“Across a political landscape beset by cynicism, squabbling, and backbiting, it is refreshing to find moments of lucid thinking and reasoned problem solving. It is even more delectable when the problem solvers are young and knowledgeable and when, despite profound disagreements with each other, they manage to accomplish what lawmakers cannot: a sensible plan for the future. Examples like this inspire us. They show us that it is possible to rise above our partisan interests for the common good. Stand by for the results. It might just inspire you and, with luck, our lawmakers, corporate leaders, and advocacy groups.”

  Peter Adler, President of The Keystone Center

Overview

Keystone Science School's Youth Policy Summits (YPS) provide students with a unique training and preparatory experience that engages a contemporary, science-intensive policy issue. Their experience provides them with the research, negotiation, problem solving, and policy analysis skills they will need to be successful in their future endeavors as scientists, lawyers, doctors and business professionals.

In partnership with the National Consortium for Specialized Secondary Schools of Mathematics, Science and Technology (NCSSSMST), The Keystone Center will conduct a Youth Policy Summit in June 2008 focused on “The Future of Sustainable Fuels in America.” Keystone will work with the NCSSSMST to select 40 students from 10 different schools around the nation to participate in this program. Participating students will be asked to negotiate consensus-based recommendations to the President, the Congress, and to America’s business and NGO sectors.

The Sustainable Fuels Summit is particularly timely. America’s cars and trucks use two-thirds of all the oil we consume as a nation. Oil prices are approaching $100 per barrel, and growing demand from China and India makes it unlikely that prices will fall in the foreseeable future, with real impacts on domestic economic stability. Further, the location of significant oil reserves in unstable parts of the world poses significant risks to national security. To address this dependence on foreign oil, Congress has provided short-term tax credits for various alternative fuels, and provided large incentives for ethanol in the Energy Policy Act of 2005. President Bush in his State of the Union address in 2007 called for a five-fold expansion to 35 billion gallons of renewable fuels by 2017.

With carbon-constrained energy demand increasing worldwide, The Keystone Center’s Youth Policy Summit on the Future of Sustainable Fuels in America will require 40 students from 10 states to undertake semester long research projects on both technical aspects of the issue as well as divergent stakeholder points of view. Students will examine different fuel types, including bio-fuels, hydrogen, natural gas, coal-to-liquids, and electric batteries, including both opportunities and challenges faced by scaling up any of these fuels. They will explore what is required to produce fuels in a carbon-constrained world and opportunities to improve the efficiencies of production, distribution, and consumption.

Students will report the results of their independent research online and then present them in person to other students and experts at the week-long Summit commencing in June 2008 in Keystone, Colorado. The students will then learn basic mediation and negotiation skills from Keystone’s experienced staff. They spend a day interacting with a panel of experts from different stakeholder groups (e.g., industry, government, academia, public interest), which allows them to further their understanding of various issues, offers a window into some real-world conflicts and challenges, and provides a glimpse of a potential future job path. Finally, the students are assigned different stakeholder roles, and participate in a mock policy dialogue, where they are challenged to arrive at consensus recommendations on the appropriate fuels mix for the U.S., and their recommendations for how to implement them.

The cost of this year’s Summit is $100,000. We seek the assistance of sponsoring companies and foundations in two ways. First, we ask that businesses and trusts support the Youth Policy Summit financially. Second, we ask that sponsors consider sending one of their leading experts to the Summit to interact with the students for a day of off-the-record questions and answers. Sponsoring organizations find these interactions with some of America’s brightest science, math, and technology students to be stimulating, creative, and rewarding. They offer an unusual opportunity to engage important issues of the day, interest students in technical, scientific careers in their industry or sector, and proudly put their name on a report that will be widely distributed to government and in the private and civic sectors.