Making the energy transition happen during a pandemic
Some insights and a whole lot of questions
Dear folks,
As you’ll remember, when the Covid-19 lockdowns started, there was considerable wonder at the direct impact it had on environmental conditions.
Environmental conditions like smog formation (through Forbes).
Predictions of a fall in emissions also started to trickle in and some people started to wonder whether this crisis was going to be a boon for the climate. At the same time, there were other reports that climate action might be delayed, whether because of the lockdown or because of a shift in priorities.
Animated by similar questions no doubt, in June, Benjamin Sovacool and colleagues invited people from across the energy social sciences to reflect on the impact of the pandemic on the energy field and those who study it.
The resulting special issue includes quite a few accounts of how the energy field looks to be impacted. It includes the well-reported troubles for fossil extraction (peak oil is behind us, the shale & sand industry imploded), but also possible new structures of energy demand, with the shift to work at home and the decline in public transport. However, contributors also talk about what the pandemic means for doing research, advocacy and outreach. And that’s what I’d like to discuss today.
In the meanwhile, I must apologize for having strayed from your inboxes for so long. This newsletter is still happening, and I have plans for its future, on which I will update you soon, but there are a couple of other things that have been demanding my attention.
In particular, I’ve been trying to see if the Dutch national elections coming up in March could occasion a joint campaign to move the needle towards climate policy as if our house was on fire. If you’re in the Netherlands and you’re interested, get in touch! If you have experience with these kinds of campaigns elsewhere and have wisdom to share about how (not) to do it, please let me know. This is taking priority right now, but if things don’t pan out, or if things pan out so well, I can sneak back into my comfort zone, I want to make this newsletter great again.
Speaking of campaigning to move the needle, there is a 2 week course by Complexity University called the Gigatonne challenge, where you’ll try to reduce emissions by a tonne in a city near you with at least 14 others. It’s a hands-on “advanced” “leadership” course. Sessions in November and December.
For now, let’s return to the – appropriately related – matter at hand: pushing the energy transition in ‘Covid times’.
Pushing solar panels pre-Covid times (Dept. of Energy Solar Decathlon)
Missed opportunities
Let’s start off by setting the scene. One could argue Covid-19 has shifted public opinion in favour of clean energy politics. In industrial areas, you could hear sighs of relief at being able to see the blue sky, while in city parks you could hear the birds call with unprecedented clarity. In Euro-America at least there was a flurry of voices advocating for a green recovery in various media. Caroline Kuzemko and colleagues, in their article on Covid-19 and the politics of sustainable energy transitions, point to some numbers that these calls might find favour with the public’s eye (even though polling is a finicky technology, for both banal and more fundamental reasons). Meanwhile, Sovacool and colleagues (3) cite a study that argues that the diversion of electricity from idle electricity-intensive industry to African homes may have given people a taste of what is possible, and we may expect their appetite whetted.
From my own limited observation, pleas for a “green recovery” have fallen mostly on deaf ears though, at least in these initial 6 to 10 months. There were some gestures, like when France said it would require climate commitments from Air France in exchange for state support, while the German government excluded combustion engines from subsidies. On the whole though, those hoping for a sea change saw their bubble mostly burst. (If am I missing something, please send me counterexamples and I’ll update you next time.)
Jobs, jobs, jobs
However, we’re still in the middle of a fight against the pandemic, and the longer it lasts, the more important jobs and social security will become. Will that change the chances of those advocating a “green recovery”? The Green New Deal family of climate program have put jobs at the core of their messaging. Could that message hit home in the near future? Anyone here seen any writing on the wall?
Regardless, if it were up to Kirsten Jenkins and her colleagues, in Geoforum, it’s time for academics to finally jump on the Just Transition bandwagon or else put their weight behind it (there is more than one metaphor to Rome). The JT framework is all about jobs, as at the 2015 COP21,
“the “Just Transition of the workforce, and the creation of decent work and quality jobs” was adopted as a key area within the work programme.” (139)
Geothermal promises clean jobs for workers from the fossil extraction industry. (Dept of Energy)
Back in our special issue, Matthew Henry et al confirm the impression that “the socio-economic aspects of the energy transition” are less well researched and that the crisis shows that it is high time to change that. So: is anyone among you working on climate/energy and job/security? Do you want to share about how it has been to try to get this on the policy table or get funding for research, recently?
Developing that research agenda requires some cross-sectoral collaboration, for instance, by getting involved with the unions and involving them “in a process of proactive industrial planning” (Goddard and Farrelly in Jenkins et al, 140). Who here has this kind of experience setting new or maintaining unfamiliar or still informal collaborations in these pandemic times, when it’s easiest to fall back on established ties?
Access to decision-making and collaboration
Speaking of collaboration, social distancing did not only have negative consequences. It has equalized access somewhat for people from the edges of those established networks, farther away, with fewer resources to travel.
“Digital interaction formats increase the inclusivity of knowledge exchange, reduce time and costs of organizing academic interactions, and enable more diverse workspaces with geographical and temporal flexibility.” (Schwarz et al)
Of course, to benefit from this new, sudden “annihilation of space and time” (Marx may have been wrong about the socialist revolution, but he sure knew his capitalist revolution!) still requires sufficient resources to be online. Proper digital tools are an issue. Would anyone like to share some unexpected success stories, or perhaps some ways to deal with continuing inequalities in access?
Whatever our digital workspaces might still wreak, there is no denying the loss of physical co-presence. Renewing the energy system is complicated work that requires collaboration from many different parties and which benefits from co-presence due to the technical nature of the subject matter. In that spirit, the CEO of Philips recently said R&D at the company was feeling the effects of not having face-to-face interaction for its creative work. The process of innovation, trying out new things, feeding off each other’s ideas etc. is cumbersome over Zoom. Again, I’d be curious to hear and relay your experiences doing research, development and demonstration? What are you finding that works and what doesn’t?
Moving to the politics of innovation, countries are supposed to be in the middle of operationalizing the National Determined Contributions for Paris Agreement. In the Netherlands, we have the “Regional Energy Strategies”, in which 30 different ‘energy regions’ are charged with – participatively – coming up with a plan to realize a previously mandated amount of GWh of renewable capacity. Those participation sessions have now been postponed, while they’re trying to develop digital means for consultation and involvement. Who’s got advice about how to do that (inclusively)?
Nothing like a good map to inspire confidence in an orderly exchange of views (maps from BUUR, for the state of Flanders, Belgium)
Finally, while work may be warped into the ever-growing time-space compression of modernity, how do you make up for the collapse of public space? How do you campaign for change without the streets? This has been a painful question for countries like Chile and Lebanon, who were the faces of the revolutionary year of 2019, where social distancing was very good news for incumbents (on a positive note, Chileans scored a victory last week). So, for straight-out direct actions (the creative craft that Extinction Rebellion mastered), there was a straightforward template: do something somewhere and count on (social) media for amplification. What are the strategies now for those clamouring for climate action or energy security?
The long and short of it
Back to a view of the whole scene. All of this will come to an end, but it does make a big difference when, because as time goes on, social distancing might impose its own realities. For example, will it become more difficult to build the public transportation systems we urgently need, when more and more people are turning to private transport now?
Kuzemko et al usefully distinguish between short, middle and long term and how each impacts the next. The short saw (understandable) knee-jerk reactions to save what we had – we’ve been directing money and effort in all kinds of directions. Kuzemko et al point out that the confusion is partly a question of scale – national governments may subsidize fossil industries, while cities are reversing course. But the middle term might enable us to build platforms and constituencies for a more focused, coordinate and comprehensive ‘green recovery’ type of plan.
As you may have noticed, I’ve been asking for your input on this 😁. We need some collective wisdom, so if you know of any resources, or if you want to share some of your experiences and insights that others may usefully draw upon, please let me know (on Twitter or email) or drop a comment in the comment section of this post and I’ll give it a proper home.
Thanks so much and till next time!
Marten
Sources
Henry, Matthew S., Morgan D. Bazilian, and Chris Markuson. 2020. "Just transitions: Histories and futures in a post-COVID world". Energy Research & Social Science. 68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101668
Jenkins, Kirsten E.H., Benjamin K. Sovacool, Andrzej Błachowicz, and Adrián Lauer. 2020. "Politicising the Just Transition: Linking global climate policy, Nationally Determined Contributions and targeted research agendas". Geoforum. 115: 138-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.05.012
Kuzemko, C, M Bradshaw, G Bridge, A Goldthau, J Jewell, I Overland, D Scholten, de G. T. Van, and K Westphal. "Covid-19 and the Politics of Sustainable Energy Transitions." Energy Research & Social Science. 68 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101685
Schwarz, Marius, Aline Scherrer, Claudia Hohmann, Jonas Heiberg, Andri Brugger, and Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez. 2020. "COVID-19 and the academy: It is time for going digital". Energy Research & Social Science. 68. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101684
Sovacool, Benjamin K., Dylan Furszyfer Del Rio, and Steve Griffiths. 2020. "Contextualizing the Covid-19 pandemic for a carbon-constrained world: Insights for sustainability transitions, energy justice, and research methodology". Energy Research & Social Science. 68: 101701. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101701