Designing the mid‐transition: A review of medium‐term challenges for coordinated decarbonization in the United States

Abstract

Decarbonizing the energy system is critical for addressing climate change. Given the dominance of fossil fuels in the energy system, decarbonization requires rapid and significant industrial transition of the energy supply at scale. This includes explicit and coordinated plans not only for zero carbon phase-in, but for fossil carbon phase-out. Even very rapid decarbonization will likely take decades, leading to a medium-term future where the conventional, fossil-based energy system coexists with a new, zero-carbon energy system. Each imposes operational constraints on the other: what we call the mid-transition. Notably, this coexistence means that the new, zero-carbon system will develop under fossil carbon system constraints. The mid-transition will therefore likely require specific analytical metrics designed to support decision making under dynamic and uncertain conditions. Many aspects of transition will be felt, and shaped, directly by individuals because of our direct interactions with energy systems.Even rare missteps are likely to have significant and potentially system designrelevant impacts on perception, political support, and implementation. Comparisons of the new system to the old system are likely to rest on experience of a world less affected by climate change, such that concerns about lower reliability, higher costs, and other challenges might be perceived as inherent to zero-carbon systems, versus energy systems facing consequences of climate change and longterm underinvestment. This review assesses and evaluates medium-term challenges associated with the mid-transition in the United States, emphasizing the need for explicit planning for joint and coordinated phase-in and phase-out.

Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification

“…electric grid, i.e., a mid-transition moment wherein consideration of fossil fuel-fired EGUs remains critical 41 .Given uncertainties in the pace of grid decarbonization, our experimental design brackets overly conservative and overly ambitious grid evolution scenarios, i.e., our eAT scenario assumes added electricity demand is met by 2016 infrastructure while our eAT_EF scenario assumes emission-free generation. Results from our EV adoption scenarios indicate that from the perspective of greenhouse gas emissions, swapping fossil fuel-fired EGUs for emission-free electricity generation has a profound impact, i.e., CO2 emission reductions and their economic valuation double.…”

“…Projections of EV uptake by mode vary considerably, but have been tending toward a more rapid transition in recent forecasts [38][39][40] . Critically, our 30% target falls within the decarbonization mid-transition, i.e., a period when consideration of fossil fuel-fired EGUs remains essential 41 .…”

Neighborhood-scale air quality, public health, and equity implications of multi-modal vehicle electrification

“…Critically, our 30% target falls within the decarbonization mid-transition, i.e. a period when consideration of fossil fuel-fired EGUs remains essential [43].…”

Results from a survey of life cycle assessment-aligned socioenvironmental priorities in US and Australian communities hosting oil, natural gas, coal, and solar thermal energy production

“…In the United States (US), the Biden administration has called for decarbonization of the electricity sector by 2035, and of the full economy by 2050 (White House 2021). As a result, the major infrastructural transitions necessary to decarbonize while responding to climate change will take place over a few decades-shorter than the lifespan of much of the relevant infrastructure, but long enough to require sustained commitment through challenging conditions on the part of the people affected (Grubert and Hastings-Simon 2022). This goal is also expected to lead to mass electrification of traditionally fossil fuel-based applications like transportation and home heating to enable use of mature zero-carbon systems like wind, solar, and geothermal plants, which in turn means a substantial expansion of the electricity sector (Williams et al 2021) and a noticeable change in the energy infrastructures people directly interact with.…”

“…Impacts might be inequitably distributed and geographically concentrated, contributing to the potential for physical, economic, and cultural dislocation (Bluestone 1982, Smith 2019) that can contribute to strong political coalition formation during transition. Meanwhile, active intervention in transition by carbon-based industry actors (Mildenberger 2020, Franta 2021 exacerbates incumbency bias and threatens the success of a normative decarbonization transition (Grubert and Hastings-Simon 2022).…”