Renewable energy

Renewable energy is energy that is collected from renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale. It includes sources such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves, and geothermal heat. Renewable energy stands in contrast to fossil fuels, which are being used far more quickly than they are being replenished. Although most renewable energy sources are sustainable, some are not. For example, some biomass sources are considered unsustainable at current rates of exploitation.

"I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power!" - Thomas Edison in a conversation shortly before his death. (1931) (A combined heat and power solar installation on a barn roof in Germany.)

"Wind [power cost] has plunged by 80% just in the past 11 or 12 years. . . . Things like wind and solar power really can already out-compete dirtier forms of electricity, and we just need to build more of them quickly; we’re not adding them fast enough." - Daniel Cohan, Rice University. (May 30, 2022) (Wind turbines in Gansu province, China.)

"The only way you can get to the very positive {CO₂ reduction} scenario is by great innovation. Innovation really does bend the curve." - Bill Gates, global philanthropist and founder of Microsoft. (June 25, 2015)

"The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot." - Jeffrey Sachs, development economist. (Dec. 20, 2018) (Pictured above is Thomas Edison, considered one of the greatest inventors and engineers of all time.)

"A carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future." - "Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends" signed by more than 3,500 economists. (Jan. 16, 2019) (Signatories included every then-living former chair of the US Federal Reserve, from left to right: Janet Yellen, Alan Greenspan, Ben Bernanke and Paul Volcker).

"Offshore wind is in a category of its own, as the only variable baseload power generation technology." - IEA special report, "Offshore Wind Outlook 2019." (Nov. 2019) (The East Anglia ONE offshore windfarm under construction in the North Sea about 43 kilometers east of the English coast.)

"Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. [And] even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too." - Bill Gates, from his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster. (Feb. 16, 2021)

"[W]e can remake our economies, build new businesses, and put millions upon millions of people to work. . . . For too long, the climate conversation has been viewed as [one] of trade-offs: the climate or the economy. No longer." - US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, addressing the 2021 Leaders Summit on Climate. (Apr. 23, 2021)

"We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees. . . . [W]e cannot and will not succeed by government spending alone. . . . [Let us] in the next days . . . not only continue with . . . a green industrial revolution, [but let] us also do enough to save our planet and our way of life." - UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, welcoming the COP representatives to Glasgow. (Nov. 1, 2021)

"[W]ithin the growing [climate] catastrophe, I believe there’s an incredible opportunity . . . . We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable clean-energy future and in the process create millions of good-paying jobs [while we] create an environment that raises the standard of living around the world." - US President Joe Biden, addressing the COP26 international climate conference. (Nov. 1, 2021)

"India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030, [and] India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030." - Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India since 2014, addressing the COP26 international climate conference. (Nov. 2, 2021)

"The electrification of things you do for climate is good for your health. The air in our homes will be cleaner, our cars zippier and community air quality better, our appliances faster and more high-tech, like smartphones compared to rotary phones. The electrified future can be awesome." - Saul Griffith, Australian-American engineer, entrepreneur and MacArthur fellow, writing on the need to "electrify everything, fast" to keep the earth habitable. (Nov. 4, 2021)

"India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. . . . {T}he good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway." - From a commentary article written jointly by the IEA's Fatih Birol and NITI Aayog's Amitabh Kant. (Jan. 10, 2022) (Click on the image above to enlarge a satellite photo of the sprawling 2.2 gigawatt Bhadla Solar Park in Rajasthan, India.)

"[W]e’ll never build enough batteries to back up the grid. . . . The more robustly we deploy complementary resources, transmission, and {demand} flexibility, the less storage we will need [thereby] reducing the overall costs of electricity." - Daniel S. Cohan, from his book Confronting Climate Gridlock. (Mar. 29, 2022) (HVDC transmission lines in Europe: existing {red}, under construction {green} and proposed {blue}. Many of these lines carry power from renewable sources.)

"[A] decarbonisation strategy [has been] accepted by those determined to stabilise the climate. Make the power on electric grids emissions-free, cheap and copious. Start electrifying all processes that now require fossil fuels . . . where electrification is clearly possible. It does not deliver everything that is needed. But it delivers a lot." - Vijay Vaitheeswaran, writing as climate innovation editor at The Economist. (June 25, 2022)

"Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress . . . . A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push." - Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, in a New York Times op-ed column. (Aug. 8, 2022)

"If you want to [get to 100% renewable energy], you're going to have to solve that problem of . . . long-term storage for the grid . . . . [Y]ou could do that with gravity storage [or] with a chemical energy carrier [like] hydrogen or ammonia or another chemical energy medium which is yet to be discovered." - George Crabtree, Director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory. (Nov. 17, 2022)

"Utility-scale solar PV {photovoltaic systems} and onshore wind are [now] the cheapest options for new electricity generation in a significant majority of countries worldwide." - From the press release accompanying the IEA's "Renewables 2022" annual report. (Dec. 6, 2022) (A 4 megawatt single axis horizontal tracking system in Tamil Nadu, India.)

"[T]he change we need is to put innovation at the heart of everything we do. . . . [M]ajor challenges like energy security and net zero will be solved by innovation. The more we innovate, the more we grow." - UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his first major speech of 2023. (Jan. 4, 2023)

"[T]he transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors." - Pope Francis, in the English language version of his "Laudate Deum" apostolic exhortation, paragraph 10. The Vatican released the document about a month before the COP28 climate conference to encourage the negotiators "to . . . allow for a decisive acceleration of energy transition." (Oct. 4, 2023)

"Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth . . . . {An} irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets." - Click on the image above to enlarge a world map showing those regions with the greatest photovoltaic power potential. (Oct. 17, 2023)

"2023 will take the title {as the world's hottest year on record}. . . . And yet . . . [a]lmost simultaneous with the breakout in temperature, there was a breakout in the installation of renewable energy. . . . There are plenty of other technologies we’re [currently] spending money on, [but in] the next few years . . . it’s sun, wind, and batteries that matter. They’re cheap, and they’re ready." - Bill McKibben, climate change activist and author, writing in The New Yorker. (Dec. 12, 2023)

"Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. . . . {A}t night, large utility-scale batteries . . . are often the single largest source of supply to the grid . . . ." - Bill McKibben, in an article in The New Yorker. (Jun. 27, 2024) (Click on the image above to enlarge a "California electricity production by type" graph for 2001 to 2024.)

"At this point the {Texas} legislature can’t do anything to stop the growth of solar and wind and batteries . . . . The state desperately needs it." - University of Houston energy economist Ed Hirs, describing the currently increasing supply of Texas electricity generated by renewables; from an article in The New York Times. (Sep. 18, 2024) (Click on the image above to enlarge a "Texas electricity generation by type" graph for 2001 to 2024.)

"With global electricity demand set to grow strongly, new technologies {like enhanced geothermal systems and closed-loop geothermal systems} are opening up the massive potential of geothermal energy to provide around-the-clock clean power in almost all countries around the world, according to a new IEA report." - IEA press release on next-generation geothermal. (Dec. 13, 2024) (The above diagram shows an enhanced geothermal system.)

Quotes

Before 2001

• I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
  • Thomas Edison (in a conversation shortly before his death in 1931), as quoted in a June 3, 2007 essay entitled "Current Thinking" by the journalist and documentary filmmaker Heather Rogers published in The New York Times Magazine.

2001 to 2010

• Although photosynthesis typically has an energy conversion efficiency below three percent, it is, together with heat from the sun, the main energy source of all living organisms, and the energy source from which biomass and fossil fuels are derived. Each year the earth receives an energy input from the sun equal to 15,000 times the world's commercial energy consumption and 100 times the world's proven coal, gas and oil reserves.
  • Bernhard Scheffler, quoted by J. Clarke and D. Holt-Biddle in Coming Back to Earth, p. 78 (2002)

• There is one forecast of which you can already be sure: someday renewable energy will be the only way for people to satisfy their energy needs. Because of the physical, ecological and (therefore) social limits to nuclear and fossil energy use, ultimately nobody will be able to circumvent renewable energy as the solution, even if it turns out to be everybody’s last remaining choice. The question keeping everyone in suspense, however, is whether we shall succeed in making this radical change of energy platforms happen early enough to spare the world irreversible ecological mutilation and political and economic catastrophe.
  • Hermann Scheer, member of the German Bundestag and President of the European Association for Renewable Energy, in his book Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy (2006). Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. ISBN 9781844073559.

2011 to 2020

• [The] solar-energy firm known as Solyndra, which the [US] Energy Department had backed with a $535 million loan guarantee [made the] unexpected announcement last week that it is filing for bankruptcy, leaving hundreds of workers jobless - and taxpayers on the hook for almost all of its government-backed loan. . . . [I]t’s not too early to draw some policy lessons from Solyndra’s ignominious downfall. . . . [G]overnment is no better than the private sector at picking industrial winners - and usually worse. . . . To the extent that government creates jobs by subsidizing particular companies, it does so by shifting resources that might have created jobs elsewhere. Political favoritism, or the appearance thereof, is an inherent risk . . . . When "green jobs" promises don’t pan out, it does the environmental cause more harm than good.
  • The Washington Post Editorial Board, in an editorial entitled "Lessons from the Solyndra debacle." (September 8, 2011)

• More solar energy falls on Earth in one hour than all the energy our civilization consumes in an entire year. If we could harness a tiny fraction of the available solar and wind power, we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon to the atmosphere.
  • From the twelfth episode of the U.S. science documentary television series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, first broadcast on June 1, 2014.

• Renewable energy: dumbest phrase since climate change. See the first law of thermodynamics, dumbass.
  • Ben Shapiro, Twitter, 2011-06-25, quoted in Judah Weinerman (23 October 2018), "Prager University's slick production masks deep-seated hatred", The Justice 

• Every percentage point increase in homegrown renewable energy makes us that much more energy secure. The progress in electricity is encouraging, but growth is not yet strong enough in renewable heat and transport to meet the government's objectives.
  • Nina Skorupska, chief executive of the UK's Renewable Energy Association, as quoted in "Wind and other renewables generated a fifth of Britain's electricity in early 2014" The Guardian. June 26, 2014.

• One of the real breakthroughs is when someone figures out long-term storage capacity.
  • George Shultz, US statesman and economist, discussing the need for improvements in batteries or other energy storage technology to better integrate solar and wind energy into the electrical grid, as quoted in "George Shultz: 'Climate is changing,' and we need more action: Former secretary of state - and former MIT professor - urges progress on multiple fronts" MIT News. October 1, 2014.

• The only way you can get to the very positive scenario is by great innovation. Innovation really does bend the curve.
  • Bill Gates, global philanthropist and founder of Microsoft, arguing that the cost of reducing CO₂ emissions using existing technologies is "beyond astronomical." From "Gates to double investment in renewable energy projects: Microsoft co-founder takes interest in new areas of research like in solar, high wind and new nuclear" Financial Times. June 25, 2015.

• If you told me that innovation had been frozen and we just have today's technologies, will the world run the climate change experiment? You bet we will. We will not deny India coal plants; we will run the scary experiment of heating up the atmosphere and seeing what happens. The only reason I'm optimistic about this problem is because of innovation. . . . I want to tilt the odds in our favor by driving innovation at an unnaturally high pace, or more than its current business-as-usual course. I see that as the only thing. I want to call up India someday and say, "Here's a source of energy that is cheaper than your coal plants, and by the way, from a global pollution and local pollution point of view, it's also better."
  • Bill Gates, in "We need an energy miracle" (Interview with Bill Gates). The Atlantic. November 2015 issue.

• Cheaper coal and cheaper gas will not derail the transformation and decarbonisation of the world’s power systems. By 2040, zero-emission energy sources will make up 60% of installed capacity.
  • Bloomberg New Energy Finance report entitled "New Energy Outlook 2016 (An annual long-term view of how the world's power markets will evolve in the future)".

• We have long supported a carbon tax as the best policy of those being considered. Replacing the hodge-podge of current, largely ineffective regulations with a revenue-neutral carbon tax would ensure a uniform and predictable cost of carbon across the economy. It would allow market forces to drive solutions. It would maximize transparency, reduce administrative complexity, promote global participation and easily adjust to future developments in our understanding of climate science as well as the policy consequences of these actions.
  • Rex Tillerson, Chairman and CEO of ExxonMobil, in a speech entitled "The Path Forward in Today’s Energy Environment" delivered at the 37th Annual Oil and Money Conference in London on October 19, 2016.

• Rather than an eyesore on the roof, it becomes actually a feature of the home. People are going to start wanting to put {building-integrated photovoltaics} on the front side of their home to show that they have solar.
  • Christopher Klinga, technical director of the (U.S.-based) Architectural Solar Association, as quoted in "The Next Solar Energy Revolution Is Hiding in Plain Sight." NBCNews.com. April 10, 2017.

• [W]ind and solar power have been rapidly winning market acceptance. Last year, the installed capacity of solar power in the United States nearly doubled. And wind is now being harnessed to produce 5.5 percent of America’s electricity, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
  • Norm Alster, journalist, in "Investing in Solar and Wind in a Coal and Oil Moment." The New York Times. April 15, 2017.

• The transition to renewable energy can be greatly accelerated if the world’s governments finally bring the engineers to the fore... I was recently on a panel with three economists and a senior business-sector engineer. After the economists spoke... the engineer spoke succinctly and wisely. “I don’t really understand what you economists were just speaking about, but I do have a suggestion... Tell us engineers the desired ‘specs’ and the timeline, and we’ll get the job done.” This is not bravado.... The next big act belongs to the engineers. Energy transformation for climate safety is our twenty-first-century moonshot.
  • Jeffrey Sachs in For Climate Safety, Call in the Engineers, Project Syndicate (20 December 2018)

• A carbon tax offers the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary. By correcting a well-known market failure, a carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future. . . . A consistently rising carbon price will encourage technological innovation and large-scale infrastructure development.
  • "Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends: Bipartisan agreement on how to combat climate change." (Statement signed by more than 3,500 economists, including every living former chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve and 27 Nobel laureates.)
    • Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends (The statement's original publication - subscription required to view in full.) The Wall Street Journal. January 16, 2019.
    • Economists’ Statement on Carbon Dividends (Republication - no subscription needed to view.) Republished by the Climate Leadership Council. Originally published on January 16, 2019.

• Offshore wind's remarkable potential: The global offshore wind market grew nearly 30% per year between 2010 and 2018, benefitting from rapid technology improvements and about 150 new offshore wind projects . . . in active development around the world. . . . Yet today's offshore wind market doesn't even come close to tapping the full potential - with high-quality resources available in most major markets, offshore wind has the potential to generate more than 420,000 [terawatt-hours] per year worldwide. This is more than 18 times global electricity demand today.
  • "Offshore Wind Outlook 2019: World Energy Outlook special report." International Energy Agency. (November, 2019)

• Offshore wind is in a category of its own, as the only variable baseload power generation technology. . . . Offshore wind output . . . hourly variability is lower than that of solar [photovoltaics]. Offshore wind typically fluctuates within a narrower band, up to 20% from hour-to-hour, than is the case for solar [photovoltaics], up to 40% from hour-to-hour.
  • "Offshore Wind Outlook 2019: World Energy Outlook special report." International Energy Agency. (November, 2019)

• The clean energy portfolios of some of the largest corporate buyers rival those of the world’s biggest utilities. These companies are facing mounting pressure from investors to decarbonize - clean energy contracts serve as a way to diversify energy spend and reduce susceptibility to the tangible risks associated with climate change.
  • Kyle Harrison, sustainability analyst at BloombergNEF and lead author of its 1H 2020 Corporate Energy Market Outlook report, as quoted in a summary discussing the report entitled "Corporate Clean Energy Buying Leapt 44% in 2019, Sets New Record", published on January 28, 2020.

• [N]ew renewable power generation projects now increasingly undercut existing coal-fired plants. On average, new solar photovoltaic (PV) and onshore wind power cost less than keeping many existing coal plants in operation, and auction results show this trend accelerating – reinforcing the case to phase-out coal entirely.
  • International Renewable Energy Agency press release entitled "Renewables Increasingly Beat Even Cheapest Coal Competitors on Cost: Competitive power generation costs make investment in renewables highly attractive as countries target economic recovery from COVID-19, new IRENA report finds." June 2, 2020.

• I think it’s clear now that energy has to be clean. . . . And we should do it in ways that give jobs to everybody. . . . There’s so much to do in renewable power, there is so little to do in coal.
  • William McDonough, as quoted in "Eliminating the concept of waste from the economy", from the Marketplace Morning Report segment of the US National Public Radio Morning Edition program, August 19, 2020.

2021

• An old proverb states: When the winds of change blow, some build walls . . . others build windmills. So, fellow windmill builders: Let’s push back on doubt and fear. Climate disasters worldwide tell us that the scariest thing we could do is nothing at all. . . . [W]e’ll all gain when we succeed - starting with jobs! We’re looking at a $23 trillion global market in the clean energy transition by 2030. . . . That means we can remake our economies, build new businesses, and put millions upon millions of people to work. . . . For too long, the climate conversation has been viewed as a zero-sum game. One of trade-offs: the climate or the economy. No longer.
  • US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, addressing the Leaders Summit on Climate organized by the Biden Administration. Excerpted from "Remarks as Delivered by Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm, President Biden's Leaders Summit on Climate, Session 4: 'Unleashing Climate Innovation.'" (April 23, 2021)

• There are two practical ways to create the magic conditions that make fusion happen. One is called magnetic confinement fusion and the other is inertial confinement fusion. There’s gravity too, of course, but for that you need scales bigger than can be created on Earth: you need, quite literally, a star. The magnetic approach is to bind the hot matter in a reactor with an invisible web of magnetic fields. The inertial approach sets matter crashing into itself, thereby both heating and compressing it, and aims to get all the fusion done before the assembled star matter falls apart again. NIF {the National Ignition Facility} uses lasers to do this.
  • Arthur Turrell, from page 10 of his book, The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet. Published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. (Aug. 3, 2021)

• There’s one aspect of the current fleet of magnetic fusion machines that is holding back progress. It’s a lesson that has been learned time and time again in fusion: . . . fusion works best on big scales. For conventional tokamaks, the confinement of plasma gets better the bigger the machine is. . . . When it is completed, ITER will be the world’s largest tokamak, and one of its key objectives will be to demonstrate net energy gain. It’s a behemoth. . . . ITER will take up 180 hectares (equivalent to 250 soccer fields), and when finished, its structure will have a mass equivalent to three Eiffel Towers.
  • Arthur Turrell, from pages 186-87 of his book, "The Star Builders: Nuclear Fusion and the Race to Power the Planet”. Published by Scribner, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. (Aug. 3, 2021)

• Future Outlook: Global offshore wind energy deployment is expected to accelerate in the future, with forecasts from 4C Offshore and Bloomberg New Energy Finance indicating a sevenfold increase in global cumulative offshore wind capacity - to 215 [gigawatts] or more by 2030 (BNEF 2020; 4C Offshore 2021). As part of that predicted surge, the U.S. offshore wind energy market continues to expand, primarily driven by increasing state-level procurement targets in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, an increased number of projects clearing major permitting milestones, as well as growing vessel, port, and infrastructure investments needed to keep pace with development.
  • "Executive Summary" for "Offshore Wind Market Report: 2021 Edition." US Department of Energy, Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy. (Aug. 30, 2021)

• Solving climate change should taste at least as good as carrots, at best ice cream, but it should not be painful. . . . How do we ensure the lowest cost of energy while electrifying everything? First, policymakers have to rewrite the federal, state and local rules and regulations that were created for the fossil-fueled world and which prevent the US from having the cheapest electricity ever. Our country needs to massively scale up the industrial production of technological solutions, just as we did to win World War II. We cannot take our foot off the innovation gas - although I'll argue that we don't need any major breakthroughs, as thousands of little inventions and cost reductions are the key to achieving our end goal. Finally, we must have cheap financing for our transition to a zero-carbon energy system with low-interest "climate loans." Climate change will not be solved if only the richest 10% can afford it; we need mechanisms to bring everyone along for the ride.
  • Saul Griffith, Australian-American engineer, entrepreneur and MacArthur fellow, writing in the "Preface" section of his book, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. MIT Press. (October 12, 2021)

• In 2006, I hosted a dinner after a screening of An Inconvenient Truth, former vice president Al Gore's seminal documentary on the climate crisis. We went around the table for everyone's reaction to the film's urgent message. When it came to my fifteen-year-old daughter, Mary, she declared with her typical candor: "I'm scared, and I'm angry." Then she added, "Dad, your generation created this problem. You better fix it." . . . As a venture capitalist, my job is to find big opportunities, target big challenges, and invest in big solutions. I was best known for backing companies like Google and Amazon early on. But the environmental crisis dwarfed any challenge I'd ever seen. . . . Eugene Kleiner, the late cofounder of Kleiner Perkins . . . left behind a set of twelve laws that [included the following:] There is a time when panic is the appropriate response. That time had come. . . . My partners and I made climate a top priority. We got serious about investing in clean and sustainable technologies . . . . Our climate investments were [slow] out of the gate, and many of them failed. . . . But with patience and persistence [by 2019] our surviving cleantech investments began to hit one home run after the next. [However, we currently] have no time for a victory lap. . . . Atmospheric carbon already exceeds the upper limit for climate stability. . . . The effects of runaway global warming are already plain to see: devastating hurricanes, biblical flooding, uncontrollable wildfires, killer heat waves, and extreme droughts. . . . I must warn you up front: we're not cutting emissions fast enough to outrun the damage on our doorstep. I said this in 2007, and I say it again today: what we're doing is not nearly enough. Unless we course correct with urgent speed and at a massive scale, we'll be staring at a doomsday scenario. The melting polar ice caps will drown coastal cities. Failed crops will lead to widespread famine. By midcentury, a billion souls worldwide could be climate refugees. . . . Fortunately, we have a powerful ally in this fight: innovation. Over the past fifteen years, prices for solar and wind power have plunged 90 percent. . . . Batteries are expanding the range of electrified vehicles at an ever lower cost. Greater energy efficiency has sharply reduced greenhouse gas emissions. . . . While a good many solutions are in hand, their deployment is nowhere near where it needs to be. We'll need massive investment and robust policy to make these innovations more affordable. We need to scale the ones we have - immediately - and invent the ones we still need. In short, we need both the now and the new.
  • John Doerr, Chairman of the US venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins and creator of the "Speed & Scale Plan." The quote is from the Prologue of his book Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. (With Ryan Panchadsaram, contributor.) Portfolio / Penguin, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC. (Oct. 28, 2021)

• What do we need to build to fight global warming? . . . The answer is actually quite simple and requires no miracle technology: we must electrify everything, fast. That means not just the supply-side sources of energy; we’ve got to electrify everything on the demand-side - the things we use in our households and small businesses every day, including cars, furnaces, stoves, water heaters, and dryers. I’m optimistic because over the last two decades {we've made} advances and cost reductions in electric vehicles, solar cells, batteries, heat pumps, and induction cooking . . . . People who are relying on governments to solve this problem don’t understand the power they have in their own hands and homes to fight global warming. . . . One astounding thing happens when we electrify everything: we would need only one-half of the primary energy that currently powers the economy. . . . The electrification of things you do for climate is good for your health. The air in our homes will be cleaner, our cars zippier and community air quality better, our appliances faster and more high-tech, like smartphones compared to rotary phones. The electrified future can be awesome.
  • Saul Griffith, Australian-American engineer, entrepreneur and author of the book Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. MIT Press. (2021) The quote is from a Time magazine article written by Griffith entitled "We Can Beat Climate Change If We Do One Thing Fast." (November 4, 2021)

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (book)

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need. Book by Bill Gates. Published by Alfred A. Knopf on February 16, 2021. ISBN 9780385546133 (hardcover), ISBN 9780385546140 (e-book).
Main Wikiquote page for How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
Wikipedia page for How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

• When it comes to climate change, I know innovation isn’t the only thing we need. But we cannot keep the earth livable without it. Techno-fixes are not sufficient, but they are necessary.
  • Bill Gates, from page 14 of his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021).

• [W]e’re going to need much more clean electricity in the coming years. Most experts agree that as we electrify other carbon-intensive processes like making steel and running cars, the world’s electricity supply will need to double or even triple by 2050. And that doesn’t even account for population growth, or the fact that people will get richer and use more electricity. So the world will need much more than three times the electricity we generate now.
  • Bill Gates, from page 79 of his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021).

• Deploying today’s renewables and improving transmission couldn’t be more important. . . . Unless we use large amounts of nuclear energy . . . every path to zero {net emissions} in the United States will require us to install as much wind and solar power as we can build and find room for. It’s hard to say exactly how much of America’s electricity will come from renewables in the end, but what we do know is that between now and 2050 we have to build them much faster - on the order of 5 to 10 times faster - than we’re doing right now. And remember that most countries aren’t as lucky as the United States when it comes to solar and wind resources. The fact that we can hope to generate a large percentage of our power from renewables is the exception rather than the rule. That’s why, even as we deploy, deploy, deploy solar and wind, the world is going to need some new clean electricity inventions too.
  • Bill Gates, from pages 83 and 84 of his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021).

• [I]t's . . . possible that some innovation will come along and make [other energy storage] ideas obsolete, the way the personal computer came along and more or less made the typewriter unnecessary. Cheap hydrogen could do that for storing electricity. . . . We could use electricity from a solar or wind farm to create hydrogen, store the hydrogen as a compressed gas or in another form, and then put it in a fuel cell to generate electricity on demand. [This] would solve the location problem; . . . although you can't ship sunlight in a railcar, you can turn it into fuel first and then ship it any way you like.
  • Bill Gates, from pages 93 and 94 of his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021).

• Over the past decade, installed wind capacity has grown by an average of 20 percent a year, and wind turbines now provide about 5 percent of the world's electricity. Wind is growing for one simple reason: It's getting cheaper.
  • Bill Gates, from page 193 of his book How to Avoid a Climate Disaster (2021).

COP26 Climate Conference in Scotland, UK

26th United Nations Climate Change Conference (or "COP26"), held in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom from October 31st to November 13th, 2021. (The quotes below are listed in the order used in the UNFCCC's "COP 26 Speeches and statements" webpage. The quotes are from the speeches as delivered; some of the English language speeches deviate slightly from the submitted speech transcripts.)

• [W]e [must] make this COP 26 in Glasgow the moment when we get real about climate change, and we can. We can get real on coal, cars, cash and trees. . . . But we cannot and will not succeed by government spending alone. . . . [T]he task now is to work together to help our friends to decarbonise using . . . the funds we have in development assistance and working with all the multilateral development banks so that in the key countries that need to make progress, we can jointly identify the projects that we can help to de-risk so that the private sector money can come in . . . . [Let us] in the next days devote ourselves to this extraordinary task. So that we not only continue with . . . a green industrial revolution, that is already creating millions of high wage, high skill jobs in power and technology, taking our economies forward. Let us also do enough to save our planet and our way of life.
  • Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, welcoming the COP representatives to Glasgow during the opening ceremony of the World Leaders Summit. Excerpted from a UN video of the speech on Youtube and the PDF text of the speech from the website for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Nov. 1, 2021)

• Climate change and biodiversity loss . . . pose an even greater existential threat [than the COVID-19 pandemic], to the extent that we have to put ourselves on what might be called a war-like footing. . . . Putting a value on carbon . . . [is] absolutely critical. . . . [W]e need a vast military style campaign to marshall the strength of the global private sector[, which has] trillions at its disposal . . . . [E]ach sector needs a clear strategy to speed up the process of getting innovations to market [and we] need to align private investment behind these industry strategies. . . . If we can develop a pipeline of many more sustainable and "bankable" projects, at a sufficient scale, it will attract greater investment. . . . CEOs and institutional investors have told me that alongside the promises countries have made, their nationally determined contributions, they need clear market signals, agreed globally, so that they have the confidence to invest without the goal posts suddenly moving. . . . [W]e are working to drive trillions of dollars in support of transition across ten of the most emitting and polluting industries [including] energy, agriculture, transportation, health systems and fashion. . . . I can only urge you, as the world’s decision-makers, to find practical ways of overcoming differences so we can all . . . rescue this precious planet and save the threatened future of our young people.
  • Charles, Prince of Wales, addressing the COP26 representatives during the opening ceremony of the World Leaders Summit. Excerpted from a Sky News video of the speech on Youtube and the pre-submitted text of the speech from princeofwales.gov.uk. Text of the speech has subsequently been made available at the website for the UK Royal Family, under the title "A speech by HRH The Prince of Wales at the Opening Ceremony of COP26, Glasgow." (Nov. 1, 2021)

• Climate change is already . . . costing our nations trillions of dollars [and] we know that none of us can escape the worst that’s yet to come if we fail to seize this moment. . . . But . . . within the growing catastrophe, I believe there’s an incredible opportunity . . . . We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable clean-energy future and in the process create millions of good-paying jobs [while we] create an environment that raises the standard of living around the world. . . . When I talk to the American people about climate change, I tell them it’s about jobs. It’s about workers [and the] communities that will revitalize themselves around new industries and opportunities. . . . So, let’s get to work.
  • Joe Biden, President of the United States, on Day 2 of the climate conference (excerpted from "Remarks by President Biden at the COP26 Leaders Statement" at whitehouse.gov). (November 1, 2021)

• We are aware that the industrialised countries have a particular responsibility. . . . The financing is essential if the industrialised countries are to maintain their credibility. . . . Ladies and gentlemen, with government activities alone we will not make progress. For this requires radical transformation of how we live, work and conduct business. I therefore want to take this opportunity to make a very clear appeal for pricing for CO2 emissions. With this form of pricing, which we already have in the European Union, which is to be introduced in China and which needs to be developed together with many others throughout the world, we could get our industries and businesses to find the technologically most effective and efficient ways to achieve climate neutrality. We need to work out how we can best integrate CO2-free mobility, CO2-free industry and CO2-free processes into our lives. My clear call in the Decade of Action, in the decade in which we now live, is for us to become more ambitious at a national level and at the same time to find global instruments that not only make use of taxpayers’ money but are also economically viable. And for me, the answer is CO2 pricing.
  • Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany from 2005 to 2021, on Day 2 of the COP26 climate conference (excerpted from "Speech by Federal Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel on the occasion of the World Leaders’ Summit at the 26th Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC (COP26) in Glasgow on 1 November 2021" at bundesregierung.de). (November 1, 2021)

• In the midst of this global brainstorming on climate change, on behalf of India, I would like to present five [commitments] to deal with this challenge. First - India will take its non-fossil energy capacity to 500 gigawatts by 2030. Second - India will meet 50 percent of its energy requirements from renewable energy by 2030. . . . And fifth - by the year 2070, India will achieve the target of Net Zero. . . . Today, when India has resolved to move forward with a new commitment and a new energy, the transfer of climate finance and low cost climate technologies have become more important. . . . India also understands the suffering of all other developing countries, shares them, and will continue to express their expectations.
  • Narendra Modi, Prime Minister of India since 2014, on Day 3 of the COP26 climate conference (excerpted from "National Statement by Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi at COP26 Summit in Glasgow" at mea.gov.in). (November 2, 2021)

2022

• India is pioneering a new model of economic development that could avoid the carbon-intensive approaches that many countries have pursued in the past - and provide a blueprint for other developing economies. . . . {India's} economic growth has been among the highest in the world over the past two decades {as coal} and oil have so far served as bedrocks of India’s industrial growth and modernisation . . . . India’s annual CO₂ emissions have risen to become the third highest in the world {but} India’s CO₂ emissions per person put it near the bottom of the world’s emitters . . . India’s sheer size and its huge scope for growth means that its energy demand is set to grow by more than that of any other country in the coming decades. . . . {T}he good news is that the clean energy transition in India is already well underway. . . . Subsidies for petrol and diesel were removed in the early 2010s, and subsidies for electric vehicles were introduced in 2019. . . . {The country is} laying the groundwork to scale up important emerging technologies such as hydrogen, battery storage, and low-carbon steel, cement and fertilisers. . . . A transition to clean energy is a huge economic opportunity {but support} from the international community is essential to help shift India’s development onto a low-carbon path {and} access of low cost long term capital is key to achieve net zero. . . . India aims to become a global hub for green hydrogen production and exports. . . . As a large developing economy with over 1.3 billion people, India’s climate adaptation and mitigation ambitions are not just transformational for India but for the entire planet.
  • From a commentary article written jointly by Fatih Birol, the Executive Director of the International Energy Agency, and Amitabh Kant, the CEO of the Indian think tank NITI Aayog. The article is entitled "India’s clean energy transition is rapidly underway, benefiting the entire world," and was first published by The Times of India (the original may be accessed here - a subscription is required to view it in full). (Jan. 10, 2022)

• [T]he solution has to be real economy government regulations to ban or to make higher [the] cost of the brown and polluting industries. That said, there are parts of finance which are longer-term and [evaluate] climate risks . . . and these are asset owners, the pension funds, the wealth funds and the insurance companies who are not so transactional [and] they’re not [as] interested in a deal to be done today. And they are in fact often mandated by their governments to take into account climate risk. So, I think those players will step up in this instance [turmoil in energy markets following Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine] and [now who might be] investing for [an electricity generation project with a] 10-year horizon which you have to do with gas they will [say], "Let’s do it with renewables." And we’ve seen movements like that in the UK, where they’re pivoting towards onshore wind, which before the invasion was politically unviable because of the NIMBY factor. . . . [T]he pension funds and the actual asset owners . . . have a longer term of perspective. And they are actually driving the issue to their commercial managers who have to service them and they’re saying, "Look, we want you to act on climate change," and that's a huge driver.
  • Dylan Tanner, executive director of Influence Map (a London-based think tank "that provides data and analysis on how business and finance are affecting the climate crisis"), in an interview on the Climate One podcast entitled "Big Money: Investment Managers Driving Corporate Action". (May 6, 2022)

• [A]s an atmospheric scientist and environmental engineer, I focus most on technologies — that’s what we think about most of what we need to be able to clean up electricity, what we need for cleaner cars. But those aren’t going to make it to market and those aren’t going to help cool the climate unless there are policies that get those to be deployed domestically. And what we do domestically isn’t enough because we’re only 1/7th of the world’s emissions, so we need diplomacy to take what we do here in the U.S. and make sure that that starts being applied in other parts of the world as well. . . . [A]s I was looking at the diplomacy [I noticed that what] the United States really gets right is being reciprocal . . . when we do something, we usually insist that our trading partners go along as well. You even hear in Congress talk about if we ever did have a carbon tax, being sure it got applied as tariffs on goods that got brought in.
  • Daniel S. Cohan, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, in an interview on the Marketplace Morning Report radio program entitled "A 3-pronged approach for adopting clean power", in which he discusses his book Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future (March 29, 2022). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300251678. (May 30, 2022)

• Solar has plunged by 90% in cost. Wind has plunged by 80% just in the past 11 or 12 years. . . . Things like wind and solar power really can already out-compete dirtier forms of electricity, and we just need to build more of them quickly; we’re not adding them fast enough. There are other technologies where we really need a big breakthrough. We don’t yet have affordable enough heat pumps. We don’t yet have a next generation nuclear technology that’s cheap enough, if we ever will. Geothermal is really at the cusp of becoming something that I think could really take off. What I also see, though, is that what carries those cutting-edge technologies to the cheaper cost can’t just happen in the lab. We need policies that pull those into the market, that get them adopted more — because if we can adopt them while they’re at that edge; while they’re not quite cheap enough, that can drive the economies of scale; that can drive what technologists call learning by doing.
  • Daniel S. Cohan, professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Rice University, in an interview on the Marketplace Morning Report radio program entitled "A 3-pronged approach for adopting clean power", in which he discusses his book Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future (March 29, 2022). Yale University Press. ISBN 9780300251678. (May 30, 2022)

• The ability to use renewables for the lion’s share of a grid’s supply, coupled with the fact that renewables have been made cheap and are getting yet cheaper, is the basis of a decarbonisation strategy all but universally accepted by those determined to stabilise the climate. Make the power on electric grids emissions-free, cheap and copious. Start electrifying all processes that now require fossil fuels - such as powering cars, or heating homes and steel foundries - where electrification is clearly possible. It does not deliver everything that is needed. But it delivers a lot.
  • Vijay Vaitheeswaran, writing as an identified author in a special section of the June 25, 2022 edition of The Economist entitled "Technology Quarterly: Climate Technology / The Energy Transition." This quote comes specifically from an article in that section entitled "Electrical tension: Electrifying everything does not solve the climate crisis, but it is a great start. Vijay Vaitheeswaran reports on what the transition still needs." The Economist. (June 25, 2022)

• Even if you're a climate denier, you should be on board with what we're advocating. . . . Our central conclusion is that we should go full speed ahead with the green energy transition because it's going to save us money.
  • Professor Doyne Farmer, director of the Complexity Economics programme, Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University's Martin School, as quoted in a BBC News article entitled "Switching to renewable energy could save trillions - study: Switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy could save the world as much as $12tn (£10.2tn) by 2050, an Oxford University study says;" the article was written by Jonah Fisher. The quote summarizes the findings from an open access Oxford University study entitled "Empirically grounded technology forecasts and the energy transition" written by Rupert Way, Matthew C. Ives, Penny Mealy, and Professor Farmer. (Both the BBC News story and the Oxford University report were published on Sept. 13, 2022)

• [Storing energy using] hydrogen . . . is getting a lot of play now. You could burn hydrogen in a gas turbine to produce electricity. You could use hydrogen in fuel cells that produce electricity without combustion; still a chemical reaction. Or you could simply use hydrogen to create ammonia, NH₃, which is another liquid, as opposed to gaseous, chemical storage medium. . . . [E]xperts say that we could probably convert the grid 80% to renewable - that's wind and solar - without having to deal with [the] long-duration storage problem. We'd still use gas peaker plants for . . . 20% of the electricity that we need. If you want to do the other 20%, you're going to have to solve that problem of . . . long-term storage for the grid, days in a row. And you could do that with gravity storage. You could do that with a chemical energy carrier. It's done with methane now. So we've got to get rid of the methane. But you could have hydrogen or ammonia or another chemical energy medium which is yet to be discovered. That's the challenge. We can get to 80%, but we can't get to 100%.
  • George Crabtree, Director of the Joint Center for Energy Storage Research at Argonne National Laboratory, in an interview on the US National Public Radio Morning Edition program entitled "The crucial need for energy storage is key to the future of clean energy." (November 17, 2022)

• The global energy crisis is driving a sharp acceleration in installations of renewable power, with total capacity growth worldwide set to almost double in the next five years, overtaking coal as the largest source of electricity generation along the way and helping keep alive the possibility of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C . . . . Global renewable power capacity is now expected to grow by 2,400 gigawatts (GW) over the 2022-2027 period, an amount equal to the entire power capacity of China today, according to Renewables 2022, the latest edition of the IEA {International Energy Agency}’s annual report on the sector. . . . The amount of renewable power capacity added in Europe in the 2022-27 period is forecast to be twice as high as in the previous five-year period, driven by a combination of energy security concerns and climate ambitions. . . . Beyond Europe, the upward revision in renewable power growth for the next five years is also driven by China, the United States and India, which are all implementing policies and introducing regulatory and market reforms more quickly than previously planned to combat the energy crisis. . . . China is expected to account for almost half of new global renewable power capacity additions over the 2022-2027 period. Meanwhile, the US Inflation Reduction Act has provided new support and long-term visibility for the expansion of renewables in the United States. . . . Utility-scale solar PV [photovoltaics] and onshore wind are the cheapest options for new electricity generation in a significant majority of countries worldwide. Global solar PV capacity is set to almost triple over the 2022-2027 period, surpassing coal and becoming the largest source of power capacity in the world. The report also forecasts an acceleration of installations of solar panels on residential and commercial rooftops . . . . Global wind capacity almost doubles in the forecast period, with offshore projects accounting for one-fifth of the growth. Together, wind and solar will account for over 90% of the renewable power capacity that is added over the next five years. . . . While China remains the dominant player [in photovoltaic supply chains], its share in global manufacturing capacity could decrease from 90% today to 75% by 2027. . . . Total global biofuel demand is set to expand by 22% over the 2022-2027 period. . . . In advanced economies . . . faster growth [in renewable power capacity] would require various regulatory and permitting challenges to be tackled and a more rapid penetration of renewable electricity in the heating and transport sectors. In emerging and developing economies, [faster growth] would mean addressing policy and regulatory uncertainties, weak grid infrastructure and a lack of access to affordable financing that are hampering new projects. . . . Worldwide, the accelerated case requires efforts to resolve supply chain issues, expand grids and deploy more flexibility resources to securely manage larger shares of variable renewables. The accelerated case’s faster renewables growth would move the world closer to a pathway consistent with reaching net zero emissions by 2050, which offers an even chance of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C.
  • From the press release accompanying the International Energy Agency's annual report on renewable energy, or "Renewables 2022." (December 6, 2022)

About the quote: The above quote summarizing the IEA's annual renewable energy report for 2022 contains very few links to Wikipedia pages or to any other information sources. For further information about any of the words or phrases in the quote, please refer to the report. Also, the quote changes "2 400 GW" (in the original) to "2,400 GW" (using a comma as a thousands-separator rather than a space, following the typical English-language convention).

• We have taken the first tentative steps towards a clean energy source that could revolutionize the world.
  • Jill M. Hruby, Administrator of the US National Nuclear Security Administration, announcing that scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory's National Ignition Facility had achieved nuclear "fusion ignition" (a controlled nuclear fusion reaction which produced more energy than was required to initiate it), as quoted in "Nuclear fusion breakthrough: Scientists generate more power than used to create reaction." CNBC. (December 13, 2022)

Confronting Climate Gridlock (book)

Confronting Climate Gridlock: How Diplomacy, Technology, and Policy Can Unlock a Clean Energy Future. Book by Daniel S. Cohan. Published by Yale University Press on March 29, 2022. ISBN 9780300251678 (hardcover).
(All page references below are to the hardcover version of the book).

• Offshore wind turbines reach even higher and wider than land-based ones. Though twice as expensive as land-based wind, their costs are falling fast. That’s making offshore wind increasingly attractive in coastal regions of Europe and the northeastern United States, where population density is high, land is scarce, and winds over the ocean far outpace those over land.
  • Daniel S. Cohan, from page 83 of his book Confronting Climate Gridlock (2022).

• [W]e’ll never build enough batteries to back up the grid. Batteries are costly to build and costly to operate, since energy is dissipated each time they are charged and discharged. Transmission moves power more efficiently. Complementary resources smooth out supply. Demand flexibility narrows gaps and surpluses between supply and demand. The more robustly we deploy complementary resources, transmission, and flexibility, the less storage we will need to build and the less often we will have to deploy it, reducing the overall costs of electricity.
  • Daniel S. Cohan, from page 96 of his book Confronting Climate Gridlock (2022).

• [H]ydrogen has many potential uses, including electricity storage, trucking, chemical production, and industrial heat - which means options for producing and distributing hydrogen deserve a closer look. "Hydrogen is hard to make, hard to move, and hard to store, but once you’ve got it, it is a brilliant ingredient," [Professor Michael] Webber told me.
  • Daniel S. Cohan, from page 119 of his book Confronting Climate Gridlock (2022).

US Inflation Reduction Act

• The [provisions of the proposed Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, including] expansion of the wind and solar credits, the exciting expansion, or creation, of additional credits in green hydrogen, the inclusion of hydrogen cars in electric car credits, the extension of the electric car credits - all those things are good [but they're] not enough. The question now is, what do we do next?
  • Bob Inglis, former Republican congressman from South Carolina and current executive director of RepublicEn, as quoted in "Carrots not sticks? Senate bill may offer template for climate action." The Christian Science Monitor; article by Stephanie Hanes. (August 1, 2022)

• The Inflation Reduction Act calls for spending less than $500 billion over a decade, compared with the American Rescue Plan’s $1.9 trillion in a single year . . . . But if the spending isn’t very large, how can it have such a big impact? The answer is that right now we’re sitting on a sort of cusp. Renewable energy technology has made revolutionary progress, and renewables are already cheaper in many areas than fossil fuels. A moderate push from public policy is all that it will take to transition to a much greener economy. And the Inflation Reduction Act will provide that push.
  • Paul Krugman, winner of the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, in a New York Times op-ed column entitled "Did Democrats Just Save Civilization?" (August 8, 2022)

• [The Inflation Reduction Act] . . . doesn’t solve the climate challenge. This is the beginning . . . and the implementation is going to be everything. This is . . . like a starting gun for a race that's going to . . . hopefully define the coming decade of building something better.
  • Sam Ricketts, a co-founder and senior advisor for the climate change advocacy group Evergreen Action, in a Climate One podcast episode entitled "The Inflation Reduction Act: What's in the Sausage?" (August 10, 2022)

• I’m about to sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law . . . . The [climate component of this legislation] invests $369 billion to take the most aggressive action ever . . . in confronting the climate crisis and strengthening . . . our energy security.
  • US President Joe Biden, excerpted from "Remarks by President Biden At Signing of H.R. 5376, The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022" at whitehouse.gov. (For more extensive excerpts from Biden's remarks see the "Remarks upon signing the Inflation Reduction Act" section of the "Joe Biden" Wikiquote page). (August 16, 2022)

• {The US Inflation Reduction Act of 2022} is really good for a developing economy like Indonesia due to spillover effects because of lower costs {for technologies that help mitigate climate change}.
  • Fabby Tumiwa, Executive Director of the IESR, an Indonesian energy and environmental policy think tank, as quoted in "The Biggest Thing to Happen in International Climate Diplomacy in Decades: The Inflation Reduction Act could change the world in at least five ways." The Atlantic. (Quote transcribed by and article written by Robinson Meyer.) (August 31, 2022)

• [T]he analogy [regarding the three recent US climate laws] we’ve been thinking about is the backbone, the brain, and the lungs. So, the backbone being the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law {November 2021} . . . . That law [includes] investment in US infrastructure [such as] roads and bridges, but including significant energy infrastructure. Then there's the brain, the CHIPS and Science Act {August 2022}, and chips being the semiconductors that are in {electric vehicles, energy infrastructure, etc.} . . . and the science part authorizes additional investments from Congress in science {related to grid upgrades, zero emissions research, etc. by the} National Science Foundation and DOE {Department of Energy}. And then the third piece is the lungs. So, [taking a deep breath] breathing into that clean energy economy, the Inflation Reduction Act {August 2022} incentivizes deployment of clean technologies and really focuses on lowering costs for American families.
  • Carla Frisch, Acting Executive Director of the Office of Policy at the US Department of Energy, in an interview segment from a Climate One podcast entitled "The Inflation Reduction Act Passed. Now What?" (September 23, 2022)

• Great, that is fantastic . . . . We want to be able to see energy - clean energy - produced in every pocket of the country. Blue states, red states, really it helps to save people money, so it’s all about green.
  • US Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, upon learning that many of the new climate projects generated by the Inflation Reduction Act will create jobs and economic benefits in Republican-held ("red") Congressional districts; as quoted in "Big winners from Biden’s climate law: Republicans who voted against it - GOP lawmakers voted en masse against Biden’s signature bill. But roughly two-thirds of green-energy projects announced since it became law are going to Republican-held congressional districts, a POLITICO analysis found." Politico. (Article written by Kelsey Tamborrino and Josh Siegel.) (January 23, 2023)

• [I]f you think about how many times [US] politicians have tried and failed to pass climate legislation, it's really notable that the Inflation Reduction Act went through. So in the past, basically legislators tried to have sticks: . . . there would be a cap and trade bill; people had debated a carbon tax. The Inflation Reduction Act includes no sticks, it's only carrots. . . . [T]his law is kind of a complicated way to try to go about decarbonizing America, but it proved to be the only politically viable option that American politicians had yet come up with. And so, I think, on those terms, it's absolutely a victory . . . for those who were trying to advance some kind of climate legislation through Washington.
  • Charlotte Howard, Executive Editor and New York Bureau Chief at The Economist, in a segment on the Marketplace Morning Report radio program entitled "How could federal dollars transform American manufacturing?" (February 20, 2023)

COP27 Climate Conference in Egypt

27th United Nations Climate Change Conference (or "COP27"), held in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt from November 6th to 18th, 2022

• Climate security goes hand in hand with energy security. Putin’s abhorrent war in Ukraine and rising energy prices across the world are not a reason to go slow on climate change. They are a reason to act faster. Because diversifying our energy supplies by investing in renewables is precisely the way to insure ourselves against the risks of energy dependency. It is also a fantastic source of new jobs and growth.
  • UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, addressing the COP27 representatives. Excerpted from a gov.uk transcript of the speech subtitled "Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's statement at the COP27 summit in Egypt," and from a combined video of COP27 speeches provided by The Telegraph news website (the speech begins at approximately 2:49:50). (Nov. 7, 2022)

• [COP27] ended on Sunday morning with researchers largely frustrated at the lack of any ambition to phase out fossil fuels. However, there was one silver lining: delegates from low and middle income countries (LMICs) came away with an agreement on a new 'loss and damage' fund to help them cover the costs of climate-change impacts. . . . Many blamed the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for a lack of progress on fossil fuels.
  • Ehsan Masood, Jeff Tollefson and Aisling Irwin, journalists writing for the science journal Nature, in "COP27 climate talks: what succeeded, what failed and what’s next: Researchers are frustrated at the glacial pace of decarbonisation - but cheered the commitment to create a 'loss and damage' fund." (Nov. 21, 2022)

2023

• [T]he change we need is to put innovation at the heart of everything we do. . . . [M]ajor challenges like energy security and net zero will be solved by innovation. The more we innovate, the more we grow.
  • UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak in his first major speech of 2023. Excerpted from an Energy Live News brief summary and short video clip of the climate-related points from the speech, and from a gov.uk transcript and video of the full speech. (Jan. 4, 2023)

• India has to do it for itself. . . . And India needs to do it for the world.
  • Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School of international affairs at Tufts University, discussing the benefits that will flow to India from its efforts to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the benefits that will also flow to the entire world community. The quote is from a Time magazine article entitled "How India Became the Most Important Country in the Climate Fight;" the article was written by Time senior correspondent Justin Worland. (Jan. 12, 2023)

• Last year was a double milestone for decarbonizing the world’s energy system. It was the first year when investment in the energy transition equaled global investment in fossil fuels . . . . [And] 2022 was . . . the first year when investment in decarbonizing energy surpassed $1 trillion. The year-on-year increase of more than $250 billion from 2021 was the largest jump yet.
  • Nat Bullard, a "senior contributor" at Bloomberg Green, and a venture partner at Voyager Venture Capital, an early-stage climate technology investor, summarizing the information in a BloombergNEF report entitled "Global Low-Carbon Energy Technology Investment Surges Past $1 Trillion for the First Time." The quote is taken from a Time magazine article written by Bullard entitled "Clean Energy Investment Sets $1.1 Trillion Record, Matching Fossil Fuels For the First Time." (Jan. 26, 2023)

• [T]he process for the permitting of renewable energy generation and electric transmission projects in the United States is multi-layered and often extremely long. If the U.S. is to achieve its climate ambitions and fully implement transformative legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress will also have to enable a massively accelerated build-out of clean energy infrastructure. At the same time, valuable environmental safeguards, and the established public participatory and related administrative processes used to adopt and implement them, cannot simply be sidestepped. Congress should approach federal permitting reform in a way that maximizes efficiency in government decisionmaking through shorter timelines for regulatory approvals without sacrificing the value of the current process in protecting the environment and local stakeholders. Further, it is essential that reforms are evidence-based in targeting the major sources of current delays.
  • From the executive summary of a Brookings Institution report entitled "How to reform federal permitting to accelerate clean energy infrastructure: A nonpartisan way forward" written by Rayan Sud, Sanjay Patnaik, and Robert Glicksman. (Feb. 14, 2023)

• Because Australia has {aggressively incentivized adoption of} rooftop solar, the economics are extraordinary. . . . So if we use our cheap sunshine to drive our cars and heat our homes, we're going to save money sooner.
  • Saul Griffith, Australian-American engineer, MacArthur fellow and author of the book The Big Switch: Australia’s Electric Future, Black Inc., an imprint of Schwartz Books (2022). The quote is from an Australian Broadcasting Corporation News article entitled "Rewiring Australia founder Saul Griffith is a man on a mission to electrify the nation, one suburb at a time." (Article written by Matt Henry and Olivia Rousset.) (Feb. 26, 2023)

• In the last several months all the key associations looked across the table and realised we were arguing for the same thing. . . . This is Big Wind and Big Solar coming to the table and saying we want to get things done. . . . It will not be possible to achieve anything close to a climate solution with the current {permitting} system in place.
  • Jason Grumet, CEO of the American Clean Power Association, as quoted in "US renewables industry joins Big Oil to fight delays to project permits: Unlikely alliance underlines frustration that lengthy review process is hampering energy development." Financial Times; article written by Myles McCormick and Aime Williams. (Apr. 23, 2023)

• {H}ydrogen is seen as a way to substitute large amounts of energy that we’re buying now at extremely high costs from countries that we shouldn’t buy this from.
  • Nils Aldag, CEO of Sunfire GmbH, a German manufacturer of hydrogen electrolyzers, commenting on the ten-fold increase in the number of product orders Sunfire receives compared with 2021. The quote is taken from a Financial Times article entitled "Ukraine war and Biden’s IRA force EU to accelerate energy transition: But business leaders warn that high electricity prices and a barrage of regulation could discourage investment;" the article was written by Alice Hancock. (May 29, 2023)

• And it's just the beginning. You know, we also protected the most significant breakthrough ever—ever—in dealing with the existential threat of climate change. Today, new wind and solar power is cheaper than fossil fuel. Since I've been in office, clean energy and advanced manufacturing have brought in $470 billion in private investments. That's going to create thousands of jobs—good-paying jobs—all across this country and help the environment at the same time. And remember, at the beginning of this debate, some of my Republican colleagues were determined to gut the clean energy investments. And I said no, and we kept them all.
  • Joe Biden, Address to the Nation on the Passage of Public Debt Limit and Federal Budget Legislation, 2 June 2023

• We have a tremendous sense of pride in our history . . . But we also understand that energy is energy, whether it is generated by wind, steam or whatever it might be.
  • Dewey F. Bartlett Jr., mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma from 2009 to 2016, and Chairman of the Board at Tulsa Ports, discussing the business and economic growth opportunities presented by the expanding US renewable energy sector. The quote is from an article in The New York Times entitled “The Clean Energy Future Is Arriving Faster Than You Think: The United States is pivoting away from fossil fuels and toward wind, solar and other renewable energy, even in areas dominated by the oil and gas industries.” (Aug. 17, 2023)

• Solar energy is the most widely available energy resource on Earth, and its economic attractiveness is improving fast in a cycle of increasing investments. . . . [D]ue to technological trajectories set in motion by past policy, a global irreversible solar tipping point may have passed where solar energy gradually comes to dominate global electricity markets, without any further climate policies. Uncertainties arise, however, over grid stability in a renewables-dominated power system, the availability of sufficient finance in underdeveloped economies, the capacity of supply chains and political resistance from regions that lose employment.
  • From the introductory abstract of a study led by the University of Exeter and University College London which was published in the British science journal Nature Communications entitled "The momentum of the solar energy transition." (Oct. 17, 2023)

• {T}he challenges are great but we have the conviction that by working together - the {European} Commission, the ITER Organization and F4E {Fusion for Energy} - we can overcome them and slowly but steadily bring the ITER project back on its rails.
  • Marc Lachaise, Director of Fusion for Energy (the organization responsible for overseeing the European Union’s 45.4% contribution for the cost of ITER’s construction), as quoted in a Fusion for Energy news release entitled “Addressing ITER’s great challenges.” The statement was made while discussing construction delays in what is planned to be the world’s largest magnetic confinement fusion tokamak and its achievement of “first plasma.” (Oct. 30, 2023)

• Electricity generation. We expect that the 23 gigawatts (GW) in 2023 and 37 GW in 2024 of new solar capacity scheduled to come online will help U.S. solar generation grow by 15% in 2023 and by 39% in 2024. We expect solar and wind generation together in 2024 to overtake electric power generation from coal for the first year ever, exceeding coal by nearly 90 billion kilowatthours.
  • US Energy Information Administration in its "Short-Term Energy Outlook December 2023" (PDF download), pages 2 and 3. (Dec. 2, 2023)

• We're not interested in a pilot [climate project] just for experimentation. . . . We're interested in proving that they work and that then we can scale them. . . . Utilities [can't afford to] move fast and break things [but they] can be great mechanisms for scaling up innovation.
  • Robert Blue, CEO at Dominion Energy, a Virginia-based, investor-owned utility that supplies electricity in three states and natural gas in twelve states, as quoted in "Dominion CEO Bob Blue on offshore wind, batteries, and the utility's role in the energy transition: Dominion Energy CEO Bob Blue joined Episode 69 of the Factor This! podcast to break down Dominion's ambitious carbon reduction plan, offshore wind's turbulent waters, and why the utility is leaning in on long-duration battery tech.” Renewable Energy World's "Factor This!" podcast. Article written by and podcast interview conducted by John Engel. (Dec. 4, 2023)

• I think [it’s] to be determined {whether the post-pandemic, low-interest-rate-fueled investment spike which flowed to non-governmental fusion companies will actually result in commercially viable fusion power}. . . . When interest rates were low, people were willing to make long-term bets. [However, the] level of investment was substantial, and it should yield technological progress.
  • Carlos Paz-Soldan, physics professor at Columbia University, as quoted in a National Public Radio article entitled "Companies say they're closing in on nuclear fusion as an energy source. Will it work?" (The article tracks a Morning Edition embedded audio transmission segment, and it paraphrases Paz-Soldan’s conclusion that since interest rates have gone up recently, fusion companies which can’t show significant progress may not be able to raise money in future venture rounds.) (Dec. 4, 2023)

• If the world is to decarbonise, then more clean energy is needed, fast. [To meet current UNFCCC pledges, countries must] raise global renewable-energy capacity to 11,000 gigawatts (GW) by 2030. [However, supply chain problems and rising interest rates cloud the industry's future. Another obstacle is slow permitting] approval, which delays projects for years and can needlessly tie up capital, lowering returns. [And,] too little development is happening in the global south [because investors require a premium when venturing money in emerging markets]. A last obstacle is protectionism, which raises costs and threatens shortages. . . . Rather than micromanaging production, governments should unleash investment, by acting boldly to strip back permitting rules and ease the risk of projects in the global south [which can come from blending in government money in southern projects that assumes some risk]. They also need to face up to the fact that protectionism frustrates their climate goals. It leads to lower returns, higher prices for power and more broken promises over decarbonisation.
  • The Economist (in keeping with longstanding tradition Economist articles are typically unsigned, which permits the news magazine to speak with one collective voice). Excerpted from an article in a Dec. 9th - 15th 2023 physical copy of the magazine entitled "Power Trip: Expanding renewable-energy capacity is becoming worryingly hard." An online (subscription-required) version of the article can be found here. (Dec. 7, 2023)

• [D]ata from the World Meteorological Agency show that, as the U.N. Secretary-General, António Guterres, told the {COP28} global climate talks in Dubai last week, we can safely say, even with weeks to go, that 2023 will take the title {as the world's hottest year on record}. . . . And yet . . . [a]lmost simultaneous with the breakout in temperature, there was a breakout in the installation of renewable energy, especially solar power, around the world. . . . {T}he cost of clean energy has dropped so far that it is now possible that saving the planet might be a corollary of saving cash. This ongoing drop in price is more than a decade old, but sometime in the past few years it crossed an invisible line, making it cheaper than hydrocarbons, and this was the year when that reality finally translated into dramatic action on the ground. . . . There are plenty of other technologies we’re [currently] spending money on, including small nuclear reactors and giant carbon-sucking machines, that may or may not someday play a role in the climate fight, but, for all the furor they produce, they seem unlikely to make much difference anytime soon. In the next few years, while the planet’s climate system teeters on the edge of breaking, it’s sun, wind, and batteries that matter. They’re cheap, and they’re ready.
  • Bill McKibben, climate change activist, author and journalist, writing in The New Yorker in an article entitled "The U.N. Announces the Hottest Year: The climate heated up, but clean energy did, too." (Dec. 12, 2023)

• {In 2023 it was the clean economy expansion efforts of} China that blew everyone away. In what may be the single biggest sustainability headline of the year, China’s national oil company, Sinopec, said the country had reached peak gasoline demand (in part by radically increasing sales of EVs). Some analysts believe China may have peaked in total carbon emissions already. The country was on track to add 150 gigawatts of solar this year (versus adding 87 gigawatts in 2022), more than the total capacity in the U.S. And in a rare positive moment in U.S.-China relations, the countries agreed to ramp up renewables. If all the estimates are true, it’s a monumental and fundamental shift in global energy and transportation systems . . . . On the other hand . . . As critics point out, China is permitting more coal plants, but this can get misconstrued. (People say to me that China is building two plants per week when, in reality, many don’t get built.) The new plants are much cleaner, it’s generally backup power, and China is also cancelling and shelving plants rapidly as well.
  • Andrew Winston, sustainable business author, writing in Harvard Business Review, in "2023: A Strange, Tumultuous Year in Sustainability." (Dec. 28, 2023)

COP28 Climate Conference in Dubai

28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (or "COP28"), held in Expo City, Dubai from November 30th to December 12th, 2023

• It is often heard . . . that efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing the use of fossil fuels and developing cleaner energy sources will lead to a reduction in the number of jobs. What is happening is that millions of people are losing their jobs due to different effects of climate change: rising sea levels, droughts and other phenomena affecting the planet have left many people adrift. Conversely, the transition to renewable forms of energy, properly managed, as well as efforts to adapt to the damage caused by climate change, are capable of generating countless jobs in different sectors. This demands that politicians and business leaders should even now be concerning themselves with it.
  • Pope Francis, in the English language version of his "Laudate Deum" apostolic exhortation, paragraph 10. The Vatican released the document about a month before the COP28 climate conference to encourage the negotiators in Dubai "to transcend their petty interests and to think in bigger terms {so} that COP28 will allow for a decisive acceleration of energy transition." (Oct. 4, 2023)

• We are edging ever-closer to a fusion-powered reality. And at the same time, yes, significant scientific and engineering challenges exist. . . . Careful thought and thoughtful policy is going to be critical to navigate this.
  • John Kerry, U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate speaking at the COP28 climate summit, announcing that the US would seek to cooperate with other nations in five areas related to fusion power development: research, future marketplace development, regulatory frameworks, maintaining a workforce pipeline, and improving public education / engagement. Kerry's announcement echoed the themes in a White House press release issued three days earlier. The quote comes from an Associated Press article entitled "At COP28, John Kerry unveils nuclear fusion strategy as a source of clean energy;" the article was written by Jennifer McDermott. (Dec. 5, 2023)

• {UNFCCC participant countries should transition} away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science[; they should also accelerate] efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power[; and triple] renewable energy capacity globally.
  • Agreement ending the COP28 UN Climate Conference in Dubai, UAE, as quoted in "COP28 climate summit ends with deal to transition away from fossil fuels." CNBC. Article written by Ruxandra Iordache (editor) and Sam Meredith (correspondent). (Dec. 13, 2023)

• {UNFCCC participant countries should accelerate} zero- and low-emission technologies, including, inter alia, renewables, nuclear, abatement and removal technologies such as carbon capture and utilization and storage.
  • Agreement ending the COP28 UN Climate Conference in Dubai, UAE, as quoted in "Takeaways from the COP28 climate deal." Reuters. Article written by Richard Valdmanis. (Dec. 13, 2023)

• No, the Cop28 agreement will not enable the world to hold the 1.5C limit, but yes, the result is a pivotal landmark. This agreement delivers on making it clear to all financial institutions, businesses and societies that we are now finally – eight years behind the Paris schedule – at the true "beginning of the end" of the fossil fuel-driven world economy.
  • Professor Johan Rockström, joint director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany, as quoted in "Cop28 landmark deal agreed to 'transition away' from fossil fuels: Summit president hails 'historic package to accelerate climate action' but critics decry 'litany of loopholes' in final text." The Guardian. Article written by Adam Morton, Patrick Greenfield, Fiona Harvey and Nina Lakhani (in Dubai), and Damian Carrington (environment editor). (Dec. 13, 2023)

• Tripling {global renewable energy capacity} is a monumental change. . . . We don't have any structures that fit 100% with the new system that is coming.
  • Francesco La Camera, Director-General of the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), commenting on the challenges of achieving a tripling target that was embraced by the COP delegates after it was promoted by IRENA. The quote is from an article in a Dec. 14th physical copy of The Wall Street Journal entitled "Climate Deal Puts Pressure on Renewables: Price drops, surging growth in solar and wind make goals more realistic." Article written by Ed Ballard. An online (subscription-required) version of the article can be found here. (Dec. 13, 2023)

• This is not a transition that will happen from one day to the other . . . . Whole economies and societies are dependent on fossil fuels. Fossil capital will not disappear just because we made a decision here. [But the COP28 final agreement sends] a strong political message that this is the pathway.
  • Susana Muhamad, Colombia's Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development, as quoted in "In a First, Nations at Climate Summit Agree to Move Away From Fossil Fuels: Nearly 200 countries convened by the United Nations approved a milestone plan to ramp up renewable energy and transition away from coal, oil and gas." The New York Times. Article written by Brad Plumer and Max Bearak ("reporting from the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, United Arab Emirates"). (Dec. 13, 2023)

2024

• China's status as the colossus of renewable energy is set to be cemented in the next five years, with the world's second-biggest economy adding more capacity than the rest of globe combined. The International Energy Agency said in its Renewables 2023 report . . . that China will account for 56% of renewable energy capacity additions in the 2023-28 period. . . . There is also a caveat to China's rapid build-out of renewable capacity because at the same time it is still adding substantial coal-fired generation. China is the world's biggest coal producer and importer and has more coal-fired capacity under construction than the rest of the world combined. China is building 136.24 GW of coal-fired generation, and has another 255.5 GW at the announced, pre-permit or permitted stage, according to data compiled by the Global Energy Monitor. . . . It's clear that renewables are increasing their share of China's power generation, but it's equally clear coal-fired power is going to be around for decades to come, and that if China does meet its goal of net-zero emissions by 2060, it will largely be achieved in the final years prior to the deadline.
  • Clyde Russell, an "Asia Commodities and Energy Columnist" at Reuters, in a commentary column entitled "China dominates renewable energy and coal power forecasts." Reuters. Column edited by Tom Hogue. (Jan. 11, 2024)

• A virtual power plant is a system of distributed energy resources - like rooftop solar panels, electric vehicle chargers, and smart water heaters - that work together to balance energy supply and demand on a large scale. They are usually run by local utility companies who oversee this balancing act. . . . VPPs can . . . allow grid operators to control the demand from end users. For example, smart thermostats linked to air conditioning units can [stagger] cooling times [to] help prevent abrupt demand hikes that might overwhelm the grid and cause outages. Similarly, electric vehicle chargers can adapt to the grid’s requirements by either supplying or utilizing electricity. These distributed energy sources connect to the grid through communication technologies like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular services.
  • MIT Technology Review contributor June Kim, in an article entitled "How virtual power plants are shaping tomorrow’s energy system: By orchestrating EVs, batteries, and smart home devices, VPPs can help make the grid cleaner and more efficient." (Feb. 7, 2024)

• [Batteries are] able to very effectively manage that evening ramp where solar is going down and customer demand is increasing. [Batteries also] made some differences last summer. We were able to meet high load days and wildfire days when we might lose some power lines.
  • John Phipps, executive director of grid operations for the California Independent System Operator, as quoted in an article in The New York Times entitled "Giant Batteries Are Transforming the Way the U.S. Uses Electricity: They’re delivering solar power after dark in California and helping to stabilize grids in other states. And the technology is expanding rapidly." Article written by Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich. (May 7, 2024)

• We have to be able to integrate all {the new} low-cost, renewable energy {flowing into the North American electrical grid} fast . . . . {With reconductoring, you’re} not acquiring a new right of way; you’re not building new towers. So it can be done much faster. . . . In the longer run, newer lines will play an important role{, but reconductoring is an inexpensive, quick way of keeping up with the increasing stresses placed on the electrical grid by changes in both supply and demand.}
  • Amol Phadke, an energy scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a contributing “corresponding author” of a report entitled “Reconductoring with Advanced Conductors Can Accelerate the Rapid Transmission Expansion Required for a Clean Grid”, as quoted in an article in The Washington Post written by Shannon Osaka entitled “How a simple fix could double the size of the U.S. electricity grid: Rewiring miles of power lines could make space for data centers, AI and a boom in renewables.” (May 28, 2024)

• Solar cells will in all likelihood be the single biggest source of electrical power on the planet by the mid 2030s. By the 2040s they may be the largest source not just of electricity but of all energy. On current trends, the all-in cost of the electricity they produce promises to be less than half as expensive as the cheapest available today. This will not stop climate change, but could slow it a lot faster. . . . The benefits [of cheaper energy] start with a boost to productivity. Anything that people use energy for today will cost less - and that includes pretty much everything. . . . Cheap energy can purify water, and even desalinate it. It can drive the hungry machinery of artificial intelligence. It can make billions of homes and offices more bearable in summers . . . . But [the] most consequential [result will be that] cheaper energy will free the imagination, setting [the] wheels of the mind spinning with excitement and new possibilities.
  • The Economist (Economist articles are typically unsigned by any individual author; this permits the news magazine to speak with one collective voice). From a special weekly edition entitled "Dawn of the solar age;" the quote comes from an article in that edition entitled "The exponential growth of solar power will change the world: An energy-rich future is within reach." (Jun. 20, 2024)

• Something approaching a miracle has been taking place in California this spring. Beginning in early March, for some portion of almost every day, a combination of solar, wind, geothermal, and hydropower has been producing more than a hundred per cent of the state’s demand for electricity. Some afternoons, solar panels alone have produced more power than the state uses. And, at night, large utility-scale batteries that have been installed during the past few years are often the single largest source of supply to the grid—sending the excess power stored up during the afternoon back out to consumers across the state. It’s taken years of construction—and solid political leadership in Sacramento—to slowly build this wave, but all of a sudden it’s cresting into view. California has the fifth-largest economy in the world and, in the course of a few months, the state has proved that it’s possible to run a thriving modern economy on clean energy.
  • Bill McKibben, climate change activist, author and journalist, writing in The New Yorker in an article entitled "California Is Showing How a Big State Can Power Itself Without Fossil Fuels: For part of almost every day this spring, the state produced more electricity than it needed from renewable sources." (Jun. 27, 2024)

• Our nation has eight million jobs in clean energy!
  Can we double it, guys, before the sea levels rise
  And I'm roommates with a manatee?
  • "Weird Al" Yankovic, "Deja Vu (But Worse)," 28 June 2024

• As summer heat strikes, the US grid increasingly relies on a kind of invisible weapon - the "virtual power plant" - to prevent blackouts. . . . Energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie says the VPPs already deployed or under development in the US will be able to save as much juice as 33 nuclear reactors can produce. . . . The US Energy Department estimates that peak consumption will increase by as much as 200 gigawatts through 2030, and about 80% of that boost could be met through VPPs.
  • Bloomberg News reporter Josh Saul writing for Bloomberg's Energy Daily newsletter in a post entitled "The Invisible Weapon Being Used to Prevent Blackouts: The US electric grid increasingly relies on the "virtual power plant" to limit consumption - and ward off outages - during peak periods." (Aug. 19, 2024)

• The International Energy Agency (IEA) . . . reckons that the global installed capacity of battery storage will need to rise from less than 200 gigawatts (GW) last year to more than a terawatt (TW) by the end of the decade, and nearly 5TW by 2050 . . . . Fortunately, though, the business of storing energy on the grid is at last being turbocharged. . . . A plunge in the price of lithium batteries is fuelling their adoption on the grid. . . . Sodium-ion batteries are one promising alternative {and incumbents} are rushing to develop the technology for the grid.
  • The Economist (following the news magazine's usual convention, this article was unsigned by any individual author). From a business news item entitled "Clean energy’s next trillion-dollar business: Grid-scale batteries are taking off at last." (Sep. 1, 2024)

• At this point the {Texas} legislature can’t do anything to stop the growth of solar and wind and batteries . . . . The state desperately needs it.
  • University of Houston energy economist Ed Hirs, describing the need for more electricity generation in Texas and the currently increasing supply of electricity generated by renewables (which should help the Texas Interconnection and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas avoid catastrophic outages like the February 2021 Texas Power Crisis). The quote is from an article in The New York Times entitled "America’s Oil Country Increasingly Runs on Renewables: Texas, the biggest oil-producing state, has turned to solar power and battery storage to see it through extreme weather. But with demand rising, much more power will be needed." (Sep. 18, 2024)

• With global electricity demand set to grow strongly, new technologies {like enhanced geothermal systems and closed-loop geothermal systems} are opening up the massive potential of geothermal energy to provide around-the-clock clean power in almost all countries around the world, according to a new IEA report. The report, The Future of Geothermal Energy, finds that geothermal energy could meet 15% of global electricity demand growth between now and 2050 if project costs continue to decline. This would mean . . . delivering annual output equivalent to the current electricity demand of the United States and India combined. . . . Importantly, geothermal energy can draw upon the expertise of today’s oil and gas industries by using existing drilling techniques and equipment to go deeper under the earth’s surface . . . . Conventional geothermal remains a location-specific, niche technology today with most of the installed capacity in countries that have either volcanic activity or straddle tectonic fault lines . . . . But new technologies are . . . opening up the potential to benefit from it in nearly all countries. . . . [T]he report finds that costs could fall by 80% by 2035 to around $50 per megawatt hour (MWh). This would make geothermal the cheapest source of dispatchable low-emissions electricity on a par with existing hydropower and nuclear installations. . . . If next-generation geothermal grows strongly in the coming years, employment in the overall geothermal sector could increase sixfold to 1 million jobs by 2030 . . . . Up to 80% of the investment required in geothermal involves capacity and skills that are transferrable from existing oil and gas operations. The oil and gas industry can also benefit {because next-generation geothermal can} serve as a hedge against commercial risks related to projected future declines in oil and gas demand. At a time when the digital economy and artificial intelligence applications are growing strongly {and with} next-generation geothermal offering a stable and essentially inexhaustible power source, large technology companies are already signing power purchase agreements with new projects.
  • Excerpt from an International Energy Agency press release entitled "Technology breakthroughs are unlocking geothermal energy’s vast potential in countries across the globe." The news release discusses a much more detailed IEA report entitled "The Future of Geothermal Energy." (Dec. 13, 2024)

"Renewables 2023" - IEA report - Jan., 2024

• [1] 2023 saw a step change in renewable capacity additions, driven by China’s solar PV market. Global annual renewable capacity additions increased by almost 50% to nearly 510 gigawatts (GW) in 2023, the fastest growth rate in the past two decades. . . . [2] Achieving the COP28 target of tripling global renewable capacity by 2030 hinges on policy implementation. . . . [C]hallenges [that could prevent reaching the tripling goal] fall into four main categories and differ by country: 1) policy uncertainties and delayed policy responses to the new macroeconomic environment; 2) insufficient investment in grid infrastructure preventing faster expansion of renewables; 3) cumbersome administrative barriers and permitting procedures and social acceptance issues; 4) insufficient financing in emerging and developing economies. . . . [3] The global power mix will be transformed by 2028. . . . In 2028, renewable energy sources [are expected to] account for over 42% of global electricity generation, with the share of wind and solar PV doubling to 25%. . . . [4] China is the world’s renewables powerhouse. . . . China’s role is critical in reaching the global goal of tripling renewables because the country is expected to install more than half of the new capacity required globally by 2030. . . . [5] The US, the EU, India and Brazil remain bright spots for onshore wind and solar PV growth. . . . Supportive policy environments and the improving economic attractiveness of solar PV and onshore wind are the primary drivers behind this acceleration. . . . [6] Solar PV prices plummet amid growing supply glut. . . . Despite unprecedented PV manufacturing expansion in the United States and India driven by policy support, China is expected to maintain its 80‑95% share of global supply chains . . . . [7] Onshore wind and solar PV are cheaper than both new and existing fossil fuel plants. . . . Despite the increasing contribution needs for flexibility and reliability to integrate variable renewables, the overall competitiveness of onshore wind and solar PV changes only slightly by 2028 in Europe, China, India and the United States. . . . [8] The new macroeconomic environment presents further challenges that policy makers need to address. . . . Since 2022, central bank base interest rates have increased from below 1% to almost 5%. . . . The implications . . . are manifold . . . . [I]nflation has increased equipment costs . . . [H]igher interest rates are increasing the financing costs of capital-intensive variable renewable technologies. . . . [And] policy has been relatively slow to adjust to the new macroeconomic environment due in part to expectations that cost reductions would continue . . . . [9] The forecast for wind capacity additions is less optimistic outside China, especially for offshore. . . .The wind industry, especially in Europe and North America, is facing challenges due to a combination of ongoing supply chain disruptions, higher costs and long permitting timelines. . . . [10] Faster deployment of variable renewables increases integration and infrastructure challenges. . . . Although European Union interconnections help integrate solar PV and wind generation, grid bottlenecks will pose significant challenges and lead to increased curtailment in many countries as grid expansion cannot keep pace with accelerated installation of variable renewables. . . . [11] Current hydrogen plans and implementation don’t match. . . . We have revised down our forecasts for all regions except China. The main reason is the slow pace of bringing planned projects to final investment decisions due to a lack of off‑takers and the impact of higher prices on production costs. . . . [12] Biofuel deployment is accelerating and diversifying more into renewable diesel and biojet fuel. . . . Emerging economies, led by Brazil, dominate global biofuel expansion . . . . Biofuels remain the dominant pathway for avoiding oil demand in the diesel and jet fuel segments. EVs outpace biofuels in the gasoline segment, especially in the United States, Europe and China. . . . [13] Aligning biofuels with a net zero pathway requires a huge increase in the pace of deployment. . . . Much faster biofuel deployment is possible through new policies and addressing supply chain challenges. [14] Renewable heat accelerates amid high energy prices and policy momentum – but not enough to curb emissions. . . . [The renewable heat acceleration comes] predominantly from the growing reliance on electricity for process heat – notably with the adoption of heat pumps in non‑energy‑intensive industries – and the deployment of electric heat pumps and boilers in buildings, increasingly powered by renewable electricity.
  • From the Executive Summary of the “Renewables 2023”report that was published by the International Energy Agency. (Released by the IEA on approximately Jan. 10, 2024)

About the quote: The above quote of phrases from the executive summary of the IEA's annual renewable energy report for 2023 contains no links to Wikiquote pages, Wikipedia pages, or to any other information sources. For further information about any of the words or phrases in the quote, please refer to the report. Also, the quote adds bracketed numbers to clarify where each of the fourteen sections in the summary begins. The numbers are a de minimis (or insignificant) addition to the original text inserted for clarification purposes only and do not appear in the IEA's original report.

"Electricity Mid-Year Update" - IEA report - Jul., 2024

• The world’s demand for electricity is rising at its fastest rate in years, driven by robust economic growth, intense heatwaves and increasing uptake of technologies that run on electricity such as EVs and heat pumps, according to a new report by the IEA. At the same time, renewables continue their rapid ascent, with solar PV on course to set new records. . . . Global electricity demand is forecast to grow by around 4% in 2024 and {will do so} into 2025, with growth around 4% again . . . . {The} share of global electricity supply {generated by renewables is} forecast to rise from 30% in 2023 to 35% in 2025. The amount of electricity generated by renewables worldwide in 2025 is forecast to eclipse the amount generated by coal for the first time. Solar PV alone is expected to meet roughly half of the growth in global electricity demand over 2024 and 2025 - with solar and wind combined meeting as much as three-quarters of the growth. Despite the sharp increases in renewables, global power generation from coal is unlikely to decline this year due to the strong growth in demand, especially in China and India . . . As a result, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the global power sector are plateauing, with a slight increase in 2024 followed by a decline in 2025. …Some of the world’s major economies are registering particularly strong increases in electricity consumption. Demand in India is expected to surge by a massive 8% this year . . . . China is also set to see significant demand growth of more than 6% . . . . After declining in 2023 amid mild weather, electricity demand in the United States is forecast to rebound this year by 3% . . . . By contrast, the European Union will see . . . growth forecast at 1.7% . . . . In many parts of the world, increasing use of air-conditioning will remain a significant driver of electricity demand. Multiple regions faced intense heatwaves . . . . With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), the electricity demand of data centres is drawing increased attention . . . .
  • From an International Energy Agency news release entitled "Global electricity demand set to rise strongly this year and next, reflecting its expanding role in energy systems around the world: Growth in demand in 2024 and 2025 is forecast to be among the highest levels in the past two decades, new IEA report finds, with solar PV alone expected to meet half of the increase." (July 19, 2024)

COP29 Climate Conference in Azerbaijan - Dec., 2024

• {COP29 set} a new annual target for global climate finance {by} reaching a deal for $300 billion a year by 2035. {However,} many developing countries said {this} amount was far too low. They also warned that the deadline for a decade away in 2035 would hold back the world's transition to clean energy. . . . Though he has yet to take office, climate denier Donald Trump's . . . election meant the U.S. could offer little at {the conference. . . . Also, the parties} reached a deal to allow countries to begin establishing {carbon} credits to bring in funding and offset their emissions, or to trade them on a market exchange.
  • Katy Daigle, Reuters journalist, in an article entitled "Takeaways from the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan." Reuters. (Nov. 23, 2024)

• The current level of climate finance ambition has broadly been preserved. There is no regression, which was a real risk given the current context. . . . While some have argued that no agreement would have been better than a bad one, I fail to see how waiting until next year — or even the year after — would have led to a more favorable outcome.
  • Dr. Romain Weikmans, Associate Professor of Global Environmental Governance at the Free University of Brussels, discussing the risks that would attend waiting for the next COP (after Donald Trump’s inauguration) to work out a better deal on international climate finance. The quote comes from an article in the British science journal Nature entitled, "Is the COP29 climate deal a historic breakthrough or letdown? Researchers react: Rich countries will take the lead in finding US$300 billion annually in climate finance for poor countries." The article was written by Ehsan Masood. (Nov. 25, 2024)

See also

• Green New Deal