The Tesla Effect: Snowmobiles, Boats and Mowers Go Electric

They’re quieter and better for the climate. But snow and water create new technological challenges for designers.

By Jack Ewing, The New York Times, May 16, 2022

STOWE, Vt. — Snowmobiles are part of the winter soundtrack in this part of Vermont, at their worst shattering the stillness of the forest like motorcycles on skis. But the motorized sleds bouncing along a wooded mountain trail in February were silent except for the whoosh of metal runners on snow.

The machines, made by a start-up Canadian company, Taiga, were battery-powered — the first electric snowmobiles to be sold widely — and symbols of how conveyances of all kinds are migrating to emission-free propulsion. Taiga is also offering battery-powered personal watercraft, another form of recreation where the gasoline version is regarded in some circles as a scourge.

While electric cars get most of the attention, electric lawn mowers, boats, bicycles, scooters and all-terrain vehicles are proliferating. In some categories, battery-powered machines are gaining market share faster than electric cars are conquering the auto world. Start-up companies are wooing investors by claiming to be the Teslas of the boating, cycling, or lawn and garden industry.

The environmental benefits are potentially significant. Unlike cars and trucks, outboard motors or lawn mowers do not usually have catalytic converters to reduce harmful emissions. They are noisy, and they often use lower-quality fuel. A gasoline lawn mower generates as much pollution in an hour as a 300-mile car trip, according to the California Air Resources Board.

California has passed legislation to ban gasoline-powered mowers beginning in 2024, and all new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035. But sales of electric alternatives are growing even without a push from government.

One of the first customers for Taiga snowmobiles was Taos Ski Valley in New Mexico, which markets itself as an environmentally conscious ski resort. The Taos ski patrol and trail maintenance workers will use the electric snowmobiles for tasks like transporting injured skiers or servicing snow-making equipment, said David Norden, the chief executive of Taos Ski Valley. When skiing resumes this year, Taos also plans to deploy an electric snow-grooming machine made by Kässbohrer Geländefahrzeug, a German firm.

Even if the electric snowmobiles, which start at $17,500, are more expensive than gasoline counterparts, which can be had for less than $10,000, the resort will save money on fuel and maintenance, Mr. Norden said.

“You do the cost-benefit analysis, you’re probably close to break even,” he said. “These are not only decisions for the environment but also good decisions for our bottom line.”

But sometimes people are converting to electrical power because it offers practical advantages.

Buyers of electric lawn and garden equipment polled by the Freedonia Group, a research firm, cited noise reduction, low maintenance costs and no need to store cans of gasoline in the garage as their most important priorities. Often electric leaf blowers or string trimmers are cheaper and lighter than gasoline versions.

The lawn and garden industry has gone electric faster than the car industry. In 2020, electric mowers, leaf blowers and other equipment accounted for 17 percent of the market in the United States, according to Freedonia. That’s more than three times the share of electric vehicles in the U.S. car market.

Many people are hesitant to buy an electric car because they worry about running out of power far from a charger. Range anxiety is not a concern in the backyard.

“You’re not worried about taking a road trip in a lawn mower,” said Jennifer Mapes-Christ, manager of commercial and consumer products research at Freedonia.

But electrifying boats and other vehicles often presents technological challenges. Electrical energy works for smaller watercraft or boats that do not travel very far. It’s the only option on the hundreds of lakes where conventional outboard motors are banned because of noise or pollution.

Because water creates so much resistance, however, big power boats require amounts of continuous power that are beyond what batteries available today can provide. (Sailboats, of course, have operated on wind power for thousands of years.)

Batteries are “part of the answer to the future but not necessarily the complete answer,” said David Foulkes, the chief executive of Brunswick, which makes Mercury marine engines.

Still, Mercury has unveiled a prototype electric outboard motor and is watching the shift to electrification carefully.

“We intend to be a leader in this space,” said Mr. Foulkes, who drives a battery-powered Porsche. “Even if the market is small at the moment, we want to be there and see what the market does.”

Some engineers are taking advantage of the shift to electrification to rethink design. A racing series known as E1, which plans to begin staging events close to shore off Miami and other cities next year, will use battery-powered boats equipped with hydrofoils that lift the hulls above the water, greatly reducing resistance.

“We have to change the paradigm,” said Rodi Basso, the chief executive of E1. “This is what Tesla has done.”

Just as Tesla has upended the auto industry, start-up firms are challenging companies that have long dominated their markets. Flux Marine is one of several companies trying to adapt electrical power for watercraft. With the help of $15 million in venture capital, it plans to begin selling electric outboard motors made at a plant in Bristol, R.I., this summer.

Ben Sorkin, the chief executive of Flux Marine, who was a summer intern at Tesla, conceded that battery power was not practical for large offshore fishing boats and the like. “Given what’s available right now, electric propulsion is a niche market,” Mr. Sorkin said.

But he said the market would expand as batteries improved and became practical for bigger and bigger motors. Flux Marine’s biggest motor is rated at 70 horsepower, and the numbers will continue to rise, Mr. Sorkin said.

“Every five or so years, the sweet spot shifts up,” he said.

Major manufacturers of boats, snowmobiles and mowers have been slow to go electric. John Deere, the largest manufacturer of self-propelled mowers, does not offer battery-powered alternatives but plans to discuss its electrification strategy with investors at an event May 25-26.

The recent history of the auto industry could serve as a warning to the established companies. Just as slow-moving car companies initially ceded territory to Tesla and are trying to catch up, new companies like Taiga are exploiting wide-open markets.

Samuel Bruneau, Taiga’s chief executive, said electrifying snowmobiles was a challenge because the batteries and motors needed to cope with extreme temperatures and bumpy terrain.

“No one was coming into that space, because it would require new technology,” he said. “That is the opportunity we saw.”

Competition is coming. BRP, a company based in Quebec that makes Ski-Doo snowmobiles as well as all-terrain vehicles and motorboats, has said it will offer electric versions of all its products by 2026. The company also plans to enter the motorcycle market with a line of electric two-wheelers in 2024.

“There is a trend out there driven by the automobile,” said José Boisjoli, the chief executive of BRP, which is the largest snowmobile maker. “We can’t ignore it.”

But he said the transition would happen more slowly in recreation. For one thing, the markets are much smaller, making it harder to achieve the cost savings that come with mass production. Fewer than 135,000 snowmobiles were sold worldwide in 2021, compared with roughly 60 million cars.

And snowmobiles and powerboats don’t receive the government subsidies or tax breaks that can cut thousands of dollars off the price of an electric car. Charging is also an issue in the woods. Taiga has installed charging stations alongside a popular snowmobile trail network in Quebec, and plans more.

But snowmobilers who venture deep into the wilderness will still prefer gasoline, Mr. Boisjoli said. “The combustion engine will be present in snowmobiles for a long time,” he said.

Dominic Jacangelo, executive director of the New York State Snowmobile Association, agreed that long-distance snowmobilers, who can easily travel more than 100 miles a day, would be skeptical.

Still, Mr. Jacangelo said he was eager to try out a Taiga. “In terms of performance, you’ve got a sled that will keep up with anything else out there on the market,” he said.

Because electric snowmobiles are quieter, they could help reduce friction between snowmobilers and people who consider the machines an affront to nature. That would open up more terrain for snowmobiles.

“Certainly,” Mr. Jacangelo said, “an electric sled is going to change a lot of environmentalists’ view of snowmobiling.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/business/electric-snowmobiles-boats-mowers.html

Investors using muscle on climate change

By Kia Kokalitcheva, Axios Pro Rata, May 7, 2022

A billionaire tech entrepreneur recently acquired a sizable stake in a public company it wants to push in a different direction — but it’s not Elon Musk and Twitter.

This week, Atlassian co-founder Mike Cannon-Brookes revealed an 11% stake in Australian energy company AGL Energy, in a bid to lessen its reliance on coal.

Why it matters: More than ever before, shareholders are tapping into their powers to influence companies on climate and sustainability.

The big picture: It’s not just activist investors like Cannon-Brookes — mainstream shareholders are also increasingly pushing companies on these issues.

• Investors have filed a record 215 climate-related shareholder resolutions this year, per data from Ceres, a sustainable investment advocacy group.

• Even major investment management companies like BlackRock and Vanguard are backing more climate-related proposals than they have previously.

• And stakeholders are getting more aggressive: For example, a year ago, Exxon shareholders defied management and installed two climate-conscious members on its board.

What they’re saying: “It’s a systemic risk, which means that you can’t deal with just one company — you gotta take it with all the companies across the portfolio,” Rev. Kirsten Spalding, senior director of Ceres' investor network, tells Axios.

• “They also recognize that it’s a governance issue… we’re seeing a look at whether boards are taking it seriously, not just management,” she adds.

Between the lines: Shareholders are also now asking for concrete progress reports, not just for information disclosures, says Spalding.

• She attributed the shift to climate science, as major organizations make more urgent appeals to drastically curb carbon emissions.

The intrigue: In addition to asking for concrete progress reports and transition plans, European shareholders are now even voting against those plans, simply because they're not good enough, says Spalding.

What's next: The pressure goes both ways. Investors will also be under pressure to show plans to transition away from fossil fuels, and they know it.

• In a recent BCG survey of 250 institutional investors, 57% said they feel pressure to divest from fossil fuels, 65% said they feel pressure to reduce those fuels' weighting in their portfolios, and 75% said they feel pressure to invest in "green" funds and companies.

The bottom line: With new regulations poised to help standardize climate-related disclosures, shareholders will be even better equipped to compare companies and push laggards to catch up.

https://www.axios.com/newsletters/axios-pro-rata-193773ba-37b6-4b98-ba69-43be74da9f5d.html

EXPLAINER: Can climate change be solved by pricing carbon?

By Matthew Brown, The Associated Press, April 22, 2022

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — As climate change bakes the planet, dozens of nations and many local governments are putting a price tag on greenhouse gas emissions that are increasing flooding, droughts and other costly catastrophes.

Pennsylvania on Saturday becomes the first major fossil fuel-producing state in the U.S. to adopt a carbon pricing policy to address climate change. It joins 11 states where coal, oil and natural gas power plants must buy credits for every ton of carbon dioxide they emit.

President Joe Biden is attempting a less direct approach — known as the social cost of carbon — that calculates future climate damages to justify tougher restrictions on polluting industries. Republicans say that could crush many businesses. They want the U.S. Supreme Court to stop the administration after lower courts in Louisiana and Missouri split on the issue.

Governments elsewhere have moved more aggressively. Canada, for example, imposes fuel charges on individuals and also makes big polluters pay for emissions. It’s one of 27 nations with some kind of carbon tax, according to The World Bank.

The varied strategies come as scientists warn climate change is accelerating — and all can help reduce emissions. But experts say U.S. efforts have been hobbled by its fractured approach.

“Part of the reason you need all of these things to work in tandem is we do not have a federal climate policy,” said Seth Blumsack, director of the Center for Energy Law and Policy at Penn State University. “We have social cost of carbon used in regulatory decisions but not (a carbon price) that is faced by the market.”

SO WHAT’S THE PRICE TAG?

It varies. A lot.

The Biden administration’s social cost estimate is about $51, meaning every ton of carbon dioxide spewed from a power plant or tail pipe today is projected to contribute to $51 in economic damages in coming years. The state of New York has its own social cost of carbon, updated in 2020 to $125 a ton to account for economic trends.

By contrast, emissions were most recently valued at $13.50 per ton at auction under the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative in the Northeast, which Pennsylvania is joining. A similar “cap and trade” emissions program is in place in California, and one is due to go into effect in Washington state in 2023.

Canada’s carbon taxes include a minimum fuel charge for individuals equivalent to about $40 per ton.

WHY THE BIG DIFFERENCES?

The social cost of carbon attempts to capture the value of all climate damage, centuries into the future. Carbon pricing reflects how much companies are willing to pay today for a limited amount of emission credits offered at auction.

In other words, the social cost of carbon guides policy, while carbon pricing represents policy in practice.

“You’re trying to get the price to reflect the true cost to society,” said economist Matthew Kotchen, a former U.S. Treasury Department official now at Yale University. “A more stringent policy would have a higher carbon price. A more lax policy would give you a lower carbon price.”

In the most efficient world, economists say the two figures would line up, meaning there would be agreement about what climate change damages will cost and the policies used to address them.

IS ANY OF THIS WORKING?

Emissions from northeastern states would have been about 24% higher if the carbon pricing consortium hadn’t been in place, according to researchers from Duke University and the Colorado School of Mines.

The carbon auctions also have brought in almost $5 billion that can be used to reduce household energy cost increases and promote renewable energy.

The consortium began in 2009 — the year of a failed push in Congress to establish a nationwide cap and trade program. The bipartisan proposal died amid arguments over cost and whether climate change was even occurring.

Following lawsuits from environmentalists, President Barack Obama’s administration crafted the social cost of carbon and began including future damage estimates in cost-benefit analyses for new regulations. It was used under Obama more than 80 times, including for tightened vehicle emissions standards and regulations aimed at shuttering coal plants.

President Donald Trump moved to roll back many of the Obama-era rules — and to help justify the changes, the Republican administration cut the social cost of carbon from about $50 per ton to $7 or less. The lower number included only domestic climate impacts and not global damages.

“On its face that might sound okay, but when you think about it, global harms from climate change have implications in the U.S. in terms of the global financial system,” said Romany Webb, a climate change law expert at Columbia Law School.

WHAT’S NEXT?

On the day Biden took office, he set up an interagency group that revived the Obama estimate and promised a revised figure incorporating previously overlooked consequences of climate change. Many economists expect the revised figure to be higher, perhaps more than double the current $51.

Without a nationwide cap and trade program, environmentalists and some economists want the government to be more aggressive in using the social cost of carbon to overhaul government energy policy.

Under Biden, the U.S. Interior Department for the first time is applying climate damage considerations to oil and gas sales on public lands and waters. An upcoming lease sale in Wyoming, for example, could result in future emissions of 34 million tons (31 million metric tons) of carbon dioxide. That’s equivalent to more than $1.5 billion in future damages.

But the agency still plans to sell the leases because officials said there were no “established thresholds” to evaluate whether the increased emissions were acceptable, or not.

The expansion of carbon pricing into Pennsylvania remains tenuous. A legal challenge is pending and the state’s term-limited Democratic governor could soon be replaced by a successor who opposes the state’s participation.

“While pricing carbon would be the gold standard, it seems politically difficult to actually get there,” said Brian Prest with Resources for the Future, a Washington, D.C.-based research organization.

https://apnews.com/article/climate-biden-business-billings-environment-0835d2e4f113ad1c2c26747c69d9e6bf

Coastal disasters to cost $100B a year by 2100

A new White House report outlines troubling costs to taxpayers from climate change.

By Thomas Frank, ClimateWire, April 6, 2022

The damage caused by hurricanes and flooding will likely soar over the next 70 years due to climate change and could cost federal taxpayers nearly $100 billion a year by 2100, according to a new White House report.

An analysis by the Office of Management and Budget shows that increasing damage from coastal disasters is the single most severe threat to federal taxpayers related to climate change.

“The fiscal risk of climate change is immense,” Candace Vahlsing, OMB's associate director for energy and climate, and Danny Yagan, the office’s chief economist, wrote in a blog post accompanying a series of new reports on the federal budget and rising temperatures.

The reports include an analysis of four federal expenditures that are expected to increase due to climate change, and they project future costs under several climate scenarios. Under each one, coastal disasters account for at least 75 percent of the total costs.

By 2100, coastal disasters would cost taxpayers $94 billion per year in a worst-case climate scenario involving a 10-foot rise in sea levels. In a best-case scenario involving less warming, lower population growth and more technological innovation, coastal disasters would cost taxpayers $32.5 billion a year.

Three other climate costs OMB analyzed — crop insurance, wildfire suppression and health care expenses — would cost between $4 billion and $34 billion a year. The costs are calculated using the value of the dollar in 2020.

Climate change will increase coastal damage by intensifying hurricanes and flooding, the OMB said.

The report notes that “there is still uncertainty in how climate change will affect the frequency of tropical cyclones, with many studies suggesting a decrease in global frequency.” But there is “some evidence that the frequency of the most intense of these storms will increase in the Atlantic and North Pacific,” OMB said.

The budget office warns separately about billions of dollars in damage to federal buildings located in areas with a 1 percent annual chance of being flooded. There are 12,200 federal buildings and structures, worth $44 billion in total, that would be inundated under a worst-case climate scenario.

The report also says that climate change will reduce federal revenue due to lower economic output, which will add “hundreds of billions of dollars to the federal deficit.” U.S. gross domestic product, currently $21 trillion, could fall by 3 to 10 percent.

OMB wrote its report following an order last year by President Joe Biden to publish an annual assessment of climate-related fiscal risk exposure.

How to Defeat Putin and Save the Planet

Column by Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times, March 29, 2022

It is impossible to predict how the war in Ukraine will end. I fervently hope it’s with a free, secure and independent Ukraine. But here is what I know for sure: America must not waste this crisis. This is our umpteenth confrontation with a petro-dictator whose viciousness and recklessness are possible only because of the oil wealth he extracts from the ground. No matter how the war ends in Ukraine, it needs to end with America finally, formally, categorically and irreversibly ending its addiction to oil.

Nothing has distorted our foreign policy, our commitments to human rights, our national security and, most of all, our environment than our oil addiction. Let this be the last war in which we and our allies fund both sides. That’s what we do. Western nations fund NATO and aid Ukraine’s military with our tax dollars, and — since Russia’s energy exports finance 40 percent of its state budget — we fund Vladimir Putin’s army with our purchases of Russian oil and gas.

Now, how stupid is that?

Our civilization simply cannot afford this anymore. Climate change has not taken a timeout for the war in Ukraine. Have you checked the weather report for the North and South Poles lately? Simultaneous extreme heat waves gripped part of Antarctica this month, driving temperatures there to 70 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the average for this time of year, and areas of the Arctic, making them more than 50 degrees warmer than average.

Those are not typos. Those are crazy superextremes.

“They are opposite seasons — you don’t see the North and the South (Poles) both melting at the same time,” Walter Meier, a researcher with the National Snow and Ice Data Center, recently told The Associated Press. “It’s definitely an unusual occurrence.” And last Friday, no surprise, scientists announced that an ice shelf the size of New York City had collapsed in East Antarctica at the beginning of this freakish warm spell.

It was the first time humans observed “that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse,” The A.P. noted, adding that if all the water frozen in East Antarctica melts, it would raise sea levels more than 160 feet around the world.

For all these reasons, I have been disappointed to see President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken doubling down on our oil addiction, rather than tripling down on renewables and efficiency. Apparently spooked by bogus Republican claims that Biden’s energy policies are responsible for higher gasoline prices, his team has gone begging to some of the biggest petro-dictatorships in the world — Venezuela, Iran and Saudi Arabia, in particular — to get them to pump more oil and push down gasoline prices.

The truth is, even if we let U.S. oil companies explore for oil in every national park, the near-term effect on gasoline prices would not be all that significant. As CNN Business reported last week, in the past decade, the boom-to-bust U.S. oil industry spent tons of cash to fund all-out production growth, helping to keep prices low, but “sustaining profits proved elusive. Hundreds of oil companies went bankrupt during multiple oil price crashes, leading investors to demand more restraint from energy C.E.O.s.” So today, most U.S. oil company executives and investors “don’t want to add so much supply that it causes another glut that crashes prices. And shareholders want companies to return excess profits in the form of dividends and buybacks, not reinvest them in increasing production.”

The country with the most cheap, spare and flexible capacity to influence global oil prices in the short run is Saudi Arabia. But Russia is also a big player. That’s why just two years ago, President Donald Trump was begging Saudi Arabia and Russia to dramatically cut their production, because oil had fallen to around $15 a barrel on world markets — badly hurting U.S. oil companies, whose cost of extraction was $40 to $50 a barrel. The price collapsed because Saudi Arabia and Russia became embroiled in a price war over shrinking market shares in the pandemic.

Now Biden is begging the Saudis to dramatically increase their production to bring prices down. But the Saudis are mad at Biden for being mad at them for murdering the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi — and are reportedly not taking Biden’s calls.

But the common denominator between Biden and Trump is the word “begging.” Is this the future we want? As long as we’re addicted to oil, we are always going to be begging someone, usually a bad guy, to move the price up or down, because we alone are not masters of our own fate.

This has got to stop. Yes, there needs to be a transition phase, during which we will continue to use oil, gas and coal. We can’t go cold turkey. But let’s vow to double the pace of that transition — not double down on fossil fuels.

Nothing would threaten Putin more than that. After all, it was the collapse in global oil prices between 1988 and 1992, triggered by Saudi overproduction, that helped bankrupt the Soviet Union and hasten its collapse. We can create the same effects today by overproducing renewables and overemphasizing energy efficiency.

The best and fastest way to do that, argues Hal Harvey, the C.E.O. of Energy Innovation, a clean energy consultancy, is by increasing clean power standards for electric utilities. That is, require every U.S. power utility to reduce its carbon emissions by shifting to renewables at a rate of 7 to 10 percent a year — i.e., faster than ever.

Utopian? Nope. The C.E.O. of American Electric Power, once utterly coal dependent, has now pledged to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, using mostly natural gas as a backup. Thirty-one states have already set steadily rising clean energy standards for their public utilities. Let’s go for all 50 — now.

At the same time, let’s enact a national law that gives every consumer the ability to join this fight. That would be a law eliminating the regulatory red tape around installing rooftop solar systems while giving every household in America a tax rebate to do so, the way Australia has done — a country that is now growing its renewable markets faster per capita than China, Europe, Japan and America.

When cars, trucks, buildings, factories and homes are all electrified and your grid is running mostly on renewables — presto! — we become increasingly free of fossil fuels, and Putin becomes increasingly dollar poor.

Americans get it. Electric cars are now flying out of the showrooms. The biggest wind-energy-producing state in the country is politically red Texas, which generates more electricity from wind than the next three states (Iowa, Oklahoma and Kansas) combined. But making this a true national mission would get us to a clean power economy so much faster.

In World War II, the U.S. government asked citizens to plant victory gardens to grow their own fruits and vegetables — and save canned goods for the troops. Some 20 million Americans responded by planting gardens everywhere from backyards to rooftops. Well, what victory gardens were to our war effort then, solar rooftops are to our generation’s struggle against petro-dictatorships.

If you want to lower gasoline prices today, the most surefire, climate-safe method would be to reduce the speed limit on highways to 60 miles per hour and ask every company in America that can do so to let its employees work at home and not commute every day. Those two things would immediately cut demand for gasoline and bring down the price.

Is that too much to ask to win the war against petro-dictators like Putin — a victory in which the byproduct is cleaner air, not burning tanks?

“The clean alternatives are now cheaper than the dirty ones,” Harvey noted. “It now costs more to ruin the earth than to save it.” It also “now costs less to liberate ourselves from petro-dictators than to remain enslaved by them.”

That’s right. The technology is here. We can now put Putin over a barrel. It is just a matter of leadership and national will. What are we waiting for?

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/29/opinion/how-to-defeat-putin-and-save-the-planet.html

New Report: Carbon Pricing is Essential for Achieving a Clean, Reliable Energy Grid

Yahoo! News

March 16, 2022

WASHINGTON, DC – An economy-wide carbon price is key to ensuring all Americans have access to affordable and reliable electricity as we transition to a low-carbon economy, according to a new report released Wednesday by the Climate Leadership Council at a virtual event. The report, co-authored by former FERC Chair Neil Chatterjee and Council CEO Greg Bertelsen, outlines why a carbon price and a more reliable energy grid are essential for meeting deep decarbonization goals by midcentury.

“In order to successfully decarbonize the U.S. economy, we will need to increase our reliance on the electric grid. As this transition takes place, the grid is coming under unprecedented strain from more frequent and prolonged extreme weather events,” Bertelsen said. “Thankfully, carbon pricing is naturally aligned with grid reliability. It works within our existing energy system to add capacity where it is needed and to reduce demand where possible, providing the maximum flexibility as we make the much-needed clean energy transition.”

Among its key findings, the report, “Achieving Grid Reliability and Decarbonization through Carbon Pricing,” highlights how a carbon price improves grid reliability:

• Carbon pricing is technology- and location-neutral. Because carbon pricing does not pick which zero- and low-carbon options contribute to the resource mix, it efficiently moves the power sector toward the right set of resources to deliver emissions reductions and ensure sufficient energy supply and operating reliability to meet customer demand, all at least cost.

• Carbon pricing sends a steady, predictable price signal. This provides investors, grid operators and power system planners with better data to forecast supply and demand trends and accommodate emerging and new technologies with a variety of attributes to build out the grid of the future.

• Carbon pricing fosters economy-wide innovation. This allows the U.S. to decarbonize its entire economy rapidly while creating headroom for the power sector to decarbonize in a manner that supports reliability for consumers.

Curt Morgan, CDEO of Vistra Corp., a leading integrated retail electricity and power generation company, says achieving grid reliability is foundational to addressing climate change. “The push for lower carbon emissions will require greater electrification of the economy, which means a dramatic increase in demand for electricity,” Morgan said. “Electricity is the lifeblood of the American economy, so we must accomplish the transition to a carbon-free grid by balancing affordability, emissions, and reliability. Decarbonizing the electric sector and the broader economy with a price on carbon is the most efficient, equitable, and transparent way to incentivize investments in low- to no-carbon resources. In addition, coupling a carbon border adjustment fee with a price on carbon will ensure the competitiveness of U.S. companies and incentivize the international community to participate in decarbonization. This will provide the least disruptive transition to a carbon-free economy while ensuring Americans and American companies have a level playing field.”

https://news.yahoo.com/report-carbon-pricing-essential-achieving-175111645.html