An Amazon in flames has caused global leaders to coalesce around climate solutions — everything from increased financial assistance to new energy policies.
Climate solutions center on growing green energy and penalizing CO2 emissions while still delivering reliable and cost-effective electricity. Today's global commerce market, thankfully, is creating the technologies to achieve positive outcomes. But true success, so far, has been elusive.
“We need to use competition to get there,” says Tom Rumsey, senior vice president of regulatory affairs for Competitive Power Ventures that builds green energy and natural gas facilities, in an interview with this writer. “We don’t believe in subsidies. We would put a price on carbon. If you have zero emissions, you get extra money. It drives companies to build efficient power plants.”
The European Union and Canada were the first advanced economies to embrace the Paris climate agreement: Europe committed to reduce its greenhouse gases by 40% by 2030 from a 1990 baseline. And Canada agreed to cut its greenhouse gases by 30% from a 2005 baseline. The United States, meanwhile, is now withdrawing from the climate pact.
To that end, the G7 just agreed to give $20 million to fight the Amazon fires in Brazil while its leaders discussed similar efforts to help African countries preserve their rain forests. Those plush regions are necessary to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere.
And the Democrats are quick to a draw a distinction between themselves and the president: U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont just released his own Green New Deal — one that he says will cost $16 trillion but that would pay for itself over 15 years while creating 20 million new jobs. Meantime, former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts have come out with more tempered plans to curtail greenhouse gas emissions — ones that cost $1.7 trillion and $2 trillion, respectively, over 10 years.
To be clear, the data indicate that the United States is unlikely to meet the climate targets set by the Paris agreement — a 26% cut in CO2 releases by 2025, from 2005. As a result, there are clarion calls for new solutions. In fact, 500 business leaders from across the United States representing E2 say that climate change could cost the American economy $500 billion a year by century’s end.
Daunting Task
Under a carbon tax, utilities and industrials are taxed based on their carbon footprints. In British Columbia, for example, the tax is first appraised and then redistributed to individuals. Here in this country, the Republican-led Climate Leadership Council proposes to tax carbon at $40 per ton, which it says would generate $194 billion in year one and $250 billion 10 years later.
Beating back the climate crisis also involves investing more in green energy and modern technologies. The transition to a power grid that runs fully on renewable energy will take an investment of $4.5 trillion over the next 20 years, says consulting firm Wood MacKenzie.
It says that 1.6 million megawatts of wind and solar capacity would be needed to produce enough energy to replace all current fossil-fired generators in the United States. The consultancy also says that about 900,000 of energy storage is required to ensure that there is enough wind and solar power on hand to meet the needs of customers.
“The data suggest that reaching 50% of supply from intermittent renewables system-wide is relatively straightforward in most of the U.S.,” says Wade Schauer, director of America’s Power Research at WoodMac. “Achieving full decarbonization will require long-duration energy storage, and the electric grid will need to roughly double its capability.”
For context, the current U.S. power grid has about 1 million megawatts of available capacity. Of that, 130,000 megawatts is comprised of wind and solar.
Obstacles abound to making change, including the current White House and the vested largesse that continues to fund climate change denial. While some experts question the level of urgency, nearly all of them understand that CO2 traps heat in the atmosphere and thus leads to global warming. But that knowledge has no doubt been obfuscated by funding from the Koch brothers, who have given hundreds of millions to groups that deny the prevailing science. That’s a lot more than Exxon Mobil Corp., which now supports climate science and which backs a carbon tax. Ditto for BP, Chevron and Royal Dutch Shell.
Gone but not Forgotten
David Koch’s death won’t stop such funding. His brother Charles will continue their cause, all of which is good for their industrial interests. The two helped defeat a cap-and-trade bill introduced during President Obama’s first term and the surviving brother will almost assuredly work to defeat any carbon tax legislation.
“David Koch is gone, but people alive today and in the generations to come will have to bear the consequences of decades deception that he helped bankroll to obstruct efforts to mitigate the devastating climate changes caused in part by the industry that made him one of the richest men in the world,” says Lisa Graves, leader of the Koch Docs project and formerly served as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Policy at the U.S. Department of Justice.
Global leaders understand that climate change is a menace, not just to the eco-system but also to their national economies. Witness the burning of the Amazon rainforest as well as the dissipation of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef. Change is coming. But the question now is in what form and just how quickly -- answers that could be life saving.
