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JESSE JENKINS: OK.
We know how to make clean energy cheap.
We did it with wind power.
We did it with solar power.
We did it with the batteries in our electric vehicles.
And now we have a decade to do the same thing for bioenergy,
for hydrogen, for carbon capture,
and for other advanced technologies.
We need to complete the job.
I'm Jesse Jenkins.
I'm an assistant professor, and I study macro-scale energy
systems engineering.
Most of my research focuses on the electricity sector
and electric power systems, which, in some ways,
are the largest machines that humans have ever created.
So I study how policy changes, technology changes, planning
decisions might evolve and change how that system operates
and to ideally deliver a more sustainable,
cleaner energy supply, particularly
with a focus on electricity.
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Climate change has been accelerating.
We're already closing in on one degree
Celsius of global warming average across the country.
One degree might not sound like a lot,
but we're already seeing devastating wildfires
and accelerating coastal flooding and hurricanes.
The last year we saw horrendous wildfires
across much of the Western United States.
Scandinavia was on fire, the Arctic in Russia.
I mean these changes are partly human activity from forestry,
but also accelerated by dry humid temperatures
that are unprecedented.
We've had something like seven of the 10 hottest years
ever in the last decade.
And that's fueling droughts and water stress
that is impacting where we're going to get our water from,
for agriculture and for cities.
And it's leading to horrible air quality, apocalyptic air
quality on a regular basis.
I grew up in Oregon and the American West.
My family lives there today and in California.
And, you know, fire season wasn't
a thing when I was a kid.
It's something that my parents and my friends
have to live with on a regular basis.
My dad spent-- spent two weeks huddled
inside his house, unable to go outside this year,
with HVAC filters taped over the bathroom fan trying
to keep the smoke out of his house,
so that he could breathe.
That's-- that's climate change.
And and it's going to get worse, unless we do something now.
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I'm one of the co-PIs of the Net-Zero America study,
which was just released in December, which is--
with unprecedented granularity, charts five different paths
to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across the entire US
economy, by 2050.
The Net-Zero America study finds that we
can affordably transition to net-zero greenhouse gas
emissions, spending the same amount,
as a share of our GDP, as we have in the past,
just spending it on the right kinds of decisions.
And so that's, on the one hand, very good news.
The other thing we find is that it really
is a dramatic transformation of how we make and use energy
across the entire country.
And that has big impacts and also big benefits.
We will save on the order of 200,000 to 300,000 lives
that would otherwise be lost to air pollution from fossil fuel
use over the next 30 years.
And it will create a half a million
to one million jobs in the energy supply
sectors by 2030 alone, and several million by 2050.
There are really whole new industries
that need to emerge over the next 30
years that are going to be integral parts
of our future energy system.
We need a new hydrogen economy that's
going to create hydrogen from a variety of sources.
We're going to use hydrogen both as a direct fuel
to displace natural gas, and heating,
and industrial processes, and as an intermediary fuel
to carry energy across the country in pipelines
and convert it later to jet fuel or diesel fuel
that we can substitute for fossil fuels.
My vision for a net-zero economy is
one in which more people are employed in the energy
sectors than today, across all parts of the country,
building wind and solar facilities,
harvesting and growing bioenergy crops,
converting those crops into low-carbon fuels, or hydrogen,
capturing and storing and transporting
CO2 across the country, making electric vehicles and heat
pumps in US manufacturing facilities.
All parts of the country are going
to participate in different ways.
And it's going to impact communities
all over the country.
And this vision is very possible.
We have the tools today to start along this path
and to make substantial investments
and progress towards net-zero.
And we have the time, that if we use it proactively,
we can spend the next decade making the rest of the tools we
need cheap, and scalable.
and affordable.
And we need to get this challenge under control,
or those costs and impacts are just
going to continue to mount over my lifetime, and my son's
lifetime.
It's time to make a difference and work on these problems.
Because if we don't get a handle on the climate challenge
now, if we don't make substantial progress
in the next five, 10 years, then the window of opportunity
to really avoid the worst effects of climate change
is starting to close.
I'm Jesse Jenkins and I'm a forward thinker.
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