Under the Paris Climate Agreement—which President Trump abandoned early in his second term, just as he did in his first—the US and other participating countries agreed to work to keep the average global temperature “well below” 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. A new analysis of global emissions as a result of policies enacted so far in President Trump’s second term says that meeting that goal is “increasingly improbable.”
The report, from energy consulting firm Baringa, also stated that if the Trump administration continues down its current “drill, baby, drill” path, there will be a “5% increase in cumulative global emissions from 2020 to 2100.” And according to David Shepheard, a partner at Baringa who specializes in energy, such an increase isn’t just the result of Trump energy policies, it’s also the result of a perfect storm of three intertwined energy dilemmas.
“Not only are we chasing a decarbonization objective, we’re now simultaneously chasing an unprecedented increase in electric demand,” Shepheard told Tech Brew. “[We’re] having to balance the objectives of reliability, decarbonization, and customer affordability, and it is a tough equation to square right now.”
That’s because Shepheard said decarbonizing the electrical grid isn’t beneficial if doing so will make the grid unreliable, which the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission signaled last month when it accepted a proposal from a large transmission organization to increase power, regardless of how it’s generated, to meet electricity demand.
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And Shepheard said the reality is that renewable energy sources just aren’t dispatchable enough to provide for the increased energy demand, at least not without a high cost to consumers—even though renewable energy is cheaper than non-renewables.
“It’s not as simple an equation as just saying ‘let’s pick the lowest-cost energy,’” Shepheard said. “[It’s] let’s pick the lowest-cost energy that delivers to the grid when we need it.”
Would the US be in the same sticky situation under a Harris administration? Shepheard told Tech Brew yes and no. No, because there wouldn’t be threats to EV tax credits and offshore wind leases, both of which can help lower emissions. But the US still needs to figure out how it will satisfy energy demand without turning mostly toward fossil fuels, as Trump did in one of his executive orders, and without large consumer costs.
“Whichever political system we’re running in,” Shepheard said, “we’ve got to put those three things together faster than we’re doing right now.”