One of the frequent (and perfectly legitimate) criticisms of both George W. Bush’s and the European Union’s very different approaches to climate policy over the past 8 years has been that despite differences in rhetoric, both approaches have allowed business as usual to continue in terms of carbon dioxide emissions.

The Obama Administration has come in to office with great expectations for accelerating the decarbonization of the U.S. economy. After taking a close look at one of President Obama’s enery commitments, Adam Zemel and Jesse Jenkins of the Breakthrough Institute (where I am a Senior Fellow) ask an uncomfortable question. Are Obama’s ambitious goals for expanding renewable energy production just business as usual presented as policy objectives? Here are Adam and Jesse writing in The Huffington Post:

Early on, before the Inauguration, Obama gave his address announcing the key components of his stimulus plan. For clean energy, the big punch line was this:

“To finally spark the creation of a clean energy economy, we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years.”

On the surface, this sounds like an ambitious and transformative goal. Doubling alternative energy production in just three years sounds like quite a feat. But, as usual, the devil is in the details, and it all depends on what Obama actually means when he says “double alternative energy production.”

What does he include in the baseline of “alternative energy production” we’re doubling from? And what kinds of “alternative energy” will be counted towards the objective? The answers to those kinds of questions can turn this transformative-sounding goal into a simple continuation of business as usual. Here’s how…

The key question is this: when Obama says “we will double the production of alternative energy in the next three years,” is he really pledging double the production of non-hydropower renewable energy sources, like wind and solar power by the end of 2011? The assumption among pundits and policymakers is that this is what he has in mind.

If so, this goal is far less inspiring than the soaring vision of a transformed energy economy painted by Obama’s rhetoric. According to the Energy Information Administration (EIA), non-hydropower renewable energy sources (wind, geothermal, solar, biomass) accounted for 72.4 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity production in 2007, just 1.8% of the total U.S. electricity supply that year. Doubling electricity production from these sources of alternative energy means bringing non-hydro renewable energy production to 144.8 billion kWh over the next three years. That would mean that after the ambitious sounding goal of “doubling alternative energy production,” these sources would still just produce 3.6% of projected 2011 electricity generation.

For comparison, EIA’s early release of their Annual Energy Outlook 2009 predicts 150 billion kWh of non-hydro alternatives in 2011 (or about 3.7% of projected electricity supply). That’s under a business-as-usual “frozen policy” scenario (i.e. they assume no new policies that aren’t already on the books and no government spending programs that aren’t already appropriated). In other words, the EIA’s early release of its annual report on projected energy patterns and predictions estimates that non-hydro alternative energy will double … even under a relatively conservative business-as-usual scenario.

In other words, if this is how the impressive sounding goal of “doubling alternative energy” is calculated, what Obama is essentially pledging is to simply maintain business-as-usual growth in alternative energy production.