An energy plan the Earth can live with

The climate science, technology, and policy landscape we face today are hugely out of alignment. While the climate science community has highlighted the critical need for immediate action towards a 1.5 degree C (or lower) global climate warming target [IPCC, 2018; USGCRP. 2018], and while energy and transportation technologies are moving rapidly to enable that tremendously challenging goal, the US stands as the sole denier of a path that requires immediate action. Both large infrastructure choices and immediate daily decisions are needed. Sadly, every delay in moving the US to a productive, proactive position, makes achieving these goals less likely, or more costly, or both. Immediate, pro-environment and pro-business decisions are needed at the household, state, regional, national and global levels to put us on a sustainable path. I highlight a set of energy, transportation, and land-use modeling tools and policy opportunities that are consistent with the needed 1.5 degree Celsius objective (Kittner, Lil & Kammen, 2017). The critical role of decision-making is highlighted through a series of technical, policy, and social justice opportunities. Recent events including the rise of a populist “Green New Deal” ethos, congressional debate over carbon pricing, and the role of environmental justice will be highlighted as critical, potentially 'last best chance' opportunities (Sunter, Castellanos & Kammen, 2019) for climate sanity and meaningful support of much needed action.

References:

Kittner, N., Lil, F., and Daniel M. Kammen (2017) “Energy storage deployment and innovation for the clean energy transition ”, Nature Energy, 2, 17125.

Sunter, Deborah, Castellanos, Sergio, and Daniel M Kammen (2019) “Disparities in rooftop photovoltaics deployment in the United States by race and ethnicity,“ Nature Sustainability.DOI: 10.1038/s41893-018-0204-z