My Climate Anxiety Emerges from Fear - but Here's the Podcast Helping Me Keep My Spirits Up
Volts.wtf, evidence-based optimism, tempered with a realistic look at the obstacles
Dear Human of Planet Earth,
I’ve run into some good news this week. Sparing you my usual long-winded wanderings, I’ll take you straight to the source:
This podcast episode really lifted my spirits. In it, David Roberts explores with one of the authors of an Oxford University research paper how the plummeting cost of renewables can make the transition away from fossil fuels a cost-benefit, rather than a cost-burden.
The forecasts make probabilistic bets that technologies on learning curves will stay on them. If that's true, then the faster we deploy clean energy technologies, the cheaper they will get. If we deploy them fast enough to reach net zero by 2050, as is our stated goal, then they will become very cheap indeed — cheap enough to utterly crush their fossil fuel competition, within the decade. Cheap enough that the most aggressive energy transition scenario won't cost anything — it will save over a trillion dollars relative to baseline.
We've gotten the sign wrong: the transition to clean energy is not a cost, it's a benefit. The implication is that it makes overwhelming sense to rapidly transition to clean energy technologies, without even counting climate and air pollution benefits. That's why the paper made a splash. - Source.
Not convinced? Have a listen yourself to hear about the data used and their approach to the research. Better yet, to be on the safe side, their good news emerged from conservative assumptions. Costs could fall even faster than they predict!
Here’s my TLDL (Too-Long-Didn’t-Listen) version:
A consistent pattern has emerged for the cost of generating renewables - most clearly wind and solar power.
The cost of generating wind and solar energy has fallen much faster than predicted. IPCC predictions also underestimated the rate of price fall, with Greenpeace being the only organisation to get it right. And Greenpeace got it right by chance - wishful thinking, rather than mathematical modelling.
Learning curves (also known as Wright curves) have been developed which show for every doubling of production for wind and solar energy, cost of generation falls by 20%. Of course, the rate of the price fall does eventually slow, and when the market is saturated, it plateaus.
When the modelling curves developed are applied retrospectively they work! Meaning they map accurately onto what has happened to costs. The theory and the facts line up!
Because there is so much more data available for wind and solar generation over a longer period of time, we can say confidently that the price of wind and solar energy generation will continue to fall rapidly. There is good reason to expect these learning curves will apply to other elements of the transition, but not all.
Learning curves apply to systems that are manufactured - like solar panels and wind turbines. For systems that are constructed more slowly on site, with site specifications - like nuclear plants, the curves don’t apply. Will they apply to the smaller, modular nuclear plants proposed? The researcher doubts it but we’ll see.
Another finding is that the unit cost of mining minerals, as well as oil and gas, does not fall - production costs have held steady relative to inflation, since oil and gas exploration began, despite improvements in mining technology. This is partly because over time, mining gets more difficult as the most accessible resources are accessed first. (Selling prices on the other hand vary with market forces and geopolitics, as we’ve been reminded very harshly this year).
Therefore, though the oil and gas dinosaurs want to keep their monster alive for as long as it can live, economies that don’t move towards the transition will fall behind fast.
The faster the transition, the faster prices fall. Even that juggernaut of a project, upgrading the US grid to accommodate renewables, will cost less than maintaining the grid with no transition at all.
If you want to feel good about at least one thing that’s happening in the world this week, I urge you to listen to the Volts.wtf podcast episode.
And listening to it will feel much sexier than reading my bullet points! That’s a promise.
I’d like to add
The cost of minerals needed for storing energy from renewables will eventually be a rate-limiting factor for the falling cost of green energy. Speaking of which, exploitation of the impoverished, including child workers in poor economies of the Global South is undoubtedly a moral failing that the energy transition needs to redress. Addressing it responsibly may also be a limiting factor for falling costs.
But overall, I hope the idea that economics could be the last nail in the coffin for the fossil fuel industry, cheers you up as it does me!
And it’s not the only piece of good news I want to tell you about either:
The story of the ‘US Climate Bill’ ( actually it’s the Inflation Reduction Act), which nearly fell apart but managed to get passed despite the machinations of Joe Manchin, is good news for so many reasons. The Bill is expected to lead to 24 times more emissions cuts than the Joe Manchin compromises will generate! It’s not perfect but maybe a compromised climate bill is better than no climate bill at all?
We non-Americans hate to admit it, but where the US economy leads, others feel compelled to follow.
If the framework has been set for a faster US transition, then that’s good for the US economy and good for the global transition too.
If you’re curious about the ‘Climate Bill’ within the more politically neutral ‘Inflation Reduction Act’ the Volts.wtf podcast has put together lots of discussion on the subject in this one place:
Remember last week when I told you the story of the Fossilised Thinking of the Men from Tufton Street, the fellows who were convinced that the UK’s 2050 Net Zero target is impossibly expensive and damn impossible?
Should I introduce them to David Roberts and his Volts.wtf podcast, where they can always find some encouraging news, tempered with realism, about the technological and political path to Net Zero?
If you listen to this episode, tell me if you think it would change the minds of those old dinosaurs from ‘Tufton Street’.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll send the podcast link to the fellow who invited me to the meeting!
Happy listening! And have a great week!
With Love,
Your Friendly Neighbourhood Radical,
Croydon,
London,
That patch of earth known today as the United Kingdom
Lat +51.51 Long, -0.118