Really stark shift over the last five years — US exports of liquefied natural gas have gone from basically nothing to a significant share of the global energy trade: eia.gov/todayinenergy/… Breakdown here from EIA on where all of America's LNG is actually going. Brazil, for instance, doubled its imports in 2020 because a drought was crippling output from its hydropower dams and they replaced it with gas power: eia.gov/todayinenergy/…

The White House just released its budget — it's the most detailed look yet at everything Biden's proposed on spending/infrastructure so far. Everything needs approval by Congress, which is the big question mark, but thought I'd pull out a few things... whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl… My rough initial tally is that there's about $800 billion over 10 years proposed for clean energy/efficiency, another $50 billion for climate resilience, plus $150 billion for transit and rail. I might be omitting things but that's some of the big climate spending stuff.

Gotta confess I don’t always understand what *exactly* is being claimed when people say climate/energy policy will “create good-paying jobs.” Obviously expanding clean energy will require workers to install wind turbines or build EVs. But does it mean anything more than that? /1 Like, does it mean that economy-wide employment will be higher with the climate policy in place than without it? (That seems like a hard claim to make — presumably overall employment depends far more on levels of aggregate demand and fiscal/monetary policy, no?) /2

No idea if this is right or not (predictions are hard, idk), but it does seem to me that thinking about solar geoengineering as a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency thing, where the world turns to it in a panic as a last resort, is the absolutely worst way to go about it.

https://twitter.com/kdrum/status/1359193839106289667

(To be clear, I can think of a bunch of plausible scenarios where solar geoengineering might make sense as a harm reduction tool, alongside deep emission cuts. I am not super optimistic that the decisions around this stuff will be great if it's suddenly seized on in a crisis.)

Hmm, the latest review of studies on corn ethanol concludes that its carbon intensity is about 40% lower than that of gasoline. If true, then ethanol's obviously not a carbon neutral fuel, but it's also not *worse* than gasoline as I've sometimes read: iopscience.iop.org/article/10.108… One surprise is that they conclude the indirect land-use effects of diverting corn to ethanol are fairly low (i.e., effects from spurring people elsewhere to clear more land for farms). Here are the studies they review — I don’t fully understand why the variation is so high.

Biden's new executive order on climate/environment has just been posted. Establishes an interagency group on the social cost of carbon, tells EPA to consider new methane regulations on existing oil/gas operations, plus a lot more: whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… The order also tells EPA/NHTSA to consider establishing new fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks by July 2021, and for DOE to consider setting new efficiency standards for appliances/equipment by mid-2021.

What were the big energy and climate surprises of the Trump era? Four years ago, I described the most plausible arc for US climate policy under Trump (it was a boring, safe bet) but expected there'd be unexpected developments too. So how about a look back? vox.com/energy-and-env… 1) The pandemic was a huge surprise, obviously, though maybe it's too early to say how that will affect the energy/climate landscape. So far, it’s put a brake on U.S. fracking and induced Europe to pledge staggering sums on hydrogen. Maybe global CO2 emissions have peaked, idk.

Can America get to net zero emissions by 2050, as Biden has pledged? A big new study from @JesseJenkins and his Princeton colleagues goes into exhaustive detail on what it would take to get there. I wrote about it here and I'll note a few things below: nytimes.com/2020/12/15/cli… /1 First, the researchers model five big plausible technological pathways for getting to net zero by 2050. There's a 100% renewable path (#5), a path where wind and solar struggles (#4), and a blended path (#1). All seem doable, but each has pros and cons. environmenthalfcentury.princeton.edu/sites/g/files/… /2

Seems both the Fed and the Biden administration are likely to push banks, insurers and other companies to do more to disclose their climate risks in the years ahead. What are the best things that have been written about the concrete, practical impacts this could have? One thing to note is that even when companies do disclose climate risks, they can get it wrong! In 2018, PG&E pegged its future wildfire risk at about $2.5 billion. The next year, it faced $30 billion in wildfire liability and filed for bankruptcy: nytimes.com/2019/06/04/cli…

This is a remarkable chart: The amount of land worldwide devoted to pasture for livestock appears to have shrunk by roughly 74 million hectares since 2000 — an area the size of Chile — even as global meat/milk consumption grew significantly. thebreakthrough.org/issues/food/li… One big reason is that livestock producers have massively improved their productivity in many places, thanks to advances in animal breeding, veterinary care, feed quality. So they can produce more meat/milk on less land. See, e.g., this paper on US trends: academic.oup.com/af/article/3/3…

The rise of renewable energy and electric vehicles will likely require a huge increase in mining, which can create its own problems. This paper is a good overview of the issue, thinking through ways to ensure this mining boom doesn't become unsustainable: science.sciencemag.org/content/367/64… (Note: This is just one estimate. It's hard to predict how many PV panels/batteries/wind turbines/fuel cells/nuclear reactors we'll build. And technology may shift: maybe sodium-ion batteries will become more popular than lithium ion, etc. But odds are, lots more mining.)

I think it's fair to say the US probably has to hit net zero emissions by somewhere around 2030 for the world to stay below 1.5°C of global warming. (Whether that's feasible or not is a different question.) /1 It's true the IPCC doesn't specify this. They just say that the world *as a whole* probably needs to get to net zero by somewhere around ~2050 to limit to 1.5°C with little overshoot. And the world would need to hit net zero by ~2070 to stay below 2°C. /2

Our latest: We were curious to see how far the US could cut emissions if it adopted just a handful of the most ambitious policies that are already in place around the world.

So @EnergyInnovLLC helped us explore, using their energy policy model: nytimes.com/interactive/20… /1 One big takeaway: With just 7 actions, they estimate you could cut US emissions roughly in half.

That includes a moderate carbon tax (like British Columbia has), a clean electricity standard (like CA or NY are doing), a huge push on EVs (Norway-style) plus a few others. /2

Okay, why not. One more thread on carbon pricing because I think this below is an important point worth expanding on. Economists and climate advocates often *do* think of carbon taxes very differently.

https://twitter.com/RyanMKellogg/status/1078337553378566144

/1 The original economic rationale for a carbon tax was that polluters should be required to pay for and internalize the damage they cause by polluting. So: Let's figure out the economic cost of global warming and tax fossil-fuel users accordingly—ie, the "social cost of carbon." /2

This new Nature paper on solar geoengineering and crop yields is quite interesting, although some of the coverage of it has not been great: nature.com/articles/s4158… /1 The basic argument of the paper is that future global warming is expected to be bad for crop yields worldwide and those harms might be difficult to minimize through solar geoengineering alone. /2

Trying to think through this new California rule to require all new buildings to install rooftop solar. Some links...

1) @BorensteinS isn't a fan, says it's "a very expensive way to expand renewables" compared with utility-scale wind/solar: faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/borenste/cecwe… 2) The CEC evaluation report says the rule would add $8,000 to $17,000 to building costs, while producing benefits twice that. (Though there's no comparisons with the cost/benefit of alternatives to boost clean energy.) docketpublic.energy.ca.gov/PublicDocument…

Wow. China accounted for 45% of the world's investment in renewables in 2017 — and built 50 GW of solar last year, as much as the entire world had built up until 2014. fs-unep-centre.org/sites/default/… All told, the world invested about $278 billion in renewables last year. That nudged the fraction of electricity the world gets from renewables up from 11% to 12.1%