentric counterparty to transform U.S. energy-climate-society relations,” said Byrne.

The paper cites President Trump’s announcement on June 1, 2017, to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change as a continuation of opposition by the national Republican Party to any American climate policy. Fast forward to 2021 on President Biden on his first day in office, January 20, 2021, Biden signed the instrument to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement and unveiled a national climate action plan, signaling his intention to return the country to negotiations organized under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Biden also signed an Executive Order directing the federal government to use its scale and procurement power to achieve five ambitious goals:

1. One hundred percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030, at least half of which will be locally supplied clean energy to meet 24/7 demand;
2. One hundred percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027;
3. Net-zero emissions from federal procurement no later than 2050, including a Buy Clean policy to promote the use of construction materials with lower embodied emissions;
4. A net-zero emissions building portfolio by 2045, including a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2032; and
5. Net-zero emissions from overall federal operations by 2050, including a 65 percent emissions reduction by 2030.

In response, the Republican Party declared its goal to prevent the plan from being implemented, exposing a repeating cycle of Democratic Party attempts to fashion a national climate policy continually confronted by successful Republican Party assaults to prevent a national policy from coming into being. Yet, a policy effort at the subnational level has recently confronted the national policy-making-and-undoing cycle in place for nearly 20 years. A polycentric layer has continually created policies designed to overcome the national posture of inaction.

This paper follows the publication of the 2007 article in Energy Policy, “American policy conflict in the greenhouse: Divergent trends in federal, regional, state, and local green energy and climate change policy,” which presented state and local policy movements in the U.S. that contest the federal climate policy stalemate. In the intervening years, the state and local layer has faced new and complex challenges as Republicans have controlled the U.S. Senate. In response, state and local policymaking has evolved as the source of society-wide platforms to counter the destruction of policy at the federal level, while also expanding the aspirations and achievements of the polycentric layer to decarbonize the U.S. economy.  The 2007 article predicted that the U.S. would reach 64% and this proactive policy process is now on track to exceed that.

American policy conflict in the hothouse: Exploring the politics of climate inaction and polycentric rebellion.

About the Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment
The Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment is a non-profit, international organization based in New York established in 2011 to promote a better future based on energy, water and materials conservation, renewable energy use, environmental resilience, and sustainable livelihoods and environmental justice for all.

For Immediate Release
July 5, 2022

Dr. John Byrne told a Korean television audience that as the renewable energy markets have grown in the United States, coal markets have declined. This means disappearing jobs for coal workers and rapidly increasing jobs in renewable energy industries. He said creative ways are in the works to make it a “just and sustainable transition” from coal to renewable energy.

During the interview, Byrne said, “I know the Biden administration has been investigating the case of actually including the coal mine workers and others that are in these extractive industry areas in a process of both making the mines secure and safe and being a host for some of the new technologies. Rather than moving the coal worker to some sort of renewable energy plant, trying instead to locate these plants and their timing so that as coal use goes down–it’s been going down in the United States since the early 1980s–as it goes down you have to find jobs for… those in the community and I think this idea is a creative one to move the technology and the plant nearer to those areas so that you can develop a more balanced and fair result.”

He said the planners responsible for new renewable energy technologies are working to bring plant operations near coal communities. The Biden administration has proposed this as one of the strategies to address this justice issue during the renewable energy transition.

In another question, Byrne addresses the role and duty of Korea in the climate crisis. Byrne cited Korea’s Green Climate Fund and Korean leadership of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as two examples of how Korea has put in place policies and people setting the country up to be a leader in the climate change crisis. He said Korea has also established credibility with key stakeholders in the United States, Latin America, east and southeast Asia, and Africa.

“I think it is natural for the world to look to Korea not only to have that kind of leadership role in these international or multinational organizations but also to lead with its own policies and strategies. I think that Korea is going to be under increasing pressure to come up with some important new ideas in this regard.”

“I think again that leadership is very important to the international effort to act on climate change. Because as you probably know, we have to have all continents working on this problem together.”

For Immediate Release
June 3, 2022

NEW YORK – In a talk to the Korean Energy Transition Forum, Dr. John Byrne called it a paradox that despite national climate and energy policy failure in the United States, the American people, through their state and local governments and regional partnerships, have been successful in their demands to pass impactful policies to lower national emissions.

Communities are faster-acting and set higher targets than policymakers at the national level, according to Byrne. Co-benefits such as jobs, local development, clean air, and water are driving support for clean energy. The political and economic support is proving to be more resilient and enduring for electricity surplus to serve the aim of social justice and sustainability.

In the hour-long public talk via remote video conference on May 18 sponsored by the Energy Transition Forum, Byrne called for a transformative energy transition.

It is the job of Energy Transition Forums to search for transformative scale energy change.  The encouraging news he said is that “we have the technology we need” and with the right policy structure, it is cheaper.

Byrne said through innovative policies supported by 44 states and more than 2,000 cities in the United States,  the American people have been extraordinarily successful in passing meaningful policies to markedly lower national emissions while providing affordable, secure electricity prices and increased job opportunities in the U.S. electricity sector.

Byrne is the co-founder and director of the Foundation for Renewable Energy and Environment and a distinguished professor of energy & climate policy at the University of Delaware’s Biden School of Public Policy & Administration.

The Problem: No More Space for Carbon Created by Fossil Fuels

Byrne called it an “inescapable conclusion” that the remaining fossil fuel resources far exceed atmospheric disposal space for carbon emissions.

Byrne said there is no more disposal space for more carbon created by fossil fuels but it will take 50 years or more to halt the spread of the disaster that has already been created. He said between 2005 and 2020, the US was forced to spend  $1.3 billion to clean up the damage from so-called billion-dollar disasters, its biggest storms, fires, etc. that are due to climate change.

Even the richest country on Earth cannot afford the cost of climate change, and it cannot escape from this cost, according to Byrne. Neither can the poor, who suffer despite having no responsibility for the problem.

Among the many examples of the solar savings potential that Byrne gave was New York City, saying it is famous for its high real estate prices but its rooftops are underutilized and are collecting solar energy.

With existing energy efficiency technology with 7-year paybacks and with existing solar panels, New York City can be a surplus city from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., which would be transformative.

Energy efficiency and rooftop solar are cheaper in 48 states than retail prices for new natural gas and nuclear plants.

U.S. Climate Policy Failure…and the Solution

Byrne said the United States’ problem is not technology or economic, rather it is the failure to adopt a policy that favors sustainability and justice over destructive growth.

Byrne said that no national climate policy bill has been allowed to be discussed since 2003.  By filibuster, the minority Republican Party in the U.S. Senate has prevented budget support to lower the cost of federal energy spending. The only bills passed by the U.S. Senate were anti-climate policies that required the U.S to reject the Kyoto Protocol, prevent a former president from adopting the Clean Power Plan, and declare U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

He said the solution is to rely on catalysts of change such as communities and energy transition funds.

After “cancel-olitics” prevented policy action, Byrne said a “polycentric rebellion” of local alliances has built a net-zero governance and policy structure that has endured and grown in achievements for 20 years.

The American people have fought back using local political and economic tools. Local and national energy transition funds are inventing policies.

Rejecting the record of national policy inaction, the American people – through their state and local governments and regional partnerships involving government and business participants – have built a policy and governance framework over the last 20 years that has deployed energy efficiency and renewable energy option to substantially cut emissions of the electricity sector while keeping prices affordable and secure from international fuel market volatility.

The Biden Agenda

Byrne said U.S. President Biden ran as a candidate on a climate and energy policy platform that called for the United States to adopt a net-zero emissions goal by mid-century.

On his first day in office, January 20, 2021, Biden signed the instrument to bring the United States back into the Paris Agreement. Biden also signed an Executive Order directing the federal government to use its scale and procurement power to achieve five ambitious goals:

1. One hundred percent carbon pollution-free electricity by 2030, at least half of which will be locally supplied clean energy to meet 24/7 demand;
2. One hundred percent zero-emission vehicle acquisitions by 2035, including 100 percent zero-emission light-duty vehicle acquisitions by 2027;
3. Net-zero emissions from federal procurement no later than 2050, including a Buy Clean policy to promote the use of construction materials with lower embodied emissions;
4. A net-zero emissions building portfolio by 2045, including a 50 percent emissions reduction by 2032; and
5. Net-zero emissions from overall federal operations by 2050, including a 65 percent emissions reduction by 2030.

National polls of Americans repeatedly record overwhelming support for the President’s policy platform. Nonetheless, 16 months after his inauguration, elected by a margin of nearly 8 million votes more than the defeated former president, the Biden Administration has been denied a vote on its policy platform in the U.S. Senate.

This is not the first president elected to act decisively on climate and energy issues whose policy platform has been blocked from receiving a vote. In fact, the U.S. Senate has blocked a vote on any national climate and energy policy legislation since 2003.