The Sanders campaign has just released their climate policy proposal. Its.... ambitious. berniesanders.com/issues/the-gre…
It aims to reach 100% renewable energy for electricity and transportation by 2030, including almost $900 billion in energy storage build out.
This is *not* possible
To start, it actually envisions doing this while phasing out nuclear power.
Despite the fact US commercial nuclear power has killed 0 members of the public, it would halt all new plants, and even halt license renewals
As other have pointed out, decarbonization is hard. Doing it with one hand and two feet tied behind your back, is not possible.
Even a basic risk/diversity analysis indicates we succeed with more sources.
This plan relies on a ~$1 trillion bet on unproven energy storage
Somehow, this plan will also pay for itself.
After 2035, "electricity will virtually be free"
Its like too cheap to meter, but for renewables
The plan does include getting money for litigation against fossil fuel companies, which is not a bad idea considering US climate liability. But even with that, electricity will never be "virtually free"
Would love to know who the experts who supposedly scored that are
They do include a storage R&D proposal: StorageShot.
Great idea, but Sunshot took a decade and solar is still less than 3% nationally.
There is no way to do the R&D, have innovation effects, and scale this up with RE to 100% reliably in 11 years
The plan has a lot of proposals for regulating fossil fuel production. Some, like banning federal leases, are somewhat climate mainstream.
Others, like banning exports AND imports, will crash the economy
We need to be ambitious. But plans should be designed in case they fail to not set back climate policy decades.
They should also be guided by science and we really can't run 100% RE for electricity, let alone transportation in 10 years. Its not technically/economically feasible
Thats about it. The plan is worth reading, it has a lot of good ideas, and only a handful of really kooky ones. I will say all of the money spending and economics seem questionable, especially as they are not consequential economic analyses but just costs (end)
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