Green New Deal: Hope or Hype?
originally published on EFEX at http://www.energyfuturex.org/2019/03/02/green-new-deal-hope-or-hype/
Just days have passed since the release of the proposal for a Joint Resolution for a Green New Deal. If the resolution has achieved success already, it is in garnering attention and focusing the political white noise on long-term strategic thinking to the point where critics try to dismantle each and every part of the text and supporters can’t seem to wait for its ideas to become law and reality.
The resolution is remarkable insofar as it recognizes a historical and profound responsibility of the United States as a leading historic emitter of greenhouse gases, resulting in a moral obligation to lead the global effort to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This indeed is a refreshing mindscape, urging the United States to leapfrog from behind to the front row. Thus, the resolution is not a call to merely meet the global community somewhere in the soft middle field, but rather to climb all the way to the summit, where the air thins and the wind blows icy.
It is not terribly surprising that resistance to the proposition is tremendous and immediate. The text lays out a deeply uncomfortable pathway towards a post-carbon future, understanding that this calls for a rupture of the status quo and not just incremental adjustments.
The title Green New Deal, however, does not include any reference to climate change or a climate-driven agenda. Instead, the historic reference projects ideas of a past which most of us — including decision makers in the US Congress — have not lived and, thus, can only relate to in clichés, heavily influenced by our prior political leaning. Had the resolution chosen a new term, it may have been equally misunderstood. Still, by conjuring the spirit of the New Deal, a certain type of policies, society and geopolitical anchoring is implied. We can only assume that the Green New Deal will be massively different from the New Deal, simply out of the fact that it would take place a good eight decades later.
If we focus on the three components of the Green New Deal, we discern an element of sustainability (Green), an element of renewal (New) and of redistribution (Deal). Economic aspects are very central to the resolution, yet still justified as a necessary response to climate change.
The question is whether the text as such will be understood as a call for climate action or whether it will be read as a framework that prioritizes economic success and economic impacts first. When shove comes to shovel, will the spirit lean towards climate action and sustainability or will job creation and economic growth be the decision anchors?
If the economics come first, then we need to ask what economic understanding underpins the thinking of this resolution? Do the authors imagine a world which is fundamentally similar to our current economic order, but with a new distribution of powers and ownership, i.e. concentrated service, manufacturing and extracting sectors, a highly-dispersed supply chain with a high degree of anonymity throughout all sectors of the economy, or do they understand the New in Green New Deal as a fundamental shift in how we trade and by extension then also turning upside-down the entire narrative of our society? In very reduced language, the choices we identify here are concentrated versus decentralized structures; economies of scale vs. human scale; atomized processes vs. integrated work concepts; efficiency vs. quality. In the end, we need to ask us: Is our future one decided by multinational corporations and their consultancies or do we still have a say?
One very striking term repeated throughout the resolution is the “worker” which seems to paint a picture of a future that resembles more the early 20th century than our current society. Then again, who can claim to know the future and maybe this is where we are going or need to be going. One might still feel a bit perplexed by the lack of imagination of a new societal order.
This brings us right back to the conjured picture of the Green New Deal: Do we want a social relaunch modeled on this last one or can be afford a more differentiated and nuanced view? (Not to mention the unnecessary inclusion of WWII as a contributor to social progress.)
Now, leaving the anchoring behind and delving into the promise of the resolution, I can’t help but applaud the daring stance the authors take. They see the immediate urgency to achieve significant climate progress and they don’t hide behind niceties and vagueness, but instead call for a net-zero greenhouse gas society achieved through a ten-year mobilization effort. Here is where critics and supporters alike want to misread what is in the text: There is the promise of a 10-year mobilization effort, but it is not a given that our goals will be reached at the end of the mobilization effort.
With regards to the environment and greenhouse gases, the ambition is limited by what is considered “technologically feasible.” If we assume that feasibility can include a certain degree of cost consideration, then this is a rather fluid promise.
The resolution does however set a clear goal to achieve 100% renewable energy in the power sector through “clean, renewable, and zero-emission energy sources,” leaving these terms open to the reader.
This goal has been met by particularly harsh criticism. The main contention is that it would be unrealistic to grow the share of clean, renewable and zero-emission power from X% in 2018 to 100% by a year x plus 10. If we assume that the start of the implementation clock is at the very earliest around 2022, considering that no legislation can pass before the end of the current presidency and even if the new Congress would pass such legislation right away, 2022 is the earliest we can set our clock to, transcribing into a goal year of 2032 for 100% clean, renewable and zero-emission power. Now, this must include more than just renewable energy, otherwise, the language could simply state renewable energy. Is clean an absolute term or a relative term? Do we count natural gas into this category? Maybe if we add carbon capture? How about nuclear energy? It seems reasonable to view this call at closer inspection as a full phase-out of coal by 2032 which is not an unrealistic time frame.
The other paragraph that was ridiculed right away from many eager commenters is the goal to “upgrading all existing buildings in the United States and building new buildings to achieve maximum energy efficiency, water efficiency, safety, affordability, comfort, and durability, including through electrification.”
Again, we need to look at the time horizon here, maybe 2032, maybe much later. The promise here consists of upgrading all existing buildings within the effort. We can only assume that this is meant to include commercial, municipal and residential buildings. Considering that building owners may start upgrading already prior to the 10-year effort, anticipating future requirements, we might even be able to consider a time span of 12–14 years. Before we can ascertain whether the goal is realistic, we need to make some assumptions about what is meant in the text of the Green New Deal and how the future buildings market will evolve. If we assume that the text only refers to upgrading the buildings that exist now, implying that all future new construction will already come to the market efficient, then we have a limited and dwindling amount of buildings to upgrade. The United States has the enormous advantage that buildings have a much shorter lifetime compared to Europe. Now, we don’t know how things will evolve after the Green New Deal effort is implemented, but this could very well shorten the lifetime of old buildings, if owners prefer to build new faster. There are a number of statistics for the median age of the building stock in the US, ranging from USCS Housing survey data for 2017 putting the median built year at 1977, to the EIA Commercial Building Energy Efficiency Survey from 2012 which puts the median age for commercial buildings at 32 years. For simplicity’s sake, we might assume that the median age of buildings, commercial and residential, is 36 years. If we assume a linear roll-over, then 2.8% of the building stock are being retired and replaced each year. So, this alone would already help us quite a bit in creating an efficient building stock. If we add to this that the remaining old building stock is being upgraded at a rate of 5% (of the remaining old buildings in each year), then we can actually achieve the goal of 100% upgraded buildings by 2040. Granted, by tweaking the assumptions we can get closer to our goal. With a flat constant number of upgrades instead, we can arrive at 100% by 2030.
If you argue that these numbers are too optimistic, then maybe the goal can’t be reached in the 10+x years. However, this shows that we can get really close to the buildings goal.
Granted, the resolution touches on many more points related to the Energy Future, such as the development of zero-emission infrastructure and manufacturing, public transit and high-speed rail, but without setting such clearly defined goals.
Taking a step back again, it seems that the Green New Deal resolution is a massive step for the US Congress to debate and engage on and does not shy away from bringing many questions to the table, including not only environmental and economic, but also social issues.
In the end, this document has its greatest value in the fact that it is a statement that the authors believe in a future that we can influence, we can design and form according to our needs, desires and hopes. And this is what has always been the driver for our great transitions.
sources:
https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-resolution/109/text
http://cwc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/DurabilityService_Life_E.pdf
https://www.eia.gov/consumption/commercial/reports/2012/buildstock/
