I love reading about all the advances in clean energy in CleanTechnica. But are these advances getting us where we need to go fast enough?
Short answer: NO.
We are making great progress, with costs of solar, wind, and batteries continuing their decline. But we are not moving fast enough to turn the tide on human-caused climate change. One study I saw recently said we need to be installing wind and solar at triple the current rate to get to 90% renewable just for electricity by 2035.
What are we missing to make the energy transition — a transition to renewables for close to 100% of our energy needs by 2050 or so? How do we do that?
My reading of many books and reports on the subject lead to a consensus that we must do three main things:
Encourage conservation and energy efficiency throughout the economy
Green the grid
Electrify everything
According to most economists, we can best achieve all these goals and make the energy transition more quickly by putting a price on carbon so that fossil fuel burning bears the price for the damage to society it causes.
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