“We don’t need a miracle. Everything we need to solve climate change is already here.”
How do we decarbonize?
Summary (2-minute read)
How to decarbonize appears to still be a contentious issue, whereas if we move past the “this, not that” arguments that plague the politics of the carbon transition, reasonable thinking leads to an approach that doesn’t require magical thinking or an over-commitment to any single technology. We don’t need a miracle technology — all we really need to do is to commit to massive electrification. Vested interests, however, want you to continue to believe in miracles because it means we can lean back and wait for the miracle to happen.
The actual miracle is that solar and wind are now the cheapest energy sources, electric cars are better cars than those we already have, electric radiant heating is better than our existing heating systems, and the internet was a practice run and blueprint for the electricity network of the future. Regardless of the minutiae of how we do it exactly, the beginning and the first half of decarbonization will most likely look the same: a commitment to solar and wind, batteries, electrification of homes, heat pumps, electric vehicles, ground-source geothermal and research into better biofuel sources and biofuels from waste, as well as research into better, cheaper, safer nuclear.
A carbon tax isn’t a solution; at best it will just accelerate solutions. It’s likely that un-subsidizing fossil fuels will be just as effective. By the time we have the political stomach for a carbon tax, the cheapest solutions will be electric vehicles, electrified homes, and wind and solar anyway.
We haven’t shown any inclination to drastically cut our consumption in the 40 years since Jimmy Carter asked us to wear sweaters.
Efficiency is great, but, like a carbon tax, it still isn’t a solution. Overwhelmingly, the largest efficiency wins aren’t LED lighting, double-glazed windows and heavier building insulation (each which is good but not nearly enough), but rather the electrification of cars and trucks, the electrification of our homes, and eliminating thermo-electric losses from the burning of fossil fuels to create electricity.
Nuclear power vs. renewables doesn’t become an issue during the first half of the transition to mass electrification, and by then nuclear might be too expensive (compared to wind and solar).
Coal or natural gas with carbon sequestration is expensive and won’t scale to the size of the problem. We know fracking leaks and that sequestered CO2 will leak too. The mere fact that compressed CO2 is much larger by volume than the oil and gas that come out tells us the simple story that we don’t have enough holes to stuff it into. Additionally and specifically, natural gas is a bridge to nowhere; fossil fuels already burned that bridge.
Renewables are disrupting fossil fuels, and if the US does not win that technology game it will no longer be the leading world power. No one is looking forward to that existential crisis.”
