The Election’s Effect on the Clean Future

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As the dust settles and Trump takes over, CO2 emissions will make a comeback like a drunken picture from college you hoped you’d never see again.

Public policy helped give sustainability a fighting chance. It incubated new industries, guided people’s buying choices, and spurred or deterred business activities. Awesome clean technologies developed because of the government’s support.

That’s all going to change. Trump believes that climate change is a hoax, and unfortunately, he stated that long before he ever said “Make America Great Again”, so he actually believes it. Let’s talk about the effect this will have on the clean future we envision…

The Dirty

Trump will unleash oil drilling on previously restricted federal lands and offshore sites. Woohoo for extra energy; bummer for ecosystem destruction, air pollution, oil spills, and climate change to come. He’ll also give the green light to the massive Keystone XL pipeline, which Obama blocked with authority like LeBron in game 7. ​

Pump Up the CO2

Just when we were getting our CO2 under control and lowering it to a non-harmful level, here’s what’s projected for the future:

Trump will also curb regulations that protect waterways and wetlands with intent to revive coal production.

Newsflash: Unless it’s for Christmas stockings, coal isn’t coming back!

Jobless coal miners voted for Trump because he promised their jobs back, but sadly, that won’t happen. Natural gas is cheaper. Fracking put them out of their jobs. Not politics or policies.

This Bloomberg chart shows the general costs, including capital, fuel, financing, maintenance, and carbon, capture, and storage for coal, for various electricity generation methods entering service in 2022:

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Wind and solar already undercut coal’s price point. And wind power with tax credits is cost competitive with natural gas. But those tax credits may soon be a thing of the past.

Clean Power Plan and COP21 Paris Agreement — You’re Fired

The Clean Power Plan (CPP) enacted by Obama requires the power sector to reduce emissions by 32% by 2032. It also gives each state an emissions reduction target based on its electricity production. Trump says the CPP will be out faster than you can say “Mexico will pay for it”. Without it, U.S. utilities will have little incentive to transform their old fossil fuel facilities to produce clean energy.

Also, put a pause on nearly 200 countries singing kumbaya after unanimously signing the historic Paris Agreement last year in which they committed to keeping total warming to a maximum of 2°C [3.6°F] by lowering their carbon emissions; the new president wants out.

Without the participation of the U.S., the world’s second-largest economy, the 2°C goal is probably unattainable. Temperature rising above 2°C will have catastrophic global consequences for decades to come. John Sterman, a professor at MIT, wrote, “other key emitter nations — especially India — now have little reason to follow through on their Paris pledges: If the U.S. won’t, why should developing nations cut their emissions?”

Great video summarizing Trump’s potential environmental policies

Myron Ebell

To lead the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) transition team, Trump appointed Myron Ebell, director of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a think-tank funded by ExxonMobil and the Koch foundation. Putting someone funded by an oil company in charge of protecting the environment is like making Yoda responsible for the rules of grammar. Inherent conflict, there exists.

Ebell doesn’t believe in climate change. He thinks it’s arrogant to believe humans can change the climate of the Earth. Tell that to people in Miami where flooding has increased 400% in the last 10 years.

Enric Sala, a Nat Geo Society Explorer-in-Residence, summed up the situation and wrote, “Reversing our current energy policies and regulations just to appease a few special interests would be an environmental disaster, it would kill many more people because of pollution, and it would be the greatest gift to China — who would leave the U.S. in the dust for decades to come.”

Staying Clean

Don’t pack your whole life up into this personal office, zero-emission van and cross the border just yet.

Sun Keeps Shining, Wind Keeps Blowing

Solar and wind power technologies, as well as electric vehicles, have reached tipping points. They’ll continue to thrive regardless of public policy. Much of cleantech innovation may revolve around these industries henceforth.

Congress also voted last year to extend the tax credits that helped prop up these industries into the early 2020s. We may even see a boost in solar and wind production as companies try to take advantage of the tax credits while they can.

Also, “according to a Trump insider, renewable energy will not be in the new president’s sights”.

We All Want Clean Energy!

Regardless of the political differences on fossil fuels, it appears we all agree that more clean energy is all good:

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We’ve had three straight years of flat emissions worldwide. The U.S. reduced its emissions by 2.6% in 2015 and a projected 1.7% in 2016. China reduced its emissions by 0.7% in 2015 and a projected 0.5% in 2016.

States can continue to enact cleantech efforts despite the federal government’s plans. California, the world’s 6th largest economy, will continue to flourish as a market for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and sustainable products.

We’re the Heroes of This Story

You know how epic movies always have a character who gets plunged into the fray without being fully ready for the journey ahead? But ends up prevailing by pursuing high-minded ideals with endless fortitude? Well, we all need to be that hero now. 
 
It’s pivotal that we affect change with our dollars. Moving markets and industries towards sustainability with our demand. We need to buy EVs, solar panels, batteries for electricity storage, etc. We need to have Elon’s back.

To help provide you with resources and guidance to take action, we’re adding an “Act on Climate” section at the bottom of our newsletters.

Act on Climate

As mentioned in Leonardo DiCaprio’s “Before the Flood”, the politicians aren’t really our elected leaders. It’s the other way around. They are our elected followers. They’ll do what the public wants to remain in office. So if we all want clean energy, we’ll get it.

President Obama has the power to permanently protect the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic from offshore oil and gas drilling. Invoking the OCS Lands Act, presidents can create national monuments to permanently protect parcels of land from development. Obama has used the law over the past two years to make some areas in Alaska off-limits to oil drilling.

Tell POTUS That You Support Him Permanently Protecting the Atlantic Ocean and Arctic from Oil Drilling

https://upscri.be/4f43ab/

Outlandish Theories for Reversing Climate Change

Image by Luca Parmitano

In a time when science fiction and reality are blending like your morning green juice, is the possibility of reversing climate change that hard to believe?

Leonardo di Caprio spent the last three years in collaboration with National Geographic to produce his latest film Before the Flood (stream it free until November 7th). In the process, he came to a stark conclusion that our current commitments to combatting climate change aren’t nearly enough.

Leo had the opportunity to speak to President Obama about the COP21 agreement made in Paris, on which he remarked, “I was happy that we put the architecture in place. But the targets that have been set in Paris are nowhere near enough for what the scientists tell us we have to do eventually to solve this problem.”

Some very smart people have pointed out that we can’t just slow down climate change. We need technology to actually reverse it. Let’s begin with why.

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CO2 Loves to Linger

The thing that’s easy to overlook in the race towards renewable energy is that once CO2 is released, our atmosphere accommodates it for a century or more. Like millennials that still live at home with their parents, it won’t be paying rent or going anywhere soon.

Unlike millennials, the lingering CO2 that’s already in our atmosphere, not including the CO2 we pump out today, tomorrow, or the next day, poses a threat to the livability of our environment in the not-that-distant future.

The John Wayne of climate scientists, James Hansen, pointed out in his 2008 paper that if CO2 levels in the atmosphere exceed 350 ppm it will lead to warming that we can’t stop (read: without technology). Its presence in our atmosphere alone will have a detrimental snowball effect.

And what did we do? We blew right by it

The solution then is not just renewables. We need to be aiming higher as Google engineers Ross Koningstein and David Fork present in their article What It Would Really Take to Reverse Climate Change.

They suggest we’ll need more than just a jab. Think of it as a one-two punch with competitively priced carbon-free energy and efficient ways to remove carbon that’s already been released.

We’ve talked about capturing and storing carbon. The technology for that is here, but it’s in its early days, and there is much room for improvement.

The bottom line, according to our Googlites, is that both governments and private companies should allocate significantly more R&D resources to new and disruptive technologies. Think 10% instead of 0.1%.

Onto the Outlandish

In addition to capturing carbon, there is another strategy to aid the cooling process. It’s called solar radiation management (SRM). The idea is to limit the amount of energy we absorb from the sun.

Here are the 3 main methods:

1. Marine Cloud Brightening: Clouds provide us with natural reflection and cooling. A fleet of autonomous ships could be built to spray seawater upwards in places where marine clouds commonly form.

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2. Stratospheric Sulfate Aerosols: During volcanic eruptions, sulfuric aerosols are released into the atmosphere and result in a cooling effect. Scientists have proposed replicating this natural phenomenon could be a viable way for us to limit sun energy hitting Earth’s surface. Options for delivering sulfuric aerosols into our atmosphere include planes, modified artillery, or specially made hot air balloons, as mocked up in this graphic by Hugh Hunt.

3. Space Sunshade or Lens: Sending a parasol satellite into orbit that could run on the energy of the sun while blocking some of the sun’s energy from hitting Earth.

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Back to Now

The future of Earth’s habitability falls on us. The above methods for engineering our climate are not without major risks, and in no way should they ever be mistaken as an alternative for transitioning to renewables and away from fossil fuels.

But the reality is we’re in an extreme situation, and extreme measures are going to be necessary.

If the little piece of glass in your pocket, that’s a million times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful than the room-sized supercomputers of 50 years ago, is any indication, we’ve got all the reason in the world to be positive and optimistic about what’s possible.

Our job as a community is to encourage and empower scientists, engineers, governments and the private sector to spend more of their resources, especially in R&D, on moonshots.

How do we do that?

We begin by knowing this truth and spreading the good word. Seeing as how broad awareness is going to be key, sharing this post would be a start.

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