Clean Energy Laws 'by 20XX' are Science Fiction Stories

Two weeks ago, youth activists in Hawaii won a “historic” climate settlement that guarantees officials will release a roadmap to reach zero emissions for its transportation system by 2045, the year by which the state was already looking to get all its energy from renewables. “It’s written down, it’s enforceable, and that makes all the difference in the world between a promise and actual implementation,” Denise Antolini, emeritus professor of law at the University of Hawaii Law School, told The Guardian about the settlement.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about that quote since I read it. 

Similar to Hawaii, Puerto Rico has a 2019 environmental law that states 40% of our electricity needs to be supplied by renewables by 2025 and 100% by 2050 with a few interim targets. However, only about 9% of our energy comes from renewables right now, according to the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA). Clearly, we’re not reaching that renewable goal next year and there’s mounting evidence that forecasts we won't reach the 2050 goal either.

A lot of the archipelago’s renewable energy comes from individual homes and businesses installing rooftop solar in their homes because they don’t trust their lights to stay on without assuring it themselves. Meanwhile, both the government and the private companies our electrical system has been handed over to are pushing for creating new LNG plants or renovating existing power plants to run on LNG. The San Juan Bay is already being dredged to make way for bigger LNG barges to pass through and New Fortress Energy, which sells Puerto Rico LNG, has already acquired a bespoke permit to get around international shipping laws.

When comparing the two archipelagos, I’m willing to bet that Hawaii is far more committed to reaching its renewable goal — especially considering they were the first to implement a 100% renewable law nearly 10 years ago and already produce 31% of their energy from renewables. However, “long-term investments will take years to pay off, allowing older equipment to keep polluting. And despite ongoing research on how to best electrify air travel, its infrastructure is all but certain to be based on petroleum products for the foreseeable future,” wrote Jennifer Oldham for Capital & Main. 

Twenty four states, alongside Washington DC and Puerto Rico, have implemented measures to reach 100% renewable energy or carbon-free electricity, according to the Clean Energy States Alliance. These pledges vary between as early as 2032 to as late as 2050. Meanwhile, at the federal level, Biden has set an “ambitious” goal of reaching a carbon-free power sector by 2035 and a net zero emissions economy “by no later than 2050.” 

Even though Hawaii and Puerto Rico present scenarios at either end of the spectrum, they illustrate a great problem with these types of goals — they present themselves as the only solution to mitigate the climate crisis while providing enough lag time so that it looks like they’re doing something when they could be doing so much more. While these “clean energy” laws and mandates are unequivocally steps in the right direction, reaching them relies on coordinated efforts the likes of which have never been seen before or deus ex machina technologies that don’t exist and likely never will.

These laws are science fiction stories selling a utopian future built without a map. Many of these pledges and laws provide interim targets, but they don't provide a detailed plan that consists decommissioning fossil fuel plants and installing renewable ones.

While Hawaiian Electric seems committed to lowering emissions, they will also “partly rely” on natural carbon sinks and “negative-emissions technologies” to reach net zero – achieving parity between emissions created and those removed through greenhouse gas sinks.

Carbon capture and storage technology has been sold as a cure all for a world that doesn’t want to substantially curb emissions. Notably, net zero doesn’t necessarily promise a reduction of emissions but instead shoring up carbon absorption to meet the amount of emissions we’re pumping into the air, a complicated math equation that relies on promises about tech that executives keep promising will exist eventually. After billions of investment and decades of research, carbon capture technology can’t do much of anything, according to an article from Nature. U.S. climate envoy John Kerry called carbon capture a “great facade.”

When it comes to states promising “carbon-free” electricity, the term can mean any number of things. Some places use it to mean exclusively solar, wind, and water, while others include nuclear. If you ask the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), it can also include “electrical energy generation from fossil resources to the extent there is active capture and storage of carbon dioxide emissions that meets EPA requirements.”

LNG — which was once marketed as a “bridge fuel” and has now been rebranded as a “destination fuel” — has been getting pushed as the “green” solution to the climate crisis. It's usually what people talk about in concert with carbon capture technology that will lead to net zero. (LNG has recently been pushed as the "clean" alternative for Puerto Rico as well, as I wrote about here). 

Meanwhile, planting gigantic above-ground or underwater forests is a laughable idea given that 10 million hectares of forests are cut down each year. Deforestation and degradation account for 11% of carbon emissions, according to the United Nations (UN). New forests can take years or decades to grow, while cutting them down only takes a couple months. 

Placing their deadlines in 20XX also obfuscates how far into the climate crisis we will be by 10, 20, or 30 years into the future. António Guterres, secretary general of the UN, called current climate policies “a death sentence” in 2023, yet a large number of them continue unchanged. Most scientists agree that passing the 1.5°C global warming target as defined by the Paris Agreement is inevitable. In fact, many agree the planet will reach 2.5°C by the end of the century, according to The Guardian. That will have cataclysmic results for places like Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Meanwhile, places in the Global South who are not directly owned by the United States (one of the main countries causing climate change), will face even worse consequences.

Despite a 38-fold increase in environmental laws since 1972, failure to fully implement and enforce these laws is still one of the greatest challenges to mitigating the effects of climate change, according to a 2019 UN report.  

“While environmental laws have become commonplace across the globe, too often they exist mostly on paper because government implementation and enforcement is irregular, incomplete, and ineffective. In many instances, the laws that have been enacted are lacking in ways that impede effective implementation (for example, by lacking clear standards or the necessary mandates),” reads the report.

Puerto Rico is much the same. At this point, the environmental protection agency is mostly toothless and the two private companies that operate our electrical grid are more committed to their sweetheart deals than to the people of Puerto Rico. New Fortress Energy (NFE) – which controls energy generation and sells LNG to Puerto Rico – revealed they were on the archipelago talking to the government merely three days after Hurricane Maria, a strong Category 4 hurricane that razed the island in 2017.

“The government has done exactly as we said — as we thought that they would,” said Wes Edens, founder of NFE, during an earnings call where executives assured that natural gas supplemented with solar and batteries will be Puerto Rico’s future. Coincidentally, Puerto Rico’s energy law requires existing and future power generation units that run fossil fuels be capable of running LNG.

The auxiliary energy secretary has said the lack of solar projects is because the proposals are “too expensive.” Meanwhile, the frontrunner for governor says we “should stop talking about solar panels and talk about [electricity] generation. Panels are cool but how do we generate energy so Puerto Rico isn’t blacked out? That should be our priority.” 

Clearly, they’re not going to be pushing for renewables no matter what the laws say. Since they're ostensibly the same people in charge of enforcement, I wouldn't bet on them pushing renewables any time soon.

Even though it's doubtful that Puerto Rico will reach this legally mandated goal, having "reach 100% renewable" written down as a law – like Hawaii and Washington DC, among others, also have – is the best way to actually reach these goals for three pivotal reasons.

First, it offers a concrete goal (100% renewable energy), instead of the amorphous "net zero emissions" statement, which would require a drawdown in emissions as well as sci-fi technology that doesn't exist yet. Even though they're not perfect, batteries and solar panels (whether distributed or utility-scale) are technology that actually exists. If these governments really wanted to, they could start putting down solar panels tomorrow.

Second, 100% renewable would case a substantive reduction in emissions because it replaces polluting fossil fuels. Meanwhile, the promise of net zero isn't zero emissions but the promise that emissions produced is equal to emissions removed.

Third, it's far harder to repeal something that's codified into law than an executive order or a board decision. Rhode Island's renewable energy executive order pledged 100% renewable by 2030. However, when its renewable energy law was signed, it tacked on three more years for a 100% renewable goal by 2033.

While writing this piece, the Supreme Court announced its 6-3 ruling to overturn a 40-year old case colloquially known as "Chevron" that instructed lower courts to defer to federal agencies when laws passed by Congress aren't clear. Essentially, it's a gigantic hit to the ability for federal agencies to regulate environmental protections, public health, and other concerns. It was the "bedrock of modern administrative law," writes Matthew Daly for the Associated Press.

However, it wasn't an actual law, just a court decision.

Pledges not codified into law are at a higher risk than those that are laws. There are six states who's net zero pledges are stipulated by either executive order or board decision (only the case for Nebraska). If political leadership were to change in these states to someone who was less amenable to these goals, they could revoke those orders. Considering that there is a notable and extreme rightward shift currently happening across the United States and the rest of the world, those leadership changes could easily dismantle everything that is not a law quite quickly.

Not to say they wouldn’t be able to do the same thing to laws, but it would be a little harder for them to do.

Reportedly, New York is considering changing its legally mandated 70% renewable goal from 2030 to 2033. Colorado is also unlikely to reach it's legally mandated 2025 climate goal as well. Notably, Colorado's law states this goal is only mandatory "so long as doing so is technically and economically feasible."

Undoubtedly, some of the people pushing these policies have the people's best interest in mind. However, the system through which they pass these measures was created to disallow progress that helps the disenfranchised unless it is pulled forward kicking and screaming by collective action. 

The truth is many of the governments and companies in the United States who are not committing and actively working to drastically lower their emissions will be some of the last affected by the worst effects of the climate crisis. Instead, it will be places like Grenada — which was razed by Hurricane Beryl, the earliest Category 4 and later Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic on record — that will suffer the brunt of the effects of global warming.

The Caribbean is “ground zero” for the climate crisis, even though we produce negligible emissions in the grand scheme of things. In fact, Grenada, alongside the over 50 political entities that make up the UN’s list of Small Island Developing States, only produce about 1% of global emissions. Meanwhile, the U.S. produced about 13.5% of all global emissions in 2022. The U.S. Army alone produced more greenhouse gas emissions than Portugal or Denmark in 2017.

By 2050 — the date by which many U.S. states and colonies are supposed to run on 100% renewable energy or reach net zero — the Caribbean could be suffering through apocalyptic conditions caused by climate change. A temperature rise of 2°C could make the likelihood of once-in-a-100-year storm three times more likely in the Dominican Republic and Cuba, and up to five times more likely for the Bahamas. These “clean energy” pledges held by different places in the U.S. do not only impact the people that live there but also other places around the world. Countries in the Global North have already used up more than their fair share of the world’s carbon budget. However, they are not drastically reducing their emissions because they believe they will be shielded from the worst effects of climate change while the rest of the world drowns.

These far future “clean energy” goals are band-aids on a problem the world is being ripped apart by right now. In lieu of committing to doing something immediately that could help mitigate the worst effects of the climate crisis, the governments that made these pledges are more focused on making money and not changing their lifestyles, which is why they promise technology that doesn’t exist or effort that they won’t take on now – much less further in the future when there are less resources available. They have chosen to believe in a science fiction story because they refuse to face the world as it is, to engage with the real threat bearing down on us from all sides. Instead, they offer condolences when climate change destroys our towns and offer a vision of a utopian future in 20XX — one they promise we will reach through a miracle because they have not mapped the steps necessary to get there and do not have the willingness to take them.