Climate Warrior: Climate Activism and Our Energy Future

By Brad Rouse

What will you do for our children and grandchildren, knowing their future depends on it?

 

Climate Warri

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wisdom House Books
• Release date: Mar 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9798985377118

Brad Rouse

Brad Rouse is a climate activist living in Asheville, NC. He is deeply involved in local efforts around the energy transition. He lobbies Congress for carbon fees and dividends as a volunteer for the Citizens' Climate Lobby. In 2016, Brad started a non-profit-Energy Savers Network-that mobilizes volunteers to help low-income people save energy, and he has participated in over 200 on-site weatherization projects himself. He has rooftop solar, and his family cars are a Tesla Model Y and a Prius Plug-in hybrid with 150,000 miles and still about nine miles of EV-only range. Brad worked for twenty years developing long-range planning studies and computer software for utility companies. He has been studying energy economics for over forty years and holds a bachelor's in economics from Yale University, where he learned about pricing pollution in freshman economics. He received his MBA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and he practiced for over ten years as a Certified Financial Planner. Climate Warrior is his first book. You can find him on the web at www.climatewarriorbook.com.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

A DEBATE AMONG FRIENDS

The Covid-19 pandemic was in full swing. Here in Asheville, North Carolina, we were all hunkered down. The non-profit I had co-founded, Energy Savers Network, was taking a hiatus from serving low-income families. I was finally completing lots of little home projects, even as I was thinking of new ones.

One night, I had a conversation with good friend, local web developer, and founder of the Asheville chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), Steffi Rausch. Steffi had been incredibly successful in getting local endorsements in support of CCL’s Carbon Fee and Dividend (CF&D) legislative proposal, which would put a fee on carbon pollution and return the revenues to legal residents of the U.S. Her request for an endorsement, however, was getting pushback from the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville (UUCA), even though the national Unitarian Universalist (UU) organization had endorsed carbon pricing. Several UUCA members were concerned that the Sierra Club had declined to endorse CCL’s proposal.

Both the UU church and the Sierra Club are strong proponents of climate action. I had given a Climate Reality presentation at the Sierra Club’s November 2019 meeting, with a strong focus on climate action, and it had been well received. Certainly, progressive environmentalists would support CCL’s proposal if they just had all the information.

Upon further digging, we found out that the Sierra Club’s concern was with the regulatory rollback portion of the CF&D bill (known as the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividends Act, or EICDA). There was concern about a provision of the bill which puts the Clean Power Plan and other forms of greenhouse gas regulation on the back burner. Steffi and I had some quick responses to that objection, but our responses didn’t seem to turn the tide. Our main argument was that EICDA would be more effective than EPA regulations in curbing carbon emissions and that it would apply to more parts of the economy than the Clean Power Plan. The EICDA would also be more stable, not subject to executive orders and had provisions to reintroduce regulations if the economy-wide emissions targets were not met. Also, we argued that regulatory relief was a big part of the appeal to Republicans and a major part of our strategy to bring them on board. (Side note: The version of the EICDA introduced into the new Congress in 2021 removed the regulatory rollback.)

This was a conversation among friends. Steffi and I had spoken to Ed Prestemon, a friend and fellow climate activist. Ed suggested that we schedule a debate between the Sierra Club and CCL so that members of the church could hear both sides of the argument. Steffi and I both agreed to that, and Ken Brame, head of the Sierra Clubs statewide political network, and also a member of UUCA, agreed to represent the other perspective.

I was convinced that the carbon fees in the EICDA would lead to a quick transition of the electric utility industry away from fossil fuels, which would obviate the need for utility regulations to address carbon emissions. It was just an informed hunch based on my economics training and my electric system planning experience, not based on any formal analysis. With my newly found free time, I was able to do a more formal analysis, developing a spreadsheet model to examine how costs for different technologies would change based on different levels of the carbon fee. The results of my analysis convinced me even more. The carbon fee would result in no new fossil fuel capacity being built. It would also quickly lead to a reduction in the use of fossil fuels from existing power plants and an increase in renewable energy from new renewable power generators. I was able to demonstrate this in a series of presentation slides, which became the crux of my debate argument.

It was a good discussion, and I think our side had the better argument. The important thing, however, was not the debate so much as that preparing for the debate caused me to heavily research carbon pricing and how it would guide the energy transition. I went a little overboard in my modeling. (You might figure out reading this book that I love building spreadsheets!) Then, a few weeks after the debate, I thought to myself that I should really turn this analysis into an article, which I titled Carbon Pricing and The Energy Transition.¹

The article was published in CleanTechnica, a great online resource for energy nerds like me. I like to wake up to CleanTechnica every morning to get a little bit of positive news to start my day. I love their short articles on the changing landscape of clean energy. I’ve learned a lot. Also, Robin Purchia, a writer for CleanTechnica, published a flattering article in 2015 about a volunteer low-income energy efficiency program I had started through my church at the time, titled Energy Efficiency for the Climate and the Poor.²

Over the summer and fall of 2020, I followed with eight additional articles on a variety of subjects related to transformation of the electric grid, carbon border adjustments, electric vehicles, and how much solar and wind we need to go to 100% carbon free.

Throughout the process, I toyed with the idea of these articles being the basis for a book. I began writing, and quickly realized I wanted to turn it into something more than an exploration of the energy future and policy required to achieve it. I also wanted to incorporate a vision of collective action, with my own experiences over the last decade as an example. I had done everything from crawling through attics and under mobile homes helping low-income people save energy to testifying before state utility commissions and meeting with members of Congress. This was a chance to share my vision—a vision of everyday citizens, environmentalists, scientists, engineers, policy makers, entrepreneurs, electricians, factory workers, plumbers, laborers, and climate activists working together to create that future we want.

Climate Warrior is the story that has emerged. It encompasses four decades—my last ten years as a climate activist and the coming thirty years of my vision of an army of climate warrior creating the transformational change we need.

Endnotes

1. Rouse, Brad (2020), Carbon Pricing and the Energy Transition, CleanTechnica , June 14, 2020 https://cleantechnica.com/2020/06/14/carbon-pricing-the-energy-transition/, (accessed 2/22/2020).

2. Purchia, Robyn (2015), Energy Efficiency for the Climate and the Poor, CleanTechnica , May 15, 2020, https://cleantechnica.com/2015/05/20/energy-efficiency-for-the-climate-and-the-poor/, (accessed 2/25/2021).

CHAPTER TWO

BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND

W hat made you such an environmentalist? Is it because you had an experience in nature that led you to appreciate its beauty, or something like that? I pondered my friend’s recent question for some time, and then it came to me: I didn’t start out as an environmentalist. I was more of a humanist. I want humanity to be all that it can be. As a child, I was enamored with science fiction stories of human galactic empires. I loved the story of progress. I still love the story of human progress but have learned the different angles to this story in the intervening years.

First, progress creates winners and losers. We need to do everything we can to bring everybody along so everybody wins with progress. Second, progress can be an illusion if our view of it masks damage to nature. We can’t live without the natural world. We are inextricably bound to it. For a conscious human who wants what is best for humanity, this is an inescapable conclusion. For humanity to succeed, nature must succeed. For humanity to prosper, nature must prosper.

We must fully understand nature’s ways. Humanism requires environmentalism. Our progress requires us to live with, and in, and as part of, nature, not the other way around. Full stop.

Climate experts say we must end our climate pollution by 2050, with a substantial improvement toward that end by 2030. Making that change will represent profound human progress. On the other hand, if we continue doing business as usual, climate change will mean a daunting and scary worldwide tsunami of cascading disasters and a bleak future.

That bleak prospect is, of course, not the future any of us would voluntarily choose. We all know such a future is the opposite of progress. And the good news is that, although time is running out, it’s still not too late. As each person, community, and nation holds fast to a collective vision of global health and joins the effort to battle the existential threat—while, at the same time, we intensively deploy continuing technological advances—a different future becomes increasingly possible. This future will represent a tsunami of change—one of opportunity for individuals, communities, and our society. Everyone has a role to play. And even those of us who are unsure about the scientific consensus on climate can help create a world that will be better than today’s, whether the scientific consensus on climate is right or wrong.

To create this better future, we must stop using fossil fuels to create energy. The burning of fossil fuels for energy results in the emission of carbon dioxide and methane, as well as other harmful pollutants. Climate scientists agree that these emissions are the primary human-caused contributors to a steady increase in the greenhouse effect, warming our planet and causing more damaging disruption. While there are other sources for this change, such as deforestation, and other solutions, such as reforestation, the most important solution is to end the use of fossil fuels. To do this, we must use less energy and/or obtain our remaining energy from clean and renewable sources.

The magnitude of the energy transition needed to end the use of fossil fuels is immense, and there are challenging technical issues associated with the transition. My analysis in Chapter Seven will show that the U.S. needs to be adding five to six times more renewable energy than we added in 2019 every year through 2050. The expansion of renewable energy will allow us to remove fossil fuels from the grid. We need to change out the energy source for devices that use fossil fuel directly and mostly replace that energy source with electricity. Cars, trucks, airplanes, heating systems, machinery, industrial blast furnaces, and other fossil fuel burning machines must be converted to the electric equivalent. The electric grid will not just need to be green, it will need to be bigger, to accommodate these conversions to electricity. Finally, when we transform the electric grid with renewable energy, we will need to deal with the challenging problem of intermittency, which will be the subject of Chapters 13–14.

We will need to act decisively, too, to meet our objectives because time is of the essence. For example, our current administration should adopt legislation to address the market failures that led to the climate crisis, which specifically should include the introduction of carbon pricing. Even if political realities keep us from enacting a comprehensive solution like carbon pricing, in the near term, we do need to do more than we are doing now—however we can. Although most of the focus here is on the U.S., we must act globally because greenhouse gas emissions are a global problem. We will explore how to get there in greater depth in the chapters to come.

THE VISION THING

At various times in my life, I’ve contemplated the idea of vision. I was a basketball player and was coached to visualize the ball going in the basket. I was in management, and I learned that it was important to have a goal and to envision the result for the company that would signify success. I internalized a personal development book: Stephen R. Covey’s bestseller, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey’s second habit, begin with the end in mind resonated. I thought maybe it was magic—just hold a vision in your mind and come back to it again and again, doggedly working toward it, and you will make it real. It seemed to work. We should do that for our energy future: visualize the future we want, take actions every day to that end, and keep the vision firmly implanted in our minds till the deed is done. Begin with the end in mind.³

In the words of my favorite poet, Bruce Springsteen, from his hit record Badlands—talk about a dream, try to make it real. And that’s just what I hope to do in this chapter and in this book. I will talk about that dream, and hopefully you will join me to share that dream and help us all make it real.⁴

Looking to the future, we home in on the year 2050, the symbolic midpoint of the twenty-first century. Climate experts have said we need to be at net zero greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. by then if we are to have a chance of achieving the Paris Climate Accord goal of limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C. Indeed, the platform of the 2020 Biden presidential campaign called for a goal of having the U.S. be net carbon neutral by 2050.

To start, this book will focus on 2050 as our goal for exploration and understanding of what is possible and what it will take. Then in Chapter Twenty, we will look more closely at the intervening decades because we need to make major emissions reductions much sooner than 2050.

THIS IS WHAT 2050 LOOKS LIKE

Nearly all of our energy needs will be met by electricity. Energy experts sometimes refer to this as Electric Everything. Second, nearly all of our electricity will be produced from renewable sources, which I will refer to as Greening the Grid. Third, most uses of energy will be far more efficient than today, from driving our cars to heating our homes to powering our factories.

We will produce any given level of economic activity with far less energy. Virtually no pollution will arise from energy production. If we are careful, there will be minimal environmental impact from creating and disposing the tools used in renewable energy production such as batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. Fossil fuels will be nearly a thing of the past.

The climate crisis will still be with us, but we will see the light at the end of the tunnel. We will have learned how to live more sustainably. We will no longer face the bleak future of continually rising energy prices due to depletion of a limited supply. We will rely on natural energy sources that depend upon the sun, the tides, the heat below, and the earth’s rotation. These sources are forever. And we will have realized a better quality of life than what we have today under our current energy regime.

DIVIDENDS

As a financial advisor, I often asked clients to evaluate alternative investments based on the potential for dividends, among other factors. Dividends are what you get paid after making an investment, and they can justify the investment by building your wealth for the future, while the investment’s principal also grows.

Think of our home—this planet Earth—as our wealth, as the sum of all our investments, and as our shared endowment that must not be spent down. Life on this planet is the endowment we bequeath to future generations. It is so precious. We can make choices that add to the endowment, or we can make choices that subtract from this endowment. We must add—not subtract—or we risk disaster. And we can make those positive investments in a way that will pay dividends that make our lives better.

Consider the dividends we will receive by 2050 if we start investing now.

A LIVABLE CLIMATE FOR ALL HUMANS AND OTHER SPECIES

We will all benefit from averting the most serious risks of climate change, including mass extinctions, sea level rise, ocean acidification, and more extreme storms, droughts, fires, famines, floods, diseases, extreme heat, crop loss, and climate migration. These negative effects of climate change affect the poor more than the well-to-do, so avoiding them makes for greater prosperity for all.

A FUTURE FOR OUR GRANDCHILDREN AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN

Youth activist, Greta Thunberg, reveals that her depression began when she learned about what man was doing to the environment and climate, and how so many people seemed not to care.⁵ I have spoken with young people who feel that their future is being robbed by older generations who do not act on this. If we do create the clean energy future vision, however, we will protect our future generations from the despair and pessimism that can only grow if we do nothing. Just think how much optimism our country has had after accomplishing great things—winning World War II or landing on the moon come to mind. We will have accomplished another such great thing by transitioning to clean energy by 2050.

LOWER COST OF ENERGY

Energy costs during the transition may rise some because we will be making investments in the new technologies, while carbon pricing policies will raise the cost of the old. However, the long-term costs we pay for utilities and transportation fuels will be lower due to four interconnected factors: (1) less energy will be used due to superior efficiencies from electricity, (2) solar and wind are producing electricity at lower overall cost, (3) solar and wind costs are mostly paid up-front, while fossil fuel costs tend to be pay as you go due to our continuing need to mine for coal and drill for oil and gas, and (4) we will no longer need to pay the separate overhead costs for refueling stations and gas distribution.

REALLY CHEAP ELECTRICITY

The future is electric, and that means more electricity demand to spread over the fixed cost of the electric system. Utility regulators will force these declines in cost per unit to be passed on to ratepayers.

And there is more. Just like our current electric system, our future electric system will need to have energy available in reserve to meet our needs, including at times when variable energy supply is low, or demand is high. Some of that will come from building more solar and wind power than we can use at other times. The electricity from those sources at those other times will be available at zero additional cost. New industries and new ways of operating will be found to take advantage of that frequently available, zero-additional-cost, electricity.

EXCELLENT AIR QUALITY

Western North Carolina has already demonstrated what can happen when advances are made toward cleaner energy. We no longer burn coal here, and visible pollution from automobile exhausts has decreased due to more stringent regulations. We are experiencing some of the cleanest air, and witnessing some of the clearest mountain views, in decades. By 2050, with no pollution from internal combustion engine cars or fossil fuel-based electricity, we’ll be able to breathe better and see even farther!

BETTER HEALTH

Cleaner air means better health and lower death rates due to pollution-related respiratory diseases such as asthma. Without natural gas fracking, oil drilling, or coal mining, we’ll have said goodbye to the health risks that go along with those jobs. Coal dust from passing trains will be no more. Oil spills will be no more. Our homes will be safer when we no longer heat them by burning gas or oil, and the dangers of fire or carbon monoxide poisoning will be vastly reduced. We will enjoy relief from the cause of almost 20% of premature deaths worldwide.⁶ As our health improves, medical costs will go down.

FEWER WARS AND OPPORTUNITY TO REDUCE MILITARY SPENDING

By 2050, we will have been independent of imported oil for more than a decade, which means the U.S. will no longer depend on foreign countries for energy as a vital commodity. That reduced dependency means less inclination to become engaged in faraway military conflicts, fewer overseas deployments overall, and fewer needless deaths.

A MORE LOCAL ECONOMY

Right now, we are largely disconnected from what we consume. We buy things on Amazon or at Walmart or even at the gas station with no clue where or how it was made, and that’s true for much of the energy we consume, as well. A clean energy transition will mean greater reliance on energy produced locally from the wind and the sun, which means our purchases will more directly support people who live and work among us and a healthier community for everyone. We will still be interconnected with other regions, but every community will have the opportunity to participate in the more distributed energy system in 2050.

RESILIENT COMMUNITIES

With local production comes the opportunity for local resilience. Microgrids, which combine renewable production with electricity storage that can operate when needed in the absence of wind, sunshine, or the overall grid, will enhance local and