The transition to clean energy is accelerating

Electric lighting, for example, did not simply replace candles and oil lamps on a 1-to-1 basis, but instead opened up entirely new residential, commercial, industrial, artistic, and scientific applications. Refrigeration did not just replace ice boxes on a 1-to-1 basis, but instead found new applications ranging from air conditioning and dehumidifi... See more

It comes on top of more visible good news—the IEA said this weak that oil demand around the world is softening because of “surging” sales of electric vehicles. In China, demand for gasoline will peak this year or next and then decline sharply. Britain, where the coal era was born, will close it’s last coal-fired power plant at the end of this month... See more

But the big picture question of how we orient ourselves is important. We shouldn’t be looking at our current energy usage and asking, “How can we get this much energy, but cleaner?” We should be looking at a 45-year energy diet and asking, “How can we use clean energy technology to shatter this barrier and open up incredible new vistas?”

What does having a lot more energy let us do? For starters we can avoid the worst of the climate crisis by aggressively shifting to electrification of transportation, heating and cooling, production and so forth. We can also deal with water shortages through desalination. We can produce food in climate controlled environments. And we can fortify an... See more

While we are converting increasing shares of electricity generation to new renewables (solar and wind, as opposed to the long-established hydroelectricity) and putting more electric cars on the roads, decarbonizing trucking, flying, and shipping will be a much greater challenge, as will the production of key materials without relying on fossil fuel

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In the “energy is a necessary evil” frame, we look at our current electricity needs and then ask, “How can we generate all that from zero-carbon sources?” In the alternate framing, you say that to the extent we can develop affordable, zero-carbon sources of electricity, we want to generate tons and tons of electricity. Ideally, we would want to rep... See more

We can proceed fairly fast with the displacement of coal-fired electricity by natural gas (when produced and transported without significant methane leakage, it has a substantially lower carbon intensity than coal) and by expanding solar and wind electricity generation. We can move away from SUVs and accelerate mass-scale deployment of electric car

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