Tim Trefren

Notes on Rewiring America

Rewiring America describe themselves as "a coalition of engineers, entrepreneurs, and volunteers focused on addressing climate change and boosting the economy by electrifying everything." The group was founded by Saul Griffith - inventor, engineer, founder of many companies, and Alex Laskey, one of the founders of Opower.
In 2020, they published a book called Rewiring America, a handbook for winning the climate fight, which lays out the case for aggressive deployment of existing low carbon energy sources like wind and solar, as well as electrifying the main sources of emissions in our lives: cars, home heating / cooling, and appliances. If we can do this very quickly, we have a chance to avoid passing 2C of warming.
I spent the last couple of days reading the book and I think it is the best plan I've seen for getting us out of this mess. It's pragmatic, does not indulge in excessive wishful thinking, and rooted in reality.
There are some very big things that would have to change to make this plan a reality though. The most critical one seems to be getting financing in place for overhauling personal energy infrastructure.

Chapter 1 - A glimmer of hope

The book does a nice job pulling out the key points from each chapter and putting them on the first page:
  • The technical path to decarbonization is simply this: we must electrify (nearly) everything.
  • We need a near 100% adoption rate of decarbonized solutions. It is the big purchases that count far more than the little ones. Your next car needs to be electric, your next furnace a heat pump, and you need solar on your roof. This is your personal zero-carbon infrastructure.
  • We must create new financing mechanisms—"climate loans"—so that everyone can afford to be part of the solution.
  • Electrifying everything will require nearly four times as much electricity. It needs to be generated, transmitted and stored with "grid neutrality," where households, businesses and utilities operate as equals.
  • Fossil fuel subsidies must end, but equally importantly we must eliminate the rules and regulations that artificially inflate the costs of renewable energy and clean solutions.
  • We can only decarbonize on schedule for 1.5C/2.7F – 2C/3.6F with a wartime–like mobilization of industry.

Chapter 2 - 1.5 degrees?

  • We must shoot for a target of 1.5C/2.7F , which at this point is very, very difficult.
  • Our situation is worse than most commonly reported emissions trajectories conclude. They assume we’ll achieve rapid "negative emissions" later this century by somehow pulling CO2 out of the air. We shouldn’t bet on things we don’t know will work.
  • Committed emissions - fossil fuels slated to be burned by machines that already exist — already take us past 1.5C/2.7F . This means we need early retirement of machinery - something people are reluctant to do.
  • Industrial mobilization will take time. Even if we committed to doing this today, it will take a heroic effort and a number of years to bring our production of the appropriate technologies up to scale.
  • We now live in a permanent state of climate emergency where we must always agitate for faster and more ambitious action.
Lifetimes of common machines:

In order to have any chance of reaching 1.5C/2.7F, we must now employ an “endgame” decarbonization strategy. That assumes an aggressive WWII–style production ramp–up of three to five years, followed by a prolonged deployment period that replaces all deployed fossil equipment at their retirement with a 100% adoption rate. This includes supply–side generation technologies as well as demand–side technologies like electric vehicles and building heat electrification. Early retirement of our heaviest emitters (coal–fired electricity) would help.

Chapter 3 - Emergencies are opportunities for lasting change

  • We can look to prior emergencies to understand what we need to do to boldly avert climate change.
  • We need to take all the actions all at once to decarbonize on time.