On climate policy, there's one main thing and then there's everything else

Last week, I wrote that there is no “moderate” position on
climate change. Either we act rapidly and at massive scale to
avoid the worst consequences … or we suffer the worst
consequences. Either outcome involves radical change. There’s no
avoiding radicalism.


Lots of activists, politicians, and ordinary citizens understand
this need for ambitious action — they are convinced by the scale
and severity of the problem — but there is less clarity about
what qualifies as ambitious.


In an atmosphere of legislative scarcity, when tough decisions
are being made and policies are being prioritized, what exactly
should climate advocates be pushing for? What’s a simple way to
distinguish between climate policy and good climate policy?


In the great climate policy feast, what is the entrée and what
are the side dishes?


We lack a common framework for judging climate policy, which
creates a fog in which dedicated advocates can lose focus and
malefactors can get up to shenanigans. Within the fog, people
tend to pick their favorite markers of climate commitment based
on instinct and affective affiliation (shut down pipelines! ramp
up nuclear power! impose a carbon tax!). What counts as good
policy becomes a matter of identity rather than what would most
effectively ratchet down carbon emissions.


The fog allows weak and marginal policies to be branded as
moderate, or, other times, to masquerade as radical. It leads
activists to diffuse their energy, while core policies often
don’t receive the coordinated support they need.


We need to clear away the fog, fast. Policy decisions are being
made over the next few weeks that will reverberate for decades.
This is crunch time on climate policy and everyone who wants
serious action needs to be (at least roughly) aligned.


So I want to spend a few minutes laying out a simple framework to
help people think about how to prioritize climate policies. It
doesn’t cover everything, but it’s a pretty good rough-and-ready
guide.


Clean electrification is the entrée. Everything else is a side.


How can the US hit net-zero emissions by or before 2050, a goal
shared by almost every Democrat and, at least rhetorically, by
some Republicans?


The key is to immediately begin reducing emissions and maintain a
rapid pace of reduction for the coming three decades. That is the
only way we have a shot. If we wait another decade to start rapid
reductions, the curve will simply be too steep. It has to start
now.


So we can think of the work in two parts. Job One is to rapidly
push fossil fuels out of the system using technologies and
strategies that we have on hand, such that we reduce carbon
emissions by around 50 percent by 2030. Job Two is to research
and develop the technologies and strategies we will need to
continue rapidly reducing emissions from 2030 onward, such that
we hit net-zero on or before 2050.


Job Two is important. But Job One is the main thing. Job One is
the entrée. Without it, you don’t have a meal.


What does Job One consist of? This is important: while different
climate models disagree about which policies and technologies
will be needed to clean up remaining emissions after 2030,
virtually all of them agree on what’s needed over the next
decade. It’s clean electrification:


* clean up the electricity grid by replacing fossil fuel power
plants with renewable energy, batteries, and other zero-carbon
resources;


* clean up transportation by replacing gasoline and diesel
vehicles — passenger vehicles, delivery trucks and vans,
semi-trucks, small planes, agricultural and mining equipment,
etc. — with electric vehicles; and


* clean up buildings by replacing furnaces and other appliances
that run on fossil fuels with electric equivalents.


Or as I summarize it: electrify everything!


Clean electrification is the entrée. If you decarbonize
electricity, transportation, and buildings, you’ve taken out the
three biggest sources of emissions in virtually every country.
The technologies and policies we need to do it exist today, ready
to deploy.


Exactly how much of the US economy can be decarbonized through
clean electrification is an open question. Saul Griffith of
Rewiring America is an optimist. He thinks electrification can
reduce between 70 and 80 percent of US emissions by 2035, and
probably in the 90s eventually. (Listen to my podcast with
Griffith.)


We’ll see. Today, there are all sorts of edge cases that are
difficult to electrify — bigger trucks, airplanes, trains, ships,
steel, concrete, a variety of high-heat industrial applications —
that might be easier with cheaper zero-carbon electricity and a
decade of innovation. There’s no way to know in advance how far
electrification can get, though it’s worth noting that critics
have underestimated it at every stage thus far.


Regardless, whether it can ultimately get at 60 or 90 percent,
clean electrification will do the bulk of the work reducing
emissions over the next decade. It is the entrée.


None of this is to diminish the scale and difficulty of Job Two —
all the side dishes. We need those too. We’ll need lots of
zero-carbon liquid fuels for industry, ships, and airplanes, so
we need to work on developing clean hydrogen. We’ll need to
figure out some sustainable biomass options, along with a variety
of ways to capture and store carbon dioxide. We’ll need focused
innovation in geothermal energy, long-term energy storage, energy
management software, and all sorts of other things. Much work
remains to be done.


Nonetheless, clean electrification — done in a way that honors
and protects frontline and vulnerable communities — needs to be
the top item on every list of climate demands. It would be fatal
for climate activists to take it for granted or assume it’s
taking care of itself. It is not.


Climate policy that’s all side dishes is not “moderate”


As I wrote last week, the danger is that weak and insufficient
climate policy gains a reputation as moderate.


But the danger is more specific than that: it’s that moderate
policy will be all side dishes and no entrée. It will be all
policies that prepare to phase out fossil fuels a decade hence …
and none of the policies that phase them out today.


This type of approach is on particularly clear display these days
from Republicans and their nascent “climate caucus.” Republicans
in the House recently introduced a package of climate policies
centered around carbon capture (helpful to fossil fuels), nuclear
power (no threat to fossil fuels in the coming decade), and tree
planting (irrelevant to fossil fuels).


But it’s also what’s passing for “bipartisan” climate policy. A
particularly on-the-nose example is the Clean Energy Future
through Innovation Act of 2020, introduced in the House by Reps.
David McKinley (R-WV) and Kurt Schrader (D-OR). It would
establish a clean energy standard to decarbonize the electricity
sector … in 2030. Until then, we’ll have a “decade of
innovation,” whee!


Needless to say, “start reducing emissions in 2030” is the very
definition of a climate policy meal with no entrée.


Our beloved West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D) recently produced
an even more elaborate version of an all-side-dishes climate
package, in the form of a 423-page bill he released, somewhat out
of the blue, earlier this month. It was unclear if the bill was
meant to be part of the bipartisan infrastructure package or
something else. Mainly it reads like a Manchin wish list.


It’s a fascinating document. It’s got a lot of policies in it.
Here’s one page of the bill’s 3.5-page table of contents:


And not just policies, but good policies. There’s virtually
nothing in it I would disagree with on the merits. Clean
electricity will need new grid infrastructure and more robust
supply chains and better cybersecurity. Energy efficiency is
great; so is keeping existing nuclear power plants open. I’m even
down with carbon capture and utilization research.


But it’s all side dishes and no entrée. It’s all preparation for
pushing fossil fuels out with none of the actual pushing. It’s
all kinds of stuff that will supplement clean electrification
without the clean electrification itself.


This is the kind of climate policy that is in danger of being
branded “moderate” — the kind that does everything but rapidly
push fossil fuels out of the energy system in the coming decade.


Progressives need to demand an entrée


Clean electrification is the core of any ambitious climate
policy. Without it, we’re still spinning our wheels, innovating
without deploying what we’ve already innovated.


There is very little for clean electrification in the bipartisan
infrastructure package recently unveiled by Manchin’s gang of ten
in the Senate, save some money for transmission lines and
electric buses.


So far, progressive Democrats aren’t making a fuss about the
bipartisan package because they have assurances from both Senate
Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-CA) that alongside the bipartisan bill there will be a
reconciliation bill, which can get through the Senate with only
Democratic votes.


Pelosi is under no illusions that anything that directly
challenges fossil fuels will get any Republican votes. "I don't
think there's any question that the more bipartisan a bill is,
the less green it is," she said last month, because Republicans
"are in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry."


So progressives are looking to reconciliation to pass the rest of
President Biden’s climate agenda.


The climate plan Biden campaigned on, the infrastructure plan he
released as president, and the plans released by Democrats in
Congress all contain extensive clean-electrification measures,
including a clean energy standard to decarbonize the grid by
2035, tax and point-of-purchase incentives for electric vehicles,
and programs to electrify buildings. Those — implemented with a
strong focus on environmental justice — are the key climate
pieces that need to be included in the reconciliation bill. They
are the entrée.


The question around reconciliation will not be Republican
support, but support from Manchin and his crew of self-styled
moderates. They will push for compromises that go easy on fossil
fuels. Progressives need to hold the line: only by pushing fossil
fuels out the system, beginning immediately, can Democrats meet
the challenge of the moment.


That means clean electrification: the policy that makes climate
legislation a meal.


This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other
subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit
www.volts.wtf/subscribe