The challenges of going green.
Decarbonizing the air and economy will take a lot of ambition, innovation and a few breakthroughs
Decarbonizing the state’s air and economy won’t be easy or cheap. It will take ambition, innovation and breakthroughs. »1D
As Colorado officials begin their quest to decarbonize the economy at a record pace, in line with a number of new laws passed by the legislature, they could do worse than pause to consider the lessons from Germany’s recent past.
In a lengthy report published this month by Der Spiegel, reporters recounted how Germany’s much-hyped transition to renewable energy (abandoning nuclear along the way) had bogged down and was facing failure.
Not only has Germany fallen short of targets for reducing greenhouse gases, Der Spiegel noted
(it has an English edition), but “German CO2 emissions have only slightly decreased this decade.” Green energy projects face lawsuits and local opposition, while progress on decarbonizing other sectors of the economy hardly registers at all.
And the price of electricity? The highest in Europe.
Perhaps the biggest lesson for Colorado officials: Don’t set yourselves up for failure with extravagant promises. Don’t convey the impression that radical reductions of greenhouse gases are easy or cost-free, especially since much of the public seems to believe that success is merely a matter of erecting more wind turbines and solar panels.
Those technologies directly address only the one-fourth of the national economy’s carbon emissions that come from power plants (the figure is closer to one-third in Colorado). Residential and commercial heating, industrial processes, agriculture, transportation and waste management make up the remainder, for which solutions are more complex or altogether elusive.
As Bill Gates, who has invested heavily in
clean-energy technology, wrote last year in his blog, “There’s not a broad awareness of how challenging it’s going to be to bring down greenhouse gas emissions.”
House Bill 1261 commits Colorado to pursuing total emission reductions of 50 percent from 2005 levels by 2030 and 90 percent by 2050. Since these are hugely ambitious targets, I sat down recently with the director of the governor’s Energy Office to see what state officials have in mind.
I’ve known Will Toor for years and appreciate his willingness to explain his point of view without resorting to end-of-times environmental rhetoric. Maybe the former Boulder mayor’s scientific background — a PH.D. in physics — helps keep his feet on the ground.
Toor admits the 2030 goal in HB 1261 is “challenging,” and the 2050 goal will require technological breakthroughs. But he believes a “plausible path” exists to 2030 given enough progress mainly on three fronts: electricity, transportation and oil and gas production. Specifically, he says, reduce power plant emissions by 80 percent; adopt California’s fuel efficiency standards while requiring automakers to sell nearly 1 million electric vehicles (EVS) here in the next decade; and make “really deep reductions” in methane emissions from drilling to distribution.
Are these goals achievable? Maybe. The state’s largest electric utility, Xcel Energy, already touts a company-wide goal of 80 percent clean energy by 2030. And thanks to a new law that allows consideration of the “social cost” of emissions, Xcel will enjoy greater freedom than ever to put the squeeze on ratepayers.
But 80 percent clean energy by 2030 is ambitious even for Xcel; its carbon-free portfolio in Colorado in 2017 was 28 percent, according to its website.
Nor is Xcel the only electricity provider. Black Hills Energy serves Pueblo and nearby areas, while a number of municipal utilities and rural electric cooperatives operate, too. To take one example, the Colorado Springs utility expects “to reduce our carbon emissions by 40 percent or more from 2005 to 2035,” according to its 2018 environmental report.
Clean electrical power is important to regulators in part because it makes plans for “electrifying other sectors more attractive,” as Toor puts it. An EV is “clean” only to the extent the electricity that charges it is. But here regulators run smack into the bracing chaos of a real marketplace: multiple car companies, numerous dealers and millions of consumers with strong preferences of their own.
The state is considering two approaches. The first is a typical iron-fisted edict — a mandate that a percentage of an automaker’s fleet sold in the state be EVS and grow over time. Alternatively, the state might stipulate that a wide variety of EVS, including SUVS and crossovers, always be available in significant numbers on dealer lots and are aggressively marketed.
The second approach is less likely to result in price hikes on traditional vehicles to offset discounts for EVS if consumers fail to embrace them on their own merits.
We will learn a great deal about how determined the Polis administration is to force-feed consumer markets in its pursuit of carbon reduction when it chooses between these options.
Meanwhile, the path toward major progress in other sectors — both in the next decade and beyond — is less clear. Take residential and commercial heating. Should that be electrified, too? The state will study the economics, Toor says. Yet beyond new construction, progress is bound to be slow. Who would pay the colossal bill for retrofitting millions of structures?
How about heavy trucks? An “open question,” Toor suggests, although hydrogen is “super interesting.”
Aviation and trains? Never mind. Energy intensive manufacturing? Another tough nut. And don’t forget agriculture. (“If cattle were a country,” Gates says, “they would rank third in greenhouse gas emissions” after China and the U.S.) Even Green New Deal types are not yet ready to order Americans to give up hamburger.
Last month, the Energy Futures Initiative (EFI)– a think tank formed by former Obama administration Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz — released a report on the prospects for California reaching similarly aggressive carbon targets. As E&E reporter Peter Behr correctly concluded, “The report is a head-on challenge to assumptions that California can achieve its carbon-reduction goals mainly by increasing wind and solar power and battery storage.”
Instead, the report stresses “innovation must be at the heart of a decarbonization strategy” because “the current cost of many important low- and zerocarbon technologies is too high.” It warned that “scalable clean technologies are not readily available” for a number of applications, such as “high-temperature process heat for industry.” Technology priorities should include “hydrogen production with electrolysis, advanced nuclear, green cement, and seasonal storage, among others.”
Even squeezing the final 20 percent of carbon from electricity production will be impossible without breakthroughs. “Maybe modular nuclear reactors really happen,” Toor suggests.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Colorado officials are embarking on a project of unprecedented scope and ambition for this state– one that is “extremely challenging” and “technically very difficult,” to quote again from the EFI study. And while Americans possess an unrivaled ability to surmount technical obstacles, that’s only true if bureaucrats foster an environment in which innovation and experimentation can flourish rather than suffocate in a web of red tape. Central planning got a bad name in the 20th century for a reason.
It’s an “exciting time” for progress on clean energy, Toor observes. Yes, but a perilous time as well.