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by gustaf
2792 days ago
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I love those podcasts. You should all listen to them. They are right that we have all the technologies we need to reach 1.5 degrees C. However we need massive acceleration of implementation of those technologies. Like a 10x improvement. We're not on track right now. The reason we need Carbon removal is because most IPCC forecast still assume a large % carbon removal. And it's going to be important for us to get back to 300ppm in atmosphere. The consequences to society of 1.5 degrees or 2 degrees are so massive and costly that we should anything that have a shot at avoiding it. |
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Taking a wider lens, my honest opinion is I think it's going to have to be a combination of a "Cuban Missile Crisis" moment for our society, and some sort of Moore's law effect on PV or battery storage.
Taking the analogy that Climate Change is the "Nuclear Arms Race" crisis of our generation, we haven't really had an event that has resonated with the populous to take an aggressive stance that blunts economics. It's shocking but true that the events of Super Storm Sandy (285 deaths), Katerina (1,833 deaths), and Puerto Rico/Maria (2,975 deaths) haven't been enough to really move the needle in the collective consciousness. It may a true disaster, on the order of Miami being rendered uninhabitable, in order for some entity above the state level to really instantiate something like a Carbon Tax.
But once we get there, I think the bottom falling out of solar pricing between now and 2025 has enough of an economic incentive to get us to 10% renewables, whereas it gets de-risked enough for the "big money" (think: Fed-backed Capital Markets ala infrastructure spending) to come in and take over. It is true that PV manufacturing doesn't exactly map onto chip manufacturing (it's not about nano scape per se, it's more about layering absorbing levels in a way that allows full capture), but ultimately I am hopeful we can get there.
Lastly ... solar is ultimately a empowering technology, in that anyone with land can use it. It's a perfect fit for a country where the laws were originally meant for a farming population (which is essentially what solar is). I think once a tipping point gets hit where gas prices stay between where they are now (maximum shale extraction cost) and ~$30 (when the Saudis start pumping), and solar goes below that, the discussion will be more around how many DC lines do we need to get electricity from the southwest to the rust belt, than whether renewables are what will save us from our energy troubles.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Sandy [2] https://cleantechnica.com/2012/07/07/double-sided-solar-cell... [3] https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/29/us/puerto-rico-growing-death-...