Coan won a $10,000 prize in an essay contest sponsored by The Presidential Forum on Renewable Energy. In his essay, Coan, a Wilson School major, proposed ways to reduce the country’s dependence on non-renewable energy sources ranging from implementing a tax on carbon emissions to encouraging Americans to eat fewer meat and dairy products.
The Presidential Forum on Renewable Energy is a nonprofit organization that strives “to bring increased attention to issues of renewable energy, sustainability, and conservation,” according to a statement provided by the organization.
Entrants of the organization’s contest were asked to submit a plan laying out “strategies for the next five to ten years and beyond that will minimize our current dependence on non-renewable energy sources,” according to the statement.
Coan’s recommendation included six points: implementation a tax on carbon dioxide, a stable tax-credit system for renewable energy sources, increased investment in renewable energy research and development, modernization of power transmission lines, setting a goal of moving 25 percent of U.S. energy production to renewable energy by 2025 and establishment of government programs to dissuade citizens from eating animal products.
In an interview with The Daily Princetonian, Coan called the tax on carbon emissions “the most important step” in his recommendation. “There is a potential for very devastating consequences” if carbon emissions continue at current levels, he said.
Coan said he advocated a carbon tax rather than a cap-and-trade system in which polluters receive a certain number of “carbon credits” that they can trade with other polluters because a carbon tax is easier to implement and provides the government with a more constant revenue stream.
“If you auction credits, you have a highly fluctuating revenue source,” Coan said. “With a tax, it’s pretty clear how much emissions are going to be there in one year or five years.”
Coan said he thought that his inclusion of the recommendation that citizens consume less meat was a major factor in the judges’ decision to award him the prize.
“It’s a good possibility that’s why I won,” Coan explained. “There are more calories in the food that animals eat than in the animals themselves, and if the goal is to produce more biofuels, eating less meat and dairy would open up land currently being used to grow crops for livestock.”
Though Coan said he is not a vegetarian, he has cut down his consumption of red meat since learning about the meat’s large carbon footprint. “[Red meat] contributes a lot more to greenhouse gasses than other meat like fish or chicken,” Coan explained.
Wilson School professor Hal Feiveson GS ’72, who advises Coan’s policy task force, said that Coan has been interested in renewable energy issues since the beginning of his college career.
“He came to see me when he was a freshman since he was interested in environmental issues,” Feiveson said.
Feiveson said that his task force focuses on “exploring what kind of climate-change policy makes sense for the United States given that global warming is a serious problem and that the United States is going to have to cut carbon emissions over the next quarter century and beyond.”
James Kuczmarski ’08, one of Coan’s task force leaders, said that Coan’s knowledge has been “a real asset to the task force.”
“[Coan] has been really helpful to me because of his background in energy efficiency,” Kuczmarski said.
While Coan said he is not sure what he’ll do with the prize money, he does have plans to continue lobbying for stricter carbon taxes.
“I will make sure a good piece of legislation goes through Congress that mandates a tax on the price of greenhouse gasses,” he said.
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