, 12 tweets, 4 min read Read on Twitter
Any New Green Deal we propose now will release massive economic savings over time. Appreciate the Op-Ed invite from @Buzzfeed to explain how rapid cost declines for wind, solar, and EV mean a green way forward is now a bargain. Let's do it. buzzfeednews.com/article/gregor…
2/ My advice to new green-dealers: don't come bearing scary high price tags. Lead, instead, with the savings. 65% of the energy the US consumes is wasted, lost to the atmosphere. That lost energy forms your budget to drive efficiency gains through the economy.
3/ Combined wind+solar is growing fast in the US, from 2.3% of our electricity generation to nearly 9% now. The biggest power plant in the country, Palo Verde nuclear, put out a monster 32.3 TWh in 2017. But in that same year, the US created 49.7 TWh from new wind and solar.
4/ Last year, the US put 360,000 new EV on the road. But the US also created enough new electricity from wind and solar alone, another 50 TWh, that could supply not just 360,000 new EV, but 20 times that amount—over 7 million new EV. Just run that formula faster.
5/ I strongly take the view that good news, not bad news, offers the best support overall to climate action. Constantly repeating oneself, saying “we’re not going fast enough” has become hollow. It’s become routine and costless to keep flogging that view.
6/ Coal consumption has peaked globally. It’s nearly gone in the UK. And it’s on course to crash out of the system here in the US. Why? Coal’s a money loser now, on course to fall regardless of policy.
7/ IMO, the historical record shows that government policy is largely “a following sea” that arrives as cost declines and profit potential have just started to kick in. That is precisely where we are today with a Green New Deal. Wind and Solar are the new new thing. Use them.
8/ China’s running a New Green Deal and it’s not onerous, not economically constraining, and will solve both air pollution and oil dependency problems: deploy lots of wind and solar, and kick the car market hard, in the ass, over towards EV. And it’s working.
9/ Just sayin: China’s car market flipped hard last year in the direction of EV, and their road fuel consumption fell for the first time in forever. Here in the US, gasoline consumption failed to make progress for a third year in row. In California, EV are now 9% of the market.
10/ Today, @budweiserusa will run a big wind power ad during the Super Bowl but this too is no surprise. Corporations are literally inhaling wind and solar as fast as possible because they're cheap, clean, and it’s a hedge against fossil fuel costs.
11/Today, wind+solar are like that old Palmolive commercial (1981) “you’re soaking in it.” Many US states, and you, are already soaking in electricity from wind and solar. Texas+California, 20% each. Plains states like OK and IA above 40%. Next up: offshore wind on US East Coast.
12/ An effective Green New Deal would be designed not around edicts, or scary revenue raising proposals that will predictably founder in the shoals of our political marshlands—but rather around incentives + tech pushes that leverage the great tools already here: wind, solar, EV.
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