Right now, could you prepare a slice of toast with zero embodied carbon emissions?
Since at least the 2000s, big polluters have tried to frame carbon emissions as an issue to be solved through the purchasing choices of individual consumers.
Solving climate change, we’ve been told, is not a matter of public policy or infrastructure. Instead, it’s about convincing individual consumers to reduce their “carbon footprint” (a term coined by BP: https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/aug/23/big-oil-coined-carbon-footprints-to-blame-us-for-their-greed-keep-them-on-the-hook).
Yet, right now, millions of people couldn’t prepare a slice of toast without causing carbon emissions, even if they wanted to.
In many low-density single-use-zoned suburbs, the only realistic option for getting to the store to get a loaf of bread is to drive. The power coming out of the mains includes energy from coal or gas.
But.
Even if they invested in solar panels, and an inverter, and a battery system, and only used an electric toaster, and baked the loaf themselves in an electric oven, and walked/cycled/drove an EV to the store to get flour and yeast, there are still embodied carbon emissions in that loaf of bread.
Just think about the diesel powered trucks used to transport the grains and packaging to the flour factory, the energy used to power the milling equipment, and the diesel fuel used to transport that flour to the store.
Basically, unless you go completely off grid and grow your own organic wheat, your zero emissions toast just ain’t happening.
And that’s for the most basic of food products!
Unless we get the infrastructure in place to move to a 100% renewables and storage grid, and use it to power fully electric freight rail and zero emissions passenger transport, pretty much all of our decarbonisation efforts are non-starters.
This is fundamentally an infrastructure and public policy problem, not a problem of individual consumer choice.
#ClimateChange #urbanism #infrastructure #energy #grid #politics #power @green
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green The Jevons paradox is widely misunderstood and almost always overestimated. Jevons himself made the mistake of attributing to efficiency improvements the rapid adoption of the steam engine, but there were many other reasons why steam engines were widely adopted.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green These reasons included higher power densities, the ability to store energy, the ability to locate motive power flexibly within factories, the ability to operate underground. Steam engines were what is known as a general purpose technology, which had wide and deep applications across society.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green Efficiency wasn’t the sole reason for its ascendence, and probably wasn’t the most important reason, but the lesson most people take from this “effect” is that efficiency causes increases in energy use. That conclusion is almost always false.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green In the same way, people look at aggregate statistics for energy use and say “look, efficiency causes energy use to go up” but there are many other factors pushing energy use upwards. Overall increase in wealth is the most powerful one.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green People building bigger houses or buying bigger cars isn’t solely caused by efficiency improvements, and efficiency is nowhere near the most important contributor to this effect.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green Technology change is complex and multifactorial, but people like to boil stuff down to simple explanations, like the Jevons Paradox. Unfortunately, these simple explanations are usually wrong.
@coffee2Di4 @jackofalltrades @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green PS. Anyone talking about this issue needs to distinguish between absolute decoupling of ENERGY USE from economic activity and absolute decoupling of EMISSIONS from economic activity. Achieving the latter is much easier than the former, given the many ways to power modern tech with zero emissions, but people often conflate the two.
@jgkoomey @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green
What are “the many ways to power modern tech with zero emissions”? Can you list some examples?
@jackofalltrades @coffee2Di4 @urlyman @FantasticalEconomics @ajsadauskas @green People with houses and EVs powered by solar PVs + batteries is the simplest example. The embedded emissions are a transient phenomenon, once we’ve decarbonized supply chains that issue will be solved.