DeepSummary
The episode focuses on the potential for the U.S. to transition to a 100% clean electricity grid by 2035, a much more ambitious timeline than the previously discussed 2050 target. Experts Sonia Aggarwal and Jesse Jenkins explain how rapidly declining costs of renewable energy and energy storage make this accelerated timeline feasible and cost-effective. The episode highlights stories of Tim Eccles, a Republican advocate for electric vehicles in Georgia, and Donnell Baird, CEO of a company electrifying buildings in underserved communities.
Transitioning the electricity system is seen as a crucial first step that will enable electrification of other sectors like transportation and buildings, allowing deeper emissions cuts. Eccles discusses his efforts to promote EVs among conservatives by focusing on economic opportunities rather than climate messaging. Baird emphasizes how building electrification can create jobs and address multiple crises around climate, public health, and racial equity.
Overall, the episode makes a hopeful case that with existing technologies, the 2035 target is achievable, unlocking further emissions reductions while creating economic opportunities and jobs. Biden's climate plan embracing this accelerated timeline is hailed as a pivotal shift aligning with the urgency of climate science.
Key Episodes Takeaways
- The U.S. can reliably and cost-effectively transition to 90% clean electricity by 2035, enabled by rapidly declining renewable energy and storage costs.
- Moving to 100% clean electricity by 2035 is a crucial enabler for deeper economy-wide emissions cuts by powering electrification of transportation, buildings, and industry.
- Grassroots advocates and innovators are driving the clean energy transition through electric vehicle promotion, building electrification, and entrepreneurship.
- Framing clean energy around economic opportunity, jobs, and local benefits resonates better with some audiences than climate messaging alone.
- Combining climate solutions with efforts to create jobs, improve public health, and address racial inequity can yield powerful co-benefits.
- Biden's climate plan embracing a 100% clean grid by 2035 represents a major acceleration aligning with scientific urgency.
- Continued policy support can drive technology breakthroughs and cost declines to fully decarbonize electricity affordably beyond 90% by 2035.
- Transitioning electricity is a feasible near-term priority unlocking pathways to much deeper economy-wide emissions cuts needed by 2050.
Top Episodes Quotes
- “We've made an extraordinary amount of progress over the last decade in terms of cleaning up our electricity system, and that's thanks to evangelists like Tim and entrepreneurs like Donnell.“ by Speaker A
- “What I want to do is to help them see why this is a good idea and how this technology fractionally lowering everybody's power bill, bringing new opportunity Atlanta and Georgia, and also using a Georgia grown fuel. Right. How patriotic is that? I mean, that's what we ought to be doing.“ by Tim Eccles
- “And it was really amazing, actually, to find that we could come up with some pretty robust scenarios that dependably deliver electricity to customers in every hour at very high shares in the very near term.“ by Sonia Aggarwal
- “If we can set the right, if we can spend the next decade basically making the full suite of technologies we need to decarbonize as cheap as we've made wind and solar and batteries over the last decade, then we're going to be well positioned to get to net zero cost effectively.“ by Jesse Jenkins
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Episode Information
A Matter of Degrees
Dr. Leah Stokes, Dr. Katharine Wilkinson
10/22/20