Climate change is an infrastructure problem, just look at this EV charger map
The case study of the US
Gas stations were transport infrastructure, too
Gas-powered vehicles with internal combustion engines have completely dominated American road transportation for 120 years. That’s a long time forpath dependenceto set in, as America built out a nationwide system to support vehicles powered by fossil fuels.
Gas stations are only the endpoints of that enormous system, which also comprises oil wells, pipelines, tankers, refineries and tank trucks – an energy production and distribution infrastructure in its own right that also supplies manufacturing, agriculture, heating oil, shipping, air travel and electric power generation.
Without it, your average gas-powered sedan wouldn’t make it from Reno to Salt Lake City either.
Fossil fuel combustion in the transport sector is nowAmerica’s largest single sourceof the greenhouse gas emissions causing climate change. Converting to electric vehicles could reduce those emissions quite a bit. A recentlife cycle studyfound that in the U.S., a 2021 battery EV – charged from today’s power grid – creates only about one-third as much greenhouse gas emissions as a similar 2021 gasoline-powered car. Those emissions will fall even further as more electricity comes from renewable sources.
Despite higher upfront costs, today’s EVs are actually less expensive than gas-powered cars due to their greater energy efficiency and many fewer moving parts. An EV owner can expect to saveUS$6,000-$10,000over the car’s lifetime versus a comparable conventional car. Large companies including UPS, FedEx, Amazon andWalmartare alreadyswitching to electric delivery vehiclesto save money on fuel and maintenance.
All this will be good news for the climate – but only if the electricity to power EVs comes from low-carbon sources such as solar, tidal, geothermal and wind. (Nuclear is also low-carbon, but expensive and politically problematic.) Since our current power grid relies on fossil fuels for about60% of its generating capacity, that’s a tall order.
To achieve maximal climate benefits, the electric grid won’t just have to supply all the cars that once used fossil fuels. Simultaneously, it will also need to meet rising demand from other fossil fuel switchovers, such aselectric water heaters, heat pumps and stovesto replace the millions of similar appliances currently fueled by fossil natural gas.
The infrastructure bill
The 2020Net-Zero America studyfrom Princeton University estimates that engineering, building and supplying a low-carbon grid that could displace most fossil fuel uses would require an investment of around $600 billion by 2030.
The infrastructure bill now being debated in Congress was originally designed to get partway to that goal. It initially included $157 billion for EVs and $82 billion for power grid upgrades. In addition,$363 billion in clean energy tax creditswould have supported low-carbon electric power sources, along with energy storage to provide backup power during periods of high demand or reduced output from renewables. During negotiations, however, the Senate dropped the clean energy credits altogether and slashed EV funding by over 90%.
Of the $15 billion that remains for electric vehicles, $2.5 billion would purchase electric school buses, while a proposed EV charging network of some 500,000 stations would get $7.5 billion – abouthalf the amount needed, according to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
As for the power grid, the infrastructure bill does include about $27 billion in direct funding and loans to improve grid reliability and climate resilience. It would also create aGrid Development Authorityunder the U.S. Department of Energy, charged with developing a national grid capable of moving renewable energy throughout the country.
The infrastructure bill may be further modified by the House before it reaches President Joe Biden’s desk, but many of the elements that were dropped have been added to another bill that’s headed for the House: the $3.5 trillionbudget plan.
As agreed to by Senate Democrats, that plan incorporates many of the Biden administration’s climate proposals, including tax credits for solar, wind and electric vehicles; a carbon tax on imports; and requirements for utilities to increase the amount of renewables in their energy mix. Senators can approve the budget by simple majority vote during “reconciliation,” though by then it will almost certainly have been trimmed again.
Overall, the bipartisan infrastructure bill looks like a small but genuine down payment on a more climate-friendly transport sector and electric power grid, all of which will take years to build out.
But to claim global leadership in avoiding the worst potential effects of climate change, the U.S. will need at least the much larger commitment promised in the Democrats’ budget plan.
Like an electric car, that commitment will seem expensive upfront. But as the recent IPCC report reminds us, over the long term, the potential savings from avoidedclimate risks like droughts, floods, wildfires, deadly heat waves and sea level risewould be far, far larger.
This article byPaul N. Edwards,William J. Perry Fellow in International Security and Senior Research, Stanford University,isrepublished fromThe Conversationunder a Creative Commons license. Read theoriginal article.
Story byThe Conversation
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