How Can We Sustain Emission Reductions Once the Lockdowns Lift?
By the end of 2020, global Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions are expected to decline by eight percent compared to 2019. It’s the largest drop on record, and it’s in line with what the United Nations says needs to happen every year through 2030 to prevent a dangerous rise in global temperatures.
There’s just one problem: We achieved these GHG reductions goals through economically ruinous and unsustainable COVID-19 lockdown measures that no one hopes we have to repeat in the decade ahead.
Emissions reductions cannot come at the expense of millions of jobs lost, families being pushed into poverty, and vital industries facing bankruptcy. There needs to be a sustainable solution, and the United States needs to lead by example and take steps to contribute its share of global emissions reductions.
The only answer is through investing in, innovating, and deploying diverse technologies that contribute to a cleaner energy system. Despite significant federal investments and incentives over the years, we still aren’t doing nearly enough.
For example: In 2018, the Department of Energy received $15 billion for energy research and development (R&D) and related activities. These funds went toward advancing work on nuclear energy technologies, reactor concepts, renewable energy resources, carbon capture, advanced energy systems, and electricity efficiency. Of that $15 billion, ARPA-E (the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy) — which funds some of the most ambitious and cutting-edge energy research — only received $353 million. The American Energy Innovation Council — a project of the Bipartisan Policy Center —recommended that the budget for ARPA-E be at least tripled to over $1 billion per year.
Although this would represent a significant funding increase, it would still pale in comparison to the amount the U.S. government spends on defense R&D. In 2018, the Department of Defense spent $805 billion, $93.5 billion of which was for RDT&E (research, development, test, and evaluation).
America still also relies on an outdated system of technology-specific production tax credits to incentivize wind and solar technologies, and these credits must be constantly renewed by Congress. Here’s a better approach: Deploy next-generation tax credits designed to favor promising, emerging technologies over maturing ones, which would mean any clean energy technology that meets certain functional goals of decarbonization would be eligible to receive the credit.
Finally, policymakers and the American people need to acknowledge that it will be virtually impossible to ratchet down GHG emissions over time without maintaining and expanding our use of nuclear power. For all the promise and progress of renewable energy sources like wind and solar, they still only account for 17% of America’s electricity generation due to their intermittency, low storage capabilities, land requirements, and reliance on rare earth minerals. Nuclear power remains the one low-carbon power source capable of producing massive quantities of energy to complement other renewable sources. Moreover, the latest nuclear reactor and generation technologies are light years ahead of the technologies used in the reactors responsible for the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear accident and the 2011 Fukushima disaster in Japan. It will take a sustained political effort from Washington to convince the American public that nuclear power is not only safe but essential for meeting our emissions reduction goals.
The sustainable blueprint for putting America on a path towards a clean energy future exists. Our leaders in Washington just need to harness the political will to put plan to action.
Aleksandra Srdanovic is a policy analyst with The New Center.
