The Path to Progress: Unpacking Recent Climate Successes
This past summer we learned that our climate warming to date of only 1.3 degrees Celsius results in sharply accelerated worldwide weather disasters. Yet there has also been very good news. The climate movement is stirring around the world and has some major victories to report.
Although the world is not yet on track for net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, global amelioration of climate change has accelerated faster than climate scientists were expecting. This has been happening particularly in China, in Europe, and now the US. There has been a positive feedback loop where greater demand for solar, wind, EVs, and batteries has led to declines in production and installation costs and spurred yet further demand. On top of that, subsidies to green technologies – exemplified by the Inflation Reduction Act whose provisions are driving competitive responses from European policy leaders. Arguably, the climate movement’s political pressure has played a crucial role in putting these policies into place.
“The Clean Energy Future is Arriving Faster than You Think.” That was the headline of a New York Times front-page article in August. The article points to the massive effects of recent subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Act, and the CHIPs initiative on investment in the US. The International Energy Agency said in its 2022 Renewables report that “Renewable capacity expansion will be much faster than predicted just a year ago,” describing the progress as unprecedented and 30 percent faster than they predicted last year. Indeed, over the next five years to 2027, the IEA expects as much renewables capacity expansion as in the previous 20 years.
The clean energy future is arriving faster than expected because as the world quickly builds out these novel technologies – solar, wind, batteries, LEDs, electric vehicles – the cost of producing them falls faster. And the climate subsidies that the Biden Administration has provided have egged on the European Union to provide similar climate subsidies. And the subsidies that the Chinese have provided to their businesses for carbon reduction greatly exceed those of the US and EU.
Electric vehicle sales (battery and plug-in hybrids) in California are now one-quarter of all new car sales in the state, thanks in part to the rapid rollout of fast charging stations. In Europe, it is one-fifth. China – now the world’s biggest auto market -- also has electric vehicles at one-quarter of new sales.
The climate scientists at the nonprofit Climate Action Tracker now suggest that current policies will keep global warming to 2.6 degrees Celsius. That’s far from good enough, but it is far below the 3.5 degrees that the same group predicted from policies in 2009.
These accelerations have occurred because as new green technologies have come into production, costs have fallen dramatically. So, for example, when we subsidize solar farms, that increases the total production of solar panels, and that lowers the costs of solar production – creating in effect a second subsidy.
Of course, this path is not smooth. The rapid increase in demand for batteries has driven a sharp cost increase for the minerals – such as lithium carbonate – needed to produce them. But this itself is temporary. Lithium is an abundant material, and once the mines are set up to produce more, prices inevitably fall. Indeed, these prices have already fallen substantially from their highs, although not yet back to 2019 prices. While additional mining is not good for the environment, the mining required for batteries and other sustainable technologies is tiny relative to the gargantuan mining needed for fossil fuel production. According to earth.org, fossil fuel mining creates ten thousand times as much greenhouse gas as lithium and cobalt combined.
We need to do more, a lot more. But do not forget we have how much we have already done. And everything we do makes life better for our future. Let’s keep on keeping on.
Upward Revision to Forecasts for Renewable Energy Capacity in 2025
