A recent study, Stacked Energyscapes, led by professors at Loyola Marymount University and Penn State University, caught my eye. The paper describes webs of complexities associated with transitions from fossil-fuel-powered economies to clean-energy economies. I burrowed into this paper as a glutton for third, fourth, and fifth-order (and beyond) downstream chain reactions and the universal picture. The Inflation Reduction Act was deployed in part to provide a 10% tax break bonus for clean energy development in communities that have been negatively impacted by decreases or closures of fossil fuel extraction. However, developers in many locations, such as the enormous Permian…
Read More
The depth of decarbonization will ride the line where the net of cost and convenience meets that of conventional alternatives. Polling from the University of Chicago indicates 38% of Americans are willing to chip in one (1) dollar per month to fight climate change, down fourteen percentage points from 2021 (presumably, that 14% are willing to pay nothing now). Or, as one Wall Street Journal article noted in November, “Someone has to pay for it, and shareholders and consumers decided this year it wouldn’t be them.” For instance, I like to cut, split, stack, haul, and burn wood for heat. It must burn hot…
Read More