Global warming is already well out of hand and getting worse, while “populist” and right-wing leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro actively try to make it worse. We need to have cogent plans to fix it. The Green New Deal is a great start. But I’m concerned that some of our proposals run afoul of a common problem in political circles — purity. They lack a feature needed in any practical solution — a bit of slack.
There’s a saying, especially well known in project management circles and among software developers, that the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the effort. And if you’re developing a product, or building a bridge, you need to get to 100% before getting its benefit. Fixing global warming, though, isn’t like that. Every ton of carbon you don’t put into the atmosphere is just as helpful as the next one. So you get the best results from focusing on the big and easy parts, and leaving some slack for the small, but difficult, problems. It may well be that the ultimate solution does require burning a little carbon, or letting a little CO2 into the atmosphere from other sources. That little bit of oil can lubricate a sticky situation and make it slide into place faster. And the planet can deal with a little carbon, just nowhere near what we’re dumping now.
Let me give some examples. Electric generation is a big use of carbon-based fuels. In practice, different types of power plant have very different economics. Baseload generators have high capital costs but low or zero fuel costs. If you don’t consume their generated capacity, it’s going to waste. But you can’t turn it up either. Solar, wind, and nuclear (let’s not discuss here when and whether any nuclear sources are desirable) are baseload sources. At the other extreme, peaking generators have low capital cost but high fuel costs. You use them only when needed, but they keep the system going during demand peaks. Storage allows baseload to be time-shifted to when it’s needed, but it has inefficiencies — some energy is lost in the process. Pumped storage and big batteries are examples. Natural gas, easily stored in compressed form, is typically used for peaking generation, as it can be powered up and down very quickly, and the machinery is relatively cheap. Same with some types of oil generator. Coal, however, fails that test. Liquid-fuel or propane emergency generators are another good use of slack — they run infrequently using stored liquid fuel.
Actual electricity demand is not constant. In most of the US, demand peaks in the summer when it’s needed for cooling. Specifically, it peaks on a few hot summer afternoons. So either you have peaking capacity or brownouts. If you built baseload capacity (solar, wind) to meet peak demand, all electricity would be expensive, because the cost of baseload has to be borne. So if we invested in renewable, carbon-free baseload and storage capacity but allowed for some legacy natural gas peaking generators to be used occasionally, the cost would be much lower and the total carbon output would still be reduced by >95% from an all-carbon system. There goes the argument that “we can’t afford it”.
Transportation is another example. Buses and trains can be electrified fairly easily. Most trains are already electric, and buses drive fixed routes that can include overnight charging at a terminal/garage. Delivery vans are a perfect use for battery power.
Electric car costs are coming down too, and for many people they’re fine. But not for everyone, at least not all the time. If you live in the city and park on the street wherever you can find a space, you can’t charge up in your garage like the suburbanite for whom the Tesla seems intended. And the chemistry of batteries mean that a charge takes a lot longer than filling a tank. So for some drivers, a better answer is an extended-range electric or hybrid. And puh-leeze don’t tell me that all of those city and apartment dwellers should just depend on bicycles or taxicabs (licensed or “share” ride-turking); 75 years of car-centered American development makes private cars necessary for many people. Let’s focus on what can be done without creating massive problems trying to get that last few percent out of the system.
Fuel cells, however, strike me as an intentional feint by the carbon industry (remember how GWBush pushed them?) in order to create a failure. In theory they’re great but most gaseous hydrogen is generated from natural gas, expending more power in the process, and the cost of fuel cells is outrageous. And hydrogen gas is very hard to store. Reformers create hydrogen from a liquid on the spot but generally release some carbon in the process. I don’t see how they can be net positive.
Also, I don’t see air transport becoming electrified in the foreseeable future. The power per weight density of liquid fuel is about 50 times that of the best batteries today, and weight is everything to an airplane. But newer plane designs are more efficient than the old ones. If only Boeing had paid attention to basic safety principles when designing the damned Max… but that too is a digression.
Another purist fail is the push to get rid of gas stoves. Electric stoves frankly suck. (I cook.) They encourage take-out from restaurants or stores that do have gas stoves! The purists say that induction stoves are pretty good, but have you actually seen one at Home Depot, Best Buy, or other non-luxury appliance stores? Most are incredibly expensive, and they have disadvantages too. (They typically list one Frigidaire model <$2000, on special order, not on display.) Gas cooking puts less carbon into the atmosphere than electric stoves or induction if your electricity source isn’t mostly carbon-free. “Solutions” like this are more divisive than productive.
There are some relatively easy benefits to be had in agriculture (methane-rich cow farts and decaying animal fecal matter are a real problem), building design/insulation/HVAC, and some industrial processes. But if we try to shut down all industrial carbon emissions in the US, we might see industry move those processes overseas to where there is no regulation at all. There’s plenty of precedent there. And the methane produced by animal waste can be captured as a renewable source of “natural” gas for peaking generators, etc.
We can solve global warming before catastrophic levels of CO2 destroy civilization as we know it. But it will take the buy-in of the public at large, and alas we know all too well how short-term and selfish thinking makes solving long-term problems hard. Purity may feel good but it is counterproductive. By allowing a little slack in the system, and letting a little carbon remain where the replacement is currently nonexistent, too costly, or impractical, we can simplify that buy-in and get the job done, and that will give the planet more time to work on the harder problems.