Some media appearances from me this week on a range of energy, housing and rail topics:
- “Greater LA” on KCRW radio in Los Angeles covered the conspiracy theory that auto companies dismantled the vast Los Angeles streetcar network in favor of freeways, interviewing me for the segment based on my Railtown book.
- CalMatters reported on a new state legislative analysis of California’s renewable energy program, finding significant emission reductions and many research gaps, which helps deflate a Republican proposal to pause the program (with some quotes from me).
- KPCC’s AirTalk radio program featured a live discussion on Wednesday on the proposed “California Green New Deal” legislation, which in part seeks to boost affordable housing and a just transition for workers out of fossil fuels. I was joined on the program by Sylvia Chi from the Asian Pacific Environmental Network and Christopher Thornberg, founding partner of Beacon Economics.
With the legislative session just beginning, I expect the media to continue to focus on the numerous proposals to address our ongoing energy and climate needs. Happy Friday!
I began working on climate change law and policy on January 20, 2009, the day I joined Berkeley Law, which was coincidentally Barack Obama’s Inauguration Day. So it’s been a full decade for me focusing exclusively on this subject (I focused on related land use and transit issues prior to 2009), roughly coinciding with the 2010s now coming to a close.
As we mark the end of this decade, two things stand out: remarkable progress reducing the price and deploying critical clean technologies, and dispiriting failure to reduce overall greenhouse gas emissions, with more severe climate impacts happening each year.
I noted some of these trends in a foreword to “Climate Change Law in the Asia Pacific” from Berkeley Law, which features articles from scholars in places like Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, as well as California.
To summarize the good news on clean technology:
- From 2009 to 2017, the levelized costs for utility-scale solar photovoltaic dropped 86 percent;
- Wind power levelized costs dropped 67 percent from 2009-2017; and
- Lithium ion battery prices (central to electric vehicles and grid energy storage) have dropped 85 percent from 2010 to 2018.
This progress is the key reason for optimism on climate change. With the price decreases, support for deployment has increased across the political spectrum and allowed for some remarkable success stories on emissions reductions, such as California’s ability to achieve its 2020 carbon goals four years earlier, due primarily to renewable energy deployment.
But despite the progress, we have this sobering data:
- Carbon parts per million have increased from 385 in 2009 to 411 (and counting).
And unsurprisingly, the bill is now coming due. This decade has brought some of the predicted severe climate impacts, such as unprecedented wildfires, droughts, extreme rain events and hurricanes, and warming oceans.
On the positive side, the extreme weather has helped shift public opinion in favor of climate action. But it’s come at a significant cost to human life, happiness, and ecosystems.
Hopefully in the 2020s we’ll see the widespread deployment of clean technologies and other climate-smart practices that we need to stabilize and reduce emissions. And while climate impacts will inevitably worsen, perhaps our ability to withstand them will improve, such as through electricity grid resilience in the face of wildfires and using natural infrastructure to lessen storm surges and flooding.
And to make any of these positives happen, we will need smart policies and public support and political leaders to enact them. I’ve had the good fortune to work on climate policy now for over a decade, and as the 2020s dawn, much work remains.
The dark winter months are a reminder that critical renewable resources like solar PV won’t be available to keep our electricity clean. And if the wind isn’t blowing, wind power is unavailable as well to meet demand. Absent baseload renewables like geothermal power, how do we achieve a 100% carbon-free in the dark, still winter time?
The answer is bulk — or seasonal — energy storage. This means massive energy storage facilities that can capture surplus renewable power like solar PV in the summer months, and store it for months until the winter.
Not many technologies can achieve this mass, seasonal storage, but Utility Dive offers a helpful list, summarized here:
- Pumped Hydro: this relatively common technology involves pumping water uphill with cheap surplus electricity and then releasing it downhill to generate power when needed. It’s been in use since the 1890s, and by the end of 2017, the US had about 22 gigawatts installed.
- Compressed Air Energy Storage: this technology involves pumping air into a confined space, like a container or underground cavern, then releasing the pressure to generate electricity when needed. It’s a capital-intensive system constrained by geography. To date, I only know of two facilities in operation, although more are in the planning stages.
- Lithium-ion battery banks: with falling battery prices, these have been a “go-to” recently for energy storage. But it’s unclear if we can produce and deploy enough batteries to store power for months at grid-scale, particularly since many of these batteries will be needed for electric vehicles.
- Other batteries: By the end of 2017, the U.S. had 708 megawatts of large-scale battery capacity other than lithium, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
- Gravity-based systems: more developers are experimenting with gravity-based systems, such as trains that power uphill and then go back downhill to release energy when needed, as I blogged about a few years ago. As another example, Switzerland-based Energy Vault unveiled a crane mounted on a steel tower 300 feet high, which hoists 35 metric ton concrete “bricks” into stacks. To discharge, the crane lowers the bricks to the ground.
- Hydrogen: liquid hydrogen gas can be a form of energy storage, if it’s produced with surplus renewable power. It can be stored without degrading and used to power a fuel cell or gas turbine (or to power fuel cell vehicles like hydrogen trucks).
Other technologies may exist or be in the planning stages to overcome this seasonal challenge with providing 100% carbon-free power all year. As more jurisdictions seek to meet this clean power goal, these bulk storage technologies will become critical in the near future.
PG&E’s decision to cut power last month (and possibly again this week) to hundreds of thousands of customers has thrown Northern California into disarray. Yet despite the blackouts, fires still raged, with people evacuating and in some cases losing homes.
How did California end up in this situation? Who was most affected by the power shut-offs, and what can be done to keep the lights on in the future?
We’ll discuss on City Visions tonight at 7pm, with guests:
- Nick Chaset, Chief Executive Officer of East Bay Community Energy;
- Martha Guzman Aceves, Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission; and
- Michael Wara, Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Tune in at 7pm at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. Call 866-798-TALK (8255) with questions or email us at cityvisions@kalw.org!
Good news on California’s efforts to fight climate change: in-state emissions in 2017 (the latest available data) were down over 2016 and ahead of the state’s mandatory 2020 goals. The California Air Resources Board announced the progress yesterday, with this chart showing emissions in context of population and GDP:
Overall, emissions totaled 424 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2017, down 5 million metric tons from 2016. For reference, the 2020 reduction target is 431 million metric tons.
Most of the progress came from the electricity sector, where for the first time renewable sources made up a larger percentage of the generation than fossil fuels.
However, transportation emissions increased 0.7% in 2017, compared to a 2% increase in 2016, mostly from passenger vehicles. That total is even worse when you consider pollution from oil and gas refineries that make the fuel for these passenger vehicles. Together with hydrogen production, these sources constituted one-third of the state’s total industrial pollution.
Here’s the latest pie chart on where the emissions came from in 2017:
While the story is overall positive for California’s climate efforts, the state will have to redouble its efforts to reduce driving miles by allowing more homes to be built near jobs and transit, while transitioning the remaining driving miles to zero-emission technologies like electric vehicles.
Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti made headlines recently by unveiling the city’s version of a “Green New Deal,” complete with ambitious goals to create a zero-emission transportation network, a zero-carbon electricity grid, and a Los Angeles that “won’t send a single piece of trash” to the landfill by 2050.
The goals in the new sustainability plan [PDF] are necessary to meet our environmental and sustainability needs, but how can the city make them feasible to achieve?
I discussed the zero-waste goal in particular on KPCC radio’s AirTalk program, along with my UCLA Law colleague Cara Horowitz. My comments were drawn largely from the 2016 CLEE report “Wasting Opportunities” on boosting energy recovery from municipal solid waste to meet climate goals.
The bottom line? Achieving zero waste will require significant reduction of materials in use, increases in recycling and composting, and — yes — some type of energy recovery from whatever is left over. You can listen to the broadcast here.
For those in the Bay Area, Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) will be hosting a free brown bag lunch talk today with Prof. Michael Grubb, professor of Energy and Climate Change at the University College of London.
Professor Grubb has been at the forefront of the United Kingdom’s successful-to-date effort to reduce carbon emissions from its electricity sector. In a talk entitled “Innovation, economics and policy in the energy revolution: Insights from the UK electricity transition and wider implications,” Dr. Grubb will describe how this transition occurred.
The event will run from 12:50 to 2pm in Boalt Room 10. More info and RSVP here. Hope to see you there!
I’ll be a guest on KPCC radio’s AirTalk program today at 10:20am, discussing the decision by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, at the urging of Mayor Garcetti, to phase out natural gas plants along the coast rather than rebuild them.
The plants will be replaced by renewable energy sources and energy storage, among other clean resources. Some business groups are concerned about the economic impacts on ratepayers, including the other guest, Stuart Waldman, president of the Valley Industry and Commerce Association.
It should be a lively discussion, so I hope you can tune in and ask questions!
Biofuels could offer an important solution for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector. Depending on the plant (or grease) feedstock, they can blend in with existing fuel or serve as separate liquid fuels to power airplanes, long-distance trucks, and other vehicles.
Today on Your Call on KALW 91.7 FM in San Francisco, we’ll discuss the prospects for more low-carbon biofuel deployment, as well as the potential carbon downside of some types of biofuels. Joining me will be:
- Daniel Kammen, Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, where he serves as Chair of the Goldman School of Public Policy and directs the Center for Environmental Policy, and the department of Nuclear Engineering.
- Dr. Jeremy Martin, Senior Scientist and Director of Fuels Policy at Union of Concerned Scientists, where he evaluates the impact of biofuels and fuel policy.
You can stream it live or listen to 91.7 FM in San Francisco. Call in with questions or comments!
Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest investor-owned utility is about to declare bankruptcy, which could undermine the state’s climate goals. The utility faces massive liability for potentially causing the recent devastating Northern California wildfires.
If bankruptcy happens, California’s clean energy companies — from solar PV facilities to energy efficiency contractors to electric vehicle charging businesses — could soon lose one of their top customers and potentially see their existing contracts ripped up. And that means the state is losing a major investor in various climate programs.
Buzzfeed and E&E News [paywalled] covered this story in more detail, including some quotes from me.
Going forward, I hope the state and various local governments in PG&E service territory consider the following reforms:
- Break up PG&E’s electricity and gas divisions, with the long-term goal of phasing out natural gas use in the state. We mostly likely need to accomplish this phase-out anyway and move towards all-electric appliances and building. A breakup could hasten that progress.
- Buy out PG&Es assets and form municipal utilities. San Francisco is already exploring purchasing the “sticks and wires” in the city to form its own utility. Municipal utilities in the state tend to have cheaper rates and often more aggressive clean energy policies (such as Sacramento Municipal Utility District), so this could be a good move overall for ratepayers and the environment. Although it’s worth noting that PG&E is one of the cleanest utilities in California already.
- Revamp liability for wildfires going forward. Right now, whichever party is responsible for igniting a blaze is 100% liable for all damages. But what about property owners who failed to maintain and “fire-harden” their buildings? What about local officials that allow development in high-risk fire zones? What about polluting companies that caused climate change, which exacerbated the fires’ intensity? Liability should fall on these parties, too, giving them incentive to correct their actions going forward and hopefully reduce the severity of future wildfires.
These reforms would be a welcome outcome from an otherwise unfortunate situation. In the meantime though, it’s hard to foresee an outcome of PG&E’s death spiral that won’t at least temporarily slow our climate progress in California.
