Earlier this month, Xcel Energy, Colorado’s largest utility, a publicly traded company, said it would
This is good news, although 32 years is a long time. We cannot help thinking that by 2050, we also will have colonized Mars and discovered a new source of energy, or at least have built much better batteries to store the old green sources like solar and wind.
Still, the important thing is that Xcel has a plan to do it and is moving incrementally in that direction.
This fall, Jared Polis won Colorado’s governorship with a platform that included a promise to move Colorado to a green grid – all non-carbon electricity generation — by 2040. This had great appeal for voters, especially the Democrats and independents who embrace the science and dire warnings surrounding climate change and expect politicians to do something about it.
Twenty-two years is also far in the future, of course, and would be 14 years beyond the time Polis likely could serve as governor. Yet if there are incremental steps he can get the state to take now, we are all for it.
So how do we get from here to there? What do we do next year?
Polis has been understandably vague on the details, but we imagine he will first have to work with the Legislature to devise a series of carrots and sticks, and encourage other utilities to fall in line with Excel.
It should be obvious that there are hard obstacles to doing this tomorrow. We are going to need better battery storage to support wind and solar generation and probably better ways to sequester carbon. We are going to need more science and innovation, which can be hastened but not commanded.
Are we being too practical?
Yes, according to the recent U.N. and U.S. national estimate reports on what it will take to outrun some of the catastrophic effects of climate change.
Enter the New Green Deal, which has been touted by recently-elected Democrats in the U.S. House, most prominently by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a democratic socialist from New York (a state that currently gets most of its electricity from gas and nuclear power).
The deal is supposed to be a plan to generate all of the nation’s electricity from renewable sources within just 10 years. How will we do that?
No one knows. Ocasio-Cortez demanded that Congress establish a select committee to work out the details.
“The Green New Deal isn’t anything yet,” energy-industry lobbyist Frank Maisano told The Washington Post. “It doesn’t have any real specifics other than broad platitudes.”
It would be nice if Congress could just legislate a greener world, we think, although it might consider what just befell French President Emmanuel Macron when he taxed fuel to do that.
It would also be nice if Congress could just give us affordable housing that let us walk to work in always pleasant weather.
The last time Democrats had a House majority, and a committee for a greener world, they succeeded in introducing recyclable cups in the House cafeteria. When Republicans regained the majority, they replaced them with styrofoam to cut costs.
We may have to recognize that Congress might not be the best instrument for devising and implementing solutions to climate change, and trust our luck and markets. Turn out the lights when you’re not using them, eat a little less beef and think a little smaller and longer when it comes to the pace of change.
