Where is the US renewable energy economy headed?
We spoke with Mark Jacobson, a professor of environmental engineering at Stanford University and the author of No Miracles Needed, which outlines a path to 100% renewable energy using only existing technologies. Below is a summary of our interview:
- How does the deployment of rooftop solar affect utilities?
- It’s contentious. Utilities are promoting policies that many consumers disagree with. If electrification continues, there will be a lot of new demand, likely more than rooftop solar alone could absorb.
- Should the US produce more solar panels itself?
- Maybe not! They only need to be built once—dependency on China for PV panels isn’t the same as long-term energy reliance.
- What states are doing the best job of transitioning to renewables?
- States with natural access to renewables (i.e. windy Great Plains states) are doing very well. Cheap supply = demand. Surprise surprise!
Views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the official position of Commonweal Ventures or its investment team.
Utilities were built on a simple flow: when you use electricity, you pay, and that’s that. Now with policies like net metering and the availability of tech like home battery systems, that relationship is getting a lot more complicated and bi-directional. How are you thinking about the future of utilities in an increasingly distributed system?
I think the utilities are acting too much like monopolies. When you have your own rooftop solar and battery system, you’re reducing demand on the grid. Utilities don’t like that, so they try as hard as possible to make that difficult to do. They’ve gotten laws in policies passed in places like California to limit solar incentives for rooftop customers. That destroyed the whole solar industry in one year. Utilities are no friend to the transition.
They misleading by trying to claim that people who have rooftop solar have an advantage because it cuts into demand and other people on the grid have to pay more. Utilities are ignoring the fact that there’s going to be much higher demand for electricity since we’re electrifying everything. Rooftop solar is not going to eat up all that demand. Regardless, rooftop solar is saving a huge amount of money and reducing wildfire risk because of lower transmission requirements and reducing infrastructure build-out as a whole.
I grew up in Las Vegas and have been watching Lake Mead wither away. Now that drought looks like the new normal in the Southwest, hydroelectricity output has been changing. How are you thinking about hydroelectricity’s future?
Actually, I’m not worried about the droughts. With climate change, you have higher temperatures. That means more water evaporates. In the global average, evaporation = precipitation. More evaporation means more precipitation; therefore, you should expect more water.
Where it occurs is a different story. You’re going to get shifts, but all renewable energy sources are variable so it’s solvable especially if you interconnect.
Hydropower has a big role in filling gaps in supply. That’s its best role—dams are like big, effective batteries. You can use it either for baseload, short-term storage, or long-term storage. It’s the most versatile type of electricity generation there is. We should keep what we have as long as possible but eventually when we get to 100% renewables and we have lots of batteries everywhere on the grid, you can start to phase out hydropower. I think how much we have right now year-to-year is just an interim issue.
Energy has been getting into some national security and trade questions. For instance, China is producing 80% of the world’s PV panels. Do you think the US can or should be competitive in those markets?
Building panels is different than drilling for fossil fuels. Let’s say China cornered the oil markets, then they’d be selling fuels forever and you’re really tied in. But with solar panels, it’s a one-time build-out. We need to do it once. Sure, we have to maintain and grow it a little bit, but the pace of additional panels goes down tremendously. Whoever can do the initial buildout fastest and cheapest is best.
You have a lot of experience laying out plans for government and pushing for large-scale change. Who needs to be influenced? Are the higher leverage places activists should be focusing on?
Getting the grid to 100% renewables is such a large problem that it needs to be solved at all levels of society and government. The federal government is paralyzed a lot of the time, so states, communities, and businesses have done lots on their own. Individuals have also built their own renewable energy infrastructure.
The federal government is kind of starting to act but it spends 40% of the Inflation Reduction Act on useless technologies. As a result, that slows us all down.
The fossil fuel industry is pushing four technologies: carbon capture, direct air capture, blue hydrogen, and electro-fuels. They’re all completely useless.
The agricultural industry is pushing biofuels for transportation like ethanol and methanol, biomass for electricity generation, and biogas for electricity generation and heat.
Nuclear industries are pushing new, small, modular reactors and to keep existing reactors open. All those industries are just lobbying the Hill to extract more money.
What jurisdictions are getting it right?
Many of the states that have made the most progress on the fraction of their electricity supplied by renewables are not states that have implemented many policies. Like North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma.
They’re making progress just by being windy.
At least in the Great Plains states. They don’t have to work very hard! But they still have a long way to go regarding the rest of their electricity but also transportation, buildings, and industry.
Oregon, Washington, California, Nevada, and New Mexico, these states have a lot of hydro and solar. 21 states and territories (including DC and Puerto Rico) have committed to 100% renewable goals. That’s helpful, but only a few of those states are on the list of having a high percentage of renewable energy today.
