The President's Parting Optimism

The most recent issue of Science Magazine includes an editorial from President Barack Obama entitled “The Irreversible Momentum of Clean Energy.”  In it, our still-current President expresses optimism that we will be able to change how we obtain our energy in ways that do not contribute ultimately to the warming of the planet. 

Obama cites four reasons why he believes the trend towards clean energy is irreversible. The first counteracts the prevailing narrative that you would need to sacrifice economic growth in order to  reduce carbon emissions.  Obama points out that carbon dioxide emissions from the energy sector fell by 9.5% from 2008 to 2015, while the economy grew by more than 10%. It’s important to keep in mind that the ultimate reason for the decline in these omissions is the redirection of our energy production away from coal and towards natural gas.  The main driver behind the switch towards natural gas is hydraulic fracturing, or fracking.  Fracking has a number of environmental issues associated with it, but the one most directly related to climate is the natural gas industry’s contribution to the increase in global methane emissions.  Methane is a greenhouse gas, stronger per unit mass then carbon dioxide is, so it's important to better quantify the cause of the increase in its emissions.  (This is an issue I will try to tackle in detail in a later blog entry.)  Regardless of how you feel about fracking (another issue I will try to address), it has shown that the way that this country and the world obtain energy can change, and change fairly quickly, if there's an incentive to do so.  The President goes on to talk about the costs that come with doing nothing about global warming, citing estimates that in the U. S. alone by the end of this century, combating the effects of global warming could cost between 340 and 690 billion dollars annually.  The report he cites is from the U. S. Office of Management and Budget; I haven't yet read the report and can’t comment on the specifics (perhaps another future blog entry?), but there’s no good reason to doubt that ignoring global warming will be very costly.  Obama then concludes this section by saying that the expenses that would be needed now to reduce the amount of global warming and bring about a clean energy economy will be small compared to preventing or repairing damages that global warming will cause if left unchecked. 

The second point Obama makes is that businesses, both with and without the support of the government, are starting to reduce their own emissions and carbon footprint.  On one hand, the Obama administration improved energy efficient standards for both automobiles and appliances.  But the President also points out that businesses are improving their energy efficiency for the simple reason that it saves money and allows them to spend that money in other areas, including the creation of new jobs.  Obama's third point concerns market forces in the power sector.  He points out that natural gas has gone from making up 21% of US electricity generation in 2008 to 33% today, and that the shift has come almost entirely at the expense of coal.  If the production of power from natural gas continues to be cheap relative to coal (as seems likely), I see no reason to think that demand for coal is going to increase in the coming years regardless of how the situation is portrayed by the incoming President.  Obama does address the issue of methane omissions, commenting that firms have an economic incentive to comply with standards his administration put in place.  I think he may be a little bit naïve about those standards being maintained, perhaps especially if the price of renewable energy continues to go down.  But that brings us to some very encouraging numbers for wind and solar, which Obama cites in the article.  Since 2008, wind power has dropped 41% in cost, rooftop solar has dropped 54%, and utility-scale solar has dropped 64%.  Obama doesn't mention a recent report from the financial advisory firm called Lazard’s that concluded that utility-scale solar power is now cheaper per unit energy produced, even without incentives, than either natural gas or coal.   (That important development will also get its own blog entry in the coming weeks.)  He does mention in concluding this section that a number of major American businesses, including Google and Walmart, have announced plans to get 100% of their power from renewable energy in the coming years.  Furthermore, plenty of states are going beyond federal initiatives to develop their clean power capacity.  So there is much momentum in the direction of renewable energy coming from the free market, regardless of what happens at the federal level.

Obama concludes his editorial by talking about momentum outside the United States to combat climate change by building up clean energy resources.  He notes that the most important aspect of the Paris agreement was that while previous attempts at climate agreements focused on the major industrialized nations of the world, in Paris over 110 countries agreed to do something.  He also acknowledges that the United States would abdicate its position to hold other countries responsible to their commitments should we back away from the Paris agreement.  While more reductions than have been presently agreed to need to be made across the board to keep global warming below 2°C (and hopefully below 1.5ºC), the Paris agreement puts the mechanisms in place to encourage the world's nations to continually update their commitments and encourage the development of further emission-reducing technologies.

Personally, I think the Paris agreement is a decent start that shows that the world is at least trying to get a handle on the problem of global warming.  The United States is in a position to be a leader in developing alternatives to fossil fuels and promoting clean sources of energy, and it's clear from the perspective of present-day economics that we walk away from that leadership position at a considerable amount of long-term economic and environmental peril.  While it would be nice if the federal government played an active role in developing and actively promoting clean, carbon-free energy over the next couple of years, solar and wind are in a position where they do not need the federal government’s help to survive and thrive, and I do believe that Obama's optimism in that regard is justified.  Whether the advance in clean energy happens quickly enough to prevent lasting harm to the planet, however, remains to be seen.

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