Thread by @drvox

I was just reminded that technically I'm still on vacation for two more days. Based on that info, should I:

All right, I have heard your counsel, and I am ignoring it. Instead, here's another thread on carbon capture & sequestration. (I know this gets tedious, feel free to mute me, but I'm determined to articulate this properly so I shall keep trying.)

THREAD:

As I see it, the primary job of decarbonization is electrification. See the work of Saul Griffith & the folks at @rewiringamerica: vox.com/energy-and-env…

Despite people's penchant for confidently proclaiming on the subject, no one actually knows how far toward total decarb we can get with electrification. 70%? 85%? 95% It's too early to tell. I'm quite bullish -- my prediction is 90+%, but let's call it 85% for this thread.

The obvious implication is that electrification is the No. 1 item on the to-do list, the overwhelming priority. That's where the bulk of attention & resources should be going. That's the wartime mobilization; it's the massive investments; it's the GND.

It is true that we don't know how far electrification can get, or how fast, so we should be thinking about backup & supplementary measures -- that last 15%. Prudence demands we invest in RD&D for hydrogen, synthetic fuels, CCS, DAC, various NETs, etc. Stipulated.

But the farther & faster we go with electrification, the less we will need of those other (largely untested & wildly expensive) options. Electrification is the cheapest, the cleanest, the best, the most available: the main f'ing event!

So, again, I'm fine researching & demonstrating CCUS options, as I've written many times. But NEVER at the expense of the main event. NEVER as an excuse to delay or avoid the main event. NEVER as implicit permission to continue slow-walking the main event.

It's like you're building a house & you've got the materials to build 85% of it & you need to develop, I dunno, some new kind of caulk to finish the last 15%. Fine, work on the caulk. But working on caulk does NOT count as a different route to (or reason to delay) house-building!

If you're negotiating w/ recalcitrant builders, and they refuse to get cracking on the house, and they say, "instead, we'll redouble our research on caulk," you would not count that as "making progress" toward the house!

You can't build a house with caulk! And similarly, you can't decarbonize the world with CCUS. The amounts required, even to make a substantial contribution, are mind-boggling large & expensive in land, time, money, etc. It's at best a supplement on the margins.

So, no, I'm not "against" CCUS. Like every other energy tech, we should be spending about 5X what we are on RD&D. What I am, primarily, is *for electrification*, the rapid phasing out of FF in electricity, transportation, & heat. That is the prize to which my eyes are affixed.

My primary interest is in building momentum for electrification -- public interest, tech, infrastructure, policy, financing, etc. IMO, that should be every climate hawk's primary interest. That is, again, the main dish, the headliner, the holy grail.

If we had our pedal to the metal on electrification, I'd feel perfectly fine with time, money, & attention going to CCUS. Again, planning for that last 15% should be happening alongside the main event. However ...

... to the extent the hype about CCUS serves to reduce the pressure for electrification -- serves as permission to delay or slow-walk electrification -- it alarms me, & should alarm all climate hawks, *even big fans of CCUS*.

Most people working on CCUS, especially in the early days, were civic-minded engineers, wonks, & other green nerds who understand all the above perfectly well. But they are also the kind of people who, god love 'em, tend to be somewhat naive about politics.

THEY aren't using CCUS as a delaying tactic or smokescreen, but the more the pressure for decarbonization rises, the more conservative pols & FF cos. feel obliged to "do something," the more the entire field will be invaded by, uh, less principled individuals.

Greens overestimate the extent to which they'll be able to keep control of it, the extent to which their extensive white papers & research reports will guide the real-world development of CCUS. They underestimate the potential for fuckery, which recent history shows is boundless.

TL;DR: a rapid wartime mobilization of electrification tech/policy is what every climate hawk should have as their No. 1, non-negotiable demand. NOTHING should be allowed to slow or compromise it. As long as (and only if) that's in place, sure, go nuts on CCUS! </fin>