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Climate Policy and the Audacity of Hope

This post was originally published by Legal Planet. Reprinted with permission.

The bad news is that we’re not yet on track to avoid dangerous climate change. But there’s also good news: We’ve taken important steps that will ease further progress. We should resist the allure of easy optimism, given the scale of the challenges. Neither should we wallow in despair. There’s a good basis for hope.

To begin with, there’s been major progress in U.S. climate policy. The first half of President Joe Biden’s term saw the passage of three bills that collectively devote about half a trillion dollars to emission reduction: the Infrastructure Law’s support for emission cuts in transportation, the CHIPS Act with research and development funding for clean energy technologies, and the IRA, with $369 billion for renewable energy and emission cuts. Fourteen states now have net-zero emissions targets for the economy as a whole, and 16 have zero-carbon targets for the grid. California set a 2035 deadline for eliminating gas and diesel cars, and eight other states are following suit. New California legislation will require corporations to disclose their carbon emissions. And this only scratches the surface in terms of all the state initiatives across the country. In short, we’re seeing something like a slimmed-down Green New Deal.

Climate policy has been boosted by dramatic changes in the economics of clean energy. Perhaps the most important development of the past decade has been the dramatic decline in the cost of renewables. Wind power costs fell by half from 2008 to 2021. Rooftop solar costs in 2020 were a third of what they had been in 2010. Utility-scale solar was an even more dramatic story. In 2020, the cost of single-axis utility scale solar was only a fifth of what it was in 2010. If car prices had declined equally, the average cost of a new car today would be $7,000.

Prices for battery storage have declined even more sharply. The Department of Energy estimates the cost of an electric vehicle lithium-ion battery pack declined 89 percent between 2008 and 2022. A similar price decline would mean that the average new car today would cost $3,500.

There’s no reason to think these trends have bottomed out. In terms of batteries, scientists and engineers are exploring many different battery chemistries, looking not only for lower costs but greater durability and less reliance on rare minerals. Toyota says it’s near mass production of a solid-state battery that will double the range of EVs up to 700 miles with a charging time of 10 minutes or less. But there are many other battery chemistries under consideration, and if Toyota’s doesn’t pan out, one of the others is likely to. Different batteries may be ideal in settings where charging speed is not a factor, such as utility-scale electricity storage.

There’s also a lot of exciting work on solar cells. This is really esoteric stuff — not surprisingly, since photovoltaics are based on quantum physics. Utility Dive reports that “the solar industry is now beginning to make a switch from p-type PERC to n-type tunnel oxide passivated contact, or TOPCon, cells.” In addition, there’s work on layering solar cells. Or in more technical terms: “Multiple junctions — or boundaries between layers of semiconducting materials — allow solar cells to break through the Shockley–Queisser limit, a theoretical limit which prevents single-junction cells from absorbing more than 30% of the solar energy that shines on them.”

I don’t mean to imply that technological progress will automatically fix things. But it does make other things easier. Cheaper renewable energy attracts private investment and makes limits on fossil fuels more feasible. The resulting economic growth also helps create a stronger political base for aggressive expansion of clean energy. With luck, we could find ourselves in a “virtuous cycle” (the opposite of a vicious cycle), where climate progress builds on itself.

We will still need major efforts to phase out fossil fuels and create the physical and institutional infrastructure for a net-zero economy. Yes, there are huge barriers to overcome. But despair is no longer the default option. Let’s dare to imagine a future in which we succeed.

Showing 2,825 results

Climate Change Protest showing a sign that says "there is not planet B"

Daniel Farber | April 29, 2024

Climate Policy and the Audacity of Hope

The bad news is that we’re not yet on track to avoid dangerous climate change. But there’s also good news: We’ve taken important steps that will ease further progress. We should resist the allure of easy optimism, given the scale of the challenges. Neither should we wallow in despair. There’s a good basis for hope.

air pollution

Daniel Farber | April 25, 2024

EPA’s New Power Plant Rules Have Dropped. What Happens Next?

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has issued a cluster of new rules designed to limit carbon emissions from power generators. Once upon a time, the presumption would have been that the rules would quietly go into effect, until someday a court rules on their validity. These days, we can expect a lot of action to begin almost right away.

Daniel Farber | March 28, 2024

The New EPA Car Rule Doesn’t Violate the Major Questions Doctrine

In West Virginia v. EPA, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. The heart of the ruling was that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had engaged in a power grab, basing an unprecedented expansion of its regulatory authority on an obscure provision of the statute. Conservative groups have claimed since then that virtually every government regulation raises a major question. But the doctrine cannot be read that broadly. In particular, the doctrine does not apply to the emission standards for cars that EPA issued last week. As EPA explains in its prologue to the rule, the car standard is very different from the Clean Power Plan.

Sophie Loeb | March 27, 2024

North Carolina Needed an Emissions Reduction Plan. They Asked a Utility Company to Create It.

Today, the Center for Progressive Reform is publishing a new policy brief. Missing the Mark: How North Carolina’s Decarbonization Efforts Fall Short and How to Fix Them examines the pitfalls of North Carolina’s decarbonization plan (known as the Carbon Plan and developed by Duke Energy) and alternative models to address those shortcomings.

Daniel Farber | March 26, 2024

Chevron Gets the Headlines, But State Farm May Be More Important

The Chevron doctrine requires judges to defer to an agency’s interpretation of a statute if that interpretation is reasonable. The State Farm case, which is much less widely known, requires courts to defer to an agency’s expert judgment unless its reasoning has ignored contrary evidence or has a logical hole. As you probably already know, two cases now before the Court will probably result in abandoning or revamping Chevron. But the “abortion pill” case that will be argued today will test the Court’s adherence to State Farm. Will the conservative Justices stand by State Farm even when doing so expands access to abortion?

Federico Holm | March 25, 2024

What Three Ohio Counties Can Tell Us About a Major Obstacle to Our Clean Energy Future

My colleagues at the Center for Progressive Reform and I recently published a report and interactive map examining how local ordinances that restrict clean energy development can impose major obstacles in our efforts toward a just clean energy transition. Among the many important findings in our report, we highlighted the high degree of variability that exists between states in the way large-scale clean energy generation is regulated. In some cases, like Illinois and Michigan, governments have empowered state authorities to override local siting measures; other states have given local governments more decision-making powers to decide if and how renewable infrastructure can be built. Among the latter is Ohio.

air pollution

Victor Flatt | March 14, 2024

Op-ed: Whether the Government Requires It or Not, Greenhouse Gas Disclosures Are Here to Stay 

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) released its long-awaited final rule requiring publicly traded companies to report certain climate risks and greenhouse gas emissions as part of their financial risk disclosures.

James Goodwin | March 5, 2024

The Ideological Warfare Behind the Attack on Chevron Deference: Part 3

As discussed in yesterday’s post, the contemporary conservative movement is prepared to use legal battles over esoteric administrative law doctrines, such as Chevron deference, as a tool of ideological warfare. Importantly, though, these battles present progressives with a great opportunity to engage at the ideological level as well. After all, progressives have been busy developing their own competing vision of what our constitutional democracy should look like. They should seize the opportunity presented by the fight over Chevron deference’s future to articulate and advance that vision.

James Goodwin | March 4, 2024

The Ideological Warfare Behind the Attack on Chevron Deference: Part 2

In Part 1 of this three-part series, I introduced the rapidly boiling legal battle over a once-obscure administrative law doctrine known as Chevron deference. Much of the commentary to this point has focused on the political motivations behind the conservative attack on Chevron deference. In this second post, I will take a closer look at how conservatives have carefully crafted this battle (and their broader war on the administrative state) to promote their distinctive brand of ideological thought.