You allude to this, but it deserves a headline: another advantage of technical developments is that we can export them to places our policies and controls do not reach.
If every US citizen accepted Bill McKibben's or Kōhei Saitō’s vision tomorrow, that would, on its own, only 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘺 global warming.
Most importantly and obviously in terms of technology but in lots of places regulation is simply copied from US standards, particularly nuclear regulations, in Spain lots of their standards just copied American authorities. Also the depressing thing of non-American politicians just copying American talking points unthinkly, British politics is obsessed with an idea of a Green New Deal despite never having a non-Green New Deal.
Everything only delays global warming. China is the world leader in renewable technologies but its own emissions are still going up as it develops more. A lot of even poorer countries have basically zero emissions; even with very good renewable tech their overall emissions are going to go up if we want them to have a humane standard of living. This makes climate change hard but also suggests that “all-of-the-above” is needed, both more technological development and conservation from people who would barely notice it.
Wonderful column on topics where I have previously been critical of Matt's work. The major omission was a lack of quantitative reasoning. Deadpan points out one of the major dimensions: scaling to other countries. There is also scaling to a future in which the global south consumes much more services, meat, etc. Finally, there quantifying to relative impact of different areas: cement and steel matter, but not that much, especially individually. Beef is bigger and harder.
Speaking of investing in technology, if direct air capture of CO2 becomes efficient, cheap, and widespread enough, it is plausible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere on net, and actually begin cooling the atmosphere. But no one in the climate advocacy space seems interested in doing that.
Just as pro-lifers often don't support contraception and sex education programs that would reduce the abortion rate due to coalitional reasons, for the same sorts of coalitional reasons green and climate groups don't support carbon capture. A big segment of pro-lifers want to disincentivize sex, and a big segment of greens wants to disincentivize "unnatural" growth.
At least pro-lifers acknowledge they're religious. Environmentalists behave religiously and then gaslight you in to thinking you're the one who doesn't care about the environment if you disagree with them.
What's notable about the former is that it's backfired on them--people are having less sex, in a way that they don't like. The latter, of course, would reap their own downfall when they realize the sheer type of downgrade of quality of life they would sow.
But that is the point, pro-lifers aren't just anti-abortion they are religious people with a whole moral code and philosophy. Similar situation here, climate activists think rich people spending $700,000 on a car is sinful, extravagant and ostentatious, they aren't suddenly going to approve if it is electric.
I think there's definitely an element of that in their rhetoric, but isn't it more salient that it would involve very difficult technology requiring significant time and investment that could be more profitably directed elsewhere?
You realize we have a giant fusion reactor next to us that will continue to spit out excess energy for the foreseeable future here, right? Thermodynamics doesn't enter into it.
To be clear: You should absolutely do research on it, iterate it, support it, maybe even fund it. But it's so far away as a solution that it makes perfect sense for advocates to focus on solar and heatpumps and EVs and what-have-you. Focusing on things we can actually deploy today instead of a technology that might never work out economically is perfectly rational
Why would anyone hang their hat on something that has low salience now. Carbon capture is not cost effective way to lower tomorrow's atmospheric carbon and there are plenty of practical and cost effective ways for stop new carbon emissions today. So in 2040 or whenever you have tackled new emissions maybe the tech is there, we can use the carbon capture in a more widespread way. Touting a far off economic and technology reality as a focus of today would be backwards.
There is research but it is way down the list - look up carbon capture on wikipedia. The simple issue is even if you found a 100% efficient process, it will still take a lot of energy. That energy can be used to efficiently power replacement of current carbon sources. But much of the carbon capture tech is just an excuse to not cut back on fossil fuel.
Because its positioned as an excuse and the fundamentals are really bad, its a low priority. But certainly in the future, capturing carbon will be useful as an input for other processes like carbonization.
The biggest problem is the fundamental economics of course, given the energy need.
Of course a lot of the climate Left are more deeply concerned about the "excuse factor" as they're more concerned about strangling oil and gas and moralising than in actual progress
That is a decent standard to look at. Would love to see the numbers about how much CSS has gotten as a subsidy compared to its actual carbon capture. I suspect that it CSS would need a much higher subsidy at this point in its development.
Because, historically, carbon capture and storage, either from fossil fuel plant emissions or directly from the air, have been used as an excuse to delay doing anything else.
Direct air capture seems likely to cost several hundred dollars per tonne of CO2 removed, and will take a couple of decades to scale up.
Sucking carbon out of the air with a very expensive straw while putting it back in with a firehouse doesn't reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration either.
Some kind of CO2 removal is ultimately going to be required to clean up the mess we have made; but it makes no sense to be paying $500 a tonne to suck CO2 out of the air while we can abate gigatonnes of annual emissions at negative cost.
And some of it is going to involve telling Americans that they are going to have to suck it up and have a Big Ass electric Truck rather than a Big Ass gasoline-powered Truck, however little political capital MattY wants to spend on climate instead of his own policy priorities.
>And some of it is going to involve telling Americans that they are going to have to suck it up and have a Big Ass electric Truck rather than a Big Ass gasoline-powered Truck
Why would the country who only emits 12% of the world's carbon and whose carbon emissions have been falling steadily since 2005 need to do anything? Global warming is certainly a bad thing, and I agree that China and India should stop doing it. I don't see that the US needs to 'suck it up' or really do much of anything at all
Because we’re only 4% of the world population. Saying only populous countries should sacrifice makes no sense. If China were divided into 2 countries each would emit less than the US but that wouldn’t make an ounce of difference to the climate.
We're already sacrificing- it seems like you missed the part where I noted the US started reducing its emissions in 2005. Meanwhile both China and India continue to increase them- China recently announced vague plans to make 10% cuts within 10 years. We don't even know if they're really going to do that! Just starting from first principles, who do you think should be more focused on cutting emissions:
The country that emits *less* and already has been reducing emissions for 2 decades across multiple presidencies
The countries that emit *more* and have been increasing their emissions steadily over multiple decades
Like, which one would you pick? The answer is obvious. Global warming is definitely bad, and China and India should stop doing it
I'm waiting for solar panels to be worth it for me as an individual - they're already at a 10 year payback but I need probably a 1 or 2 year payback to make it worth the hassle to install them, as well as making it easier for them to fully supply my house rather than going into the national grid & getting a discount for supplying that electricity.
My next car will definitely be electric - having 2 kids and planning a third has shifted me towards being significantly more pro-car than I ever was before mind you, and I want a larger car to fit 3 kids + all their stuff.
This is a very long winded way of saying you're right, and even as someone who is slightly more pro-climate than the average voter, there is no way I'm sacrificing either my current standard of living or my aspirations for higher standards of living in the future for the climate. Willing to adopt tech though (once it gets good enough).
Thanks for laying out your personal experience. I think a lot of climate activists assume that people who don't want to install solar panels, or install a heat pump are climate denialists who are brainwashed by the koch brothers. Really a lot of people are just like you — aware that climate change is a problem but also rationally don't really want to make changes that will alter their standard of living.
And there's cost, as the top level comment cites as well. I am totally fine with spending some money on my household solely for the benefits of using fewer fossil fuels, but I'm also unusual in that.
This way of thinking about solar is entirely reasonable, especially considering competing priorities and the hassle factor. That said, another framing is that if solar has a 10 year payback, you're probably getting a roughly 8% internal rate of return on the money spent on the project.
A nearly risk free investment with an almost guaranteed 8% return is an incredibly good deal. If you don't have any savings to spare, this might not seem relevant. OTOH, stock market returns have an average return of 8%, but come with a pretty high level of risk. So having an investment option that gives you 8% without all that risk is worth considering, even though it doesn't seem to be as much of a slam dunk as solar installs with much lower payback periods.
a different way to analyze it is to look at the hassle as part of the cost
if solar panels cost e.g. $10000 and return $1000/year at end-of-year for 25 years then IRR is about 8%. but if the hassle is worth $2000 then the IRR is only 6.5% and if the hassle is worth $7500 then the IRR is 3%, worse than a 1-year treasury
im also unsure about whether this really is risk-free, since electricity prices might change (although up perhaps more likely than down) and there may be policy risk due to grid access charges
Reasonable although in end for Retail /Consumers really it is very hard - the 10 year horizon sale works with industrial / commercial but only a minority of consumers
but this same for industrial / commercial where you present a positive NPV for XX megawatts and an unadjusted IRR ex any incentives of 8-10%, it moves capital investment decisions.
I agree that net metering schemes are ripe for adjustment on many grids as solar penetration increases and many jurisdictions have already changed the rules. But so far at least, I don't know of any case where previously installed solar didn't get grandfathered in under the old rules even after changes were made for new installs.
Also, on grids with time of use metering and grid battery programs, the economics can work for homeowners to add batteries and self-consume most of their production. Homeowners where this math works or mostly works also get home backup power as a bonus.
In Australia, it's not a hassle to install them (most of the time), and they're half the price they are in the US. Consequently, a large fraction of houses, including in the most politically conservative places in the country, have them installed, and now there's a huge rush to install home batteries to better utilize those solar panels.
The technology is exactly the same in the USA and Australia, it's just that a combination of advocacy and luck have made the logistics far easier.
It's not just about technology, as much as MattY wants to expend zero political capital on climate because he's got other political priorities.
The difference in available sunshine is dwarfed by the efficiency of the Australian home solar industry compared to the United States.
The local equivalent of Trader Joe’s is offering a 6.6 kilowatt solar system and a 20 kWh battery for $5000 USD installed, with long warranties. The battery component is subsidised by about 30%, but even taking that into account it’s way, way cheaper than the US equivalent because a) we don’t punch ourselves in the face with tariffs and b) the Australian home solar industry is much, much, much more efficient because it operates in a much more consistent and friendly regulatory environment.
All of the above. Marketing costs are lower because solar is now a mass-market product, design and approvals costs are lower because of a much more uniform and simpler regulatory environment for solar, and utilities have learned to stop worrying and love home solar (and the regulatory environment doesn’t let them say no easily).
Out of curiosity, which part of the country do you live in? We have solar panels and a plug-in hybrid, but we live in SoCal, which is pretty much the best place in the US for solar panels. It’s far south and sunny year-round! It feels so cool to drive a car powered by electrons from the sun. (The upfront cost was huge though, I must admit.)
This is why I think green financing is a good idea. Theoretically with a PPA/Lease, someone could pay you $5,000 up front for the privilege of using your roof and also lock in your current electric rate so it won't go up with inflation. Free money to help the environment! But no one trusts the utilities or the solar companies not to pull a fast one on them with this kind of deal. People might trust the government to keep its word though.
This is a little known fact, but as I understand it, OBBBA actually keeps the tax credits for solar leasing companies installing residential solar. So basically leasing solar is the only way for homeowners to still get the tax credit, albeit indirectly through leasing companies.
Retail is regardless not the major way forward for signficant RE deployment. Industrial / utility scale megawatts to gigawatts are where the cost deployment effiiciencies kick in big time.
"And of course, if everyone did switch to an electric car, that would drive up the price of electricity."
IMO, this is generally false. As long as regulators do their jobs, the switch to electric cars is likely to make electricity rates go down.
The reason for this counter-intuitive result is that electricity grids have to be massively overbuilt to handle peak loads. This means they have very low overall asset utilization rates. The average distribution grid runs at about 30% of its capacity. Transmission and power generation assets average about 50% utilization. So the system has a ton of excess capacity available for flexible loads like EV charging.
To unlock this excess capacity, regulators have to force utilities to incentivize flexible off-peak EV charging and get customers to avoid charging EVs during peak periods. As long as they do this, charging EVs off-peak means moving more kwhs over the same fixed grid assets. This could reduce the the cost of moving each kwh and lower rates.
That's definitely true, but it's getting harder and harder for regulators to ignore all the successful EV charging programs that have been rolled out around the country that allow EV owners to charger their EVs for significantly less cost than in places where regulators are idiots or captured by utilities.
Texas is a good example. They have tons of excess wind power overnight and lots of excess solar during some sunny days. They also have some crazy high peak loads on the hottest sunniest days that cause grid stress and huge price spikes during peak periods. All the new batteries are helping ease this, but managed EVs charging programs have already been widely deployed and they offer EV charging for between $0.00/kwh and about $.06/per kwh in exchange for letting grid operators control the exact timing of the charging.
how would this work in practice? are we pricing household electricity consumption by time of day? or are we assuming they charge their EVs overnight and only worrying about commercial charging stations?
I think almost everyone in the business believes the best way to keep costs down is to deploy mandatory time-of-use pricing. This is sort of independent of EV adoption.
Given average grid utilization rates and the fact that peak loads are the biggest driver of cost, it just makes the most sense. In competitive generation markets, the cost per kwh during non-peak times averages $.02-$.04 but spikes as high as $1.00-$10.00 per kwh during peaks. It's moronic to charge consumers a flat rate 24/7 given these behind the scenes pricing dynamics.
Managed home EV charging has another value to grid operators in that it can be instantly shut down during grid emergencies. Most grids need something called spinning reserves, where power plants are kept running 24/7 even when their output isn't needed, just in case another plant trips offline suddenly. Managed EV charging can eliminate the need for this type of backup because grid operators can just shut down all the EV charging for a few minutes if there's an emergency. The interruption doesn't need to be very long because slower backup power sources can take over in just a few minutes and the EV chargers can be turned back on.
It depends on the program. For simple time-of-use, there's no control. It's just differential pricing to encourage off-peak charging.
The most advanced programs, and these are already pretty widely deployed in more forward thinking grids, are set up with very granular operator control. The EV owner sets up their charging app with a percent of charge target and a time that target needs to be hit (say 80% charged by 7am). The grid operator looks at supply and load forecasts and optimizes the charging so it happens during the exact best/lowest cost time over the course of the night.
IMO, any programs where grid operators take control have to be completely voluntary and based on carrots not sticks. This is another area where Democrats/bureaucrats could mess up big time and create a huge backlash. We've seen this with programs where grid operators control thermostats and although most (all?) of these programs are voluntary, regulators have to be extremely careful to avoid backlash which will be swift and could cripple programs before they even get going.
"Are we pricing household electricity consumption by time of day?"
We are today. Below is the Illinois Comed day-ahead rate table per kWh by hour. There's always a ~ 5x difference between the low and high price per day. The current Tesla app let's you schedule your charging to minimize cost (i.e., charge between 2:00AM and 5:00AM).
Great article! Another thing the activists have wrought is negatively polarizing Republicans against green technology to the extent that the current administration is cancelling green energy projects just for fun, and I would guess that a significant fraction of Americans are more skeptical of green technology than they would otherwise be absent activists trying too hard and making things like electric cars into political statements.
As an actual RE &EE investment professional I entirely blame the Activist Left and Green NGO segment for this as for at least the past 7 years it's been the wrong focus and the fact they pushed in Biden Admin heavily on 'strangle the oil and gas" was a major trigger
I think we should put the blame on the group that is actually doing the dumb thing instead of vague outside factors that are impossible to quantify. No one forces them to be dipshits!
I am sure you do given your snobbish characterisation of the others as “dipshits” and perfectly illustrates how the sneering elitism of the profesional class Left has ended up in a dead-end. The idiocy of the Left Climate NGO class actively hindered me and actively moved in a very avoidable way the perceptions. Whereas industrial professionals really wanted different images. One as to sell to the market that is, not the population and market that the pointy headed profesisoinal class snobs want it to be
I know from personal experience that the "left climate NGO class" made things harder to a certain extent. That effect definitely exists. But absolving MAGA world from any personal responsibility for their dumb energy and climate policies is way more removed from reality than my "snobbish characterizations" could ever be.
I get that it's attractive to use the left as a punching bag for everything, but at some point, we need to be serious here. These people wouldn't magically become your friends if the Sunrise movement didn't exist.
Personal Responsability has FUCK ALL to do with this. Achieving the market progress and market share does. The problem is you people are treating this as some moral crusade and moral positioning. I give zero fucks about MAGA personal responsability. I give many fucks about achieving market sales, penetration and what is needed to Communicate to the Widest Market Possible, not engaging in moralising, about personal responsaiblity or whatever. And the LEfty NGOs climate agenda for past 5 yrs at minimum have been a detriment to me. And and an active detriment to achieving real progress - banging on about the evil oil corporations and spending more time trying to block hydrocarbons than waking up to the calls of people like me that the goddamn system is overall starting to strangle our ability to deploy at speed
The dipshits are the politicians cancelling these projects. AFAIK, Republicans voters aren't asking for that. It's not "sneering elitism" to call them out for that.
And is there a possible argument that what Florian said above is out of bounds but Trump's various characterizations of his political opponents isn't?
if one wants to point to the MAGA Political Activists, the equally online bunch of wankers who for me are the mirror of the wokey woke, right wokism is a good expression - sure - but that’s not the habit of the commentary going on about MAGA idiocy this MAGA that. Separate that out and I have no problem - I was going after the Activist NGOs you should note, that their mirror image on the right are a bunch of fuck-heads too …. activism of all stripes is a modern pox.
Sure it is. Take EVs from an engineering perspective they will end up a lot cheaper and better, more durable etc than ICE vehicles and very few if any ICE vehicles will be sold. This would be absent and environmental benefits. So why enact a ban just to scare and enrage people and driven them to the right?
Sure it does - it's all about oppositional defiant disorder as a political philosophy. People are strongly objecting to being told what to do by environmental scolds. Wind is just one way to object. It's also poorly thought out retaliation for canceling various oil and gas projects by the Biden admin.
"Take EVs from an engineering perspective they will end up a lot cheaper and better."
This is probably true for a new EV vs. a new ICE. I only say probably because there's still a school of thought that a plug in hybrid will remain the "best" overall platform. But there's no EV solution for the $2,000 - $5000 used vehicle segment which represents 25% of the US vehicle population today because the EV battery replacement at 8-10 years will create two depreciation cycles and prevent an EV from reached the 20 year old, near end life segment of the market.
EDIT: Not disagreeing, just noting we'll have ~ 100m ICE vehicles on the road through 2050 based on economics of supporting this segment of the used car market.
What on earth are you talking about? The warranty is 10-100k. Replacing at 8 years? At 10 years the average battery is still at 90% of what it was new.
The low-end EVs that currently have the potential to reach this low-end segment < $5k price point are not going to reach the segment due to battery replacement costs. Just facts. The 8-10 year old EVs that are reaching their battery replacement window are all getting scrapped right now. Just like I'll scrap my 2016 Model S in for sure less than 2 years rather than replace the battery.
"I would guess that a significant fraction of Americans are more skeptical of green technology than they would otherwise be absent activists trying too hard and making things like electric cars into political statements"
I'm sure some effect like this exists, but technology like electric cars and solar panels of the quality we have today wouldn't exist without the political and cultural work being put in to develop a market that supported these technologies as they were emerging. Honestly, your comment reads as smug and intellectually lazy piling on to a group that's a popular local villain?
Because it fails to consider the variety of effects that activism has had on technological uptake, to question what the net effect has been, and to weigh to what extent it was possible to get the good without the bad?
Not the most knowledgeable about this (though I am a welder!), but I've long thought setting fossil fuels on fire was extraordinarily wasteful considering what else we can use them for (making steel and plastics amongst other things). There's no denying they're good for generating energy when nothing else is on offer, but renewables are starting to get pretty damn cheap especially in terms of deployment. Pompeo was on TRIP Leading recently pretending that China was doing all their energy build-out on coal and it was quite shocking considering how fast they're cranking out solar (wind too?) to expand their capacity for energy generation. We should be doing this too!
Similarly, my MAGA shithead bar buddy was mocking wind turbines for having blades that only last eight years, and I was incredulous. Who cares? They're cheap to erect and its good work for welders (he's also a welder). We need more juice; who cares where it comes from provided we're maximizing production?
These guys stand for degrowth first and foremost. Europe shows what happens when you stifle energy production. Germany stands proud by closing its nuclear plants and damaging industrial production. The U.K. is trying to meet energy goals by relying on extortionate wind energy and overly complicated nuclear power, leading to ridiculous energy prices.
As a proper actual financier of industiral RE & EE I broadly agree.
First the Activists focus heavily on suppression of hydrocarbons and use the pollution paradigm that really is not an actionable paradigm for CO2 (and in most ways inappropriate) - and are for my perception in many ways trapped in the same 1970s BoomerAge Framework Thinking as their right-wing nemeses - whereas the technology of RE and elecrrification has leaped forward over the past 15 years to cost and efficiency levels that frankly myself didn't even believe would happen (when I started on RE & EE about 15 yrs ago as a financier).
Regulatory streamlining, permitting - and grid expansion to remove / reduce congestion as well as grid modernisation to enable the lowest cost energy to move consistently as well as modernise for Grid Efficicency - 60s era grids are leaving money on the table.... or wasting money.
Selling EE & RE as Savings, as Economic Competitiveness, as Growth Drivers - that's what is needed. The Climate Activists have been my nemesis in a way for the past decade as the whole goddamn Hair Shirt Guiltism isn't how you get real adoptoin.
We do our financials and support the investments based on Positive Net Present Value (NPV) ex-subsidies - and it works - get the private counterpart looking at their long-term asset deployment, cost stabilisation (and typically 20-40% up-front energy bill savings again ex-any subsidies which can be fine carrots for enabling important capital deployment but aren't the needed basis of NPV analysis)
Misselling EE & RE as Climate Guilt has set back this deployment. It's wrong headed
Under-focus on the ready-for-market technology acceleration AND on upgrading the needed energy infrastructure (with electricity demand growing by leaps and bounds this needs to be a priority regardless of decarbonisation)
“First the Activists focus heavily on suppression of hydrocarbons and use the pollution paradigm that really is not an actionable paradigm for CO2 (and in most ways inappropriate) - and are for my perception in many ways trapped in the same 1970s “
If they were so focused on pollution they should have been working on nuclear all this time.
well yes - anti-nuclear was always wrong-headed mixing of anti-Nukes (weapons) with generally incoherent non-factual fears of nuclear reactors being bombs (or massively incompetent idiocies like Chernobyl although there of course bad design was coupled with bad Communist maintenance and bad Soviet hierarchies and bad… well just everything Soviet… for a fuck up of Russo-Soviet scale
I think one thing Matt and most of the comment section misses about climate concerned people is the importance of low likelihood high impact possibilities in their thinking. This is things like permafrost melting and carbon release and other "tipping point" type problems.
The activists tend to overestimate the climate science consensus about these things happening. But on the other hand, they're not zero (and much higher than Skynet, or whatever). I don't know that a proper estimate could actually bridge the political gap here, but that's much more the root of the disconnect than concern about the third world in 60 years.
In part because most of those others are not anthropogenic. Moving the average temperature change up in high emissions scenarios also moves 1% tail risks to 5% tail risks (or whatever). And they are probably generally inclined to be interested in environmental stuff.
Also, people have idiosyncratic concerns, why is Matt and the EA types worked up about Skynet? idk
The argument seems to be "despite all of the technical progress, we still aren't ready for reduction in fossil fuel production, imposing limits would be too costly. At some point in the future, we will have the technology such that we can start reducing, but until then we need to accept increasing production."
I'm not sure I buy it. Is it not the case that no matter how much technology we develop, reducing fossil fuel production will always be an economic drag that voters won't be happy with? Why in 20 years would we not just be in exactly the same scenario, with the technical capacity but not the political will to sacrifice?
One might think otherwise if one conceived of fossil fuels like horse power, a fundamentally inferior technology that would be replaced naturally, but fossil fuel is a technology too, and one that can get more productive with technical developments in parallel with renewables.
Definitely on board with this one. Throw the kitchen sink at R&D and getting as much clean(er) electricity as possible, and stay laser focused on that. And the (er) includes supplanting any remaining coal plants with gas (frack baby frack), and getting over hangup on hydro and especially nuclear.
Energy infratructure enablement more than pure R&D (except to extent that R&D on grid dev) needs to be priority - as boring infra, grid upgrades for distrubtion and long-distance transmission as well as stability upgrding is massively neglected.
Sexy new tech is getting attention.
The energy highways and getting them upgraded / built fast (and with improved wires, etc) is not getting the needed attention.
Matt provides a useful primer on how to worry about climate less destructively, but he never asks why climate change should be such a consuming priority.
The very kind of technological abundance he celebrates — cheaper energy, cheaper electricity — doesn’t just reduce carbon, it makes societies resilient to warming itself. If energy is abundant, Bangladesh can move earth and build coastal defenses. If electricity is cheap, the global poor can afford air conditioning. Once coastal defenses and AC are in place, people often prefer warmer climates anyway.
Actual human beings don’t regard Columbus, Ohio or Frankfurt, Germany circa 1975 as climatic ideals. They migrate toward Jacksonville or Málaga, and they pay the air conditioning bill happily. Humans today are less likely to be immiserated by weather than at any point in our history.
I think Matt is writing under the understanding that major donors are going to prioritize AGW mitigation, even if he thinks they should prioritize other things.
Indeed. It’s interesting that anti warming sentiments are more a vice that needs to be channeled than a virtue. It’s worth pointing that out, even if the donors won’t care.
I'm not sure if virtue/vice is the right way to structure that. Plenty of people have their own ascetic quirks that they feel is very important to practice for their psyche. Things just run afoul if they try to impose their asceticism on everyone else.
About three quarters of the way through Matt admits that most environmentalists already believe in technological progress. That really undercuts the point of this article.
He doesn't give them credit because they oppose subsidies in the form of streamlined regulatory approval for new fossil fuel development. Which is fine as a criticism but the implication is that this behavior is what makes climate change activism harmful for electability and even "democracy".
The idea that you should focus on priming the pump on new technologies that help electrification is called... the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that combines economic concerns with climate change concerns. Unless your position is that the IRA is what made Harris lose then you already have climate activists rowing in the same direction that this article wants.
But guess what? Trump and MAGA can turn any technology into a culture war issue. What's the point in improving the efficiency of wind power if wind turbines are banned? How many green tech startups are going to die before their technologies get proved out? Instead of writing a circular firing squad article like this, just say that climate activists should join the abundance agenda and only ever say that green technology will reduce your electric bill (even if it's not strictly true yet).
I don't really see us getting out of this without some sort of carbon capture technology.
Climate change is tricky because we EVENTUALLY have to do SOMETHING. I've heard the figure 3-4F of warming by the end of the century and that that's baked in and there's nothing we can do about it (unless we directly removed carbon from the atmosphere, right? I'm not a scientist). But then like what next century, another 3-4F of warming? This has to stop eventually, and I think it will. But this is a good illustration of the limits of copy/pasting public opinion in to policy, and thank you to Matt for saying "you don't have to stop caring about something just because voters don't, you just have to be smart about it." If that's what popularism means, I'm all for it. I'm just tired of "you favor XYZ policy? But that's unpopular hurr hurr hurr"
You allude to this, but it deserves a headline: another advantage of technical developments is that we can export them to places our policies and controls do not reach.
If every US citizen accepted Bill McKibben's or Kōhei Saitō’s vision tomorrow, that would, on its own, only 𝘥𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘺 global warming.
Good point.
Most importantly and obviously in terms of technology but in lots of places regulation is simply copied from US standards, particularly nuclear regulations, in Spain lots of their standards just copied American authorities. Also the depressing thing of non-American politicians just copying American talking points unthinkly, British politics is obsessed with an idea of a Green New Deal despite never having a non-Green New Deal.
Everything only delays global warming. China is the world leader in renewable technologies but its own emissions are still going up as it develops more. A lot of even poorer countries have basically zero emissions; even with very good renewable tech their overall emissions are going to go up if we want them to have a humane standard of living. This makes climate change hard but also suggests that “all-of-the-above” is needed, both more technological development and conservation from people who would barely notice it.
Lots of places alreasy DO. Fracking is outlawed all over Europe.
I think the Poles do fracking because they hate Russians and Russian gas.
Wonderful column on topics where I have previously been critical of Matt's work. The major omission was a lack of quantitative reasoning. Deadpan points out one of the major dimensions: scaling to other countries. There is also scaling to a future in which the global south consumes much more services, meat, etc. Finally, there quantifying to relative impact of different areas: cement and steel matter, but not that much, especially individually. Beef is bigger and harder.
Speaking of investing in technology, if direct air capture of CO2 becomes efficient, cheap, and widespread enough, it is plausible to remove CO2 from the atmosphere on net, and actually begin cooling the atmosphere. But no one in the climate advocacy space seems interested in doing that.
Just as pro-lifers often don't support contraception and sex education programs that would reduce the abortion rate due to coalitional reasons, for the same sorts of coalitional reasons green and climate groups don't support carbon capture. A big segment of pro-lifers want to disincentivize sex, and a big segment of greens wants to disincentivize "unnatural" growth.
At least pro-lifers acknowledge they're religious. Environmentalists behave religiously and then gaslight you in to thinking you're the one who doesn't care about the environment if you disagree with them.
Hear me out. What about an abortion tax? $500 per trimester.
The same thing could probably be achieved a lot less politically toxically with generous child tax credits.
Definitely the preferred approach!
What's notable about the former is that it's backfired on them--people are having less sex, in a way that they don't like. The latter, of course, would reap their own downfall when they realize the sheer type of downgrade of quality of life they would sow.
Talk about never satisfied.
But that is the point, pro-lifers aren't just anti-abortion they are religious people with a whole moral code and philosophy. Similar situation here, climate activists think rich people spending $700,000 on a car is sinful, extravagant and ostentatious, they aren't suddenly going to approve if it is electric.
I think there's definitely an element of that in their rhetoric, but isn't it more salient that it would involve very difficult technology requiring significant time and investment that could be more profitably directed elsewhere?
And Matt's whole point is the increase the size of tents, by NOT letting one coalition partner black ball the entry of others.
Direct capture of CO2 to date has not proven economical, the tyranny of thermodynamics so far renders this Pie in the Sky.
Future perhaps but at the moment it's not really even a medium hanging fruit.
You realize we have a giant fusion reactor next to us that will continue to spit out excess energy for the foreseeable future here, right? Thermodynamics doesn't enter into it.
? what? - you mean the Sun? ... that's your answer then you're in the territory of Not Even Wrong.
I think it's perfectably rational to be disinterested in a solution that's gonna be viable in the 2050s at the earliest
> disinterested
As the bearer of this nom de internet, this is not the word you are looking for
Well, disinterested maybe not the word, but certainly it's not where one should be focusing for immediate term action.
Absolutely not. If you are, then it will NOT be viable in 2050.
To be clear: You should absolutely do research on it, iterate it, support it, maybe even fund it. But it's so far away as a solution that it makes perfect sense for advocates to focus on solar and heatpumps and EVs and what-have-you. Focusing on things we can actually deploy today instead of a technology that might never work out economically is perfectly rational
Why would anyone hang their hat on something that has low salience now. Carbon capture is not cost effective way to lower tomorrow's atmospheric carbon and there are plenty of practical and cost effective ways for stop new carbon emissions today. So in 2040 or whenever you have tackled new emissions maybe the tech is there, we can use the carbon capture in a more widespread way. Touting a far off economic and technology reality as a focus of today would be backwards.
i would have thought the point of funding research into technology was that there are areas where no practical, cost-effective solution exists
There is research but it is way down the list - look up carbon capture on wikipedia. The simple issue is even if you found a 100% efficient process, it will still take a lot of energy. That energy can be used to efficiently power replacement of current carbon sources. But much of the carbon capture tech is just an excuse to not cut back on fossil fuel.
Because its positioned as an excuse and the fundamentals are really bad, its a low priority. But certainly in the future, capturing carbon will be useful as an input for other processes like carbonization.
The biggest problem is the fundamental economics of course, given the energy need.
Of course a lot of the climate Left are more deeply concerned about the "excuse factor" as they're more concerned about strangling oil and gas and moralising than in actual progress
I don't see what your tradeoffs are? Molecule for molecule CSS deserves just a much subsidy as the CO2 not emitted becasue of use of solar or wind.
That is a decent standard to look at. Would love to see the numbers about how much CSS has gotten as a subsidy compared to its actual carbon capture. I suspect that it CSS would need a much higher subsidy at this point in its development.
Because, historically, carbon capture and storage, either from fossil fuel plant emissions or directly from the air, have been used as an excuse to delay doing anything else.
Direct air capture seems likely to cost several hundred dollars per tonne of CO2 removed, and will take a couple of decades to scale up.
It's not just climate Puritanism at work.
Except anything else doesn't actually decrease atmospheric CO2 concentration, which is the primary problem.
Sucking carbon out of the air with a very expensive straw while putting it back in with a firehouse doesn't reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration either.
Some kind of CO2 removal is ultimately going to be required to clean up the mess we have made; but it makes no sense to be paying $500 a tonne to suck CO2 out of the air while we can abate gigatonnes of annual emissions at negative cost.
And some of it is going to involve telling Americans that they are going to have to suck it up and have a Big Ass electric Truck rather than a Big Ass gasoline-powered Truck, however little political capital MattY wants to spend on climate instead of his own policy priorities.
>And some of it is going to involve telling Americans that they are going to have to suck it up and have a Big Ass electric Truck rather than a Big Ass gasoline-powered Truck
Why would the country who only emits 12% of the world's carbon and whose carbon emissions have been falling steadily since 2005 need to do anything? Global warming is certainly a bad thing, and I agree that China and India should stop doing it. I don't see that the US needs to 'suck it up' or really do much of anything at all
Because we’re only 4% of the world population. Saying only populous countries should sacrifice makes no sense. If China were divided into 2 countries each would emit less than the US but that wouldn’t make an ounce of difference to the climate.
We're already sacrificing- it seems like you missed the part where I noted the US started reducing its emissions in 2005. Meanwhile both China and India continue to increase them- China recently announced vague plans to make 10% cuts within 10 years. We don't even know if they're really going to do that! Just starting from first principles, who do you think should be more focused on cutting emissions:
The country that emits *less* and already has been reducing emissions for 2 decades across multiple presidencies
The countries that emit *more* and have been increasing their emissions steadily over multiple decades
Like, which one would you pick? The answer is obvious. Global warming is definitely bad, and China and India should stop doing it
Ah. Beat me to it.
And it set an upper limit on which will be the remaining niche uses of fossil fuels.
I'm waiting for solar panels to be worth it for me as an individual - they're already at a 10 year payback but I need probably a 1 or 2 year payback to make it worth the hassle to install them, as well as making it easier for them to fully supply my house rather than going into the national grid & getting a discount for supplying that electricity.
My next car will definitely be electric - having 2 kids and planning a third has shifted me towards being significantly more pro-car than I ever was before mind you, and I want a larger car to fit 3 kids + all their stuff.
This is a very long winded way of saying you're right, and even as someone who is slightly more pro-climate than the average voter, there is no way I'm sacrificing either my current standard of living or my aspirations for higher standards of living in the future for the climate. Willing to adopt tech though (once it gets good enough).
Thanks for laying out your personal experience. I think a lot of climate activists assume that people who don't want to install solar panels, or install a heat pump are climate denialists who are brainwashed by the koch brothers. Really a lot of people are just like you — aware that climate change is a problem but also rationally don't really want to make changes that will alter their standard of living.
And there's cost, as the top level comment cites as well. I am totally fine with spending some money on my household solely for the benefits of using fewer fossil fuels, but I'm also unusual in that.
"rationally"
I'd say egotistically. Extra weird for someone who has kids.
This way of thinking about solar is entirely reasonable, especially considering competing priorities and the hassle factor. That said, another framing is that if solar has a 10 year payback, you're probably getting a roughly 8% internal rate of return on the money spent on the project.
A nearly risk free investment with an almost guaranteed 8% return is an incredibly good deal. If you don't have any savings to spare, this might not seem relevant. OTOH, stock market returns have an average return of 8%, but come with a pretty high level of risk. So having an investment option that gives you 8% without all that risk is worth considering, even though it doesn't seem to be as much of a slam dunk as solar installs with much lower payback periods.
a different way to analyze it is to look at the hassle as part of the cost
if solar panels cost e.g. $10000 and return $1000/year at end-of-year for 25 years then IRR is about 8%. but if the hassle is worth $2000 then the IRR is only 6.5% and if the hassle is worth $7500 then the IRR is 3%, worse than a 1-year treasury
im also unsure about whether this really is risk-free, since electricity prices might change (although up perhaps more likely than down) and there may be policy risk due to grid access charges
Annoyingly, in CA batteries are mandatory, so there's an extra 15k cost on a much less durable item
Reasonable although in end for Retail /Consumers really it is very hard - the 10 year horizon sale works with industrial / commercial but only a minority of consumers
but this same for industrial / commercial where you present a positive NPV for XX megawatts and an unadjusted IRR ex any incentives of 8-10%, it moves capital investment decisions.
A 10 year payback if the payola from the utility companies doesn’t change, which there are rumblings about.
I agree that net metering schemes are ripe for adjustment on many grids as solar penetration increases and many jurisdictions have already changed the rules. But so far at least, I don't know of any case where previously installed solar didn't get grandfathered in under the old rules even after changes were made for new installs.
Also, on grids with time of use metering and grid battery programs, the economics can work for homeowners to add batteries and self-consume most of their production. Homeowners where this math works or mostly works also get home backup power as a bonus.
CA is making a bunch of rumbles about this, I wouldn't bet 25 grand against it happening
I thought most of CA already killed net metering a while ago?
It got much less generous, but they're coming for the grandfathered customers, and strangling what's left.
In Australia, it's not a hassle to install them (most of the time), and they're half the price they are in the US. Consequently, a large fraction of houses, including in the most politically conservative places in the country, have them installed, and now there's a huge rush to install home batteries to better utilize those solar panels.
The technology is exactly the same in the USA and Australia, it's just that a combination of advocacy and luck have made the logistics far easier.
It's not just about technology, as much as MattY wants to expend zero political capital on climate because he's got other political priorities.
I imagine Australia has, on average, much better sun + weather than most of the US does, too.
The difference in available sunshine is dwarfed by the efficiency of the Australian home solar industry compared to the United States.
The local equivalent of Trader Joe’s is offering a 6.6 kilowatt solar system and a 20 kWh battery for $5000 USD installed, with long warranties. The battery component is subsidised by about 30%, but even taking that into account it’s way, way cheaper than the US equivalent because a) we don’t punch ourselves in the face with tariffs and b) the Australian home solar industry is much, much, much more efficient because it operates in a much more consistent and friendly regulatory environment.
In my understanding, the drivers of resi solar costs are
- Huge advertising bills to find customers who are interested
- Navigating a maze of different building codes for every county and getting a building permit
- Needing to ask permission from reluctant utilities before installing
Any idea which of those Australia does better?
All of the above. Marketing costs are lower because solar is now a mass-market product, design and approvals costs are lower because of a much more uniform and simpler regulatory environment for solar, and utilities have learned to stop worrying and love home solar (and the regulatory environment doesn’t let them say no easily).
My hurdle with solar panels is that I don't want to put them on until I need to replace my roof, and so far it continues to be a rock star.
Sending the hail damage roof inspector over to move your decision point. ;)
Out of curiosity, which part of the country do you live in? We have solar panels and a plug-in hybrid, but we live in SoCal, which is pretty much the best place in the US for solar panels. It’s far south and sunny year-round! It feels so cool to drive a car powered by electrons from the sun. (The upfront cost was huge though, I must admit.)
> but I need probably a 1 or 2 year payback
This is why I think green financing is a good idea. Theoretically with a PPA/Lease, someone could pay you $5,000 up front for the privilege of using your roof and also lock in your current electric rate so it won't go up with inflation. Free money to help the environment! But no one trusts the utilities or the solar companies not to pull a fast one on them with this kind of deal. People might trust the government to keep its word though.
This is a little known fact, but as I understand it, OBBBA actually keeps the tax credits for solar leasing companies installing residential solar. So basically leasing solar is the only way for homeowners to still get the tax credit, albeit indirectly through leasing companies.
Retail is regardless not the major way forward for signficant RE deployment. Industrial / utility scale megawatts to gigawatts are where the cost deployment effiiciencies kick in big time.
"And of course, if everyone did switch to an electric car, that would drive up the price of electricity."
IMO, this is generally false. As long as regulators do their jobs, the switch to electric cars is likely to make electricity rates go down.
The reason for this counter-intuitive result is that electricity grids have to be massively overbuilt to handle peak loads. This means they have very low overall asset utilization rates. The average distribution grid runs at about 30% of its capacity. Transmission and power generation assets average about 50% utilization. So the system has a ton of excess capacity available for flexible loads like EV charging.
To unlock this excess capacity, regulators have to force utilities to incentivize flexible off-peak EV charging and get customers to avoid charging EVs during peak periods. As long as they do this, charging EVs off-peak means moving more kwhs over the same fixed grid assets. This could reduce the the cost of moving each kwh and lower rates.
Assuming that regulators will do their job is very risky IMO
That's definitely true, but it's getting harder and harder for regulators to ignore all the successful EV charging programs that have been rolled out around the country that allow EV owners to charger their EVs for significantly less cost than in places where regulators are idiots or captured by utilities.
Texas is a good example. They have tons of excess wind power overnight and lots of excess solar during some sunny days. They also have some crazy high peak loads on the hottest sunniest days that cause grid stress and huge price spikes during peak periods. All the new batteries are helping ease this, but managed EVs charging programs have already been widely deployed and they offer EV charging for between $0.00/kwh and about $.06/per kwh in exchange for letting grid operators control the exact timing of the charging.
how would this work in practice? are we pricing household electricity consumption by time of day? or are we assuming they charge their EVs overnight and only worrying about commercial charging stations?
I think almost everyone in the business believes the best way to keep costs down is to deploy mandatory time-of-use pricing. This is sort of independent of EV adoption.
Given average grid utilization rates and the fact that peak loads are the biggest driver of cost, it just makes the most sense. In competitive generation markets, the cost per kwh during non-peak times averages $.02-$.04 but spikes as high as $1.00-$10.00 per kwh during peaks. It's moronic to charge consumers a flat rate 24/7 given these behind the scenes pricing dynamics.
Managed home EV charging has another value to grid operators in that it can be instantly shut down during grid emergencies. Most grids need something called spinning reserves, where power plants are kept running 24/7 even when their output isn't needed, just in case another plant trips offline suddenly. Managed EV charging can eliminate the need for this type of backup because grid operators can just shut down all the EV charging for a few minutes if there's an emergency. The interruption doesn't need to be very long because slower backup power sources can take over in just a few minutes and the EV chargers can be turned back on.
so would the grid operator be able to selectively shut off EV charging?
It depends on the program. For simple time-of-use, there's no control. It's just differential pricing to encourage off-peak charging.
The most advanced programs, and these are already pretty widely deployed in more forward thinking grids, are set up with very granular operator control. The EV owner sets up their charging app with a percent of charge target and a time that target needs to be hit (say 80% charged by 7am). The grid operator looks at supply and load forecasts and optimizes the charging so it happens during the exact best/lowest cost time over the course of the night.
IMO, any programs where grid operators take control have to be completely voluntary and based on carrots not sticks. This is another area where Democrats/bureaucrats could mess up big time and create a huge backlash. We've seen this with programs where grid operators control thermostats and although most (all?) of these programs are voluntary, regulators have to be extremely careful to avoid backlash which will be swift and could cripple programs before they even get going.
"Are we pricing household electricity consumption by time of day?"
We are today. Below is the Illinois Comed day-ahead rate table per kWh by hour. There's always a ~ 5x difference between the low and high price per day. The current Tesla app let's you schedule your charging to minimize cost (i.e., charge between 2:00AM and 5:00AM).
Time (Hour Ending) Day-Ahead Hourly Price
12:00 AM 3.0¢
1:00 AM 2.5¢
2:00 AM 2.1¢
3:00 AM 2.0¢
4:00 AM 2.2¢
5:00 AM 2.7¢
6:00 AM 4.2¢
7:00 AM 4.8¢
8:00 AM 4.1¢
9:00 AM 3.6¢
10:00 AM 3.5¢
11:00 AM 4.0¢
12:00 PM 4.6¢
1:00 PM 5.0¢
2:00 PM 5.3¢
3:00 PM 5.4¢
4:00 PM 6.4¢
5:00 PM 8.9¢
6:00 PM 9.8¢
7:00 PM 8.2¢
8:00 PM 5.3¢
9:00 PM 4.3¢
10:00 PM 3.7¢
11:00 PM 3.0¢
"are we pricing household electricity consumption by time of day?"
That started in at least the 1970s.
Great article! Another thing the activists have wrought is negatively polarizing Republicans against green technology to the extent that the current administration is cancelling green energy projects just for fun, and I would guess that a significant fraction of Americans are more skeptical of green technology than they would otherwise be absent activists trying too hard and making things like electric cars into political statements.
I really don't think it's the left's fault that MAGA is on a dipshit crusade against greentech
As an actual RE &EE investment professional I entirely blame the Activist Left and Green NGO segment for this as for at least the past 7 years it's been the wrong focus and the fact they pushed in Biden Admin heavily on 'strangle the oil and gas" was a major trigger
so they for me bear a significant blame
I think we should put the blame on the group that is actually doing the dumb thing instead of vague outside factors that are impossible to quantify. No one forces them to be dipshits!
I am sure you do given your snobbish characterisation of the others as “dipshits” and perfectly illustrates how the sneering elitism of the profesional class Left has ended up in a dead-end. The idiocy of the Left Climate NGO class actively hindered me and actively moved in a very avoidable way the perceptions. Whereas industrial professionals really wanted different images. One as to sell to the market that is, not the population and market that the pointy headed profesisoinal class snobs want it to be
I know from personal experience that the "left climate NGO class" made things harder to a certain extent. That effect definitely exists. But absolving MAGA world from any personal responsibility for their dumb energy and climate policies is way more removed from reality than my "snobbish characterizations" could ever be.
I get that it's attractive to use the left as a punching bag for everything, but at some point, we need to be serious here. These people wouldn't magically become your friends if the Sunrise movement didn't exist.
Personal Responsability has FUCK ALL to do with this. Achieving the market progress and market share does. The problem is you people are treating this as some moral crusade and moral positioning. I give zero fucks about MAGA personal responsability. I give many fucks about achieving market sales, penetration and what is needed to Communicate to the Widest Market Possible, not engaging in moralising, about personal responsaiblity or whatever. And the LEfty NGOs climate agenda for past 5 yrs at minimum have been a detriment to me. And and an active detriment to achieving real progress - banging on about the evil oil corporations and spending more time trying to block hydrocarbons than waking up to the calls of people like me that the goddamn system is overall starting to strangle our ability to deploy at speed
The dipshits are the politicians cancelling these projects. AFAIK, Republicans voters aren't asking for that. It's not "sneering elitism" to call them out for that.
And is there a possible argument that what Florian said above is out of bounds but Trump's various characterizations of his political opponents isn't?
if one wants to point to the MAGA Political Activists, the equally online bunch of wankers who for me are the mirror of the wokey woke, right wokism is a good expression - sure - but that’s not the habit of the commentary going on about MAGA idiocy this MAGA that. Separate that out and I have no problem - I was going after the Activist NGOs you should note, that their mirror image on the right are a bunch of fuck-heads too …. activism of all stripes is a modern pox.
Sure it is. Take EVs from an engineering perspective they will end up a lot cheaper and better, more durable etc than ICE vehicles and very few if any ICE vehicles will be sold. This would be absent and environmental benefits. So why enact a ban just to scare and enrage people and driven them to the right?
I agree with you but if you think this has anything to do with Trump's war on wind power, you are, dare I say, credulous.
Sure it does - it's all about oppositional defiant disorder as a political philosophy. People are strongly objecting to being told what to do by environmental scolds. Wind is just one way to object. It's also poorly thought out retaliation for canceling various oil and gas projects by the Biden admin.
The reasons for Trump's opposition to wind energy are way older and way dumber than that.
Ah I was thinking you were talking about the right/MAGA opposition to wind power vs. Trump specifically.
"Take EVs from an engineering perspective they will end up a lot cheaper and better."
This is probably true for a new EV vs. a new ICE. I only say probably because there's still a school of thought that a plug in hybrid will remain the "best" overall platform. But there's no EV solution for the $2,000 - $5000 used vehicle segment which represents 25% of the US vehicle population today because the EV battery replacement at 8-10 years will create two depreciation cycles and prevent an EV from reached the 20 year old, near end life segment of the market.
EDIT: Not disagreeing, just noting we'll have ~ 100m ICE vehicles on the road through 2050 based on economics of supporting this segment of the used car market.
"EV battery replacement at 8-10 years "
What on earth are you talking about? The warranty is 10-100k. Replacing at 8 years? At 10 years the average battery is still at 90% of what it was new.
The low-end EVs that currently have the potential to reach this low-end segment < $5k price point are not going to reach the segment due to battery replacement costs. Just facts. The 8-10 year old EVs that are reaching their battery replacement window are all getting scrapped right now. Just like I'll scrap my 2016 Model S in for sure less than 2 years rather than replace the battery.
"The 8-10 year old EVs that are reaching their battery replacement window are all getting scrapped right now."
I'm going to need a cite for that load of complete nonsense.
I mean you're going to replace the battery when the warranty expires for no reason? Who is feeding you this nonsense?
"I would guess that a significant fraction of Americans are more skeptical of green technology than they would otherwise be absent activists trying too hard and making things like electric cars into political statements"
I'm sure some effect like this exists, but technology like electric cars and solar panels of the quality we have today wouldn't exist without the political and cultural work being put in to develop a market that supported these technologies as they were emerging. Honestly, your comment reads as smug and intellectually lazy piling on to a group that's a popular local villain?
So if you agree that this effect probably exists, why is it intellectually lazy and smug to point it out?
Because it fails to consider the variety of effects that activism has had on technological uptake, to question what the net effect has been, and to weigh to what extent it was possible to get the good without the bad?
It is interesting how federal level Republicans are anti-green tech but state level ones especially in Texas don't seem to hide their support.
Not the most knowledgeable about this (though I am a welder!), but I've long thought setting fossil fuels on fire was extraordinarily wasteful considering what else we can use them for (making steel and plastics amongst other things). There's no denying they're good for generating energy when nothing else is on offer, but renewables are starting to get pretty damn cheap especially in terms of deployment. Pompeo was on TRIP Leading recently pretending that China was doing all their energy build-out on coal and it was quite shocking considering how fast they're cranking out solar (wind too?) to expand their capacity for energy generation. We should be doing this too!
Similarly, my MAGA shithead bar buddy was mocking wind turbines for having blades that only last eight years, and I was incredulous. Who cares? They're cheap to erect and its good work for welders (he's also a welder). We need more juice; who cares where it comes from provided we're maximizing production?
And as more blades pile up some clever people will figure out how to reuse or recycle them.
These guys stand for degrowth first and foremost. Europe shows what happens when you stifle energy production. Germany stands proud by closing its nuclear plants and damaging industrial production. The U.K. is trying to meet energy goals by relying on extortionate wind energy and overly complicated nuclear power, leading to ridiculous energy prices.
While there is investment in the UK in nuclear the policy is that renewables take the lions share.
As a proper actual financier of industiral RE & EE I broadly agree.
First the Activists focus heavily on suppression of hydrocarbons and use the pollution paradigm that really is not an actionable paradigm for CO2 (and in most ways inappropriate) - and are for my perception in many ways trapped in the same 1970s BoomerAge Framework Thinking as their right-wing nemeses - whereas the technology of RE and elecrrification has leaped forward over the past 15 years to cost and efficiency levels that frankly myself didn't even believe would happen (when I started on RE & EE about 15 yrs ago as a financier).
Regulatory streamlining, permitting - and grid expansion to remove / reduce congestion as well as grid modernisation to enable the lowest cost energy to move consistently as well as modernise for Grid Efficicency - 60s era grids are leaving money on the table.... or wasting money.
Selling EE & RE as Savings, as Economic Competitiveness, as Growth Drivers - that's what is needed. The Climate Activists have been my nemesis in a way for the past decade as the whole goddamn Hair Shirt Guiltism isn't how you get real adoptoin.
We do our financials and support the investments based on Positive Net Present Value (NPV) ex-subsidies - and it works - get the private counterpart looking at their long-term asset deployment, cost stabilisation (and typically 20-40% up-front energy bill savings again ex-any subsidies which can be fine carrots for enabling important capital deployment but aren't the needed basis of NPV analysis)
Misselling EE & RE as Climate Guilt has set back this deployment. It's wrong headed
Under-focus on the ready-for-market technology acceleration AND on upgrading the needed energy infrastructure (with electricity demand growing by leaps and bounds this needs to be a priority regardless of decarbonisation)
“First the Activists focus heavily on suppression of hydrocarbons and use the pollution paradigm that really is not an actionable paradigm for CO2 (and in most ways inappropriate) - and are for my perception in many ways trapped in the same 1970s “
If they were so focused on pollution they should have been working on nuclear all this time.
well yes - anti-nuclear was always wrong-headed mixing of anti-Nukes (weapons) with generally incoherent non-factual fears of nuclear reactors being bombs (or massively incompetent idiocies like Chernobyl although there of course bad design was coupled with bad Communist maintenance and bad Soviet hierarchies and bad… well just everything Soviet… for a fuck up of Russo-Soviet scale
Climate activists don't see it as an economic or technical issue, they see it as a moral one.
Pragmatic arguments, just don't work, to change their mind you need to explore their psychology.
I think one thing Matt and most of the comment section misses about climate concerned people is the importance of low likelihood high impact possibilities in their thinking. This is things like permafrost melting and carbon release and other "tipping point" type problems.
The activists tend to overestimate the climate science consensus about these things happening. But on the other hand, they're not zero (and much higher than Skynet, or whatever). I don't know that a proper estimate could actually bridge the political gap here, but that's much more the root of the disconnect than concern about the third world in 60 years.
Tail events can happen in other areas as well (pandemics, earthquakes, supervolcanos, solar storms).
Why aren’t they consumed by those?
In part because most of those others are not anthropogenic. Moving the average temperature change up in high emissions scenarios also moves 1% tail risks to 5% tail risks (or whatever). And they are probably generally inclined to be interested in environmental stuff.
Also, people have idiosyncratic concerns, why is Matt and the EA types worked up about Skynet? idk
Some people like to "do activism" though.
The argument seems to be "despite all of the technical progress, we still aren't ready for reduction in fossil fuel production, imposing limits would be too costly. At some point in the future, we will have the technology such that we can start reducing, but until then we need to accept increasing production."
I'm not sure I buy it. Is it not the case that no matter how much technology we develop, reducing fossil fuel production will always be an economic drag that voters won't be happy with? Why in 20 years would we not just be in exactly the same scenario, with the technical capacity but not the political will to sacrifice?
One might think otherwise if one conceived of fossil fuels like horse power, a fundamentally inferior technology that would be replaced naturally, but fossil fuel is a technology too, and one that can get more productive with technical developments in parallel with renewables.
Definitely on board with this one. Throw the kitchen sink at R&D and getting as much clean(er) electricity as possible, and stay laser focused on that. And the (er) includes supplanting any remaining coal plants with gas (frack baby frack), and getting over hangup on hydro and especially nuclear.
Energy infratructure enablement more than pure R&D (except to extent that R&D on grid dev) needs to be priority - as boring infra, grid upgrades for distrubtion and long-distance transmission as well as stability upgrding is massively neglected.
Sexy new tech is getting attention.
The energy highways and getting them upgraded / built fast (and with improved wires, etc) is not getting the needed attention.
Matt provides a useful primer on how to worry about climate less destructively, but he never asks why climate change should be such a consuming priority.
The very kind of technological abundance he celebrates — cheaper energy, cheaper electricity — doesn’t just reduce carbon, it makes societies resilient to warming itself. If energy is abundant, Bangladesh can move earth and build coastal defenses. If electricity is cheap, the global poor can afford air conditioning. Once coastal defenses and AC are in place, people often prefer warmer climates anyway.
Actual human beings don’t regard Columbus, Ohio or Frankfurt, Germany circa 1975 as climatic ideals. They migrate toward Jacksonville or Málaga, and they pay the air conditioning bill happily. Humans today are less likely to be immiserated by weather than at any point in our history.
I think Matt is writing under the understanding that major donors are going to prioritize AGW mitigation, even if he thinks they should prioritize other things.
Yeah, you don’t want to undermine an attempt at persuasion with rhetoric that elicits defensiveness.
He has said elsewhere, more than once, that climate change is a phenomenon to be managed rather than vanquished.
Indeed. It’s interesting that anti warming sentiments are more a vice that needs to be channeled than a virtue. It’s worth pointing that out, even if the donors won’t care.
I'm not sure if virtue/vice is the right way to structure that. Plenty of people have their own ascetic quirks that they feel is very important to practice for their psyche. Things just run afoul if they try to impose their asceticism on everyone else.
About three quarters of the way through Matt admits that most environmentalists already believe in technological progress. That really undercuts the point of this article.
He doesn't give them credit because they oppose subsidies in the form of streamlined regulatory approval for new fossil fuel development. Which is fine as a criticism but the implication is that this behavior is what makes climate change activism harmful for electability and even "democracy".
The idea that you should focus on priming the pump on new technologies that help electrification is called... the Inflation Reduction Act, a bill that combines economic concerns with climate change concerns. Unless your position is that the IRA is what made Harris lose then you already have climate activists rowing in the same direction that this article wants.
But guess what? Trump and MAGA can turn any technology into a culture war issue. What's the point in improving the efficiency of wind power if wind turbines are banned? How many green tech startups are going to die before their technologies get proved out? Instead of writing a circular firing squad article like this, just say that climate activists should join the abundance agenda and only ever say that green technology will reduce your electric bill (even if it's not strictly true yet).
I don't really see us getting out of this without some sort of carbon capture technology.
Climate change is tricky because we EVENTUALLY have to do SOMETHING. I've heard the figure 3-4F of warming by the end of the century and that that's baked in and there's nothing we can do about it (unless we directly removed carbon from the atmosphere, right? I'm not a scientist). But then like what next century, another 3-4F of warming? This has to stop eventually, and I think it will. But this is a good illustration of the limits of copy/pasting public opinion in to policy, and thank you to Matt for saying "you don't have to stop caring about something just because voters don't, you just have to be smart about it." If that's what popularism means, I'm all for it. I'm just tired of "you favor XYZ policy? But that's unpopular hurr hurr hurr"