The idea of the energy transition has been occupying a lot of my time and mental capacity lately so I thought I’d put together some thoughts on how we could do it more, shall we say, economically. 1. Improve tax collection:
It's easy to dream up ways to make progress on the energy transition, not so easy to execute. For example, the plan to have more people go off-grid hits a snag when it cones time to put the pieces together. Want a whole-house solar system? Good luck finding the major components, inverters, batteries, panels, photovoltaic wiring.
If you can gather up those parts, you've made a good start. Now to install it. Priced copper wire lately? Checked in at building and electrical suppliers to see if they actually have any? How about electrical panels? I'm dealing with that now. If just a few more people in the area tried to build a system, there wouldn't be enough supplies to install the systems.
The plan for a better transition should start with questions about scalability and its impact on execution.
This list is a bit too statist for my tastes. In my view, unfortunately we can’t ban and subsidize our way to prosperity and there is really a limited amount that governments can do. We need more incentives (or better yet “un-disincentives”) for human ingenuity.
The only one on the list I would agree with is the energy education item. Unfortunately most folks are just not energy literate in any way shape or form.
Local food may slightly increase resilience, but growing things on marginal land nearby is often not economically productive as far higher inputs can be required and yields are often lower. If the higher fertilizer emissions overwhelm the transportation emissions then this is a dead end from a transition perspective anyway. This is not to say that I don’t love garden tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer... but that isn’t a scalable food system.
I think the tax you are looking for Irina is a pigouvian tax. Rather than have CAFE standards in the US forcing americans to drive cars they don't want to, they should have a slow but steadily increasing fuel tax - 1/3 to highways, 1/3 to military (protecting the free flow of oil, the biggest users should pay more) and 1/3 to education or something. Taxing something makes you use less of it - taxing fuel would get people to be more fuel efficient.
I have a totally different view on that - reduce taxes and reduce government. In fact eliminate personal income tax.
Radical Paradigm Shift?
No!
Personal income taxes were effectively nada in USA right up until the middle of the last century. In fact, just look at pictures of New York City in the 1930's you know when the Empire State Building was completed.
How did that nation build out so much of everything and become so big and powerful without personal income taxes?
Imagine if all citizens had that tax money in their own pocket - imagine how they could help recreate a greener society...
The current problems are exasperated by a resource shortage and a labour shortage, so any short-medium term things should be the lowest resource and labour costs.
With that in mind some comments:
1. The whole system of taxes, subsidies, permits, financing should work together to encourage the end results, with as much long term policy certainty as possible to help investments.
3. Residential rooftop solar requires more resources than on commercial buildings due to the small scale. Focus on commercial buildings, parking lots etc. (And add EV charging to those parking lots). I hear pastures may integrate well with PV as shade can be useful for livestock. Wind unfortunately is not great near residences so siting will be hard.
5. Off grid takes a lot more resources unless you go hermit style as the utilization of the resources is lower or more storage required.
9. Depends, transport energy costs are often less than the difference in doing something in the most efficient spot vs average spot.
Other things:
Scrap all the carbon trading schemes and put on a carbon tax. Much harder to game. Rebate enough to make it fair for lower income people. Can have it start at 80% of average for exporting industrial users to stay competitive, or have border adjusted carbon taxes. Eventually this same cale can be paid to DAC to geological storage, but that takes energy so only after the energy crisis is resolved. Now that we need to get to net zero the whole trading scheme premise of "find someone who can make the reduction cheaper than you and pay for the credit" is obselete anyway.
Forget BEV for 10 years and focus on plug in hybrids. Most of the fuel reductions for 20% of the limited battery resources. Also allows more energy flexibility, give cheap off peak power with smart charges when there is surplus, (or those solar covered parking lots), when short electricity use more storable fuel.
Keep / reopen all the nuclear possible.
Unfortunately most of Europe has poor renewable resources for the pop density, so unless you get into nuclear in a big way, all the high energy industries need to offshore. North Africa looks promising for wind + solar to make industrial scale green fertilizer, chemicals, steel etc.
Funny how those "finger-pointing-ecologists" who place all the blame on the oil industry (and blind faith on the green revolution) usually hit the brakes when challenged with solutions similar to your points #2, #7 and #9.
They insist on believing that driving a Tesla makes them pure and guiltless but will never even consider using the same phone for over 2 years, the same car for more than 7 years, taking shorter showers, giving their AC a break, etc. Some would probably bury their heads in the sand if told that, given the embargo, the energy to charge their EV comes from coal power plants!
It's easy to dream up ways to make progress on the energy transition, not so easy to execute. For example, the plan to have more people go off-grid hits a snag when it cones time to put the pieces together. Want a whole-house solar system? Good luck finding the major components, inverters, batteries, panels, photovoltaic wiring.
If you can gather up those parts, you've made a good start. Now to install it. Priced copper wire lately? Checked in at building and electrical suppliers to see if they actually have any? How about electrical panels? I'm dealing with that now. If just a few more people in the area tried to build a system, there wouldn't be enough supplies to install the systems.
The plan for a better transition should start with questions about scalability and its impact on execution.
This list is a bit too statist for my tastes. In my view, unfortunately we can’t ban and subsidize our way to prosperity and there is really a limited amount that governments can do. We need more incentives (or better yet “un-disincentives”) for human ingenuity.
The only one on the list I would agree with is the energy education item. Unfortunately most folks are just not energy literate in any way shape or form.
Local food may slightly increase resilience, but growing things on marginal land nearby is often not economically productive as far higher inputs can be required and yields are often lower. If the higher fertilizer emissions overwhelm the transportation emissions then this is a dead end from a transition perspective anyway. This is not to say that I don’t love garden tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer... but that isn’t a scalable food system.
I think the tax you are looking for Irina is a pigouvian tax. Rather than have CAFE standards in the US forcing americans to drive cars they don't want to, they should have a slow but steadily increasing fuel tax - 1/3 to highways, 1/3 to military (protecting the free flow of oil, the biggest users should pay more) and 1/3 to education or something. Taxing something makes you use less of it - taxing fuel would get people to be more fuel efficient.
Tax Collection.
I have a totally different view on that - reduce taxes and reduce government. In fact eliminate personal income tax.
Radical Paradigm Shift?
No!
Personal income taxes were effectively nada in USA right up until the middle of the last century. In fact, just look at pictures of New York City in the 1930's you know when the Empire State Building was completed.
How did that nation build out so much of everything and become so big and powerful without personal income taxes?
Imagine if all citizens had that tax money in their own pocket - imagine how they could help recreate a greener society...
The current problems are exasperated by a resource shortage and a labour shortage, so any short-medium term things should be the lowest resource and labour costs.
With that in mind some comments:
1. The whole system of taxes, subsidies, permits, financing should work together to encourage the end results, with as much long term policy certainty as possible to help investments.
3. Residential rooftop solar requires more resources than on commercial buildings due to the small scale. Focus on commercial buildings, parking lots etc. (And add EV charging to those parking lots). I hear pastures may integrate well with PV as shade can be useful for livestock. Wind unfortunately is not great near residences so siting will be hard.
5. Off grid takes a lot more resources unless you go hermit style as the utilization of the resources is lower or more storage required.
9. Depends, transport energy costs are often less than the difference in doing something in the most efficient spot vs average spot.
Other things:
Scrap all the carbon trading schemes and put on a carbon tax. Much harder to game. Rebate enough to make it fair for lower income people. Can have it start at 80% of average for exporting industrial users to stay competitive, or have border adjusted carbon taxes. Eventually this same cale can be paid to DAC to geological storage, but that takes energy so only after the energy crisis is resolved. Now that we need to get to net zero the whole trading scheme premise of "find someone who can make the reduction cheaper than you and pay for the credit" is obselete anyway.
Forget BEV for 10 years and focus on plug in hybrids. Most of the fuel reductions for 20% of the limited battery resources. Also allows more energy flexibility, give cheap off peak power with smart charges when there is surplus, (or those solar covered parking lots), when short electricity use more storable fuel.
Keep / reopen all the nuclear possible.
Unfortunately most of Europe has poor renewable resources for the pop density, so unless you get into nuclear in a big way, all the high energy industries need to offshore. North Africa looks promising for wind + solar to make industrial scale green fertilizer, chemicals, steel etc.
Funny how those "finger-pointing-ecologists" who place all the blame on the oil industry (and blind faith on the green revolution) usually hit the brakes when challenged with solutions similar to your points #2, #7 and #9.
They insist on believing that driving a Tesla makes them pure and guiltless but will never even consider using the same phone for over 2 years, the same car for more than 7 years, taking shorter showers, giving their AC a break, etc. Some would probably bury their heads in the sand if told that, given the embargo, the energy to charge their EV comes from coal power plants!