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Be Part of the Electrification Revolution
What is happening that will reduce our reliance on fossil fuel power?
What is happening that will reduce our reliance on fossil fuel power?
Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Editor’s note: This is one in a continuing series of guest educational opinions about fostering environmental stewardship and leadership coordinated by ACES — The Alliance of Climate and Environmental Stewards.
When record-breaking heatwaves in Europe and North America this summer sent energy demand soaring, renewable energy kept the lights and the air conditioning on. California, the world’s fifth-largest economy, has largely managed to avoid blackouts with the aid of wind, solar, and batteries. Currently, 45 percent of that state’s energy comes from renewable sources.
Solar energy helped keep Europe cool, too. Solar provided almost a quarter of Spain’s electricity this July. In the same month Sicily met nearly half of its excess demand with solar energy. Belgium used solar power to cover more than 100 percent of the extra energy needed during summer spikes in power demand.
Renewable energy’s success in Europe and the U.S. is tempered by results in Asia, where power grids have labored to keep up with surging demand despite heavy investment in renewable energy, leaving millions of people to suffer rolling blackouts in extreme heat. The region’s struggles offer a cautionary tale, reminding us that to be effective, renewable energy must be fully integrated into a nation’s power grid.
An ever-bigger obstacle to the electrification revolution is the $7 trillion in subsidies world governments gave to the fossil fuel industry last year. This to an industry that recorded record profits in the same year.
The IMF estimates that eliminating these subsidies would prevent 1.6 million premature deaths annually, raise government revenues by $4.4 trillion, and put the world on track to reaching global emissions targets. And economists have already figured out a Nobel-prize winning solution: taxing carbon pollution and putting the money back in taxpayer’s pockets. 39 countries have already done it, including Canada. So, why do we keep paying these subsidies? Politics.
Contact your CitizensClimateLobby.org chapter to learn how citizens are claiming the political power we need to take on these big issues.
You can help at the local level, too. We encourage you to look at the numerous incentives in Massachusetts, in tandem with President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, that make electrifying your home and vehicles more affordable.
To help you navigate the many options, Citizens’ Climate Lobby Northshore created a help information sheet which can be found at https://tinyurl.com/Electrify-Massachusetts
You may not be able to implement all of these options today and we recognize that our cities, states and nation need to do more to make them affordable. But whatever you can do will help this peaceful revolution succeed. Contact me or another team member at CCL Northshore to learn more about our electrification initiative and
the other work we are doing to build a healthy and sustainable world. You can reach us at opportunities northshoremass@citizensclimatelobby.org
ACES Youth Corps team members encourage you to promote and lobby for more renewable energy and electrification. Every bit counts, and your contributions and choices are important. Please provide any thoughts about other opportunities to benefit our environment and send us a note at acesnewburyport@gmail.com. To learn more about ACES and its Initiatives, visit https://www.aces-alliance.org.
Citizens's Climate Lobby
Co-chair of Citizens’ Climate Lobby’s Northshore (MA) Chapter for the past six years, Rob is the former leader and co-founder of the Cincinnati Chapter of CCL. He notes that an important distinction of Citizens’ Climate Lobby is the organization's focus on carbon pollution pricing. They advocate for a specific type of pricing called carbon fee and dividend. Rob is also the author of two novels and is currently writing his third. Rob lives in Salem, Massachusetts.
