Will your next car run on electricity?

Will your next car run on electricity? Nearly 9 percent of the new cars sold last year worldwide were electric, up from 2.5 percent in 2019, according to the International Energy Agency. By 2025, 25 percent of all new vehicles sold in the U.S. will be fully electric or plug-in hybrids, the Boston Consulting Group predicts. 

“It’s one of the biggest industrial transformations probably in the history of capitalism,” Scott Keogh, chief executive of Volkswagen Group of America, told The New York Times.

Automakers are rushing to get ahead of their rivals. The industry is on track to invest half a trillion dollars in the next five years to make the transition to EVs, Wedbush Securities, an investment firm, estimates. Companies are planning more than a dozen new electric car and battery factories just in the United States.

The excitement was evident to the huge audience tuned into February’s Super Bowl. As Axios put it, “The suite of expensive ads shows how automakers are increasingly devoting marketing dollars to new and upcoming electric models.” For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger played Zeus in a BMW spot hyping EVs, and in a GM ad Mike Myers revived Dr. Evil. 

If you go electric, you will have a wide range of options. Scores of new electric cars, trucks, vans, and SUVs have already been announced, and more will be soon. Ford decided that its F-150 truck, the long-time leader in vehicle sales, will be available as an EV (named “Lightning”), and it has sold out all 200,000 offered so far. 

One of the buyers is Eddie Berry, the owner of an auto-parts delivery business in Groveport, Ohio. He has long relied on pickup trucks for work and camping trips. He had little interest in EVs until the Lightning. His roughly $75,000 truck will be delivered this spring. Since the Lightning can be used as a power source, it will revolutionize Berry’s tailgate at Ohio State football games. “I’ll be able to set up my big-screen TV,” Mr. Berry told The New York Times. “I can power the electric smoker I use for ribs and pork. I’m superexcited. I’m going to be the guy everybody’s talking about.” 

Around the world, the rapid shift to embrace electric vehicles is creating opportunities for tech companies to join the auto market since EVs are simpler to manufacture than cars carrying internal combustion engines. That explains the partnership announced recently by Sony and Honda, which plan to begin selling their cars in 2025. 

Of course, any industrial transformation on this scale faces challenges. The U.S. will need at least 1 million public chargers by 2025 — up from about 131,000 publicly available plugs today.

Range anxiety has declined because most EVs now have a driving range of at least 250 to 300 miles. But it remains a concern for many potential EV buyers. "Access to charging infrastructure is really the biggest hurdle now," Bonnie Datta, founder of Plug To Grid Strategies, told Axios.

The Biden administration's $5 billion electric vehicle charging plan — while far short of what's needed — is a psychological play meant to ease Americans' anxiety about driving an EV, experts say. The plan is to strategically place 33,000 fast-chargers along desolate stretches of interstate highways, thus reassuring drivers they'll never be stranded. 

Fast-chargers? They can recharge an EV to 80 percent in just 20 minutes — about the time it takes to grab a snack and use the bathroom at a rest area. Ten percent of the federal chargers will be fast, while the rest will be "slow" Level 2 chargers for apartment buildings or for topping off while at destinations like stores, libraries, and churches. Fast-chargers cost about $150,000 — at least 10 times more than a Level 2 charger. 

Another challenge is obtaining a steady supply of the raw materials, such as lithium, to make the batteries. The nation’s best and brightest are working to advance battery technology and thus reduce dependence on sources in China and elsewhere. U.S. automakers and their suppliers “are racing to develop a new generation of batteries that are cheaper, can pack in more energy and charge faster,” The New York Times reported.

Even the nation’s traditional system of sales can slow the transition to EVs. Most Americans cannot buy a car directly from the automaker, The Atlantic’s Robinson Meyer pointed out. In 17 states, laws forbid any automaker from opening a store and selling its vehicles directly to customers. Another 11 states allow only one automaker, Tesla, to open stores and sell directly to state residents. 

Daniel Crane, a law professor at the University of Michigan who studies dealer-protection laws, explained to Meyer that EVs, with their lower upkeep costs, can’t provide the cash flow that dealers need to survive. Dealers’ “economic model is to make all their money on service,” said Crane. “They have a 30 percent margin on service, but only a 5 percent margin on sales…. If you want to see more rapid market penetration of electric vehicles, then prohibitions on direct sales are a major barrier.” 

Congress took a look at the pace of EV market penetration March 8 during a hearing before a subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.  “If we want to reduce Putin’s power… then we need to double-down on alternatives, not on the same old failed policies of the past,” said Committee Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), adding that with the bipartisan infrastructure bill passed last November, “we have the historic opportunity to charge forward on EVs.” The bill set aside $7.5 billion for electric vehicle charging infrastructure and a $2.5 billion competitive grant program with funding designated for rural and underserved communities. Pallone said the U.S. must make “smart investments to usher in the post-oil era as quickly as possible.”

Here’s another way to step up the pace on EVs: Put an honest price on carbon. That will make gasoline-powered cars less appealing. Please encourage those who represent you on Capitol Hill to take that common-sense step.

Tackling climate change makes economic sense

Two reports issued January 25 spell out the enormous upsides of limiting global warming's severity, along with the growing perils from inaction.

A report by the Deloitte Economics Institute, Andrew Freedman of Axios wrote, “shows that rapidly decarbonizing the U.S. economy during the next 50 years could generate $3 trillion, and add nearly 1 million more jobs to the economy by 2070.”

"Unchecked climate change is a costly choice for the U.S.," Alicia Rose, deputy CEO for Deloitte U.S., told Axios. Such a loss, Deloitte found, would be equivalent to almost 4 percent of U.S. GDP in 2070, or about $1.5 trillion. Insufficient action would also cost jobs, with nearly 900,000 disappearing each year due to climate-caused damage through midcentury. In contrast, Deloitte concluded, the cost of moving the country to net-zero emissions would be about 0.1% of GDP ($35 billion per year through 2050).

One challenge facing policymakers is the need to focus on the long term rather than the short term–and the track record on that is not so good. The Deloitte report said that the costs of the energy transition would be front-loaded, with the break-even point, or "turning point," coming between 2041 and 2050.

Deloitte compared a scenario in which global warming is left relatively unchecked, with average temperatures increasing to 3° C (5.4° F) above preindustrial levels, with one in which the Paris target of limiting warming to "well below" 2° C is met.

One example of the financial peril that would likely result from inaction is the cost of floods, which have become more frequent and more damaging , due in part to climate change. A study by University of Bristol researchers, published January 31 in Nature Climate Change, forecasts that average annual flood losses in the U.S. would surge by 26.4 percent by 2050, from $32.1 billion today to $40.6 billion. The greatest increases are projected for the Southeast, along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts.

“It’s the latest scientific research to show the myriad ways in which rising temperatures associated with climate change could reshape society, destroy homes and infrastructure, and endanger lives,” Aaron Gregg reported in The Washington Post.

The second report issued January 25, by McKinsey Global Institute, took a worldwide view. McKinsey concluded that reaching net-zero emissions by 2050 could lead to a reallocation of labor, with about 200 million direct and indirect jobs gained and 185 million lost by 2050. Reaching the goal would require $275 trillion of cumulative global capital spending or about 7.5 percent of global GDP from 2021 to 2050.

In its report, McKinsey wrote, “It is important not to view the transition as only onerous; the required economic transformation will not only create immediate economic opportunities but also open up the prospect of a fundamentally transformed global economy with lower energy costs, and numerous other benefits—for example, improved health outcomes and enhanced conservation of natural capital.”

The Deloitte and McKinsey reports are consistent with previous research showing the economic wisdom of taming global warming. In 2019, for example, the World Bank found that an investment of $1, on average, yields $4 in benefits.

We continue to urge Capitol Hill lawmakers to enact a carbon tax and other measures to put our nation in a position to honor our Paris Accord commitments. They need to hear from all of us that failure to take strong action is not an option.

Another year of extreme weather--and a big bill

“For many people, 2021 was the year in which climate change jumped from the part of our brains reserved for future-think — for worries not yet realized — and landed squarely in the now,” Sabrina Shankman wrote in The Boston Globe recently. “It was the year that extreme heat rolled into wildfires into poor air quality into endless downpours and flash floods. No more future tense. 2021 was the year that climate change entered the present.”

“I think the word ‘unprecedented’ got a real workout this year,” said Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist and acting deputy director at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. 

That word certainly applies to the weather experienced last year in Lytton, British Columbia. The scenic village near the confluence of the Fraser and Thompson rivers endured one catastrophe after another. Last summer, a day after Lytton set Canada’s all-time heat record of 121 degrees, a fast-moving wildfire tore through the area, devouring scores of homes, The Washington Post reported. Then, in December, flooding brought on by torrential rain washed out main roads to the north and south of Lytton. “I used to think that it was going to be the next generation that was going to have to deal with climate change. I think otherwise now,” Mayor Jan Polderman said. “It’s something we better start dealing with sooner than later.” 

South of Lytton, the U.S. Pacific Northwest took a beating from the same heat dome, The Post’s Sarah Kaplan and Brady Dennis  wrote. “It scorched crops, melted pavement, and cooked a billion sea creatures inside their own shells. Hospitals saw 69 times the usual number of emergency room visits; one facility put patients in body bags filled with ice in a desperate effort to bring their internal temperatures down. More than 1,000 people died.”

“Scrolling through the list of 2021's billion dollar disasters in the U.S. reads like a tour through the Book of Revelation,” Axios’ Andrew Freedman wrote. More than 4 in 10 Americans live in a county that was struck by climate-related extreme weather last year, according to a new Washington Post analysis of federal disaster declarations, and more than 80 percent experienced a heat wave. 

“People are suffering and dying unnecessarily,” said Kristie Ebi, director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at the University of Washington in Seattle.

Then there’s the financial toll. The world’s 10 costliest weather disasters of 2021 caused more than $170 billion worth of damage, according to a new report from UK-based Christian Aid.

According to Steve Bowen, head of catastrophe insight on the impact forecasting team at insurer Aon, 2021 is expected to be the sixth time extreme weather catastrophes have cost more than $100 billion — all of which have happened in the last decade.

Add to that the damage that global warming does to various economic sectors. Sixty percent of the nation’s downhill skiing capacity lies on National Forest lands, where wildfire is a growing threat to the $788 billion outdoor industry. “I always thought climate was going to take the industry out, for sure, but due to warming, shorter seasons and spring meltdown,” Auden Schendler, Aspen Skiing Company’s senior vice president for sustainability, told The New York Times’ Tim Neville. “I now believe the way we’re going down is through fire.”

No relief is in sight. Last month’s temperatures averaged across the state of Texas made it that state’s warmest December, state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon said in a statement. It is also likely to be the first month to exceed the 20th-century average by more than 10°F.

Scientists say there's reason to expect even more menacing extreme weather disasters in 2022, Freedman reported: “This past year brought the uncomfortable realization that even scientists' worst-case scenarios don't fully capture what the climate system is already capable of.”

"It seems as if models do underestimate those extremes and particularly these scenarios are really hard to predict and also to prepare for," said Kai Kornhuber, a climate scientist at Columbia University.

Most Americans, polls show, want the federal government to respond to this threat. We urge Congress to pass the Build Back Better bill–now–and also tax the carbon dioxide emissions that are the primary cause of global warming.

Seeking Solutions to Aviation's Emissions Challenge

“Hour by hour, there is just about nothing you as an individual can do that is worse for the health of the planet than to sit on an airplane,” says NASA’s Peter Kalmus.

Aviation accounts for about 3 percent of global carbon emissions, but has other warming impacts, too. As Axios reported, those emissions are projected to rise significantly in coming decades alongside the growth of air travel, absent aggressive adoption of climate-friendly tech. What is the potential for growth? Start with this fact: An estimated 80 percent of the people on the planet have never flown. That is one reason that by 2050 we can expect to reach 10 billion passengers per year, double the pre-pandemic rate.

Concern about aviation’s emissions has fueled a movement that encourages travelers to use trains and buses instead of planes. It’s called flygskam, a Swedish term best translated as “flying shame.”

But are we prepared to give up the many benefits of air travel? They are economic, diplomatic, and cultural. “Look, we simply have to get there,” said Jennifer Holmgren, CEO of LanzaTech, as she discussed solutions with a writer for National Geographic. Her company is pioneering the development of aviation fuel from unorthodox sources such as waste to replace the standard kerosene jet fuel. “Everyone agrees: Airplanes simply can’t keep flying around on fossil kerosene. But there is no magic solution to this problem.”

Many experts are pinning their hopes on what are called “sustainable aviation fuels” or SAFs. On December 1, United Airlines flew the world’s first passenger flight powered by 100-percent SAFs from Chicago to Washington.

The U.S. Department of Transportation Department (DOT) has drawn up a plan for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from the U.S. aviation sector, with a 2050 target of net-zero. “A very big part of the plan seeks to help spur development and uptake of SAFs for long-haul flights,” wrote Ben Geman of Axios.

“I don’t know how you decarbonize [aviation] without SAFs,” Congressman Sean Casten (D-Ill.) told Axios’ Andrew Freedman. Casten, who was on the United flight from Chicago, is backing the Sustainable Skies Act (H.R. 3440), which would promote SAF research, development and production.

But as Freedman noted, SAFs won't eliminate aviation’s carbon footprint because the amount of emissions depends on the feedstocks used to make the fuel. The New York Times’ Hiroko Tabuchi reported, “Scientific studies have long shown that biofuels can be as polluting as fossil fuels.” If the biofuels are made from, say, soy or corn, there will be emissions from production and transport of those raw materials. 

Alexander Laska of Third Way told Jeremy Beaman of the Washington Examiner, “We need to look at the entire lifecycle of the feedstock from how it's grown and harvested, how it’s transported, how it's refined, and blended.” United Airlines, Tabucki wrote, “is looking to a more promising source of sustainable fuel: forest waste, like fallen branches, or leaves and stalks left over from growing crops.” The EU, as part of its effort to create an SAF mandate, is likely to impose restrictions on the kinds of biofuels that can be used.

One way to speed the adoption of cleaner fuels, Sam Howe Verhovek wrote in National Geographic, is to create a carbon tax on kerosene jet fuel. 

Liquid hydrogen and electric power may help meet the challenges posed by this hard-to-decarbonize transportation sector. At the moment, the weight of batteries is a significant limitation, but there are signs that electric-powered flight could play a notable role in local and regional travel. “Enthusiasts say that within 15 to 20 years, electric airliners could be carrying as many as 50 people a few hundred miles” wrote Verhovek.

While of critical importance, airplanes’ fuel is not the only way to tackle aviation’s emissions. Another goal of DOT’s Aviation Climate Action Plan is to help speed efficiency gains, with a target to "demonstrate a suite of aircraft technologies by 2030 to achieve a 30% improvement" relative to today's best tech.

Congress may boost the aviation sector’s progress on emissions by passing the Build Back Better bill. The House-passed version includes $1 billion for an alternative fuel and low-emission aviation technology program, which would fund grants and cost-sharing agreements with companies producing SAF and other technologies.

As the Sea Level Keeps Rising, We Need Accurate Data

As delegates returned home from the climate summit in Glasgow, we received yet another warning about the threat that climate change poses. Two days of torrential rain across British Columbia touched off major flooding and landslides and shut routes operated by Canada's two biggest rail companies. All rail access to Canada's largest port in the city of Vancouver was cut off, Reuters’ Artur Gajda and Rod Nickel reported.

Some areas of British Columbia received eight inches of rain on the final day of COP26, the amount that usually falls in a month. Earlier this year, BC dealt with a major drought, which sharply reduced farm output, and during the record-breaking “heat dome” that hit BC, Washington, and Oregon in June, wildfires all but wiped out Lytton, BC.

As the planet experiences more intense storms with historic amounts of rain, such calamities are putting us in increasing peril. In his 2021 book Moving to Higher Ground, Rising Sea Level and the Path Forward, oceanographer John Englander updates the science of sea level rise, driving home the point that excess heat already stored in our oceans guarantees that sea levels will continue to rise for centuries to come.  Many people around the globe, Englander maintains, will be forced to move to higher ground. 

In Charleston, South Carolina, sea levels have already risen by 10 inches since 1950, according to estimates from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Earlier this year, city leaders endorsed a $2 billion federal proposal to build an eight-mile-long sea wall to protect the city’s historic district. In Miami, where sea levels are expected to rise by 15 inches in the next 30 years, the Army Corps of Engineers is researching the feasibility of an estimated $8 billion, 13-foot-high sea wall, Xander Peters reported in The Christian Science Monitor.

Englander, a recent addition to our Advisory Board, has served as the CEO of the International SeaKeepers Society, The Cousteau Society, and The Underwater Explorers Society. He’s the founder and president of the Rising Seas Institute, a Florida-based nonprofit think tank and resource center created to advance the understanding of potential solutions to future flooding. 

As delegates in Glasgow struggled to tackle these problems, The Washington Post ran a page-one story on its investigation finding that, in their reports to the UN, a number of countries were grossly exaggerating the emission reductions they had achieved. “An examination of 196 country reports reveals a giant gap between what nations declare their emissions to be vs. the greenhouse gases they are sending into the atmosphere,” a team of six reporters wrote. “The gap ranges from at least 8.5 billion to as high as 13.3 billion tons a year of underreported emissions — big enough to move the needle on how much the Earth will warm.”

That troubling news was accompanied by a new analysis released by Climate Action Tracker, a nonprofit that keeps tabs on nations' pledges to cut emissions and calculates the climate change that would result if those voluntary commitments are met. The group concluded that the world is still on a course to be emitting twice the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in 2030 than would be consistent with the Paris Agreement's more ambitious temperature target. Based on a continuation of current policies (i.e., what's happening in the real world), Climate Action Tracker found that, by 2100, the globe will likely warm by about 2.7°C (4.86°F) compared to preindustrial levels.

While there is plenty of disappointment that COP26 didn’t produce agreement to move more boldly to counter climate change, there was progress, including on the reduction of methane emissions. John Kerry, the U.S. special presidential envoy for climate, called the conference “a starting gun,” acknowledging that there are still numerous variables to consider before declaring the world on track to stop climate change. But at least “I think we're going to get closer and closer as a result, provided we implement and follow through." 

One encouraging sign was increasing discussion of pricing carbon and establishing border carbon adjustments. Those steps would speed up the transition to a world economy built on clean energy.