A highly entertaining and informative (and long) read on the history of energy, climate, cars and Tesla by Tim Urban at “Wait But Why.” Elon Musk participated in the drafting of the post. I was particularly struck by this nugget on climate history:
18,000 years ago, global temperatures were about 5ºC lower than the 20th century average. That was enough to put Canada, Scandinavia, and half of England and the US under a half a mile of ice. That’s what 5ºC can do.8
100 million years ago, temperatures were 6-10ºC higher than they are now—and there were palm trees on the poles, no permanent ice anywhere, ocean levels were 200 meters higher, and this kind of shit was happening:
So we’re currently in this not-that-big window we probably should try to stay in:
I recommend reading the whole thing. Happy Friday!
The dark orange over Wyoming means intense wind speeds of over 8 meters per second
As California deploys more and more renewable energy, we’re going to have a problem integrating all that variable sun- and wind-powered electricity. One of the key solutions is to create a renewable energy market across the western United States. For example, if we need more morning renewable energy, maybe Arizona or New Mexico can export their solar power to us, since the sun will be higher there.
And if wind and sun are both down in California, maybe Wyoming wind can help us? Along those lines, the federal government just released a draft environmental review document for a transmission line to bring Wyoming wind power to California. It’s sad and ironic that Wyoming, a state heavily dependent on coal power and largely backwards when it comes to acknowledging climate science, will be exporting that clean energy anywhere but domestically.
Still, perhaps it will help ease a political transition in that state if locals in Wyoming realize there’s money to be made off clean energy. And for California, it means another step toward a deep decarbonization of our electricity supply.
Minister President Winfried Kretschmann
But at the sub-national level, certain states within Germany are pushing the envelope even more. One of those states is Baden-Württemberg, led by the Green Party minister-president Winfried Kretschmann. Together with California, these sub-national climate hawks could play a powerful role at the upcoming UN climate talks in Paris.
Minister-President Kretschmann will be speaking at UC Berkeley’s Institute of European Studies tonight at 6pm at 100 Genetics & Plant Biology Building to discuss the climate synergies with these two subnational leaders.
In his lecture, he promises to make a “special announcement in the field of renewable energy and climate policy that will also affect California.” Let’s hope it’s something that will push the global community into action, instead of the wheel-spinning we’ve seen to date.
Big news in the climate world yesterday as California Governor Jerry Brown announced ambitious 2030 targets for greenhouse gas emissions for the state:
The target, contained in an executive order and expected to be folded into pending legislation, seeks to reduce emissions in California 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030.
The goal is in line with one adopted by the European Union last year, and proponents characterized it as the most aggressive in North America.
“With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it’s one that must be reached – for this generation and generations to come,” Brown said in a prepared statement.
California is well on pace to meet our 2020 goals set forth by AB 32. But admittedly, we’ve had some winds at our back. The recession significantly cut energy demand and also seems to have reduced driving miles, although there could be multiple factors there. Cheap natural gas has also helped.
But make no mistake, California has encouraged significant progress on renewables and electric vehicle deployment, and is starting to make strides on energy storage as well. These will be critical technologies to meeting the governor’s 2030 goals. But the other big challenge will be the less sexy energy efficiency efforts, which so far the state has made only moderate progress on.
Still, with these goals, the path is now laid out for businesses, regulators and the public to follow. And California will provide a strong example for other states and countries by showing how to decarbonize the economy without hurting economic growth.
There are a number of misconceptions about electric vehicles. Like the battery is toxic and the mining for battery materials is destructive, so the cars aren’t great for the environemt (not true — they have a comparatively minimal environmental footprint and the batteries can be recycled or repurposed).
Or these cars are just for bigshots and celebrities like Brad Pitt (not true — lots of cheap lease deals out there, and the Nissan LEAF is under $20,000 in California after incentives).
Or electricity is a dirty fuel, too, so you’re not really helping the environment by switching to it from gas.
Okay, that last one is actually partially true. In states that are heavily dependent on burning coal for electricity, you’re better off driving a hybrid, if all you care about is air pollution. But those are just about eight states in the upper plains, like North Dakota and Iowa. And it’s still good to drive an EV there, just not great. Meanwhile, everywhere else it’s an environmental slam-dunk.
But even better news: given the improved efficiency of the vehicles, with longer range and better technology, coupled with coal power being swapped out for natural gas plants and more renewables, the environmental equation for electric vehicles is getting better and better.
As Green Car Reports noted late last year, a recent Union of Concerned Scientists study has upgraded the numbers to show significant improvements across the country. In states like California, EVs get the equivalent of almost 100 miles per gallon, while in “bad” states with coal, the numbers are 35 to 39 miles per gallon and getting better.
So in a few years, as prices come down, more of us will be able to do that cross-country all-electric drive for cheap — and without environmental guilt.
Batteries are key to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. We simply can’t avert massive climate change without them. Why? They will power our vehicles, instead of gas. They will store surplus renewable power when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing. And they can allow neighborhoods to go “off grid” entirely via microgrids, with neighborhood battery packs capturing surplus renewable power generated on-site, and no more need for electric utilities.
But the problem has always been that batteries are too expensive.
Now a new study by Björn Nykvist & Måns Nilsson in the journal Nature Climate Change (subscription only) shows remarkable progress on price. Keep in mind that the magic number to make batteries cost-competitive and enable long-distance, cheap electric vehicle batteries is about $150 per kilowatt hour (kWh):
We show that industry-wide cost estimates declined by approximately 14% annually between 2007 and 2014, from above US$1,000 per kWh to around US$410 per kWh, and that the cost of battery packs used by market-leading BEV [battery electric vehicle] manufacturers are even lower, at US$300 per kWh, and has declined by 8% annually. Learning rate, the cost reduction following a cumulative doubling of production, is found to be between 6 and 9%, in line with earlier studies on vehicle battery technology. We reveal that the costs of Li-ion battery packs continue to decline and that the costs among market leaders are much lower than previously reported.
While this is a bit wonky sounding, it’s significant. We’re seeing solid price declines each year and getting closer to that magic number of $150/kWh. While it’s unlikely we’ll see a sudden, massive drop in prices like we did with solar, this pace should mean that in another decade or so, electric vehicles could be widespread and the norm. And then renewable power can truly decarbonize our electricity sector by coupling with cheap batteries.
But we must maintain the federal and state incentives for batteries that we currently have in place, and then we can slowly phase them out as we approach that magic number. Those incentives include federal investment tax credits, federal and state tax credits and cash rebates for electric vehicles, and various grant funding for demonstration battery projects.
Without those incentives, this progress could be arrested before it reaches that magic price number. But for the time being, we have real reason for hope.
Call it Kyoto Syndrome, but each year for the past few decades we hear hopeful things about the upcoming negotiations for the “United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.” These discussions usually take place in some far-flung world capital, and they unfailingly result in a nothing sandwich. In 2009, President Obama humiliated himself with a last-ditch flight to Copenhagen to try to hammer out something meaningful.
And like clockwork this year, hopes seem to be higher than normal that something might actually get accomplished in Paris in December (that is, other than the convention attendees enjoying themselves after-hours in the cafes and tourist sites in the City of Lights).
Mercifully, Ruth Greenspan Bell dispenses with the fiction that a meaningful international agreement is either feasible or likely to make a difference if one were to actually get signed. In an article for Georgetown International Environmental Law Review (PDF), she questions the assumptions underlying these talks:
Negotiators have, apparently, uncritically accepted the proposition that a huge basket of climate-related issues—each of them very complex and requiring for their execution the cooperation of many parties with often wildly disparate views—can (indeed, must) be resolved in one comprehensive agreement. They also assume that such agreements, should they be signed and ratified, will lead to assured changes in the GHG emission practices of the many parties to the agreement.
It’s worth reading the piece in full, but in short, Bell traces the history of multilateral agreements in the environmental context and notes the tremendous uncertainty about their effectiveness. And the greenhouse gas problem is arguably even more difficult to tackle than some of the past agreements that addressed single pollutants with often straightforward technology fixes or alternatives. She also points out how challenging the UN process is to reaching an agreement, with its requirement for consensus, the huge number of parties involved, and the incredible political diversity and needs of the countries at the table. And by focusing so much on ratification, the process is in danger of reaching an agreement with little enforceability or monitoring of compliance.
Meanwhile, time is running out on our ability to stabilize the Earth’s climate.
Given the urgency, Bell offers some alternatives that could actually achieve reductions sooner. Most importantly, we need to forget about a comprehensive agreement and instead bite off more manageable international agreements, akin to the progress made in the international weapons arena. For example, major emitter nations could come to terms on pollution targets among themselves; developing countries could negotiate over reduced amount of emissions reductions; and bilateral agreements, such as the recent one between China and the U.S., might pave the way for future agreements between other countries.
Overall, I believe that the solution to global climate change will come locally, from technology, policy, and financing innovations that happen within places like California, China and Germany. But at some point we will need a global approach to limiting carbon to reflect the true cost of this pollution to our economy, health, and environment. I’d much prefer that we engage in that process in a way that will actually achieve results, rather than spinning our wheels on the international stage each year.
As my Legal Planet colleague Rick Frank blogged, the California Supreme Court on Wednesday granted review of San Diego’s really bad regional transportation plan. I detail the history here, but basically San Diego’s regional transportation agency delivered a plan in 2011 that was supposed to comply with SB 375 (Steinberg, 2008), a landmark law linking transportation spending with long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions.
Instead, San Diego’s agency issued a plan that projected reductions in vehicle miles traveled only in the short run, via accounting gimmicks like more telecommuting and estimated smoother traffic flows from highway widening. And then the plan actually showed backsliding on emissions going out to 2050.
Petitioners argued successfully at the trial and appellate court level that this backsliding contravened California’s long-term policy on greenhouse gases, specifically Governor Schwarzenegger’s 2005 executive order calling for an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by 2050. Notably, the state’s 2006 climate legislation, AB 32, only discussed a 2020 greenhouse gas target.
But will this case already be moot by the time the court decides it? There are two reasons to think so:
First, San Diego is already well into its second transportation plan in the post-SB 375 world, which presumably will be much stronger than its 2011 version. That version was already in process when SB 375 was enacted and was the first out of the gate in California to have to comply with the new law.
Second, the California Legislature is currently debating a series of bills that could solidify California’s long-term greenhouse gas emissions reduction goals. If those goals get legislated, particularly ones out to 2050, then a debate over whether the 2005 executive order is legally enforceable in this instance becomes moot.
Of course, a win for the plan’s opponents will only strengthen the hand of advocates for better, more sustainable transportation and land use planning. It will force SB 375 plans to contemplate real, meaningful changes in land use and transportation decision-making, because these greenhouse gas reductions will have to be permanent and cumulative. And it will bolster efforts by public officials in other contexts to reduce long-term greenhouse gas emissions in order to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act, which this case is based on.
So in the end, I hope the court upholds the lower court decision. But I also hope the case becomes moot with legislative action this year.
