Sensible Decarbonization

This book is a far-reaching study of where we are in our goal of decarbonizing energy, how we approach risk, and how regulation may help or hinder. It is a survey of where we are in the early 2020's and possible pathways into the future. The goal is to develop a realistic and balanced approach to decarbonization. Much information and data are included to argue for certain pathways. How fast we need to decarbonize is a big question. Another is how fast can we decarbonize without economic and reliability disruptions. We need to understand and keep account of relative decarbonization for different sources of energy and different technologies. We need to accurately evaluate and predict the utility and impacts of immature and maturing technologies. The goal is to prioritize the most important, feasible, useful, scalable, and beneficial energy sources, technologies, and climate change adaptation strategies in their regional contexts and in reasonable timeframes. This book is about much more than decarbonization. It is about regulation. It is about the nature and measure of risk of many kinds. It is about recognizing and dealing with bias, hype, and influence while considering data and science. It is about integrating science and policy. It also considers and compares different ways to tell stories about regulation and risk. It shows that most of the data suggests that human technology innovation and wealthy societies steadily increase human well-being through time, despite widespread narratives to the contrary. It suggests that obtaining consensus for policies leads to more durable policies, but also that more biased and radical viewpoints hinder the building of consensus. Many different decarbonization solutions are explored and compared considering cost, technical feasibility, reliability, maturity of technology, co-benefits and co-harms like improved or impeded environmental protection, and land use impacts.