What’s emerging is the following:
- Electrify everything. Convert all energy services to work directly from electricity instead of fossil fuels. Transportation, industry and agriculture. All of it. All gas appliances must go. All road transport must be electric. Most trains and a lot of planes must shift to electric. All heat from electricity. The USA throws away two thirds of all primary energy, mostly in the form of waste heat from fossil fuels used in inherently inefficient combustion processes. We only have to replace a third of the actual primary energy we use today to maintain our lifestyle and economy.
- Overbuild renewable generation. All other forms of generation with the exception of nuclear were overbuilt, so we’ll do the same with wind and solar, and they are really cheap, so that’s not that expensive. After all, $3 trillion USD would provide all primary energy for everything the US does.
- *Build continent-scale electrical grids and markets, and improve existing ones. HVDC became much more viable with high-speed hybrid circuit breakers in 2011, and is an essential technology for long-distance, low-loss electrical transmission.
Where statements diverge from the above, question what lobbying groups are involved, where revenue will be lost or gained and in general what the motivations of the people or organizations involved are. This is all empirically grounded analysis. It’s not rocket science. We have the solutions. We just need the will to execute, which is being sapped by the losers in this necessary transformation, dominantly the fossil fuel industry.
Read more at Other than Cutting Down Carbon Emissions, What Exactly Is the Current Scientific Consensus on Steps to Combat Climate Change?
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