When I wrote “if anyone has actually run the numbers, I haven't seen their work” I was thinking “built an economic model of the transformation required to move the world away from fossil fuels.” It seems to me direly important that we do so.
We’ve been talking about natural
gas. We know that as various subsidies are removed the price of natural gas
will rise. (By the way, the USA has a production subsidy, the depletion
allowance.) Ideally, users of natural gas as fuel will, therefore, replace
their systems with some combination of heat pumps and electric furnaces. Many
furnace owners quite literally cannot afford to upgrade their systems. Others may
be able to afford the change but will be adversely affected by it. All businesses
in this area will be in competition with international businesses that have not
converted their systems. So subsidies and, probably, tariffs will be needed for
this change to be carried out in an equitable way.
Natural gas is also used for
transportation, and natural gas liquids are used as a chemical feedstock for
plastics manufacture. DOE’s Energy Information Agency does not even know the
amount of NGLs that are used in plastics manufacture; probably no-one does.
The scale of this problem is vast.
In the USA, there are tens of millions of single-family homes with gas furnaces.
If fuel prices spike sufficiently, there is likely to be a voter backlash
against the conversion. There is going to be resistance in any event.
The scale of the mobilization
required to decarbonize the economy will be vast and it must be done very
quickly. Back in 1991, Al Gore said we needed the equivalent of a Manhattan Project
to guide the change. Time has gone by, and the urgency is much great. Now we
need a mobilization equivalent to that required for a total war.
If this is going to be done at
all, we need the best planning possible. Hence, we need models, and I am not aware
of anyone who has built even the prototypes of those models.
Enough of an answer?
4 comments:
Why must it be all or nothing?
Can't we back off in areas that are easily replaced? And swapping gas heat for electric heat only works if electricity is all from renewables.
It need not immediately be all or nothing, but at least we need to get started, and we need modeling to base our policies on. As far as I can tell – admittedly I have not done a full literature search – right now we have almost nothing, only hope and hope is not a plan.
Tomorrow, maybe, I'll write something about what proceeding without planning implies.
We do need to get started. And I agree, going all panicky with no plan will crash everything.
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