Common Sense Papers 46 through 52 discuss certain arguments for the right kind of independent political movement.
Protect Our Planet
Multiple founders of the constitutional government of this nation proclaimed that each generation can and must be free to remake the political order of the time in keeping with the immediate needs of the people and their circumstances. We come now to the subject of our finite planet and the climate that supports our unique habitat. Science has given us a view into the past cycles of heating and cooling which have attended mass extinctions and altered the landscape of the beautiful blue dot upon which live. The world abounds with data that shows increased melting of polar ice caps, increasing drought, increasing flooding due to storms, and elevated average temperature readings compared to the human history of meteorological datasets. The idea that greenhouse gas emissions create a greenhouse effect in our atmosphere is somewhat commonly understood, although causes are debated.
The concept of net zero refers to the balance between the amount of greenhouse gas that's produced and the amount that's removed from the atmosphere. Net zero places a strong focus on reducing carbon emissions as much as possible, and only offsetting unavoidable, residual carbon dioxide as a last resort. Achieving net zero ranks high among the concerns of young people today.
The measuring tools of our time enable us to understand many features and impacts of the greenhouse gasses that move into our atmosphere due to the human activities that produce them. The more greenhouse gasses we produce, the greater the effect that human activity has on the temperature of our land and ocean surfaces. Sustained temperature increases of several degrees Celsius would have profound impacts on the seasons and practices that support human life. Such temperature increases, if left unchecked, would change the habitable dwelling places for humanity in a way that completely upsets the organized boundaries of modern life—we aren’t in the age of explorers anymore and the cowboy economy of the 1800s is not comparable with today.
While acknowledging that not every aspect of climate science is understood, and certain aspects of it are debated within American society, we must nevertheless carry on a dialogue about the collective decisions we must make that impact our sources of energy, our power grid, our transportation grid, our agricultural footprint, our air quality, sustainable water access, and the biodiversity of life that inhabits our national borders with us. It’s a national problem for our infrastructure and economy, but it’s a global problem for the weather, which knows no sovereign boundaries. It’s a problem of political economy—the democratically chosen boundaries that we place on business and commerce for the enjoyment and maintenance of modern life.
The young people of America routinely rank climate change among the most pressing issues of our day—an issue that for some brings an existential sense of foreboding. The concept of net zero addresses how to adjust policies and practices in society to decarbonize our energy activities in such a way that human activity emits no net increase in carbon or other greenhouse gas emissions. For this to take place, a gargantuan project of infrastructure adjustment and creation would need to be put in motion.
The recent bipartisan Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2021 put the wheels turning on the net zero runway, and it looks like some aspects of public policy are taking off. While politics is clearly a domain where compromise is necessary and routine, protecting the planet involves some political choices that bump up against gravity problems—the types of problems that are defined by immovable circumstances. Our finite planet has a certain physics associated with the atmosphere. Regardless of our economic or aesthetic preferences for certain fuels and transmission protocols, burning fuels that release carbon to create the energy that powers our lives will impact our long-term sustainability.
We know that capitalism has insatiable demands for growth in the pursuit of profits. We also know that all production depends not just on labor and capital, but on the energy harnessed by labor and capital to produce goods and services. If economic growth and energy growth go hand-in-hand, which they do, then we can admit now that capitalism, absent some major structural adjustment, is doomed to devastate the planet by the very requirements that perpetuate its unsustainable natural resource usage. These realities make it clear that capitalism needs to be retuned as the strategy to protect the planet undergoes deliberation.
This essay is not an attempt to solve the debate on climate science. Rather, I’m interested in looking at how a modern public policy shift could entertain a topic as big as decarbonization. This section will only highlight the daunting task of decarbonizing that deserves to be discussed more broadly across our nation. If the American public reaches consensus that decarbonization is good, then we have various questions to answer. What action might be needed? How could it take place? How might such an agenda be sustained even as elections bring changing faces to various offices of government?
Net Zero America
Let’s focus on the project report entitled “Net Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts” from October 2021, which offered a comprehensive analysis of multiple pathways to reaching net zero emissions of greenhouse gasses by the year 2050 in the United States.1 It’s a discussion starter for political, business, and local conversations about climate-energy issues that are fundamental to our economy and our sustainability. About 80% of primary human energy needs come from the combustion of coal, oil, and natural gas, all of which emit carbon dioxide. Our reliance on these sources is one of the key factors that must shift over the next few decades to prevent potentially devastating impacts on our global ecosystem. Looking at multiple pathways for how the gigantic shift in energy production resources could take place allows for sensitive conversations around the priorities of various local stakeholders. The manner in which energy infrastructure was cataloged for the report enables many forms of assessment: impact on land use, employment, air pollution, capital mobilization, and current fossil fuel providers at state and local levels. Let’s dig in!
All of the five pathways presented by Net Zero involve increased employment in the energy sector, as well as significant reductions in air pollution. The mobilization of investment capital and coordination of public policy at all levels of government would be daunting. The five pathways selected for reaching net zero differ in the amount of end-use electrification in transportation and buildings, the amount of solar and wind electricity generation, and the amount of biomass utilization for energy. Electrification refers to the process of replacing technologies that use fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) with technologies that use electricity—the movement of charged particles—as a source of energy.
Plan A: Aggressive end-use electrification with energy-supply options left open for finding the best system cost for America.
Plan B: Less aggressive end-use electrification than Plan A, but the same energy-supply options.
Plan C: Electrification level of Plan B with higher biomass supply for liquid fuels of non-electrified transport.
Plan D: Electrification level of Plan A with constrained amount of renewable energy sources; use of CO2 storage for helping meet targets.
Plan E: Electrification level of Plan A with 100% renewable energy by 2050 supporting the plan.
So, Plans A, D, and E involve aggressive electrification, while Plans B and C offer less aggressive electrification. In all scenarios, coal is mostly gone by 2030. By 2050, Plan D will have the highest use of oil and gas of any scenario. Nuclear energy is held at the status quo for Plans A, B, and C; nuclear ramps up significantly in Plan D; nuclear is eliminated in Plan E. There are two main reasons why clean electricity is a linchpin in decarbonizing the energy system. First, electricity is a carbon-free energy carrier. If we don’t use electricity, we generally need liquid fuels like gasoline and diesel, or we need natural gas moved through pipelines to the point of usage. Any use of hydrocarbon fuels emits CO2 when the chemical bonds are broken to release energy. Second, we need to be able to produce more electricity from carbon-free sources. Approximately 40% of the U.S. electric energy today is carbon-free and half of that comes from nuclear power. The other half is from hydropower and the growing base of wind and solar renewable sources of energy. The only good way to substitute liquid fuels for carbon-based liquid fuels is to use biomass-based fuels. That’s not easy to do, so making electrification a carbon-free energy source is critical.
According to Jesse Jenkins, one of the authors/contributors to the Net Zero project, the challenge is daunting.
We’re going to have to rewire the country and change the way we make and use energy from the way we produce it, to the way we transport it, to the way we consume it at a very large scale.2
His statistics indicate that the current power grid has been formed over 140 years, while the demands for decarbonization would require the country to build the same amount of energy capacity using clean tech twice over in the next 30 years. That’s massive!!
Basically, we have to expand carbon-free electricity from 40% to 100%, then we need to use electricity to penetrate the large transport sector that currently runs on fossil fuels. It’s a project mobilization effort that rivals the size and scope of World War II. According to Jenkins:
We have to eliminate the large share of fossil energy generation in our grid today and more than double the overall amount of supply. And what that means is we have to basically build two U.S. power grids over the next 30 years.3
Some of the numbers in the five pathway plans to net zero are mind-boggling for the next 25+ years.4 Electric vehicle (EV) penetration of light-duty vehicles in the U.S. would need to reach between 210 million (61% of vehicle stock) and 330 million (96% of vehicle stock) units. Cumulative U.S. light-duty vehicle sales of plug-ins crossed 3 million units in 2022. To reach the Net Zero targets, the increase in EV vehicle stock would be on the order of 70 times or 110 times the current market. Similarly, residential heat pump heaters would need to reach 80 million to 120 million homes, between 54% and 80% penetration. If nuclear energy is pursued to follow Plan D, either 250 new 1-GW (gigawatt) reactors would be needed, or 3,800 small modular reactors (SMRs) must be built. The big reactors could power about 750,000 homes each, while the SMRs are likely to power about 50,000 homes per SMR. Those are very big numbers across 50 states.
Another major challenge of getting to net zero is that the capacity additions needed for wind and solar are basically unprecedented for the foreseeable future. The 2020 wind installed capacity reached 14 GW, while the solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity reached 10 GW. Many scenarios call for installations by year at double or even triple those record-setting rates. Only Plan D has consistent yearly wind additions at 15 GW per year, and 18-20 GW solar PV per year. To get to Plan A electrification requires more than triple the transmission line capacity of 2020 by the year 2050. To get to Plan D, the power transmission line capacity needs to double the 2020 level by 2050. Both targets are daunting. Plan E requires 5x the 2020 level of transmission capacity!
The inclusion of biomass to displace liquid fossil fuels would mean significant investment across rural America. The biomass supply in four of the five net-zero scenarios consists of agricultural and forest residues, plus shifting land growing corn for ethanol to growing perennial grasses for energy. No conversion of land that currently produces food or feed is anticipated in the plans.
Another plan element would be CO2 capture, transport, and utilization or geologic storage. The demand for storage of carbon becomes quite large for Plan D as this allows the most oil and gas production of the five plans by 2050. Major CO2 storage basins would need to be utilized along the Gulf Coast from Texas to Florida, and in the region of Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, as well as Kansas and Oklahoma.
On a financial investment basis, the five pathways will require somewhere between 2-4 times the baseline amount of capital investment by 2050. Plan D is on the lower end ($8 trillion), and Plan E is on the highest end ($14 trillion) of capital investment.5
Land use is also a major consideration and factor in the five pathways. As land use invariably brings more clogged political channel discussion, it is not an easy variable to just manage through some grand plan. The current land use of the 48 contiguous states in our country is as follows: 28% is forest, 35% is pasture, 21% is cropland, 9% is special use, 3.5% is urban, and 3.5% is just all other.6 The sheer size of the land area usage needed for four out of five scenarios is staggering. In all but Plan D, wind farms would cover the equivalent of 4-6 whole states! Plan D covers two complete states in land area demand. The solar land demand is equivalent to one or two small states (think Connecticut or Maryland). If someone had to pick one of the five plans based on a single metric of feasibility, the land use charts would probably win by making the case for Plan D as the most feasible option with the lowest equivalent usage demands.
The employed workforce impact is meaningful, depending on the scenario. While the workforce is projected to expand a modest 15% in the first decade, the ultimate impact depends greatly on the plan pathway chosen. Plan D would add 600,000 jobs above the baseline by 2050, while Plans A, B, and C add 1.5-2.2 million, and Plan E would add 3.8 million more jobs. Those gains include the offset of oil and gas jobs. On top of job gains, there are health gains from the reduced air pollution that comes from the fine particulate matter associated with burning carbon-based fuels. Several hundred thousand premature deaths are projected to be avoided over the decades of planning to reach net zero.
These are by no means the only possible routes to achieving net zero. Other proposals prioritize a transition to regenerative agriculture, which restores the earth’s natural ability to capture and recycle carbon at very low cost. I’ve reviewed this report to provide a sampling of potential approaches currently under discussion.
Summary Ideas
The keys to a successful transition to net zero may include: 1) building societal commitment, investment environment, and delivery capabilities, 2) improving end-use energy productivity and efficiency, 3) electrifying energy demand for transportation and buildings, 4) decarbonizing and expanding electricity, 5) preparing for major expansion of the bioenergy industry, 6) building infrastructure for electricity transmission and CO2 transport and storage, 7) enhancing land sinks and reducing non-CO2 emissions, and 8) innovating to create additional options for the technologies needed beyond 2030.7
Protecting the planet includes a range of other key variables not associated with net zero. It involves sustainable water management and clean wastewater technologies. It demands that we conserve and sustainably use the oceans and other marine resources for sustainable development. It includes protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, and halting and reversing land degradation while being attentive to biodiversity loss.8
Protecting the planet involves producing energy in clean, affordable, and reliable ways. The task is truly daunting but also exhilarating for the future of the planet. These are absolutely issues of the political economy of democracy, not free-market escapades that fail to price the value of the natural commons that support our existence on this amazing planet. Any credible political movement that seeks to move America forward beyond its first 250 years needs to commit to protecting the planet consistent with the best scientific thinking around energy-system pathways for our political economy. The discussions need to encompass many political and business actors across federal, state, and local government and industry. America needs to execute with a renewed vision of our shared capacity to provide a sustainable system for future generations.
To all readers, happy Earth Day 2024! Enjoy the beauty of spring!
Notes for new readers:
The Common Sense Papers are an offering by Common Sense 250, which proposes a method to realign the two-party system with the creation of a new political superstructure that circumvents the current dysfunctional duopoly. The goal is to heal political divisions and reboot the American political system for an effective federal government. If the movement can gain appeal, a call to crowdfund the project may occur in 2024 or 2025. Subscribe for free with an email to follow along.
The tabs on the top of the Substack page can bring you to earlier essays that spell out key political issues. Common Sense Paper No. 1, No. 2, No. 4, and No. 5 can help anyone get up to speed on the project.
Common Sense 250 is still working out details on launching a podcast for those who want to listen to the political strategy but don’t have time to read. Subscribe and watch for an email announcement.
E. Larson, C. Greig, J. Jenkins, E. Mayfield, A. Pascale, C. Zhang, J. Drossman, R. Williams, S. Pacala,R.Socolow, EJ Baik, R. Birdsey, R. Duke, R. Jones, B. Haley,E. Leslie, K.Paustian, and A. Swan, “Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, Final Report,” Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 29 October 2021.
Ezra Klein, “Ezra Klein Interviews Jesse Jenkins,” The New York Times, September 20, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/podcasts/transcript-ezra-klein-interviews-jesse-jenkins.html (accessed April 21, 2024).
Ibid.
Larson et al., “Net-Zero America, Final Report.”
Ibid, 254.
Ibid, 244.
E. Larson, C. Greig, J. Jenkins, E. Mayfield, A. Pascale, C. Zhang, J. Drossman, R. Williams, S. Pacala, R. Socolow, EJ Baik, R. Birdsey, R. Duke, R. Jones, B. Haley, E. Leslie, K. Paustian, and A. Swan, “Net-Zero America: Potential Pathways, Infrastructure, and Impacts, Final Report Summary,” Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, 29 October 2021, 74.
United Nations Statistics Division, “Goal 15: Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss,” United Nations, 2017, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/report/2017/goal-15/ (accessed April 21, 2024).
Great Earth Day piece Joe.
It is worth remembering that decarbonization of energy began centuries ago in the shift from wood, to coal, to oil, to natural gas. Each creating about 30 percent fewer CO2 emissions than the last: https://www.lianeon.org/p/decarbonizing-progress
The engine technologies that utilize those fuels simultaneously became more efficient, rising from 1 percent to ~64 percent thermal efficiency: https://www.lianeon.org/p/the-engines-of-progress
The simplest way, if you ask me, to decarbonize is to accelerate progress. That is, a carbon tax that begins will coal and slowly rises on oil, and eventually natural gas.
One we internalize these externalities; the market will be aligned and solve these problems for us.
The second component of this plan, however, would be to get out of the way of viable solutions. Nuclear power, for example, needs to be a significant part of the mix.