Climate change and the green energy transition

[00:00:24]

RICK WEISS: Hello, everyone, and welcome to SciLine’s media briefing on climate change and the green energy transition. I’m SciLine’s director, Rick Weiss. For those of you not familiar with SciLine, we are a philanthropically supported, editorially independent free service for reporters and scientists. We’re based at the nonprofit American Association for the Advancement of Science. And our mission is pretty simple and straightforward. It’s to make it as easy as possible for you as reporters to include scientist sources and scientifically validated information in your news stories whether those stories are about a science topic or are about something else going on in your community where a little bit of scientific research results about that topic would help bring some rigor and depth to your story, which is just about any kind of story we can think of.

I want to make a special note about today’s briefing. We generally host briefings like this on the science behind topics in the news about once a month, but this briefing is different. It’s the first of a half a dozen briefings we’re going to be hosting this month, two a week for the next three weeks, all on topics that are in the news because they are issues at the top of the political agenda in the leadup to November’s elections. We’re doing this because many of the topics that candidates are disagreeing about this campaign season, topics like immigration policy, the actual state of the economy, trustworthiness of the electoral system itself, are too often covered by the media as though they were simply matters of political opinion when in fact these are topics that have been rigorously studied by scientists across multiple disciplines. Of course, science is not going to have the answers to these policy debates. But at SciLine, we are committed to the idea that validated scientific findings and research-backed context ought to at least inform voters as they decide what kind of policies and what kind of people they want to support at the polls. Basically, I’m saying that if you as reporters are going to produce stories about what the candidates are saying about these issues, then we think you have a responsibility to include in those stories what carefully conducted research is found to be true in those areas. And if nothing else, knowing what the research has concluded about these topics can help you ask more probing questions of candidates or the people who support those candidates and they can help you recognize when candidate statements don’t really hue to the best available evidence. So, I hope you’ll find time to attend as many of these six briefings as you can. They’re all on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You can see the link we’re going to put up in the chat here for a schedule of these six briefings. And for any that you do miss, you’ll be able to find full video and transcripts posted on the SciLine website very soon after each one.

A couple of quick logistical details before we get started. We’ve got two panelists today. We’re going to make short presentations of less than 10 minutes each before we open things up for Q&A. To enter a question during these presentations, just go to the bottom of your Zoom screen. You all know how to do this. Hover over the Q&A icon. Tell us your name, your news outlet, and your question. And if you want to pose that question to a particular speaker, you can note that as well. A full video of this briefing will be available by the end of the day. A timestamped transcript will show up a day or two later. And if you need an immediate copy of this video at the end of this briefing, just send us a message in that Q&A box and we’ll get you something right away.

Finally, I’m not going to take time to give full introductions and bios of our speakers today. Those are all on our website. I will just tell you that we will hear first from Dr. Noah Kittner. Dr. Kittner is an assistant professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina. He studies energy systems at multiple scales from local to global, and he’s going to share some of the basic things that every reporter should be familiar with about how the U.S. produces energy and what each energy and economic sector is contributing to the greenhouse emissions and warming that is driving today’s climate crisis. Basically, it’s going to be a look at the current situation and the predicament we face today. And then second, we’ll hear from Dr. Melissa Lott who is a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School and former director of research at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy, and she’s going to focus on what it’s going to take to make that transition to a green energy economy in the race against accelerating climate change and sort of sort out for us some of what you’ve been hearing from candidates and others about the prospects for success in this area. So, with all that said, let’s get started, and over to you, Dr. Kittner.

[00:05:23]

NOAH KITTNER: OK. Thank you very much for having me. So, I’m Noah Kittner, and I’m going to give you a snapshot of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and their contribution to climate change. So, if we look at the different gases that contribute to greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S., the U.S. EPA recently released an inventory of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from the year 2022. And on the left, you can see a pie chart here with about 80% of the overall greenhouse gas emissions coming from carbon dioxide or CO2. That’s followed by 11% from CH4, otherwise known as methane, which includes natural gas or agricultural emissions. The remaining greenhouse gas emissions are from nitrous oxides such as N2O or HFCs, PFCs, SF6 and NF3, which are different types of refrigerants and other fluorocarbons that are a smaller contributor of the overall greenhouse gas emissions that are entering the atmosphere and warming the Earth.

In 2022, transportation as an economic sector actually became the largest contributor to overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions as you can see in green in this middle pie chart here, followed by electric power at 25%. And what is interesting and new is that electric power for the majority of the time period over the past 30 years was the leading sector of emissions. And now, it has been eclipsed by transportation. And in the next few slides, I’ll explain what kind of trends have happened in the electric power sector to reduce those emissions. We can also see that residential and commercial buildings account for some portion of emissions, and that includes the fossil fuel combustion for heating and cooking, for instance, and agriculture is about 10%. When you account for the indirect electricity that’s used in these residential and commercial buildings on the right, then residential and commercial buildings’ contribution to climate change increases. And this right-hand pie chart shows how including electricity in industry and transportation also changes their percentages. Effectively, the greenhouse gas emissions sorted by economic sector and electricity end use accounts for then the electricity that’s used in industry or in transportation.

So, looking more at the EPA data, what we can see over the past 30 years are a few different trends. In the red block here, you can see transportation emissions. And the blue is the electric power industry. What you might notice is that since 2010, actually the share of the electric power industry for the overall greenhouse gas emissions has declined a bit, and that is actually in spite of increasing overall electricity generation. So, what’s happening is that the emissions from the electric power industry have been declining, although we’ve increased electricity. But if you look at the overall sectors, basically there’s been about a 3% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions overall from 1990 levels. And if you look at from 2005 levels, there’s been about a 17% reduction. So, there has been some reduction, but there’s not enough in order to really address all of the greenhouse gas emissions goals that are stated forward. And agriculture industry and other sectors including residential at the bottom have remained relatively stagnant over that period of time. So, really, the major trends and changes are in the electric power industry. So, why is that? Well, fossil fuel combustion is the major contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions, especially in the energy sector. And the leading sources of the fossil fuels that are contributing to climate change include petroleum, coal and natural gas. Now, petroleum is referring to the petroleum that’s being refined into gasoline that’s used in vehicles or also petroleum in plastic products and refined. Coal and natural gas, however, are primarily used in electric power generation. Natural gas also provides heating in buildings and other purposes and contributes to methane emissions. But what you’ll see is that from around 2010, there’s been a dramatic decrease in the contribution of coal to greenhouse gas emissions. Why is that? Well, many coal plants across the U.S. have closed, and many of them have been replaced with natural gas combustion turbines and combined cycle power plants and also solar and wind electricity.

The natural gas is increasing in emissions because we’re using more natural gas. But if you look at other studies that include life cycle assessment, which compare the environmental impacts from the extraction of different fossil fuels through their distribution use and then retirement, most of the studies have coal at anywhere from 800 to 1100 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity. And natural gas is around 300 to 500 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. So, roughly speaking, natural gas has about half or 50% of the greenhouse gas emissions impact per kilowatt hour of electricity generated as coal, yet there still is a significant amount of greenhouse gases that are emitted from natural gas for electricity including both CO2 and methane. So, we’ve declined the amount of coal we’re using in the electricity sector, which has led to fewer emissions, but solar, wind and geothermal and other renewable electricity options are typically less than 100 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour. So, a much smaller fraction, a tenth or even less. Solar and wind can be as low as 20 grams of CO2 per kilowatt hour if you include all of the emissions associated with manufacturing the panels or the wind turbines. So, this is a dramatically lower amount than coal or natural gas. And to look at this again in summary over time, what you can see is that the total CO2 emissions have declined a bit, but really the story is that electric power is really the only sector where we’ve seen reductions in energy-related CO2 emissions. And therefore, this is an important area.

And also, transportation is really important to consider in terms of a way to potentially reduce CO2 emissions in the future because if you see this graph that shows from the EIA the actual CO2 emission reductions in electric power sector, we’ve been able to reduce the amount of coal in the fossil fuel combustion. And as we reduce overall fossil fuel combustion in the electric power sector, you can use electricity as a cleaner fuel to power transportation, to provide substitutes for fossil fuel combustion in industrial purposes, so that would be factories for steam or other industrial heat applications, and then also for residential and commercial buildings. So, these are people’s homes or office spaces where heating and cooking typically use fossil fuels like natural gas and could be replaced with electricity, which has actually experienced a decline in CO2 emissions over time. This leads to a number of challenges and opportunities in terms of our fossil fuel combustion and its role in terms of global climate change. So, the reduction in coal in the electricity generation sector does show up in terms of our greenhouse gas emission reductions especially in the electric power sector over the past 50 years. However, we have a lot of work to do because there’s still a lot of emissions to resolve. And replacing coal with natural gas, even though natural gas has a lower greenhouse gas emissions rate than coal, still leads to continued CO2 emissions. And so, that’s why renewable electricity such as solar and wind are so important in terms of effectively reducing CO2 emissions and cleaning the electric power sector, which affects other economic sectors.

There’s more work to electrify the other end uses such as transportation, industry and buildings. And so, some examples of that are in buildings where natural gas is used for heating and cooling. Highly efficient electric heat pumps could become replacements that use electricity and could reduce their contribution to climate change. And additionally, we can see the importance of reasons why electric vehicles could dramatically reduce petroleum consumption, which is the major fossil fuel driver of climate change, and that in itself will help with addressing these issues. So, there are many sectors that are predicated on reducing emissions in the electric power sector to address decarbonization, and these are great opportunities actually in terms of reducing emissions further. So, thank you very much, and I look forward to talking with you further.

[00:17:29]

RICK WEISS: Fantastic. Great foundational introduction to the situation today and I think a picture of some progress and also how difficult it is to move and bend those curves. So, to look ahead at some of that in more detail, let’s go over to Dr. Melissa Lott.

[00:17:46]

MELISSA LOTT: Wonderful. Can you all see my slides? Fantastic. So, thanks, Rick. As you said, I am a professor at Columbia University’s Climate School, and what I look at and what I’ve looked at for the past couple of decades is how do we actually design and execute pathways towards net zero, which is where we found a balance between the greenhouse gas emissions that we’re putting into the air and those that we’re pulling out. And why we want to do that is to stabilize climate change, to prevent as much future damage as we can. So, by way of a little bit of background, what we have seen when it comes to the climate science is that climate change is actually happening faster and probably more severely than we expected. This is partially a product of as scientists, we like to be conservative, so I am going to give you the bottom of the band when it comes to potential damages. I’m going to give you, “It’s this or more or it’s at least this much damage,” but what we’re finding out is actually that impacts that we thought we’d be seeing with climate change, it wouldn’t be happening for many more years, and higher temperature changes are already happening. I’m going to give one reference, which is just my go-to source when it comes to looking at what effects are we seeing of climate change already. It’s called the Lancet Countdown, and it tracks what are the health impacts, what are the economic impacts of climate change as we go on, and also how much progress are we making towards solving climate change particularly in the energy sector, which I’ll get to in a minute.

So, just as a couple of examples, we’re seeing rapidly rising deaths from heat-related incidences and also a global drop in productivity because of things like heat waves, but also just increasingly hot trends. And that is particularly impacting low-income economies. Low-income countries around the world that have a lot more people who work outdoors or even if they work indoors do not have access to a lot of air conditioning, which is a tool that actually keeps us safe within our homes and our offices. We’re also seeing severe storms here in the U.S., and I’m from Texas, so you don’t have to tell me about hurricanes and what’s going on right now. There’s still as of this morning a million people who are without power, but we’re just seeing more and more of this happening, these severe storms, this flooding, increased disease transmission, etc. So, climate change is happening faster than we expected.

So, if we want to solve it, we’re really talking mostly about an energy transition, and I say that because three-quarters roughly of global emissions—similar numbers here in the U.S.—are from energy, the energy sector, which includes a bunch of different things, not just power plants, but power plants, as well as transportation, different ways that we use energy in buildings, and different ways that we use energy in industry. So, producing the dyes that made this clothing a dark gray, for producing all the things that we want to use in our lives. So, the good stuff is if you know where the problem’s coming from, you can target it and solve it. And further good news, which I’ll get into a minute, is we have most of the technologies that we need to actually get to a solution, which is something that comes up and I’m asked about all the time. Do we have what we need to actually do this thing and to get there quickly? And quickly is the key point here because when we look at the impacts of climate change on our health and the environment, which all relates to the health of our economies, what we’re seeing is that we want to meet climate goals and we want to meet them very rapidly because rapid movement is actually a much cheaper option than slow movement. So, getting quicker to net zero, bringing emissions down will result in less damage and be economically better for all of us than if we move slowly. There is a complication there where some of the damages of climate change are paid for with one bucket for instance like an insurance bill or a healthcare bill where the solutions are paid through our energy bills and through our food bills and other things. But backing up for a minute, when we talk about rapid transition, I’ll point to this graph on the left, which shows global again net CO2 emissions.

So, greenhouse gas emissions. Noah talked a bunch about those and how quickly we need to get emissions down. And as you can see, that isn’t what we’ve been doing in the past, and we’re all familiar with this. We’ve been going up. Now, we want to go down, and we need to go down rapidly. And the more we delay, the sharper that slope is. So, how quickly we need to come down so that we can control cumulative emissions. Within the transition, we have to think about both mitigating, bringing down emissions, but also adapting because we have existing and kind of baked in climate impacts that we actually have to adapt in our lives too. So, we are already seeing heat waves. We’re already seeing the things I talked about before. So, how do we reduce emissions? And I want to zoom in on the U.S. And this is a summary of more than hundreds if not more than a thousand different studies that have been done over decades by researchers at many universities. And when I boil them all down and I summarize them, what it says is the cheapest and most effective way to get to net zero to bring down emissions around all these different parts of the economy—and Noah showed you all this chart from the EPA before, which shows where emissions are coming from—again, transportation being the biggest one, electric power being next, industry behind that, then residential and commercial buildings and agriculture.

If we want to get it down, what do we do? Well, in the energy sector, the first thing we do is we electrify everything that makes sense to electrify while becoming as efficient as possible. We don’t electrify everything, but we electrify a lot of things. So, we probably electrify our personal vehicles. We probably electrify how we heat water and cook in our homes. We probably don’t electrify long haul flights and we probably don’t electrify shipping because those things don’t make sense economically. We have other solutions for them like drop-in fuel replacements and other things I can get into as you like. The second thing we do is clean up that electricity mix because of course if we just are switching from one source of emissions to another, it may be better, but it’s not going to get us all the way to a goal of solving climate change. And then, we clean up everything else. So, we create liquid fuels. We create feed stocks for industry so that we can create the things we want in our lives and that we want to use in our lives, but not produce these emissions that are harming our lives as the same step.

So, the backbone of all this is electricity. That was those first two steps. Electrify a lot of stuff, and then clean up that electricity. So, the question is, “How fast can we move in electricity and how fast have we moved in electricity?” There’s good news that Noah already highlighted, which is that we are already bringing down emissions in the electric power industry. As of last year compared to a 2005 baseline, we’d already reduced emissions from electric power by just under 20%. It was like 18.7. And these are data from the EPA again, and it shows by sector how many emissions are coming from which group over time. And blue is that electric power sector. And you can see that it’s getting narrower over time where if you actually look at the other bars, they’re kind of holding steady. That one is actually coming down, and that’s a really good sign of progress. Another piece of good news is that policies are helping. So, not just the Inflation Reduction Act, but the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Bill, CHIPS and Science, the Energy Policy Act. There’s a lot of different policies that we’ve done since the turn of the century that have actually brought down emissions. What this chart is showing is the potential reductions that we could see from the Inflation Reduction Act if we get a lot of other stuff right in the system. So, we could bring down emissions from electricity, which is that massive gray bar at the top, by quite a bit. The low, moderate and high case that you see across the bottom axis is a function of the uncertainty. When you have a policy that has a bunch of incentives but not strict requirements, you’re not exactly sure how much reduction you’re going to get, but you’re pretty sure you’re at least going to see what’s in the low case on the left. If a lot of stuff goes well, you might get the high case on the right. But you’ll see that big gray bar is the largest one. It’s the driver of all this, and it’s the electric power sector.

The other good news is that we know how to get to those climate goals. For example, in electricity, we know what technologies we have available to us to get almost to 100% clean electricity. So, this chart shows us historic emissions on the left-hand side of that dash line. And on the right-hand side, it shows a bunch of different scenarios that are put together first by the Energy Information Administration. The second is the International Energy Agency. The third is Berkeley, UC Berkeley. And the third is Net-Zero America, which came out of Princeton University. And essentially what this shows is that we look at a future electricity sector that is net zero and we see that it is heavily dependent on nuclear, the purple bar at the bottom, solar and wind, the yellow and the green bars above it. We know how to build those things. They make a lot of sense cost-wise. It’s a question of, “Can we actually build at speed and scale?” But it’s not about the technologies. We have them. We know what we need to use. We know how to use them. We know how to manage them in the grid.

The less good news is a few different things that I’m just going to plant seeds for and we can go down any one of these rabbit holes that you all want. But effectively, we’re not actually still moving fast enough to reach climate goals, to reach a place we’re in line with the Paris Climate Agreement as one benchmark or any number of stated goals that states and companies and the federal government and the current administration have stated that they would like to achieve whether it’s around clean electricity or elsewhere. So, some things to consider around this is how can we rapidly build out infrastructure because solving climate change means building a lot of stuff, power lines, power plants, solar panels, and the list goes on and on and on. And so, how do we build those things and get them installed and up and running? Because until running, a solar panel cannot replace part of the coal-fired power that Noah spoke about. We have most of the technologies we need, but also innovation and cost reductions will be very helpful. Some of this will be achieved by scaling and deploying things. We will learn as we go. But there are some spaces where while we have a solution, it is still complicated, it is still more expensive than we’d like.

So, more innovation would be very helpful plus we have a few tools in our toolbox they’re very useful. But if you’re ever in the middle of a big blackout and you’re trying to fix your system, you want as many tools in your toolbox as possible. So, getting more tools is a good idea. We know that it’s cheaper to transition than not, but also we know that transitioning has different types of burdens on different types of folks. So, I’ll give a very quick example that actually relates to energy and security and energy justice, the next point, which is that when I move to net zero electricity, when I clean up my electric grid and have cleaner power, if I don’t—so, a couple different things. If I’m in a low-income community, I probably will benefit more from the corresponding reductions in air pollution that were highlighted in the Duke University study that I put down as reading on this. I’m a professor. I can’t help but give reading assignments. But on the flip side, while that low-income community will really benefit from reductions and other types of air pollution, they may be exposed to higher bills in their power bills, and that’s a really tense combination of things. So, being aware of that and being aware that there are policy solutions, but you have to implement them to prevent unintended consequences you don’t want. The last point that I will highlight is actually about supply chains.

So, we have the technologies. We know how to install them. We know how to use them. But we actually have to get them from the system. So, our battery supply chains are being built up, but they’re highly concentrated in just a few different countries, just one country really. And so, how do we build out the supply chains we need or the scale we need, but also diversity to provide robustness to get us all the way to net zero? The last thing I’ll say is my textbook for my mitigation class is for free online in the form of a podcast. You can listen to it anywhere around the world and it talks to you about pathways to get to net zero, and there’s a season on each one of the wedges in the pie that Noah and I both brought up. So, transportation, power industry, etc. So, it’s free online. Enjoy it. Listen to it at 2x speed if you want or don’t and you can cherry pick your episodes. And that’s it.

[00:29:04]

RICK WEISS: Wow, fantastic. So much information there and really helpful to remind us all that this is not just a technological problem. Policymaking is complicated and different policy solutions affect different people differently. A really good take-home lesson and great bunch of stories to be written about those options. Okay. A reminder to reporters, if you have questions, please go to the Q&A icon at the bottom and submit them with your name and with your news outlet name. And I will start though with the prerogative that we typically do in these media briefings, which is the first question from me and that is asking each of our speakers to briefly address this audience of reporters and as professionals who are also news watchers, tell us what you either like or don’t like about how this topic is covered in the news typically so that some of our listeners and participants here can maybe get some direct take-home lessons from you. And Dr. Kittner, I’ll start with you.

[00:30:03]

NOAH KITTNER: Thanks. So, some different lessons I think are that electricity is really the key to reducing emissions. We’ve seen historically that we’ve been able to reduce emissions in the electric power sector by closing different coal-fired power plants. And so, that is really the integral piece to unlock these other complimentary sectors that we’ve seen. And so, it’s something that is historically, we’ve witnessed those reductions. And so, if we expect we could continue them, we need to rapidly expand that by using other technologies that have a much lower greenhouse gas emission impact such as solar, wind and energy storage.

[00:31:08]

RICK WEISS: Okay. So, more emphasis on that. And Melissa.

[00:31:12]

MELISSA LOTT: I’ll say one thing I really like that I’ve been seeing lately in the past few years and one thing that is just an opportunity that I don’t see taking advantage of too much. When it comes to things I enjoy seeing, it’s the link between energy and climate. It’s coming up more and more in stories of how climate’s affecting energy systems. So, heat waves affecting demand for air conditioning is an example and also heating up the cooling water for a power plant, making it less efficient. Like I’m seeing that pop up more and more also around extreme storms. The coverage of the current hurricane that’s going through Texas right now, there’s mentions of, “Hey, climate change is affecting this. We’re looking at the hurricane season, and here’s the connection.” So, it’s those connections between topics I love seeing. Things that I think are opportunities is just there’s often a focus on like one individual technology or one individual solution or one individual situation. So, the permitting of a road or the installation of solar panels. But the reality of getting to a decarbonized future, a net zero future, a future where we solve climate change, is that, A, we need basically all the technologies in our toolbox. Just solar and storage won’t get you to a reliable and affordable clean grid. Like that’s not what the research says. So, putting it in context of, “Yes, there’s been so much progress on solar, but how is it working in the broader context of what’s going on?” And then also, when a road isn’t permitted or something like that, what does that mean for the overall picture if we need to scale up things and move at speed. So, that broader context is sometimes lost in stories. So, I think it’s just an opportunity that’s missed sometimes.

[00:32:47]

MELISSA LOTT: And I think that Rick froze. So, Becky, I was gonna go—oh, Rick is back. So, we’re good. Nevermind.

[00:32:56]

RICK WEISS: Sorry. I don’t know why I dropped off there. Thanks to the energy infrastructure for dropping me for a moment. We’ll see how this goes. I do have backup if necessary. Thank you both for those responses. And let’s go into some questions. I have a question here from Christine Woodside, a reporter based in Connecticut. Would residential switches to air conditioning which could help health benefit society or create more emissions and just add to the problem? How do you balance all that out? Melissa, I see you nodding. Do you want to go first?

[00:33:28]

MELISSA LOTT: It is such an important question, so thank you for it, Christine. Like both in the U.S., but also around the world, this is a question that comes up again and again because A/C is something that saves lives, but then you have to think about what it’s connected to because of course it may not be producing emissions in our homes, but it’s producing emissions somewhere today because the electricity for that air conditioning is coming from somewhere that probably isn’t carbon free depending on what country you’re in in the world. So, overall on balance, what we need to do is twofold. Make sure that everyone has access to air conditioning that needs it. Also, effective heating so that they can keep their homes safe, fundamentally safe year round, but do it in a way that is emissions beneficial in the long term. So, I’ll say air conditioning is one of these, and we use electricity for a lot of that. So, it’s about cleaning up the power grid, but I’ll flip it and say on the heating side of things, thinking about how we use electricity more and not natural gas for heating over time so that we can reduce emissions in terms of the overall system. So, we need to get cleaner as we make sure that everyone has access. The other thing I’ll just flag really fast, Rick, we were talking about this yesterday I think, which is that one in three Americans is currently defined as energy insecure. These are numbers that are well studied. You can look at my colleague Diana Hernandez amongst others if you want to, Shalanda Baker’s work, Tony Reames’ work, etc. But what that means is that even if they have an air conditioner, they’re not turning it on because they know they can’t afford the bill if it comes in. And so, just having an air conditioner is not enough if you want to have those health benefits. You have to make sure that people can use it in their homes and get their homes to healthy temperatures. So, that’s better quality housing and cheap energy.

[00:35:03]

RICK WEISS: Great. Noah, do you want to add anything to the air conditioning issue or should we move on?

[00:35:07]

NOAH KITTNER: No, that was a great response and I completely agree. I think that electric heat pumps are really interesting technology in the space because of their dual role as providing both heating and cooling in one unit, and the Inflation Reduction Act now provides direct subsidies to support heat pump replacement, which would directly reduce natural gas and other fossil fuel combustion, which is really important.

[00:35:43]

RICK WEISS: Great. I keep hearing more and more about heat pumps. I think there’s a lot to be written about heat pumps from local and other reporters. Question from Christine Heinrichs, a reporter based in California. Where do the West Coast floating offshore wind projects fit into this? They require substantial onshore port renovation and infrastructure for support. The timeline to getting them in the water is long, 5 to 10 years or longer. Is this an investment that’s important to keep making? Does either one of you want to address that?

[00:36:14]

MELISSA LOTT: I can unless you want to go for it first, Noah. Your call.

[00:36:18]

NOAH KITTNER: Go for it.

[00:36:21]

MELISSA LOTT: So, being in New York, I think about offshore a lot, but I actually have spent a lot of time on the west coast. So, it’s a great, great question. Around it, when we look at offshore wind, there’s a couple different reasons why it is really advantageous and even with a 5 to 10-year timeframe, even if it was longer, you still would probably want to integrate a bunch of it in your system. One, the wind patterns complement the patterns for other types of technologies, like onshore wind and also onshore solar. And so, what it helps you do is get closer to that place where you have 24/7/365 clean electricity that is affordable. So, it’s a really good tool again in your toolbox. All of those things that I just outlined require infrastructure investment, require wires, require a lot of stuff to be built and done. So, when you talk about offshore wind, there is a role for it. Now, will offshore wind get any place all the way to its goals? Almost certainly not. You need to have other tools that are actually implemented. But I would bring up two things around the 5 to 10-year timeframe. One, which is we’re in 2024. If you look at the Biden administration’s goal just as one example, but there’s a lot of these—I’m talking about getting to clean electricity by 2035 or if you look at some of the targets for 2030—offshore wind can still help in that next decade timeframe. But also, we’re talking about getting all the way to net zero, to solving climate change, which means getting emissions all the way down by around mid-century, so like 2050, and then keeping them there. And so, offshore wind can have a really good role in that. So, you shouldn’t only do offshore wind. If you have an opportunity, you should use it, but you have to complement it with other things. And I would give the same answer no matter what technology you threw out, nuclear, carbon capture, solar, wind, etc., geothermal even, which is a very cool and interesting technology that’s having a moment right now. Noah, what did I miss? What would you add or push back on?

[00:38:07]

NOAH KITTNER: No. Well, yeah, I agree. I think the advantage of offshore wind especially in a grid that’s dominated by solar and other variable renewable energies is that offshore wind is very complementary to solar during the day. So, there are some studies now that show that using more offshore wind could actually reduce the total amount of new energy storage needed on a grid, which could really help in that transition away from the traditional dispatchable fossil fuel plants to ones that are more low carbon options. And even with a 1 to 5-year delay in terms of the time to permitting, we’ve seen other larger centralized power plants take longer than 5 to 10 years, which is a major challenge in terms of meeting our climate goals and something that needs to be addressed. So, absolutely there should be attention paid toward expediting the ability to be able to deploy different types of offshore wind and other diverse renewable energy technologies on the grid.

[00:39:27]

RICK WEISS: That’s an interesting connection I haven’t seen written about much that maybe it could reduce our demand on batteries because there’s a lot of talk about the problem of getting batteries up to scale. So, super interesting. Let’s take this question from Kathy Kowalski, an energy reporter based in Ohio who’s asking basically wondering about the panelists’ take on policy statements in the Republican party platform released yesterday. We can address this in a political way or just in a scientific way. But among other things, we are told by Kathy that the policy seems to or the platform seems to call for rescinding motor vehicle standards and more oil and gas drilling and the repeal of the Inflation Reduction Act. Other than addressing what this would do to climate change, what would you focus on here in terms of how a policy like this would affect things in various states? So, either one of you want to address those sorts of policy changes?

[00:40:24]

MELISSA LOTT: I can say a few things. Yeah. So, around it, to your last part of your question, Rick, whatever happens at the federal government level, we know separation of powers, School House Rock days. I’m reliving them in my mind right now. But effectively, states have made their own targets. And so, the federal government can make decisions, but that doesn’t override states’ rights to make their decisions. And yes, there’s some complexities in that, but all the targets have been set by the states. And if you haven’t followed them or haven’t seen the numbers, this used to be out of NC State, but it’s a DSIRE website database. It can show you all the different state policies, not just comprehensive clean energy, but all the different sub things, incentives for heat pumps, incentives for electric vehicles, but those things don’t go away because the federal government decides to make different decisions. The second thing I’ll say is just that practically speaking, repealing something that’s been signed into law is extremely difficult. You have to get really, really high numbers of votes in Congress across both the House and the Senate, and it has to take precedence over other actions because there’s only so much time on the floor. So, it’s just a really difficult thing to do. And also, any repeal would not affect money that’s already out the door. So, in terms of some of the trends I outlined earlier about the potential impacts of the Inflation Reduction Act, if the money’s been spent, we would largely expect a lot of those things to still happen. Not all of them. It would be more difficult. But it wouldn’t stop things that had already been done before any type of potential revoke could happen. When it comes to rescinding any other standards, this is intention on the climate side just if the goal is to solve climate change. If that is your goal, then more action is needed, not less. If that is not your goal of course, that doesn’t come into play. But we know from the climate science, we know from the emissions impacts that we need to reduce emissions very, very quickly if we do want to protect human health and the environment. So, if that is your goal, you actually need to be going for more, not less things actually being implemented to reduce emissions. I think I covered all the points on that, but if I didn’t, please feel free to follow up.

[00:42:27]

RICK WEISS: Noah, anything you want to add to that?

[00:42:31]

NOAH KITTNER: No, thanks.

[00:42:32]

RICK WEISS: Okay. Let’s move to a question from Monica Samayoa from Oregon Public Broadcasting. I’d like to hear the panelists thoughts on renewable natural gas and if it will help reduce emissions. In Oregon, utility is pushing hard on renewable natural gas instead of electrification, but they’re having a hard time acquiring it. Some say it’s a delay tactic, but is it a solution that can work? So, can one of you address what is renewable natural gas and is it a solution? Noah, are you up on that?

[00:43:05]

NOAH KITTNER: Sure, yeah. So, I mean, I think you have to start with the actual life cycle analysis. So, there’s a discussion of renewable natural gas, which has many different feedstocks. There’s some types of biofuel, bioenergy-based natural gas feedstocks where they’re converting different bioenergy sources into natural gas. There’s also discussions of using electricity to split water to create electrolytic hydrogen in the form of a substitute fuel for natural gas that could be used in certain cases. And I think that when comparing these different options, looking at the life cycle analysis is really important to be thinking about. What is the potential feedstock of the renewable natural gas? Where is it coming from in terms of either the biofuel that’s being used or if it’s waste material from like landfills or other sources? There’s different impacts at all of these stages. And so, that’s why life cycle assessment, which can provide a cradle to grave assessment and emissions inventory, can really help address whether that fuel will reduce emissions or not. In some cases, some of these options are not reducing emissions to the extent that they claim. So, that’s a challenge.

[00:44:51]

MELISSA LOTT: I can add three quick points. Is that all right, Rick? And I’ll say them real fast.

[00:44:54]

RICK WEISS: Sure.

[00:44:55]

MELISSA LOTT: So, three quick points. One, if you haven’t followed Lucas Davis at UC Berkeley, he does a lot of work around what changes in the natural gas system can do to different communities and some of the tradeoffs. So, pro renewable natural gas. It’s still CH4. It’s still methane. So, you can drop it in some pipelines if you can buy it to your point and the economics are such that it still makes sense to use just methane you got straight out of the ground. At this point, they’re producing it that way. The second point I’ll make is that we’re looking at getting an entire economy to net zero. If you remember my three points, you want to electrify, clean up electricity, and then produce all the things you can’t do with electricity. That bucket, that last one is actually still pretty significant, especially in industry, in potentially shipping, and then in long haul aviation. And there’s a conflict there with the number and amount of renewables we can produce and where is going to be its kind of highest and best use. And so, there’s a tension where if we have an alternative for whatever that renewable natural gas would be doing, but we don’t have an alternative for long haul flights because physics tells us that electrification of long haul flights would be extremely difficult if not impossible. That’s researched by—oh, my goodness—it’s a professor at USC, but I can send the link later. It’s in one of our podcasts where we talk about decarbonizing aviation.

You have to think about that tension. The third thing I will say, which is we often think about solving climate change as moving completely away from pipelines, but that may not actually be true, and pipelines might actually be a piece of infrastructure that can help us accelerate progress to net zero. And there’s a paper we published a couple years ago on that at Columbia University. I’m one of the authors on it. It’s open source. No pay walls. And what the paper basically says is there’s two things. Pipelines can be converted actually to basically highways for additional grid lines, but you can blend a whole host of different gases potentially into those pipelines. So, not just renewable natural gas, but other things as well that might help you to get down emissions, not hurt the most vulnerable amongst us, and achieve different goals that different states have set. So, it’s complex. But to your point, it’s hard to get the volumes of RNG at the price you want today. It’s just not there.

[00:46:57]

RICK WEISS: Interesting. Great. Thank you, both. I’ve got two questions here that I think are related. I’ll put them together. One is from Holliday Moore from WAER public radio in my hometown of Syracuse asking, “Which states are in your opinion leading the way to improve electric and renewable use and in what ways are they leading by example?” And similarly, Larry Johnson from Cobb County Courier in Georgia is asking if you have any suggestions for locally focused stories that would dovetail with the goals Dr. Lott presented basically looking for examples I think of success or good efforts that might serve in stories to show the way. I wonder if each of you have a few suggestions about projects underway in states or localities that are worth highlighting. Noah? Oh, go ahead. Melissa.

[00:47:46]

MELISSA LOTT: I was going to say. Noah, do you want to go first and then I can jump in with a few too?

[00:47:50]

NOAH KITTNER: Sure. Well, yeah. I’m maybe a bit biased as I spent quite a bit of time during my Ph.D. in California, but I think there’s quite a number of really innovative energy storage projects happening now in California that are demonstrating the way that you could integrate variable renewable energy like solar and wind at a higher scale compared to other states. Particularly, I think large scale lithium ion batteries storage facilities that are being grid connected and operating and also other types of flow batteries that maybe provide a longer duration in energy storage compared to lithium ion projects. So, there are a lot of innovations happening that other states could take note of, especially ones that are now experiencing this transition where a lot of coal electricity is expensive. The coal-fired power plants are closing for economic reasons and also climate reasons. But in a lot of cases, they’re just not cost competitive to compete. And so, finding ways to replace that electricity generation as we’ll need increased electricity generation capacity from low carbon and renewable sources is going to be really important.

[00:49:35]

MELISSA LOTT: And I’ll just mention, so, the podcast I mentioned earlier, that is my textbook. It’s not like a textbook I would have had in school at least. It’s storytelling. And within that, we blend in a lot of local stories that I just think are really interesting examples of where things are working, where they’re not, what we learned from them, etc. I’ll flag a few. One, we did an episode on clean heat for all. This talks about some actions within New York City. I’m not from New York City, but obviously I live here now. And it talks about in social housing where have all different types of kind of challenges coming to a point where you’re looking to solve them, how do you get cheap heat that stays reliable in the face of storms because we’re on the coast, etc. It talks about new innovations that have been happening around heat pumps where actually you have systems that look like saddle bags that go on your windows. They don’t block the windows, so you still have sunlight, but they can heat and cool your apartment and do it in a way that is actually economically advantageous. So, it saves money. The other one all flag is a cool local story going to the other coast. It’s a group that does repairs of EV charging stations. So, electric vehicle charging station, you get funding from the federal government or from a program or maybe it’s a private investment, but you build it, and then it has to be maintained. Well, that grant from the federal government paid to build it, not maintain it. So, what are we actually seeing as we’re developing out that part of our economy? It’s still in the early stages. I have an EV. I can tell you I run into broken chargers especially around public charging systems more frequently than I’d like, but these folks are figuring out how to solve things. So, that’s another one. There’s also an entire episode that we did about taking coal out of Colorado, but you can go through this. Basically, you go across the U.S., but also into different countries where you can pull good examples. So, responses to the invasion of Ukraine and like what they did in Poland and Germany and other places in terms of their response, you can get some just good stories. And we do zoom into individual towns, individual people and companies. So, they’re very specific. The last thing I’ll mention is just that the group at—was it Canary Media and Post Script Media? They do a lot of coverage of local stories of energy transition stories. So, it’s Stephen Lacey and his crew, and they have The Carbon Copy as one of their podcasts, and they do short stories just about what folks are up to in different places, and they did a big thing on battery recycling the other week, etc. And I know their series are really solid and they don’t kind of—they’re objective about like what they’re covering. So, it’s a good resource if you want to get some more examples.

[00:52:07]

RICK WEISS: Great. I have just been noticing Canary Media myself lately. Great new resource. Question here that’s focused a little bit on Puerto Rico, this from Jillian Melero, a reporter based in Chicago, asking this one aimed at you, Dr. Lott, regarding mitigation and adaptation in the case of Puerto Rico. What are some observations or recommendations you have about the challenges and opportunities to address resilience there and energy justice?

[00:52:35]

MELISSA LOTT: Oh, gosh. How much time do we have, Rick? I’ve got such a long list of observations, thoughts, opportunities, etc. I’ll pick two, which is going to be quite a challenge.

[00:52:45]

RICK WEISS: And you can connect offline if necessary to have a conversation.

[00:52:49]

MELISSA LOTT: Absolutely. And I have a number of colleagues who do direct work in Puerto Rico, work with Puerto Rico on rebuilding the grid, etc. So, I’ll share two observations, one that applies to all of us, which is that we are still largely planning our energy systems around the patterns we saw with our climate and our weather, which are two different things as all my climate scientist colleagues tell me again and again and again. We’re still planning them for the things we’ve seen in the past or maybe the things we’re seeing today, but not the things that are baked into the system with the climate for the future. And so, as we’re rebuilding things and as we’re investing in resiliency in a system, we need to expect these changes in the climate to be happening. So, the number of hurricanes and the intensity that we had 20 years ago is not what we expect in the next 20 years. And so, taking that into account is extremely important. The other observation I’ll just highlight is that there’s a lot of focus in discussions around what the solution is or, “It’s microgrids, we have to have microgrids.” And the answer is so often not “or,” it’s “and.” When you look at the research and analysis, it’s like yes, you want to have a resilient mesh network microgrid connected to a centralized grid. Like you want to have an “and” there because there’s advantages to both. And so, the question is, “How do you do that in a way that is affordable?” And diversity of technologies really comes into play in all the analysis that I follow and incorporate in my own studies. So, I’m just going to stop there. There’s a long list behind that, but that’s two of them.

[00:54:14]

RICK WEISS: Great. We do have a question about your energy mix work reference, Melissa, but I want to save that for a moment. And this is a very interesting question that doesn’t draw on your scientific expertise, but maybe your observational expertise in this area from Michael Fanelli at KRBD radio in Ketchikan, Alaska. Do you think journalists still have a role to play in convincing audiences of the importance or urgency of climate change? And if so, how should we do that without being doomsday and depressing? And I’d be very interested to hear each of your takes on this journalistic question from your vantage working in the science in this area. Noah, do want to start?

[00:54:57]

NOAH KITTNER: Sure, yeah. So, I mean, I think that one of the issues that often comes up is that there’s a doomsday tale about how our emissions aren’t coming down fast enough. But less so, journalists have really explained how individual people could really benefit economically from transitioning to some of these different technologies. For instance, what I’ve seen with electric vehicles for instance is that the total cost of ownership of electric vehicles is often less than an internal combustion engine vehicle and it’s becoming more affordable, but I think there’s less understanding and explanation in the general public of why that is so and how that is so. And so, I think making some of the connections between individual things or explaining technologies like heat pumps, which are really new, but could have a big impact for people’s lives, is a way to look at potential solutions. So, essentially, I think journalists could help communicate what actions people can take in their lives that are not only about reducing emissions, but could also potentially save them money or also help society to solve other issues like in equity and justice in other factors.

[00:56:34]

MELISSA LOTT: I’m gonna quickly quote or paraphrase. I don’t think it’s a direct quote. This is from my memory of something. I did a documentary year and a half ago with PBS NOVA. It was called Chasing Carbon Zero, and it talks about progress we’ve made in the U.S. It actually highlights a bunch of the data we’ve been talking through today like what progress has been seen and what needs to happen in the future across all the different sectors, which goes I think to the other question you’re referring to Rick. But within this, he said in an interview that effectively there’s an obligation that reporters have to report—this is his opinion—on climate change and what’s happening and the urgency, but there’s also a responsibility to report on the solutions to climate change because if you leave it is, “This is horrible, this is happening,” but don’t provide the information that there’s solutions and we can do something about this, which is what the research and data show us. That’s not my optimistic, I want to feel good about it. It’s simply what the research tells me is that we have solutions. He thinks there’s a responsibility amongst journalists to report on that, which is why he created the documentary and then came and asked me to be a part of it. In terms of communicating this, I think the urgency point is very lost in communication today, and it’s something that I spend a lot of my time on, and it would be great to have more people who are referencing what the science is telling us, which is that this is urgent and it’s not without huge costs if we don’t act quickly. So, maintaining the status quo is so much more expensive than rapidly transitioning. So, how does one effectively do it if that’s your goal to reduce the cost of this whole thing and protect communities, human health, and the environment? But I really resonate with this solutions point because when I’m engaging with policymakers, my students, etc., it’s so easy to get stuck in doom and gloom. And it’s like, but wait, we have solutions. It’s a much better problem than to not have solutions. And those solutions are thanks to decades of investments by scientists and engineers, social scientists, etc., in looking at what are the pathways.

[00:58:33]

RICK WEISS: Great. We only have a couple of minutes left, and I want to remind reporters when you do leave at the end of the briefing, I would strongly encourage you to take the half a minute it takes to fill out the survey you’ll get. It really helps us plan these briefings to be most helpful for you. But I want to ask Melissa first to just quickly in about a minute give a little bit more detail on your category three of your three sections there, which talks about mixed electricity. I’ve got two different people. Lauren Hines-Acosta at Chesapeake Bay Journal and I think Jenae Barnes from Capital B News are both asking about that. So, a little more explication about that. And then, I will ask each of you to wrap up with a quick take-home that reporters can get little nuggets of a take-home message from you each to wrap up. But Melissa, will you start with that?

[00:59:19]

MELISSA LOTT: So, slide number five in my presentation, there’s a footnote at the bottom, Loton and Smith 2021. It’s a fact sheet. It’s two pages, it’s got graphics, and it summarizes hundreds and hundreds of studies by researchers all over. And what it says is those three points. What do you do? Electrify, clean up electricity, and then clean up everything else. And then, it goes into what you do in terms of cleaning up electricity, which is the question I think is being asked here, Rick. And to that, what I will do is I’ll do two things. One, reference a podcast episode we did on how you build a zero carbon sports team. It’s fun. We use soccer to explain what the science and engineering tells us about the mix of technologies we need. But the high level is that if you want to get to an affordable, reliable and clean electricity systems—it has to be affordable and reliable—you want three buckets of technologies. The first is variable renewables, wind and solar examples. They’re cheap when they’re around, but they need to be complemented by energy storage, which is the second bucket. Spoiler, they’re the midfielders in the soccer team. But those things are batteries, but well beyond batteries, long duration storage, seasonal storage. The details are all there in the fact sheet. The third one is firm dispatchable power. That’s the other set of technologies. Those are things that are around 24/7/365. Geothermal and hydro are some of the examples from the renewable space, but also nuclear, potentially fossil fuel with carbon capture if we can scale that, etc. So, I hope that gives you a taste, but slide number five, second footnote, two-page fact sheet is there. The link is there.

[01:00:42]

RICK WEISS: Perfect. Thank you. And you’re right, it’s the second of the three. Thanks for correcting me. And great reference. And I want to take the last minute here to hear each of you just in 30 seconds or less give me a take-home message. If there’s one thing you want reporters to walk away with today, what would you have them walk away with? Noah?

[01:01:01]

NOAH KITTNER: Just that fossil fuels are the majority contributor to greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. And so, we need to continue to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. And we’ve been able to do that by closing down coal plants, but also increase our electricity generation capacity. So, this is a great opportunity to really clean up the electric grid, and that’ll be very urgent and important to be able to address climate change.

[01:01:34]

RICK WEISS: And Melissa?

[01:01:37]

MELISSA LOTT: Climate change is affecting us even more than we thought it would be. It’s already affecting us today, and it’s affecting us more than we thought it would be, creating an urgency to get emissions down. So, if we want to achieve those goals and get emissions down to combat climate change, we need to move rapidly and at scale, and we need to use a lot of different technologies. That’s what the research tells us, that we want a diverse mix of things. And so, the good news is we have solutions. The challenge is to deploy those solutions, when you have the technology sorted, to get them out into the world, you need a lot of leadership, you need policies, you need a lot of social change. And so, that’s where the complications come in, but we have the solutions.

[01:02:17]

RICK WEISS: Fantastic. I want to thank our two expert speakers today, Dr. Noah Kittner and Dr. Melissa Lott. Fantastic presentations. Such a good Q&A. Lots of information. Lots of story ideas here for our reporter audience. Thank you, reporters, for your commitment to covering this urgent topic, this important topic. And I want to remind you all that we at SciLine are here to help you to find scientist, references, scientist sources for you to use in your reporting. Get in touch anytime. Thanks all for attending, and I hope we’ll see you at the next five election-related media briefings over the next three weeks. So long. See you next time.