Affordable Solutions to the Climate Emergency Are Available Now Off-the-Shelf

Here we review detailed solutions to the climate emergency, published freely by highly-qualified experts.

By Peter Montague (pm8525@gmail.com)

The burning of fossil fuels has warmed Earth’s atmosphere, disrupting the global water cycle, causing more and bigger floods, droughts, storms (hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos), and heat waves.  This is making large parts of the planet uninhabitable, forcing mass migrations, which cause hardship, suffering, and conflict.

The solution to the climate emergency is to make an all-out effort to replace fossil fuels with electricity generated from solar, wind, and geothermal energy.  Combined with energy efficiency (doing the same amount of work using about half as much energy), these renewable sources of energy can power the U.S. and global economies at less cost (measured in dollars and in human health) than fossil fuels.

This article briefly summarizes the work of two experts who have studied, in detail, how to shift the U.S. and global economies from fossil fuels to electric power: Saul Griffith and Arjun Makhijani.

Saul Griffith holds a Ph.D. degree in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has also received a MacArthur Foundation “genius award.”  He has founded several organizations, including Otherlab and Rewiring America, dedicated to analyzing and solving energy problems.

Arjun Makhijani holds a Ph.D. degree in engineering from University of California at Berkeley. He is president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Takoma Park, Maryland.   

Here are some details about their studies:

Saul Griffith and Sam Calisch. Mobilizing for a zero carbon America: Jobs, jobs, jobs, and more jobs; A Jobs and Employment Study Report. San Francisco, Calif.: Rewiring America, July 29, 2020.

Here are a few quotations:

“Total decarbonization of America’s energy system is often portrayed as being inconsistent with economic growth, particularly with respect to job opportunities for those currently working in more traditional energy industries. This report, based on an extensive industrial and engineering analysis of what such a decarbonization would entail, demonstrates that aggressive decarbonization would create, rather than destroy, many millions of well–paying American jobs. These jobs will be highly distributed geographically and difficult to off-shore. The opportunity to create even more jobs by becoming an exporter of clean energy

technologies would increase the number of jobs.” (pg. 1)

“Where most studies look at decarbonization in specific individual sectors such as transportation, the electricity grid, or buildings — and mostly only on the supply side — we build a model of the interactions of all sectors, both supply and demand, in a rapid and total decarbonization. The maximum speed at which the transition can occur is dictated by the speed at which productive capacity in critical industries is built out. We call this the “mobilization period,” akin to the “arsenal of democracy” mobilization in service of winning WWII. Under our model, this period is followed by a prolonged stretch of deployment at close to 100% adoption rates. After this deployment period, the economy settles into a “new normal state” that provides steady growth, replacement, and maintenance of a 100% clean energy system.” (pg. 1)

“In 2018, Otherlab worked under ARPA-e (Department of Energy) contract DE-AR0000853 to conduct a highly granular energy flow analysis of the American energy system, identifying every energy flow in the American economy, from supply through demand, that could be determined from public data3. These flows can be seen in Figure 1. This study builds on that tool to develop fully decarbonized future energy scenarios. This study maps out a decarbonization pathway consistent with the most rapid rates of industrial transition in U.S. history [2]. The scenario utilizes only existing technology commercially available today.” (pg. 2)

“The maximum feasible transition (MFT) involves two primary stages: (i) an aggressive WWII–style production ramp–up of 3–5 years, followed by (ii) an intensive deployment of decarbonized infrastructure and technology up to 2035. This includes supply–side generation technologies as well as demand–side technologies such as electric vehicles and building heat electrification.” (pg. 3)

“MFT [maximum feasible transition] also calls for close to 100% adoption of decarbonized technology when fossil machines reach retirement age. This is fairly simple to imagine: when someone’s car reaches retirement age, it is replaced with an electric vehicle. When a natural gas plant is retired, it is replaced with nuclear or renewables.” (pg. 3)

“An MFT approach would create as many as 25 million net new jobs at peak.” (pg. 3)

“Every American household would accrue savings of $1,000–2,000 per year due to lower, more predictable energy prices.” (pg. 3)

Saul Griffith, Sam Calisch and Laura Fraser. Rewiring America; A Field Manual for the Climate Fight. San Francisco, Calif.: Rewiring America, July 29, 2020. 145 pgs.

How to electrify almost everything and reduce fossil fuels emissions drastically by 2035.

Saul Griffith.  “The Green New deal: The enormous opportunity in shooting for the moon; decarbonizing with massive electrification will bring about a new American abundance.”  Medium.com Feb. 21, 2019. http://bit.ly/2EYJsns

This is a short summary of Griffith’s large, detailed plan to win the fight against climate change by drastically reducing dependence on fossil fuels by electrifying almost everything; for more details see the three other publications by Saul Griffith listed above.

Saul Griffith. Electrify; An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2021. [ISBN13: 9780262046237] 288 pgs. 

This book is available for purchase in hardback from Powell’s books (a unionized book store) for $24.95. https://bit.ly/3ruThlm  This is Saul Griffith’s most well-worked-out, detailed plan for rapidly eliminating most fossil fuels, their greenhouse gas emissions, and their deadly pollution that is harming overburdened communities -- rapidly enough to avoid the worst effects of the climate emergency.

Of course, if the U.S. were to adopt such a sensible and ambitious program, other rich countries could do the same.  However, as we know from the detailed study by Calverly (2022), the rich world only accounts for roughly 30 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, so, to make Griffith’s plan(s) effective and adequate on a global scale, the rich world would have to support the electrification of the non-rich world with financial and technological assistance.

Here are some brief quotations from Electrify:

“In this book I approach the climate emergency from a new angle. I look for solutions, not barriers. Solving climate change should taste at least as good as carrots, at best ice cream, but it should not be painful. Instead, I’d like to offer a no-regrets pathway to success.”  (pg. 11)

“This book doesn’t start with the question of what is politically possible, but asks what is technically necessary to reach a climate solution that is also a great economic pathway for a country.” (pg. 11)

“I support technologies that pass the “Is it ready and does it work?” test.” [Griffith notes that this criterion rules out carbon capture and storage.]

Arjun Makhijani. The Technical and Economic Feasibility of a Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free Energy System in the United States. Takoma Park, Maryland: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, March 4, 2009. 19 pgs.

“It is technically and economically feasible to transform the U.S. energy sector from an overwhelming dependence on fossil fuels (85 percent) into one that uses renewable energy only. This paper provides details about that conclusion, for the most part about the electricity sector, but also to some extent about other parts of

the energy sector. It is largely based on a much more detailed examination of the issue in my book, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy (listed below).

Arjun Makhijani. Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy [Second Edition]. Takoma Park, Maryland: Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, March 11, 2008. 290 pgs.

This 290-page book, available free in PDF format, offers detailed alternatives to the continued use of fossil fuels – continued use that is supposed to be made possible by massive, rapid deployment of carbon capture and storage paid for with public money. Unfortunately, CCS is “too little, too late” and electrifying the U.S. and global economies is the only feasible and affordable solution in the time we have left before we stumble headlong into irreversible climate catastrophe.