Unlock Climate Consensus with Clean Energy — Not Climate Science

This blog post is the 2nd part of a series focused on arguments and strategies to achieve climate policy consensus in the United States. Part I introduces the author and advocates for a national Carbon Dividend. Statistics on U.S. views of climate change are largely drawn from the Pew Center’s research on climate politics.

There is a fundamental divide in United States between how Democrats and Republicans interpret the decades of climate science research from groups like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Although the overwhelming majority, 80% of all scientists and 97% of climate experts, agree that climate change is caused by human actions, primarily burning fossil fuels since the industrial revolution, the Pew Center has found that only 55% of liberal Democrats and just 16% of conservative Republicans perceive this level of consensus in the scientific community. There are many reasons for this gap between reality and the perceptions of the general public, which are outside the scope of this blog post.

The good news is that there is one area with consensus between members of both parties: deploying clean energy in the form of solar power and wind farms. The Pew Center found that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats strongly support increased deployment of clean energy, with 83% in favor of more wind farms and 89% in favor of more solar power. Both industries are geographically distributed across the U.S. and employ a large number of people, 102,000 in wind and 374,000 in solar. These industries are also rapidly growing at a rate of 32% annually for wind and 25% annually for solar, leading to ample career growth opportunities. In contrast, jobs in the coal industry look like a dead-end: 160,000 people were employed in coal electric generation and mining jobs in 2016, with a 24% declining rate of employment in coal mining between 2015-2016.

Wind and solar energy are already the most economically competitive electricity resources in the United States according to a study by Lazard, achieving costs of $17–47/MWh for wind or $37–49/MWh (when you include the Production Tax Credit and Investment Tax Credit for each resource, respectively), and are even cheaper than an investment in new natural gas combined-cycle plants, at $45–79/MWh. Wind is already often cheaper to run than existing natural gas plants (i.e. ignoring sunk capital costs and only considering variable fuel, operations, and maintenance costs), even in an era of cheap natural gas. Between 2009–2016, wind costs have come down 66% and solar costs have come down by 85%.

There are a number of policies at the state level to accelerate clean energy which are likely to have bi-partisan support. Currently, 29 states have binding Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS), which set a mandatory target and date for the percentage of renewable energy that must be integrated in a state’s electric grid. A further 8 states have voluntary RPS targets, so if you live in those states, a push for a mandatory target would help to accelerate clean energy deployment. The remaining 13 states have no RPS targets and a state-level awareness campaign, with a focus on the economic and job benefits of clean energy, would be valuable. Other clean energy policies that are likely to have broad support include: cutting red-tape for community solar to be installed for shared use in multi-family buildings and townhouse associations, and policies to support electric vehicles such as tax credits, investments in electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, and building codes for electric vehicle charging in multi-family buildings (Full disclosure: I work for a company that makes EVs).

Source: NCSL

In addition, a Carbon Dividend implemented at a national level would be a complimentary policy to state-level targets and efforts to cut red-tape and other codes and standards barriers. The full policy is a ‘carbon fee and dividend’ which would introduce a fee for carbon that increases over time on producers of fossil fuels, taxed at the mine, wellhead, refinery, or border, and redistribute all net proceeds in equal shares to American taxpayers as a monthly dividend. Such a policy makes carbon-intensive electricity and transportation more expensive and emphasizes that clean energy, such as wind and solar and efficient and/or electric vehicles, are the logical choice.

While clean energy seems to be the motherhood and apple pie of climate change politics, there is still an important role for the communication of climate science research to the public. Overall, the Pew Center’s study shows that only 36% of Americans are deeply concerned about climate change (while an additional 38% are somewhat concerned), and 72% of these deeply engaged citizens are Democrats. Engagement and awareness of climate change is important, because whether you follow climate news is correlated with whether you trust of media coverage of climate research (though the causal link could work in either direction). To make meaningful progress on climate change policy in the U.S., we must increase the engagement in climate change among the 38% of somewhat concerned citizens, especially Republicans, using clean energy and the good jobs it creates as the common ground on which to start the discussion.

To take action:

• Keep informed about climate science facts so you can dispel myths
• Find out about the current clean energy policies and gaps in your state and call or write your state legislators and governor’s office to fill these gaps
• Write your U.S. Congressional Representative asking them to join the bi-partisan Climate Solutions Caucus which aims to pass a national Carbon Dividend in the U.S. House of Representatives.
• Join the bi-partisan Citizen’s Climate Lobby to advocate for the National Carbon Dividend.

Note: All views are my own and do not represent the views of any other organization.