Chris Wright, the fracking magnate and likely next U.S. energy secretary, makes a moral case for fossil fuels.
Chris Wright, the founder and chief executive of Liberty Energy, in 2018.
Credit Andy Cross/The Denver Post, via Associated Press
His position, laid out in speeches and podcasts, is that the world’s poorest people need oil, gas and coal to realize the benefits of modern life that Americans and others in rich nations take for granted. Only fossil fuels, he says, can bring prosperity to millions who still burn wood, dung or charcoal for basic needs like cooking food and heating homes.
“It’s just, I think, naïve or evil, or some combination of the two, to believe they should never have washing machines, they should never have access to electricity, they should never have modern medicine,” Mr. Wright said on the “Mission Zero” podcast last year. “We don’t want that to happen. And we simply don’t have meaningful substitutes for oil, gas and coal today.”
The argument offered by Mr. Wright, who has been chosen by President-elect Donald J. Trump to run the Energy Department, ignores the fact that wind, solar and other renewable energy are cleaner and increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels. The International Energy Agency says clean energy is coming online globally at an “unprecedented rate” and will play a significant role in the future. In some places, renewable energy has been able to displace fossil fuels.
Mr. Wright also skates past the climate impacts from burning more fossil fuels. Climate change is already having a disproportionate impact on poor nations, which are less able than rich countries to handle the rising seas, extreme weather, drought and other consequences of global warming.
“It’s pretty self-serving by the fossil fuel industry to assume the future is going to look exactly like the past,” said Joseph Curtin, a managing director on the power and climate team at the Rockefeller Foundation, which is working on expanding clean energy access in poor countries.
“That’s not based on any analytical rigor,” Mr. Curtin said. “It’s perhaps based in the need to sell fossil fuels and shroud it in a moral framework.”
Jody Freeman, the director of the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law, called Mr. Wright’s position “misleading, warped and selective.”
“It is not an intellectually serious argument,” she said. “It’s about creating a permission structure for not pursuing a more responsible energy policy.”
But by sheathing fossil fuels in humanitarian language as a solution to global poverty, Mr. Wright has emerged as one of the right’s most savvy salesmen for oil and gas. “His is the newest and freshest point of view I’ve seen,” Jeff Peeples, the host of “Mission Zero.” He said the oil and gas industry has been on the defensive when it comes to climate change.
“If a lot more executives in the oil and gas industry would make this argument, and make this intellectual case for the use of fossil fuels, I think the energy industry as a whole would have a lot better PR success,” Mr. Peeples said.
A self-described “nerd turned entrepreneur” and outdoor enthusiast who is often photographed in a fleece vest, Mr. Wright runs a fracking services company and frequently talks about his travels through Africa as informing his desire to tackle poverty.
“People that are burning wooden dung in their huts and want to have a propane stove, they want to get off their feet, ride on a bus or a motor scooter,” Mr. Wright said on the podcast “PetroNerds” last year.
The Trump transition team did not make Mr. Wright available for a telephone interview.
Mr. Wright’s views on developing nations are important; as energy secretary, he would not only oversee oil and gas exports from the United States but also partnerships with poor countries to create renewable energy.
The share of people gaining access to electricity has steadily grown globally, and fossil fuels are largely responsible. About 800 million people now lack access to electricity, down from more than 1.5 billion in 1998.
A new solar project in Gabon. A solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take years to build a gas-powered plant.Credit…Nao Mukadi/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
But Ian Muir, head of insights at Catalyst Energy Advisors, a consulting firm, pointed out that renewables were now cheaper than fossil fuels in most countries where people lack electricity. Moreover, a solar array can start producing electricity in months, while it can take more than two years to build a gas-powered plant, he said.
The World Bank has found that solar mini grids could provide basic electricity to 380 million people in Africa by 2030 who do not currently have access to power. A Rockefeller Foundation study in 2021 found that investing in distributed renewable energy like rooftop solar panels, small-scale wind turbines and home battery storage systems could create 25 million jobs by the end of the decade in Asia and Africa. That is about 30 times the number of jobs that would be created by investments in oil, gas or coal in that period, the study found.
Moreover, he said, big fossil fuel plants in developing nations often tend to favor industries like mining rather than people who need electricity in their homes, so that their children can study at night or they can charge a cellphone.
Technologies like mini grids and rooftop solar can often move faster to provide the electricity access Mr. Wright talks about, he said.
While the coal industry for years presented its product as an antidote to poverty, Mr. Wright has become the new master of an old playbook.
His rhetoric echoes Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author who gained prominence in 2001 with the English publication of his book “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” in which he accepted the reality of climate change but said governments should focus on reducing poverty rather than greenhouse gases. Mr. Lomborg was accused of cherry-picking data and misrepresenting science, but Mr. Wright called the book “fantastic” and has referred to Mr. Lomborg a friend.
In 2014, Alex Epstein, who argues against climate science and is a favorite of Fox News, published “The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels,”which described coal, oil and gas as humanity’s best chance to thrive. (Mr. Wright has appeared on Mr. Epstein’s podcast, “Power Hour.”) That same year, Peabody Energy, then one of the world’s leading coal companies, began an ad campaign that extolled the virtues of coal for the world’s poor.
“Its déjà vu all over again,” said Robert J. Brulle, a sociologist at Brown University who studies fossil fuel misinformation campaigns. “They’re drawing on old tropes that have been around for 20, 30 years.”
Over the years, Mr. Wright built a reputation with gimmicks like drinking a shot of fracked water in a toast to environmental critics. In 2021, he commissioned billboards around Denver to heckle the outdoor clothing maker North Face after the company — whose products, like many other goods, contain petroleum — declined to brand a jacket with an oil company.
“That North Face puffer looks great on you. And it was made from fossil fuels,” read the signs.
Those who have worked with Mr. Wright described him as someone who sincerely wants to improve living standards.
“He’s a good person who wants to make the world better,” said Tisha Schuller, an energy consultant in Colorado and past president of the Colorado Oil & Gas Association who has worked closely with Mr. Wright.
After receiving a diploma from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Mr. Wright did graduate work on solar energy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1992, he founded Pinnacle Technologies, which created software that Mr. Wright called “super nerdy” to measure the motion of fluid beneath the earth. It helped bring about a commercial shale gas revolution. Mr. Wright started Liberty Energy in 2011, and the company has partnered with others on small modular nuclear reactors and geothermal energy.
Mr. Wright’s stake in Liberty Energy is worth $50 million, according to Forbes, and a recent SEC filing put his compensation last year at $5.6 million. He helped establish a charity, the Bettering Human Lives Foundation, to promote cookstoves using liquefied petroleum gas in Kenya and elsewhere. They are considered better for the environment and health than traditional cooking fuels of kerosene, biomass and coal. Records show the foundation started in 2023 with $11,450 in assets and spent all of it on administrative costs. The foundation did not respond to a request to discuss its work.
Some who work on energy poverty said Mr. Wright’s views had merit.
Todd Moss, executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a research organization, said tackling climate change was not the responsibility of the world’s poorest countries who have done little to cause the problem. In some countries, fossil fuels may still be needed to power factories and industries to spur economic prosperity, he said. Any effort that is too strict and “puts climate above development” would hurt poor countries, Mr. Moss said.
But scientists have maintained that Mr. Wright has selectively used data to downplay the impacts of climate change.
While he acknowledges that the planet is warming, Mr. Wright has inaccurately said that it is a modest and distant threat. He has denied the well-established connection between climate change and extreme weather, wrongly claiming that hurricanes, droughts and floods are not becoming more intense.
“We’re impoverishing people today, those least able to bear it and afford it, for what the economic work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows is a slow-moving, modest impact two or three generations from now,” Mr. Wright said on the “WOW Factor” podcast last year. “That’s not a good trade-off.”
In fact, the I.P.C.C., the United Nations’ top scientific body, found last year with very high confidence that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a livable and sustainable future for all.” It recommended nations make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from crossing a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade.
Mr. Wright “may not have read an I.P.C.C. report since 1990,” said Robert E. Kopp, a climate scientist at Rutgers University and a lead author of an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report published in 2021.
In face of the recent record-setting heat wave that tested California’s power grid, experts attributed the state’s success to its commitment to renewable energy and called for collaboration with China to accelerate the path to a fully clean electricity grid.
California has set aggressive targets for renewable energy adoption, with state law requiring 90 percent of all retail electricity sales to come from renewable sources by 2035 and 100 percent by 2045. To meet those ambitious goals, the state is turning its attention to offshore wind power.
“In California, we have zero offshore wind today … right now, China is far ahead of the US on the offshore wind industry,” Daniel Kammen, a professor of energy at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of its Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, said.
California has designated two zones for offshore wind farms — one in Humboldt Bay in the north, and another in central California. “Offshore wind is exciting because it can be permitted more quickly and serves as a ‘battery’ for the grid,” Kammen said.
Offshore wind can complement the production cycles of solar and on-land wind energy. That characteristic is particularly valuable, as solar production quickly diminishes when the sun sets, requiring system operators to replace those megawatts with other sources in real time to maintain grid stability.
It also offers flexibility in energy production, capable of generating electricity during peak demand and producing hydrogen or methanol during periods of low electricity prices. That flexibility presents huge opportunities to decarbonize sectors that have traditionally been difficult to transition to clean energy, Kammen said.
The state can directly apply some of China’s practices, he said. “The best way to apply it is not just to read about it, but to actually get partners from China.”
California has already taken such steps by inviting engineering groups from Norway. The state is also exploring opportunities in fuel cells, hydrogen production and other offshore renewable energy sources, such as tidal and wave power. Those areas promise rich opportunities for knowledge exchange and collaboration with Chinese partners, who have wide experience in the fields, Kammen added.
California and China have a history of partnership in developing clean energy technologies.
Kammen, however, stressed the need to accelerate the collaborations. He highlighted his own partnerships with research colleagues at Tsinghua University and North China Electric Power University, as well as with Chinese companies such as Geely.
“We want to build more of those teams so that we can move quickly when the politics let it happen,” he said.
Gaining momentum
Despite tensions at the national level, locality cooperation between China and the United States has gained momentum recently.
“I think the conference may give you the best example,” said Richard Dasher, director of the US-Asia Technology Management Center at Stanford University, referring to the 2024 Global Green Development Summit at his university on the weekend.
The summit, held by the Global Green Development Alliance, brought together climate and energy experts, as well as business leaders from both countries to discuss “energy transition and innovation for carbon neutrality”.
Companies must provide solutions that are both economically viable and attractive to consumers, Dasher said.
Kammen emphasized the need for a combination of Silicon Valley’s innovative mentality and the large-scale industrial capacity of entities such as China’s State Grid and the State Grid Electric Vehicle Service.
He pointed to the productivity of new companies and university offshoots as evidence of the potential for collaborative innovation with Chinese companies.
Comments Off on Sam Miles contributes to a new assessment report, “Digitalising Innovative Finance: Emerging instruments for early- stage innovators in low- and middle-income countries”
Digital technologies play a significant role in unlocking the potential of innovative financing mechanisms across the utilities sectors in Africa and Asia. Across these sectors, access to capital is a major challenge, particularly when enterprises have outgrown grant funding but do not have the scale to tap into traditional investment channels. Technologies like digital platforms, artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and the Internet
of Things (IoT) can bring innovative financing instruments to the energy, water, waste, sanitation, recycling, mobility and asset-financing sectors. However, the scale of innovative finance has yet to reach its potential, with only a small portion of available development assistance and sustainable private sector capital being mobilised through digitally enabled innovative financing.
There is little research that focuses specifically on the role of technology in unlocking innovative finance in the utilities service sector in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This research serves as a first attempt to categorise the complex value chain connecting upstream financiers exploring innovative financing instruments to the midstream digital technology providers and solutions and on to the downstream implementers of utility service delivery and their beneficiaries.
The study uses novel conceptual and analytical frameworks designed to create a common language in identifying and analysing instances of digitally enabled innovative finance. The framework employs three distinct lenses that correspond to the principal stages within the value chain connecting financiers to implementers. This approach acknowledges that the frontier of innovation is continually expanding and context-dependent; what may be commonplace in one area can be considered innovative when applied elsewhere.
To operationalise this framework, each lens was defined through extensive desk-based research as well as consultation with key stakeholders.Limitations to this approach are principally around the interconnected nature of the different financial instruments and technologies which make categories less discrete in real-world applications than in theory. Nonetheless, the framework enables a complex landscape to be broken down into clear components.
Over 80 in-scope use cases were identified through this analytical framework. Use cases and their application of innovative finance instruments are segmented into mature, scaling and emerging categories based on the number of implementation examples documented in the literature, number of countries and sectors, and typical volumes associated with the instrument. These use cases serve to concretise the
universe of digitally enabled innovative finance instruments into a catalogue of examples where finance instruments, digital technologies and the transaction mechanisms underpinning them come to life in the real world. The study dives into five innovative finance instruments as case studies — receivables financing, alt-lending, climate, revenue- share models, and digitally-verified RBF – as a means to fully explore the relationship between digital innovation and these evolving models.
Key trends
Maturing use cases include social enterprises’ use of financial instruments such as alternative lending, receivables financing and crowdfunding. Digital technologies driving the growth of such use cases principally include advances in satellite imagery and digital platforms that perform analytics on transaction and asset usage data enabled by IoT. Transaction mechanisms that foster the growth of these use cases include traditional mobile money and pay-as-you-go (PAYG) systems. The most mature use cases across the review were principally from the energy sector, with emerging innovation in the cooking space mirroring early successes of the PAYG solar lighting product and solar home systems (SHS) verticals.
Scaling use cases include those leveraging the growth of climate finance, revenue sharing models and digitally-verified results-based finance (RBF) mechanisms. The digital technologies principally driving these use cases are IoT systems paired with digital platforms capable of performing verification analytics, increasingly leveraging AI, and digital ledger technologies. Transaction mechanisms that foster these models include mass-payout electronic payment integrations into digital platforms, as
well as embedded finance mechanisms. Use cases exhibiting characteristics of scaling are largely focused on agritech and productive use asset- lending, particularly in the vehicle financing space.
Emerging use cases include social or environmental climate finance co- benefits monetisation, impact bonds and
various applications of digital tokens and cryptocurrencies. These use cases increasingly leverage innovations in digital identity verification like biometrics and chatbots, as well as digital ledger technologies including smart contracts. Ledger technologies are particularly well represented in the transaction mechanisms underpinning emerging use cases. Emerging use cases were identified across sectors, with digital technologies surfacing as particularly prominent in use cases focused on the co-benefits of climate finance.
Accelerating adoption
Across the use cases considered, the most advanced and innovative organisations have pioneered a specific technology, instrument or business model, layering on additional innovations with time. Enterprises or utility service providers aiming to leverage digital technologies to unlock innovative finance instruments
should master the technologies that produce tangible value in their sector, and consider what opportunities are offered by off-the-shelf solutions providers, particularly for IoT platforms, satellite imagery processing or blockchain solutions.
The intersection of climate and fintech finance is an emerging macro trend that will likely impact the landscape of utility service providers. Smartphone penetration and increasing maturity in satellite imagery, IoT platforms, blockchain and AI are creating opportunities for utility service implementers to advance their digitisation journeys. Trends in mobile money interoperability and cross- border connectivity are also poised to unlock additional opportunities for building on PAYG models across Africa and Asia, particularly for receivables finance and climate finance.
Utility service enterprises need to recognise the value of digitisation in leveraging innovative finance. Digitisation processes typically begin with a desire to improve operations, with innovative finance opportunities often emerging as a byproduct. Developing a sector-specific understanding of which technologies are best suited to improving operations is often the first step towards tapping into the most appropriate innovative finance mechanisms.
Financiers across the impact-return spectrum need to leverage the data-sharing opportunities unlocked by digital technologies to generate sector standards. The use of innovative finance specific to the utilities sector is poorly characterised in the available literature. Grant, equity and debt financiers can leverage the exponential increase
in data generated by utility service providers to develop and share sector-specific benchmarks that can generate, benchmark and socialise both commercial and impact indicators.
Global corporations need to support transparent, and accessible financial intermediaries and instruments that can effectively allocate impact- oriented capital flows. Increased attention on corporate climate and ESG impact metrics means that corporations need to drive digitally enabled mechanisms that can enable standardised, timely, and reliable impact data.
Mobile network operators (MNOs) have a key role to play across the landscape of use cases. Increased attention to utility verticals represents a significant opportunity for operators to develop additional revenue streams and move towards a positioning as a technology partner for organisations in the ecosystem. Laser-focused attention on facilitating third-party access to mobile money integrations across markets can additionally support utility service providers’ ability to digitise operations in their financing journeys.
Partnership opportunities highlighted through the landscape emphasise the need for blended finance. Development financiers and impact- oriented investors can unlock new private capital by de-risking investments into technology- enabled sectors through guarantee mechanisms and concessional forms of investment. Such partnerships represent the opportunity to include novel players like local banks and public agencies in pioneering otherwise poorly understood financial instruments across new geographies.
Achieving an inflection point in innovative finance using technology will require dedicated efforts in breaking down silos across the investment landscape. The returns on investing in digital innovation can take years to be realised, and typically require time and effort to understand for those not already immersed. This report serves to capture some of the most significant intersections of technology and finance trends that will guide the needed deployment of climate-resilient, pro- poor capital in the utility service sectors in the coming decade.
US, China cooperate on green energy in rural areas
By MINGMEI LI in New York | Xinhua |
Innovation in rural area-green energy development and boosting collaboration between the United States and China in science and technology are being emphasized at a “smart village” forum.
More than 50 experts, professors, local entrepreneurs, environmental and social organizations from many countries are participating in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Smart Village Forum (ISV) in Shanxi province on Sunday and Monday.
Participants in the forum, titled “Green Low-Carbon and Smart Village”, discussed environmental governance topics such as achieving energy transition, using advanced technology to assist poverty-stricken regions globally in accessing affordable and clean energy, improving energy efficiency, and promoting green and sustainable development.
A new demonstration project in Changzhi, a city in southeast Shanxi province, was featured at the forum, showcasing the current progress and practical results achieved by ISV. The project has effectively incorporated solar photovoltaic power and clean-heating technologies and products for residents.
The ISV working group has partnered with leading Chinese and international higher-education institutions to create energy models and projects suited to specific local conditions in other cities such as Chongqing, Gansu and Heilongjiang.
Daniel Kammen, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and energy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and his laboratory, have worked closely with scholars and students from Tsinghua University, Chongqing University and North China Electric Power University to research renewable energy conservation and intelligent models from an academic perspective.
“We develop mathematical models of the grid. There’s lots of interesting physics. There’s lots of interesting science. My partnerships in China have been very productive,” Kammen told China Daily. “Low-cost solar, better batteries and smart sensors. We build models that become real. My laboratory is very much based around not just basic science, but also the mission of decarbonizing the power grid and making our economy green.
“Just like the tensions that existed between the Soviet Union and the US over politics and geopolitics in the ’70s and ’80s, one lesson that I think scientists learned on both sides, both in the Soviet Union and in the US, is that we need to keep the scientific channels open,” he said.
Kammen said that science cooperation and exchange are important at this moment. “The US and China are the G2. I like to say we are the G2 of energy, the two biggest consumers of energy and the two biggest polluters in terms of greenhouse gases,” he said. “There is no climate solution unless the US and China find ways to work through their differences.”
“This is a technology exchange and a global need. We are working on clean energy under climate change and fulfilling the need for decarbonization,” said Xiaofeng Zhang, the vice-president of ISV and president of Global Green Development Alliance.
The ISV has extended its efforts not only within China but also across diverse regions, including Africa, Latin America, South Asia and North America, with the primary focus on delivering eco-friendly and cost-effective energy solutions to underprivileged communities who have limited access to environmental resources.
“We are doing more than only energy transferring, but also internet, electrical machinery, telecommunications and telemedicine. We introduce all of these based on the community’s needs,” said Rajan Kapur, the president of ISV. “We ask the community what they want to do, and based on that, we tell them what technology might be appropriate, what technology can be locally sourced.”
ISV is also collaborating with Chinese local companies and organizations.
“It is also a business-development cooperation, because when you take technology and introduce it into society, you cannot just drop it over there,” he said. “The capacity does not exist to use the technology; the infrastructure does not exist. So we also help with the business modeling, the governance of the enterprises that get set up,” he said.
Kapur said that what they are trying to do is to have a long-term impact, and ISV has not only created scientific and business models in those regions but also has deployed supportive equipment for more than 20 or 30 years.
He emphasized that ISV’s ultimate objective is to ensure affordable and clean energy access for 1 billion people worldwide through technology and cooperation between the US and China.
Additionally, ISV expects to leverage its resources to assist local communities and businesses in achieving sustainable economic growth and regionwide improvements.
“What we should remember is that it is advancing technology for all of humanity,” Kapur said.
That has been the dispiriting equation shutting out roughly half of all Americans from plugging into the sun.
But signing up for solar soon might be as easy as subscribing to Netflix. Scores of new small solar farms that sell clean, local electricity directly to customers are popping up. The setup, dubbed “community solar,” is designed to bring solar power to people who don’t own their own homes or can’t install panels — often at prices below retail electricity rates.
Clean electricity for less money seems a bit too good to be true. But it reflects a new reality: Solar energy prices are falling as private and public money, and new laws, are fueling a massive expansion of small-scale community solar projects.
Finding a subscription to one, however, can feel like trying to score Taylor Swift tickets: They’re on sale, but only a lucky few can buy them. At least 22 states have passed legislation encouraging independent community solar projects, but developers are just beginning to expand.Most existing projects are booked.
At the moment, community solar projects in the United States generate enough electricity to power about 918,000 homes — less than 1 percent of total households, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a nonprofit trade group.
But as more states join, and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “Solar for All” program pours billions into federal solar power grants, more Americans will get the chance.
Should you take it? I took a look.
Solar panels on Barb and Gerald Bauer’s Minnesota farm in 2021. (Jim Mone/AP)
Developers tend to finance their projects through investors or banks, and sign up customers during construction. If there are projects in your utility’s service area, you can subscribe to electricity generated by a certain share of the project’s solar panels.
The electrons that ultimately flow into your home aren’t necessarily from your panel. They are fed into the local grid, which powers households throughout your service area. Most allow subscribers to start or cancel their solar subscription at any time, orsometimes with a few months’ notice. The renewable energy marketplace EnergySage and the nonprofit Solar United Neighbors connect customers to community solar projects in their region.
People generally receive monthly creditsfor electricity produced by their share of solar panels. These are subtracted fromtheir total electricity bill or credited on future bills. If customers produce more than they consume, those credits roll over. If they produce less, customers pay the difference. Subscribers on average save about 10 percent on their utility bill (the range is 5 percent to 15 percent).
These economics are propelling the industry to record heights. Between 2016 and 2019, community solar capacity more than quadrupled to 1.4 gigawatts. By the end of this year, energy research firm Wood Mackenzie estimates, there will be 6 GW of community solar. And the Energy Department wants to see community solar reach 5 million households by 2025.
“The economics are strongly on the side of doing this,” says Dan Kammen, an energy professor at the University of California at Berkeley. “It’s now cheaper to build new solar than to operate old fossil [fuel plants]. … We’re at the takeoff point.”
Photovoltaic panels at a solar field in Whitewater, Calif., in 2021. (Bing Guan/Bloomberg)
Who should get it?
Community solar, also called “solar for renters,”is for anyone. But if you’re a homeowner, it won’t maximize your savings.
On average, savings from community solar amount to about $100 per year for the average ratepayer. Rooftop solar arrays may save homeowners more than $1,000 annually, estimates EnergySage.
But it brings other advantages. It’s a subscription you can walk away from at any time with no upfront investment. And your fixed rate or discount off prevailing electric rates is usually locked in for at least a decade. Residential electricity rates, meanwhile, have jumped about 17 percent since 2018.
The biggest benefit may be expanding access to clean energy to the roughly half of U.S. consumers and businesses not able to install their own solar panels. “The great promise of community solar is it allows everyone to be part of the energy transition,” says Brandon Smithwood of Dimension Renewable Energy, a company that has financed more than 1,000 MW of solar projects, “and not feel they’re being left behind.”
How to buy
If you live in a state with a robust community solar market, subscribing is easy.
The EnergySage community solar marketplace. (EnergySage/TWP)
The marketplace allows you to quickly compare details such as fees, locations and billing. Once I selected a project, I could create an account, link this to my utility and start a subscription.
To get the best terms, say project developers and nonprofit groups, you should look for contracts that uphold a few key terms:
Get a discounted electricity rate: Community solar projects tend to offer 5 percent to 15 percent off prevailing electricity rates.
Ensure you can cancel any time: Sellers should allow you to cancel your subscription immediately or within a few months to finalize credits on your bill.
Avoid cancellation fees: Choose a plan that doesn’t force you to payif you want to end your subscription.
Source close to your home: Ideally, projects should be within 10 or 15 miles of where you live, says Jeff Cramer, CEO of the Coalition for Community Solar Access. This ensures that you decarbonize your local grid.
But I live in California, where the market has stagnated amid unfavorable policies and fierce opposition from utilities. While that may change — California, like many other states, is poised to enact policiesenabling more community solar — I need to buy electricity now.
I still have options — they’re just not as attractive. Green power plans, or retail electricity plans sold by third parties in about 20 states, are often pricier, and most don’t finance new renewables directly since they often just buy renewable energy credits from existing projects.
Community choice aggregation is another one. Cities or local governments buy power independently for local residents and businesses, and rely on utilities to distribute the electricity, which is often cleaner than the standard mix. CCA can be less expensive, but not always. It served about 5 million customers in 10 states in 2020, according to the EPA.
In the end, I signed up for CCA. It was cheaper than my local utility’s standard rate. I paid a small monthly premium of about $3 to source 100 percent green power.
But if community solar comes to town, I look forward to subscribing to my own solar panels — and paying less.
Location: 141 Giannini Hall, University of California, Berkeley
Time: 16:00 — 17:30 PDT
Title: The Power of Health: Accelerating the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
Summary: Clean energy is undergoing a cost and performance revolution, and health, social andgender-justice crises across Africa are exploding. With that background, how do we rapidlyand with resilience accelerate progress on the Sustainable Development Goals? To explorethis question on basic theoretical and very practical applied grounds, HETA, (HealthElectrification and Telecommunications Alliance) has emerged as a new tool. This talk willexplore the early evolution and framing ideal of this clean energy-health-gender nexus. Wewill also cover HETA+, the integration of indigenous knowledge and traditional medicine intothis via a large-scale ‘pilot’ learning project that was advanced significantly last week at theAfrica Climate Summit in Nairobi, Kenya.
Comments Off on Why what happened to Oppenheimer then is relevant now
Timed for publication with the release of the movie Oppenheimer, we published an article on public service by scientists, a the I‑M-P-E-A-C‑H letter when Prof. Kammen left the Trump Administration, a piece in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is now available (open access):
The growing popularity of solar panels has brought attention to a critical issue: the challenge of recycling these devices at the end of their lifespan.
California has become a significant hub for solar panel installations, leading the way in the adoption of solar energy within the United States.
With a current installed capacity of over 11,000 MW or the amount of electricity that would power Los Angeles County, the state has embraced sustainable practices and played a pivotal role in promoting clean energy solutions.
However, the growing popularity of solar panels has brought attention to a critical issue: the challenge of recycling these devices at the end of their lifespan.
As the United States is projected to dominate solar power in North America by 2030, with an estimated capacity of 240 gigawatts, concerns are emerging about the potential accumulation of solar waste. Experts anticipate that by 2030, between 170,000 and 1 million metric tons of solar panel waste may be generated.
Ensuring proper management and recycling of solar panels is essential to mitigate the environmental impact of this growing waste stream.
California, along with other states and the solar industry, is actively working to develop ways to recover the valuable materials from decommissioned solar panels and minimize the disposal of hazardous components.
Efforts are underway to establish dedicated recycling facilities and create standardized processes for handling solar panel waste. Collaboration between manufacturers, recyclers, and regulatory bodies is crucial to address the challenges associated with recycling solar panels effectively. Developing efficient recycling methods will not only help reduce the environmental footprint of solar energy but also ensure the long-term sustainability of this renewable energy source.
By addressing the issue of solar panel recycling, California and the broader solar industry can pave the way for responsible and environmentally conscious practices, ensuring that the growth of solar energy aligns with sustainable waste management principles.
Comments Off on Climate Change is an Energy Problem. Here’s How We Solve It.
For the California Magazine article, click here.
Count on comedians to nail the zeitgeist.
I’m thinking of comics like Marc Maron, whose act riffs off existential pain points like mortality, antisemitism, the delaminating geopolitical situation, and, of course, that multigigaton carbon elephant in the room, climate change.
“The reason we’re not more upset about the world ending environmentally, I think, is that, you know, all of us in our hearts really know that we did everything we could,” Maron deadpans. “We brought our own bags to the supermarket,” he says, then pauses a few beats.
“Yeah, that’s about it.”
No surprise that comedians are able to play our eco-dread for yuks. Comedy is often rooted in the fertile manure of uncomfortable truths: we laugh so we don’t sob. And that’s all fine and good; laughter’s a good antidote to the malaise that comes from doomscrolling our newsfeeds day in, day out.
But are we really ready to throw in the towel and laugh ourselves into oblivion? And is Maron correct? Have we really done nothing to confront our foremost environmental crisis? Hardly. True, we haven’t yet reversed the upward trend in greenhouse gas emissions, and the challenge of transitioning away from fossil fuels often seems insurmountable. Is it, though?
According to Berkeley experts interviewed for this story, there’s reason for hope that we’ll make it through the bottleneck yet. The technology is already here and improving all the time. It won’t be easy, but it is doable. Now, let’s see how:
SOLAR
If you’re looking for a peg to hang your hopes on, start with energy economics and, in particular, the price of solar panels. Costs have dropped by nearly 90 percent since 2009, driven by both improved technology and global production (particularly from China). In 1976, solar electricity cost $106 a watt; today, it costs less than 50 cents per watt. Bottom line: Solar is now competitive with fossil fuels as a means of energy production.
While solar still only accounts for 3.4 percent of domestic energy consumption, production has been growing by more than 20 percent annually over the past five years, and likely would have been higher if not for shipping and supply chain difficulties stemming from the pandemic.
Production isn’t everything, however. For widespread adoption, an energy source must be available on demand. And it’s here that fossil fuels have a big leg up. Natural gas or coal can be burned at any time to generate electricity as required. Solar panels produce only when the sun shines. Storing adequate energy for later use—i.e., at night or on cloudy days—has long posed a major obstacle.
Solar production has been growing by more than 20 percent annually over the past five years, and likely would have been greater but for the pandemic.
Not anymore, says Daniel Kammen, the founding director of Cal’s Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory and a professor in the Energy and Resources Group and the Goldman School of Public Policy. A coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999, he shared in the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.
“I don’t see storage as a major problem at this point,” Kammen says. “It’s not a single breakthrough that makes me think that way, but more that we’re seeing the same trend in price and performance for storage that we saw with photovoltaics. A variety of approaches are coming to market, and they’re scaling really fast. Things that used to take several years to develop now take a year, and that’s almost certain to continue.”
The storage of the future will serve two different sectors, observes Kammen: transportation (think electric vehicles) and everything else (homes, office buildings, factories, etc.).
EVs
From a climate change point of view, an electrified vehicle fleet is desirable because it dovetails nicely with a green electric grid—i.e., one fed by sustainable energy sources. Currently, cars burning gasoline or diesel spew about 3 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere each year—about 7 percent of total human-created CO² emissions. Just electrifying roughly a third of China’s vehicle fleet could slash carbon emissions by a gigaton a year by 2040. So there’s a lot at stake with electric vehicles, and everything considered, Kammen is pretty sanguine about their progress.
“It’s really been picking up, particularly over the last year,” he says. “It’s probably not a coincidence that gasoline and diesel prices have been spiking at the same time, and I hate to think that the war in Ukraine is part of that, but it probably is.” EVs are now the best-selling cars in California, Kammen continues, “and it’s the same in Norway, and it’ll soon be the same in New York. Prices on EVs are coming down. The trend is strong and accelerating.”
EVs generally store energy in batteries that use lithium, a relatively rare element that charges and discharges rapidly and is lightweight—an essential quality for automobiles, where excess weight is anathema. Lithium battery technology is well advanced, and some EVs can now go 400 miles between charging, alleviating earlier anxieties about limited range.
A central goal of the Biden administration is the construction of 500,000 new EV charging stations. For perspective: There are currently fewer than 150,000 gas stations in the entire United States.
The next challenge to overcome is a paucity of charging stations, a reality that still gives Tesla drivers pause before embarking on a long road trip. But that’s being remedied, Kammen says, thanks in significant part to the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act (see sidebar), which provides generous home and business tax credits for new and used EV purchases and fast-charging EV stations. A central goal of the Biden administration is the construction of 500,000 new EV charging stations distributed across all 50 states and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico by 2030. For a little perspective on how ambitious that number is, consider: There are currently fewer than 150,000 gas stations in the entire United States.
“Worries over charging station access are real, there’s no denying it,” says Kammen. “But this legislation, coupled with the fact that recharge times are now very fast, will make a huge difference. The one thing that we still have to address, though, is the social justice component,” as not all zip codes will see the same resources. Without policies to ensure otherwise, Santa Monica will likely have charging stations aplenty; South Central Los Angeles not so much.
“We really need to ensure that doesn’t happen,” says Kammen. “First, it’s wrong. Second, to make a real difference, both energy production and transport must progress across a broad scale. That’s an easier case to make when everyone benefits.”
BATTERIES
In addition to transportation, urban infrastructure must transition to sustainable, carbon-free energy as well. That will require combining clean energy with adequate storage to provide “grid reliability”—that is, systems that will keep the juice flowing in all seasons, even when the sun is absent or the wind stops blowing. In short, you need really, really big batteries.
But what kind of batteries? Lithium-ion batteries, already well established, are one option, says Kammen. But the qualities that make them ideal for vehicles—lightweight, fast charging capabilities—aren’t as critical when you’re trying to light a city at night. For stationary power needs, batteries can be industrial scale—heavy, with a large footprint.
Another problem with lithium is its scarcity. The United States currently controls less than 4 percent of global reserves. For that reason alone, researchers are looking for alternatives: batteries that employ cheaper and more readily available elements.
One of the most promising approaches, according to several sources, is iron-air batteries. And one of the leaders in the technology is Form Energy, a company headquartered in Massachusetts with satellite facilities in Berkeley.
Zac Judkins ’06 is the company’s vice president of engineering. He stresses that Form was obsessed with finding a way to address the problem of multiday storage, not enamored of a particular technology.
Judkins and colleagues evaluated a wide array of candidate chemistries before settling on iron-air batteries, which work by rusting and unrusting thousands of iron pellets with every cycle.
“When we started up in 2017, we saw that the world was rapidly moving to renewables—mainly solar and wind—and setting increasingly ambitious grid reliability and decarbonization goals.” Without effective storage, however, progress was going to hit a brick wall, Judkins says.
Analyzing the market, Form’s engineers arrived at a target. They needed to build a battery that could continuously discharge for 100 hours at a total cost of $20 per kilowatt-hour and had a round-trip efficiency (the amount of energy stored in a battery that can later be used) of 50 percent.
Those parameters, Judkins says, would allow for very high adoption of renewables with no sacrifice to grid reliability and minimal increase in cost to consumers. “That was the benchmark we had to hit.”
Judkins and colleagues evaluated a wide array of candidate chemistries before settling on iron-air batteries, which work by rusting and unrusting thousands of iron pellets with every cycle. Says Judkins, “We didn’t invent the iron-air battery. It was developed by Westinghouse and NASA in the late ’60s and ’70s. They’re not good for cars—they’re not light, and they don’t discharge rapidly. But there are advantages. For one thing, iron is abundant. It’s cheap. We don’t have to worry about supply constraints.”
What you also get with iron, says Judkins, is low cost and high energy density—i.e., the amount of juice you can put into the battery. The tradeoff is lower power density—how fast you can pull the energy out relative to volume.
“It’s roughly 10 times lower on power density than lithium-ion, but for our needs it’s fine,” says Judkins. “This is storage for large-scale, grid-tied projects.” Take the example of a large photovoltaic array like those on California’s Carrizo Plain. One array there has a 250-megawatt capacity, enough for about 100,000 homes, but only when the sun is shining. At night, during storms, there’s no electricity. But, says Judkins, with the addition of a Form plant with a footprint of 100 acres or so, you could store enough energy to keep the electricity flowing for a four-day period.
The company is now transitioning from proof of concept to full production. Ironically, the first commercial rust/unrust battery systems will likely come out of the Rust Belt. “We’re building a factory in West Virginia on a 55-acre site—a former steel plant—that will have approximately 800,000 square feet of production space and employ 750 people at full operation.” Green jobs. Once the plant is fully on its feet, Judkins says, it will produce 50 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity every year.
MICROGRID
In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 600 million people live without electricity. Providing them carbon-free power will require microgrids.
Large, centralized utility grids are naturally the focus for decarbonizing developed countries—but they don’t really apply to parts of the world where access to electricity is still rare. In sub-Saharan Africa alone, 600 million people live without electricity, which doesn’t mean they don’t want it. Providing carbon-free power to these communities will require microgrids: small systems that serve neighborhoods, hamlets, or even multiple villages. But while the microgrid concept has been kicking around for years, its full realization has been elusive—until recently.
“What we’re seeing is a meshing of enabling technologies,” says Duncan Callaway, an associate professor of Energy and Resources at Berkeley and a faculty scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
For starters, he points to cheap solar. “With the profound price drop in panels, it’s a truly affordable resource that’s ideally suited for mid-latitude countries,” which experience less seasonality. “In general, you can serve electric demand with solar better in those latitudes than in countries [closer to either pole], where there’s just less sunlight.”
Another driver is cheaper, better storage options, Callaway says. For microgrid-scale, lithium-ion batteries work well. And these, too, have grown more affordable. “The explosive growth in electric vehicles really pushed things along,” Callaway says. “Ten years ago, it cost $1,000 for one kilowatt-hour of storage. Now it costs less than $100.”
Finally, says Callaway, “smart grid” technologies have been developed that make microgrids, once notoriously balky, highly efficient.
“We now have ‘big bucket’ control systems that allow for the smooth coordination of energy production, storage, and demand,” Callaway says. “That makes these small grids both low-cost and really reliable. The goal is to make systems that are truly modular, so you can plug various components into larger systems. That will allow easy customization and scaling.”
More than 150 microgrids already are deployed in the United States, powering everything from individual buildings in large cities to small, remote villages in Alaska.
As far as widespread adoption goes, Callaway doesn’t foresee many technical difficulties. It’s social and political roadblocks that need to be overcome. “The great thing about microgrids is that they work well in remote, underserved areas and they can be managed locally. But in less developed countries, there are often corrupt governments that want their cut from any project. And if that’s the case, you’d have an inherent bias toward centralized grids with baseline power plants.”
It’s a challenge that must be met, says Callaway. “Somehow, some way, small grid technology must be put on a level playing field with the old system, the large, centralized grid—or it’s unlikely to make it, even where it’s clearly the superior choice.”
FUSION
Microgrid or macrogrid, we’ll need a lot of clean, sustainable energy flowing through the wires if we’re going to simultaneously sustain an advanced civilization and cool the planet. Kammen is convinced it will largely come from fusion. But by that he means fusion in all its forms, including, as noted, the sun: that massive reactor in the sky that continually fuses hydrogen into heavier elements, releasing 3.8 x 10²6 joules of energy every second.
But there’s also that will‑o’-the-wisp that’s been tantalizing futurists and physicists for decades: terrestrial fusion reactors. These would use hydrogen—the most common element in the universe—as feedstock to generate gigawatt-hours of cheap energy, producing harmless, inert helium as the primary by-product. (Radioactive tritium would also be generated, but it has a short half-life and it’s consumed by the reactor in a closed-loop process.) Fusion technology remains the Holy Grail of clean, Earth-friendly energy production, but it’s also the butt of waggish comments. The most common is that it looks promising, but it’s 20 years away. And it’s been 20 years away for 60 years.
But after a breakthrough on December 5, 2022, at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility (NIF), it now seems highly possible that a commercial fusion reactor actually could be available in, uh, well, 20 years. Maybe sooner.
Most fusion efforts to date have involved tokamak reactors—toroidal vacuum chambers that corral hydrogen atoms via magnetic coils, subjecting them to heat and pressure until they become plasma, a superheated (as in 150 million degrees Celsius) gas that allows the hydrogen to fuse. This releases energy that transfers as heat to the chamber walls, where it is harvested to produce steam to drive turbines for electricity production.
For the first time on this planet—other than during a thermonuclear explosion—a fusion reaction was created that produced more energy than was required to initiate the process.
Tokamaks have been able to coax hydrogen to fuse for brief periods—indeed, progress has been steady, if plodding, since the first machine was built 60 years ago. But to date, they haven’t been able to achieve “ignition”—that point at which sustained fusion occurs, and more energy is produced by the device than it consumes.
NIF took a different approach. Researchers there fabricated a minute pellet from frozen deuterium and tritium (both hydrogen isotopes). They then placed the pellet in a small gold capsule known as a hohlraum, which in turn was situated on an arm in a chamber bristling with 192 lasers. The scientists then fired the lasers simultaneously at the hohlraum, causing the inner capsule to compress. The result: temperatures and pressures exerted on the deuterium/tritium admixture were extreme enough to produce ignition. For the first time on this planet—other than during a thermonuclear explosion—a fusion reaction was created that produced more energy than was required to initiate the process.
True, the sustained yield was modest. The reaction lasted less than a billionth of a second and released 3.15 megajoules of energy, or slightly less than one kilowatt-hour. Not very much, in other words; the average American household uses about 900 times that every month. Still, it was 50 percent more energy than was expended by the laser bursts. Progress! But here’s another catch: While the actual laser beams represented only around two megajoules of energy, it took about 300 megajoules to power up and operate the mechanisms that fired the beams.
So, there’s still a lot to be done before we’re microwaving our frozen burritos with fusion power. Nevertheless, Kammen, ever the optimist, is fairly sure we will be soon.
“Given the trends, I think I’m pretty safe in predicting that we’ll derive about 70 percent of our power from fusion by 2070,” Kammen says. “Half of that will be from the sun and half from fusion power plants.”
And while NIF’s laser-blasted pellet approach points to future success, don’t rule out tokamaks. Kammen says he’s “expecting some exciting announcements about tokamak reactors pretty soon.” You heard it here first.
Solar fusion, too, will follow multiple avenues toward fuller implementation.
“It’s not just rooftop panels in cities and solar farms out on the landscape,” he says. “There’ll also be marine solar—large arrays out in the ocean.”
Also: orbital solar. Live trials are now underway at Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, says Kammen, to establish large, autonomously assembled (i.e., no live astronauts required) solar arrays in space. The energy would be beamed down as microwaves to terrestrial collectors, where it would be converted to electricity. That may raise the specter of a loose-cannon death ray immolating cities from orbit if something goes awry—but not to worry, says Kammen. “The watt-per-square-meter dose is pretty low, so there’s no danger of anyone getting fried if they’re hit by it.”
He also thinks the fusion technology now under development for terrestrial reactors will have applications for space travel. “There’s a dual angle on fusion that’s really catapulting the technology,” Kammen says. “For better or worse, it’s imperative that we colonize the solar system so our fate as a species isn’t completely tied to one planet. Fusion propulsion will be an excellent means for getting us to the moon and Mars and beyond, and fusion—solar, reactor, or both—will also serve as a base-load power source when we get there.”
FISSION
Fission generates a lot of energy from a small footprint. Diablo Canyon, California’s sole nuclear plant, produces almost 10 percent of the total electricity consumed in the state, and it does it within a confine of 600 acres.
With all the fuss over fusion, the other “nuclear” power source, fission, seems to have faded into the background. That’s illusory. Fission is still quite hot, so to speak, with increasing numbers of erstwhile foes in the environmental community now embracing it—or, at least, tacitly supporting it. The reasons are clear. First, fission can generate a great amount of energy on a small footprint. Diablo Canyon, California’s sole operating commercial fission plant, produces almost 10 percent of the electricity consumed in the state and does it within a confine of 600 acres. And from a climate change perspective, nukes are peerless: they emit zero CO².
Of course, people remain worried about other kinds of emissions, such as intense radioactivity from long-lived waste isotopes. And older generation plants—that is, most of the ones operating today—are susceptible to core damage to varying degrees, with catastrophic results à la Chernobyl and Fukushima.
Those concerns are entrenched, especially in the United States, where environmental issues, regulatory red tape, and simple cost often conspire to scotch large infrastructure projects in the proposal phase.
“We’re pretty bad at megaprojects in this country,” says Rachel Slaybaugh, formerly an associate professor in nuclear engineering at Berkeley and now a partner at venture capital firm DCVC. “For one thing, it’s incredibly easy for them to go over budget. Just look at the new Bay Bridge, which ran triple the original estimates.”
That problem is compounded for nuclear plants, given heightened safety concerns and the regulations and litigation they engender. But there has been an upside to the impediments imposed on traditional nuclear power, Slaybaugh says: Out of necessity, more efficient—and perhaps more socially acceptable—technology has been developed.
The newer reactors are smaller—some much smaller—than the behemoths of yore, and pilot projects are underway.
“A good many of these designs originated from basic concepts developed in the 1950s or 1960s, but their refinement and commercial deployment is being driven in large part by our inability to construct large projects,” Slaybaugh says.
Different reactors have been designed for different situations, Slaybaugh observes, employing various fuels, coolants, and configurations. Some “breeder” reactors could even burn their own byproducts, greatly reducing radioactive waste.
“What’s the priority?” Slaybaugh asks rhetorically. “Economics? Providing high-temperature heat, or balancing renewables on the grid? Minimizing nuclear waste? A combination of different goals? These new designs can be standardized or customized and scaled for the site and requirements, and all involve considerable engineering to ensure safety.”
Some of the reactors will be large enough to power a city, or several cities. “And others will be teeny,” Slaybaugh says. “Those will be perfect for remote military bases or research facilities, say Antarctica or the Arctic. You’d eliminate several major problems with one of these very small reactors. Think of the logistical difficulties involved in getting diesel fuel to an arctic base, not to mention the heavy pollution it produces and, of course, the CO² that’s emitted.”
Fission technology also has some profound advantages over renewables, she says. “There are real limits to how many solar farms and wind turbines we should or even can build,” she observes. “A lot of materials are required for their production, and a lot of mining is needed to get the necessary elements. And these facilities tend to have very large footprints. I’m actually worried that we’re going to see a strong solar and wind backlash as people really start to understand all the impacts.”
Every energy source has strengths and weaknesses, continues Slaybaugh, “and we need to have sophisticated conversations on what they are and where each can best apply. Ultimately, my view of fission is that it’s a necessary tool that we must use in conjunction with other available tools to get the job done as well and as quickly as possible. No single solution is going to work for all scenarios.”
CARBON REMOVAL
At this point, we know what we must do to turn things around. Even better, we have the technologies and techniques to do it. But we need to deploy them.
Reducing carbon emissions is not the complete solution to global warming, say scientists. To really get a handle on the problem, we’ll also need to remove existing CO² from the atmosphere and sequester it permanently in the ground. One option, direct air capture (DAC), is the basis for a small but growing industry: Currently, there are about 20 DAC pilot plants operating, in total capturing and sequestering around .01 megaton of atmospheric CO² annually. According to the International Energy Agency, that storage could grow to 60 megatons a year by 2030, assuming large-scale demonstration plants proceed apace, current techniques are refined, and costs drop as the technology scales.
But those are a lot of assumptions for minimal benefit. Granted, a 60-megaton mass of anything is impressive. But from a climate-change perspective, 60 Mt is negligible, given energy-related carbon emissions hit an all-time high of over 36.8 billion tons in 2022. Many researchers think there are better options, and we don’t have to do anything to develop them because they already exist. They point to natural carbon sinks: forests, wetlands, grasslands, and, most significantly, the oceans. These natural systems are part of the Earth’s carbon cycle, which absorbs and releases about 100 gigatons of carbon a year. A planetary mechanism of that scale might seem more than adequate to handle carbon emissions, and it would, if atmospheric CO² only originated from natural emission points such as volcanoes and hydrothermal vents. As noted recently by MIT professor of geophysics Daniel Rothman, natural sources contribute ten times more carbon to the atmosphere than human activities, but it’s the anthropogenic carbon that is pushing the cycle over the edge. The planet can’t process the extra atmospheric carbon back into a stable earthbound state fast enough.
This deficit is exacerbated by the fact that we’re degrading our carbon sinks even as we’re pumping more CO2 into the sky.
“The ecological services carbon sinks provide are really priceless,” says John Harte, a professor of the Graduate School in Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. Harte, who conducted pioneering work on the “feedback” effect a warming climate exerts on natural carbon cycles in high-altitude meadows, observes that carbon sinks were poorly understood 35 years ago.
“But we now know they absorb 18 billion tons of CO2 a year. Realistically, we should be putting more of the money we’re devoting to the development of carbon sequestration technology into enhancing natural carbon sinks. At the very least, we need to stop their degradation.”
Harte’s work in the Colorado Rockies entailed artificially heating plots of land and tracking changes in vegetation types and carbon sequestration rates. In plots that weren’t heated and experienced climate change in real time, he found that wildflowers dominated, cycling large volumes of carbon into the soil during the short alpine growing season; when the plants died back each fall, the rate of carbon storage dropped off dramatically. But as Harte warmed specific plots over a period of years, woody shrubs replaced the flowering annual plants earlier than on nonheated land. These slower-growing plants sequestered carbon at a much slower rate than the wildflowers.
“The ‘money,’ the carbon, in the bank account shrinks,” says Harte. But after about 100 years, you begin to see dividends. “The carbon coming into the soil from woody plants is stored longer, so you eventually still have carbon in the soil.”
The goods news: This suggests natural sinks could be managed for optimal storage. But if emissions remain high, they’ll strain and ultimately overwhelm the sequestration capacity of the sinks, negating their value.
“If climate change continues, if we don’t cut back on emissions,” says Harte, “there’ll be no way to buffer the effects.”
And really, that’s the crux of the whole issue. At this point in the climate change crisis, we know what we must do to turn things around. Even better, we have the technologies and techniques to do it. But we need to deploy them. That means everything: solar in all its forms, from rooftop panels to orbital microwave arrays; wind turbine farms, both on land and at sea; fusion reactors; fission reactors; microgrids; massively distributed storage systems. And we must enhance, not debase, the natural systems that sequester carbon. We need to plant many more trees and manage working forests more sustainably, calculating carbon storage as a product equal to or exceeding board feet of lumber. And we need to protect the greatest carbon sink of them all: the ocean.
“I’m terribly worried about the trend toward seabed mining,” says Kammen. “It’s the least regulated of all the new frontiers, some very large companies are pushing it, and it’d be absolutely devastating. If we don’t stop activities like that and if we don’t use all the sustainable energy options that are available, we are risking extinction.”
That may not be a very optimistic note to end on, but then, optimism only gets us so far, doesn’t it? What we need now is grit and determination.
You must be logged in to post a comment.