Getting to Net Zero Carbon Emissions:

Can We Do It?

ESST 3104

2021.2022

Randy Ramadhar Singh

 Major Goals of a Green New Deal
• Transformation to a low-carbon economy
including renewable energy sources and
energy efficiency

• Protection and restoration of forests and

wetlands; sustainable farming and soil
restoration

• Expanding employment in renewable energy,

energy efficiency, infrastructure investment,
environmental protection, ecological
resilience, water management, other areas
 The Original New Deal of the 1930s
• A pragmatic response to high unemployment,
but consistent with Keynesian economics.

• Direct effect of government employment and

government spending plus indirect, or
multiplier, effects leading to additional
economic activity and employment creation.

• Significant “green” aspect: Civilian Conservation

Corps, erosion and flood control, forest
protection and tree planting, streambed
protection, agricultural extension for crop
rotation and soil restoration.
Ecological Economics and Green New Deal
• Ecological economics, as distinct from mainstream
environmental economics, is based on a specific and powerful
insight: the economy, as a subsystem of the planetary
ecological system, is fundamentally limited by the physical
realities of that planetary system.

• Since about 1950, there have been staggering increases in

global population, energy use, and carbon emissions—more
than threefold for global population and more than sixfold for
energy use and carbon emissions.

• Climate crisis, parallel crises in water resources, forests and

wetlands, agricultural soils, ocean pollution, fisheries decline,
and biodiversity loss.
 Nature of Economic Production Must Change
• Ecological economics perspective implies that a
reorientation will be required as the period of steady
economic growth, characteristic of the past 200 years and
especially of the last 75 years, comes up against firm
ecological limits, including climate change.

• An end to conventional growth need not mean an end to

employment growth or improvement in human well-
being, but production must be reoriented to services and
energy-efficient outputs.

• Many of the standard Keynesian policy tools are relevant,

but in a new context of developing a sustainable
economy.
Climate Change Could Cut World Economy by $23
Trillion in 2050, Insurance Giant Warns

WASHINGTON — Rising temperatures are likely to reduce global

wealth significantly by 2050, as crop yields fall, disease spreads
and rising seas consume coastal cities, a major insurance company
warned Thursday. The effects of climate change can be expected
to shave 11 percent to 14 percent off global economic output by
2050 compared with growth levels without climate change. That
amounts to as much as $23 trillion in reduced annual global
economic output.

Poor nations would be particularly hard hit, but few would

escape, Swiss Re said. The findings could influence how the
industry prices insurance and invests its mammoth portfolios.

-- Christopher Flavelle, New York Times, April 22, 2021.

 Paris Climate Targets and Catastrophic Impacts
Permafrost

East Antarctic ice sheet

Thermohaline circulation

Boreal forests

Amazon rainforest

West Antarctic ice sheet

Greenland ice sheet

Alpine glaciers

Coral reefs

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Temperature Increase (°C)
Source: Schellnhuber et al, 2016.
Note: The vertical bar represents the range of the Paris climate targets, from 1.5°C to 2.0°C
 US Emissions Targets (2015)

Source: U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, http://unfccc.int/2860.php.

Note: In 2018, actual U.S. emissions were 10% below 1995 levels. In 2020, due to the
covid-19 crisis, emissions were 21% below 2005 levels.
US Emissions Targets (2020)

 50% emissions reduction by 2030.

 100% reduction in power sector emissions by 2035.

 100% reduction of all emissions by 2050

( = net zero).
 Global Wind Energy Installed Capacity and Average Cost, 2000-
2019

Source: Capacity data from BP, 2020b. Cost data from IRENA, 2019b.
 Global Solar Energy Installed Capacity and Average Cost, 2000-
2019

Source: Capacity data from BP, 2020b. Cost data from Lazard, 2020 and Shahan, 2014.
 To Cut Emissions to Zero, U.S. Needs to Make Big
Changes in Next 10 Years
• In 2020 energy companies installed 42 gigawatts of new wind turbines and solar panels,
smashing records. That annual pace would need to nearly double over the next decade.
• The capacity of the nation’s electric grid would have to expand roughly 60 percent by
2030 to handle vast amounts of wind and solar power.
• Today, electric-vehicle models are just 2 percent of new sales. By 2030, at least 50
percent of new cars sold would need to be battery-powered, with that share rising
thereafter.
• Most homes today are heated by natural gas or oil. In 10 years, nearly one-quarter
would need to be warmed with efficient electric heat pumps, double today’s numbers.
• Virtually all 200 remaining coal-burning power plants would have to shut down by
2030.
• Today, there are no cement plants that bury their emissions underground, and there
are no facilities sustainably producing hydrogen, a clean-burning fuel. By the mid-2020s,
several such plants would need to be operating to prepare for wider deployment.

-- Brad Plumer, New York Times, December 15, 2020

Electric cars hit record 54% of sales in Norway
By Charles Riley, CNN Business
Updated 11:57 AM ET, Tue January 5, 2021

Battery electric vehicles accounted for more than half of all cars sold in
Norway last year, putting the country way out in front in efforts to kill off
the internal combustion engine.

The market share of electric cars in Norway increased to 54% in 2020 from
42% the previous year, according to data published by OFV on Tuesday.
When hybrid vehicles are included, the share of electrified vehicles hit
83% last year. Petrol and diesel cars, which had a combined market share
of 71% in 2015, now have just 17%.

Norway is using huge tax incentives to help ensure that every new
passenger car and van sold in the country by the end of 2025 is a zero-
emission vehicle. Record electric vehicle sales in 2020 means the country
is now ahead of schedule, according to Oyvind Solberg Thorsen, CEO of
the Norwegian Road Federation (OFV).
Potential of Energy Efficiency
• A 2017 analysis by the International Renewable Energy
Agency (IRENA) found that successful decarbonization
of the world’s energy system by 2050 to limit warming
to 2°C could be accomplished with 50% of the carbon
reduction coming from a transition to renewable energy
and 45% from energy efficiency gains (with the
remaining reduction being reduced emissions from
remaining fossil fuel sources).

• “Lowering the ceiling” of total energy demand is as

important as “raising the floor” of renewable supply to
squeeze fossil fuels use close to zero.
Potential of Forests and Land Use Change
• An amount equal to 29% of annual anthropogenic CO2 emissions
is removed from the atmosphere by terrestrial ecosystems (IPCC
2019)
• Forests and grasslands could sequester twice as much CO2
annually as they do now (Erb et al. 2018)
• Primary forests store more than twice as much carbon as do
harvested forests and plantations (Harmon 1990)
• Allowing secondary forests to continue growing will sequester an
additional 2.8 GtC/yr
• Halting land use change would sequester an additional 1.5
GtC/yr
• In total, this would be 4.3 of the 4.7 GtC/yr gap between
emissions and removal rates (Houghton and Nassikas 2018)
-- Moomaw, William R., Susan A. Masino and Edward K. Faison. 2019. “Intact Forests in the United States:
Proforestation Mitigates Climate Change and Serves the Greatest Good.” Frontiers in Forests and Global
Change, June 11. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/ffgc.2019.00027/full
Potential of Healthy Soils Carbon Storage

• Global soils contain 2 to 3 times more carbon than the

atmosphere (1,500 Gigatons).
• If this carbon level increased by 0.4% in the first 30-40 cm
of soil, the annual increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the
atmosphere would be significantly reduced.
• 4 per 1000 Initiative: healthy soils for food security and
climate stabilization.
• There are 570 million farms in the world and more than 3
billion people living in rural areas could implement these
practices.
• This initiative is part of the Global Climate Action Plan
(GCAA) adopted by the UNFCCC at COP 22.

--“4 Per Thousand” Initiative, https://www.4p1000.org/

 Will the GND be Extremely Costly?
• An important issue in assessing costs is the standard economic principle
of increasing marginal cost. This implies that the initial costs are the
lowest.

• A major study of greenhouse gas abatement costs by McKinsey &

Company found that the costs of abating up to about a third of total
emissions were negative – implying that for these abatement programs,
especially increasing energy efficiency, economic advantages
outweighed costs even without considering environmental gains.

• The second third involved relatively low cost, less than $20 per ton of
CO2 equivalent. On a global scale, the total cost of reducing 2030
emissions by 35% compared to 1990 levels, or 70% compared with
business-as-usual levels, would be less than 1% of global GDP.

McKinsey and Company, 2009 and 2013, Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy,

https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/sustainability/our-insights/pathways-to-a-low-carbon-
economy
 Global Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Carbon capture and
storage, reduced
Curve for 2030 intensive agriculture
60
conversion

40
New building efficiency, Wind and solar power,
Abatement cost (€ per tCO₂e)

Waste recycling, small pasture, grassland, soil forest restoration

20 and forest management
hydro, other efficiency
improvement
0
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

-20

Hybrid cars, electricity

-40 from landfill gas, other
industrial efficiency

-60
Improved cropland
management, insulation
-80
retrofit (residential)

Efficiency improvement,
-100 LED lighting, insulation
retrofit (commercial)
Abatement potential (GtCO₂e per year)

Source: Adapted from McKinsey & Company, 2009.

 Employment Benefits
Fastest Growing Jobs in Clean Energy
Wind Turbine Technician
Adding 25,000 new jobs last year, the U.S. wind industry now boasts
102,000 workers. Wind turbine technician is the single fastest growing
occupation in America.

Solar Installer

The solar industry added more than 73,000 jobs in 2016. One out of every
50 new jobs created nationally came from solar.

Sustainable Builder
Nearly 1.4 million energy efficiency jobs are in the construction industry.
Construction firms have also seen a marked increase in the percentage of
their workforce that spends at least half their time on work related to
improving energy efficiency, rising from approximately 65 percent in 2015 to
74 percent in 2016.
U.S. Department of Energy, 2017.
Jobs Generated by Investing One Million
Dollars in Clean Energy versus Fossil Fuel
Production

Source: Pollin, 2015.

 Biden’s American Jobs Plan

 $621 billion for roads, bridges, transit and transportation

infrastructure, electric vehicles.

 $300 billion for clean manufacturing.

 $213 billion for green housing and retrofit.

 $180 billion for technology R&D including battery storage, hydrogen

systems.

 $111 billion for water infrastructure.

 $100 billion for workforce development including displaced workers,

equal access.
 Coal miners join climate activists to
back Biden's $2 trillion infrastructure
Coal country is in free fall and is pleading for help from Washington. That's
plan
why the largest union in one of the dirtiest industries is broadly backing
President Joe Biden's $2 trillion green infrastructure package -- an ambitious
plan that has also won support from climate activists.

"Anybody who would not accept jobs where jobs are desperately needed is
making a horrendous mistake," said Cecil Roberts, president of the United
Mine Workers of America, the country's largest mine workers union.

Biden's American Jobs Plan calls for improving the nation's infrastructure and
shifting to greener energy in a bid to simultaneously address inequality and
the climate crisis.

"We're for infrastructure. We're for jobs. We're for moving manufacturing into
coalfields. We'll work with the president on that," said Roberts, who has
known Biden for decades.
-- Brad Plumer, CNN News, April 20, 2021
The Need for Infrastructure Investment
Algae Bloom Fouls N.J.’s Largest Lake, Indicating Broader Crisis

“Around Lake Hopatcong, New Jersey’s largest lake, workers have been laid off, sailing
lessons canceled and summers ruined. The reason: clouds of blue-green algae in the water,
blooming in quantities never before recorded.”
“The biggest challenge is in places with older sewer and stormwater systems that have been
overwhelmed by fast-moving storms, as has happened repeatedly this summer in New
Jersey and New York. The Environmental Protection Agency has put the cost of upgrading
New Jersey’s stormwater system at $16 billion.”
-- New York Times, August 5, 2019.
 Policies to achieve GND goals
• Redirection of existing economic activity and investment
through taxes, subsidies, standards, and regulation.

• Shift hundreds of billions in fossil fuel and intensive agriculture

subsidies to renewable energy and regenerative agriculture and
forestry.

• New “green” public investment in energy transition, greener

housing and buildings, public transit, new renewable
technologies and battery storage, electrical grid integration and
modernization, public trust funds for community resilience,
land protection programs, water and sewer infrastructure.

• Employment creation programs including human resource areas

such as health, education, and community services. .
Financing a Green New Deal
 Raising revenue: Corporate tax, close loopholes, repeal Trump tax cuts for
high incomes, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies.
 Possible carbon or resource depletion tax, with per capita rebate.
 Deficit spending: depends how you look at it:
“The US national debt isn't actually very high, Bank of
America says: if you value the US economy like a
company, using a discounted cash flow analysis, the debt
to GDP ratio is just 0.7%, the lowest since 2004, based
on research by by former White House officials Larry
Summers and Jason Furman.” -- Business Insider, April
19, 2021
Environmental and Employment Benefits
Outweigh Costs
• Many GND policies require minimal spending and deliver net
benefits in terms of employment and environmental
improvement, including health co-benefits.
• In terms of carbon reduction, the higher costs would potentially
come later: 30% reduction would be cheap, 100% could be
expensive.
• Infrastructure investment will ultimately involve trillions in
spending, but will generate tremendous employment potential,
including in economically lagging areas.
• If initiated with an emphasis on energy efficiency, low-cost
renewables, and employment generation, GND would
demonstrate major employment and environmental benefits,
and could be ramped up over time.