President Elect (PEOTUS) Joe Biden lives in a far different world than PEOTUS Obama did. The differences can’t be summarized as simply Trump Virus (even though that does capture a lot). When it comes to clean energy and climate action opportunities, there are some rather stark — and encouraging — differences between the two eras.
- Twelve years ago, PEOTUS Obama faced a massively devastated economy with serious challenges in recovery. A core part of the recovery efforts (some $90B) sensibly focused on clean-energy arenas, much of this foundational work.
- In 2020, PEOTUS Biden faces a massively devastated economy with serious challenges ahead toward recovery. A core part of the Biden-Harris Administration recovery effort, to Build Back Better, will build on the Obama-Biden Administration (and global) clean-energy foundational work.
In 2008, those (like myself) advocating for rapid clean-energy investments and deployments had to be creative in accounting (seeking fully-burdened analysis (including health implications, job creation, climate risks)) as part of the advocacy efforts. In 2020, clean-energy options are ever more clearly cost competitive with fossil-foolish options — even without considering pollution and other costs from exploiting and burning fossil fuels. These a few graphics make clear how different 2020 is from 2008.
- in 2009, onshore wind was an expensive electricity option and solar PV was an exorbitantly (literally off the charts in this case) electricity options.
- By 2019, both onshore wind and solar PV were less expensive than any other electricity option.
As to batteries,
To give credit where credit is due, a Zeke Hausfather tweet sparked this post:
“CLEAN ENERGY HAS BECOME CHEAP …”
In 2007, Google began the renewable energy produced at a lower price than coal “initiative through Google.org as an effort to drive down the cost of renewable energy”.
Many (most?) viewed this as a quixotic and potentially unrealistic quest in the near-term, seeing a need for pricing pollution as the most critical tool since renewables were seen as a potentially never being ‘as cheap’ (let alone cheaper) as polluting fossil fuel usage if pollution costs weren’t counted in the financial transactions. While Google walked away from the initiative after a few years, leaving it to others, this vision of renewable power (electricity) produced at a lower price than coal was achieved within a decade. And, as can be seen in the Lazard chart above, this isn’t just Renewable Energy Less Than Coal, but also less than natural gas, less than oil, less than fossil fuels.
PEOTUS Obama lived a world where renewables at a lower cost than fossil fuels was aspirational vision.
PEOTUS Biden lives in a world where this is reality.