Announcement of a Plan for the Peer Review of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.5 titled
‘Effects of Climate Change on Energy Production and Use in the United States’

Pursuant to Section V of the “Information Quality Bulletin for Peer Review” of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), under the authority of the Information Quality Act of 2000 (P.L. 106-554), the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) announces a plan for the peer review of its Synthesis and Assessment Product 4.5 (SAP 4.5) titled ‘Effects of Climate Change on Energy Production and Use in the United States’.  The CCSP is an interagency research, planning, and coordinating entity that integrates federal research on climate and global change, as sponsored by thirteen federal agencies and overseen by the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Council on Environmental Quality, the National Economic Council, and OMB.  See http://www.climatescience.gov for more information about the CCSP.

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is the lead agency for the CCSP SAP 4.5.  Details on the status of the prospectus that will be used to develop SAP 4.5 may be found at http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-5/default.php.

Inquiries or comments regarding the expert peer review plan of this report may be submitted to:

Dr. Jeffrey S. Amthor

SC-23.3 Germantown Building

U.S. Department of Energy

1000 Independence Avenue S.W.

Washington, DC  20585-1290

E-mail: jeff.amthor@science.doe.gov

Tel: (301) 903-2507

The SAP 4.5 will summarize the current knowledge base about potential effects of climatic change on energy production and use in the United States.  The intended audience includes scientists in related fields, decisionmakers in the public sector (federal, state, and local governments), the private sector (energy companies, electric utilities, energy equipment providers and vendors, and energy-dependent sectors of the economy), energy and environmental policy interest groups, and the general public.

The central questions to be addressed by SAP 4.5 are: (1) How might climatic change affect energy consumption in the United States? (2) How might climatic change affect energy production and supply in the United States? and (3) How might climatic change have other effects that indirectly shape energy production and consumption in the United States?  The SAP 4.5 is not expected to produce definitive quantitative answers to these questions, but instead will provide broad qualitative generalizations.  Nonetheless, the process of addressing the questions in SAP 4.5 is expected to be informative.  In particular, it is expected that SAP 4.5 will inform future discussions about the three central questions and clarify priorities for research to make significant advances toward answering the questions in more quantitative ways.

Preparation of SAP 4.5 is scheduled to start about April 1, 2006.  The estimated online (electronic) dissemination date is about January 2, 2008.  The hard copy SAP 4.5 is scheduled for production in February 2008.

The estimated start date of the expert peer review of SAP 4.5 is June 30, 2006, with an estimated completion date of August 1, 2006.  The expert peer review will be conducted through individual letters.  The number of reviewers is expected to be eight.  The DOE will not provide significant and relevant public comments to the expert peer reviewers before they conduct their review of SAP 4.5 because the public comment period will follow the expert peer review period.  The DOE will select the final list of expert peer reviewers from candidates known to the DOE to be technical experts on the subject matter.  Scientific or professional societies will not be asked to nominate potential expert peer reviewers. They will, however, be free to comment on SAP 4.5 during the public review period which will follow the expert peer review period.

The disciplinary expertise needed for the expert peer review is: energy production and supply; energy and environmental policy; energy technologies, including new and emerging energy technologies; human (societal) responses to climatic change; renewable energy; energy efficiency; the utility sector; climatic change modeling; global change research; transportation systems; environmental planning; economic analysis; and sustainable development.

The comments by the expert peer reviewers on the Expert Peer Review Draft of SAP 4.5, along with the responses from the SAP 4.5 authors, will be available at http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-5/peer-review-comments/default.htm.  The expert peer reviewer comments will be used to revise the SAP 4.5 draft and produce the Public Review Draft of SAP 4.5.

The Public Review Draft of SAP 4.5 will be posted on the CCSP website at http://www.climatescience.gov/Library/sap/sap4-5/public-review-draft/sap4-5prd.pdf.  The public review period is expected to extend across the 45-day period from December 18, 2006, to February 1, 2007.