If the benefits of rooftop solar are to be realized on a larger scale, regulators need to come up with a more consumer friendly way for consumers to be paid for their surplus electricity while utilities and investors see a fair return on their investment for maintaining, expanding, and upgrading the distribution grid.
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Carbon Tax vs Cap 'n Trade: Who knew a Yogi-ism could provide insight into addressing decarbonization?
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If you want to better understand why transmission lines are such a big deal, listen to these Volts podcasts from David Roberts.
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The US Department of Energy is funding research into carbon capture. To understand where the research may go, check out the CDR Primer by J Wilcox, B Kolosz, & J Freeman.
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One reason for decarbonization journey's complexity is due to the diverse key roles and their relationships. Understanding their contributions provides insight into where the bottlenecks will occur as we decarbonize.
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Much can be learned from podcasts and there are plenty out there on energy, climate change, and decarbonization.
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In simple terms, decarbonization has two basic components:
- The elimination of producing CO2 from fossil fuels
- The removal of excess CO2 already in the carbon cycle
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Numbers. When talking about decarbonization, there are lots of numbers. And they pertain to all aspects in the decarbonization journey- technology, economics, politics, and regulation. How do you know the numbers are accurate? How do you know if they are true? Who can you trust? It's important to know where the data is coming from.
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Decarbonization is an extremely complex goal to achieve. It will come from disparate actions from the various facets that will make mistakes along the way, course adjust, and accommodate when faced with the critical need to integrate.
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While the end goal of fulfilling our energy needs with non-fossil fuels is a widely accepted goal, the plan to get there is one with many opinions. Amongst the plans, there are two I'd like to call out as I consider them at the top of the heap.
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