Press Release: Annual Decarbonization Perspective (ADP) 2022
Introducing a new report, developed by Evolved Energy, the modelers behind SDSN's Zero Carbon Action Plan ( ZCAP ) and Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project ( DDPP ).
In the wake of the newly passed Inflation Reduction Act, which proponents hope will decrease U.S. greenhouse gas emissions up to 40% by 2030, a new study charts a course to their complete elimination by mid-century. It analyzes multiple pathways to net-zero and how it can be reached given many potential twists and turns along the way, such as the rise and fall of oil prices, technology breakthroughs or stagnation, and public preferences. The research was conducted by Evolved Energy Research, which developed the energy models that underlie many of the best-known decarbonization studies to date, including Princeton’s Net Zero America , Third Way’s Decarb-America , and SDSN’s Zero Carbon Action Plan.
According to Dan Lashof, U.S. director of the World Resources Institute, who was not involved in the study, “the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act through Congress puts a strong wind in the sails of a broad suite of clean energy technologies and will cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 1 billion tons in 2030 according to an analysis by Princeton ZERO Lab and Evolved. This new study by Evolved provides additional insights into multiple pathways to get from there to net zero emissions in 2050. It is an invaluable resource for federal, state, and local policymakers—and anyone else—who wants to understand the technology options and tradeoffs that must be navigated to achieve a clean, healthy and affordable energy system by mid-century.”
Breakthrough Energy provided funding for the annual updating of net-zero scenarios that first appeared in the scholarly journal AGU Advances in 2021, to account for the latest changes in technologies and cost forecasts, and for ever-increasing modeling capabilities, including the health benefits of improved air quality. Annual updating aims to ensure that decision-makers have the best possible information on which to base policy, benchmark progress, identify gaps, and highlight opportunities. The detailed results of this analysis are publicly available on the Rhodium Group’s ClimateDeck website. Input assumptions and other underlying data can be found on the Evolved website.
According to study co-author Ryan Jones, the analysis of 22 different scenarios and sensitivities was conducted “with the highest-resolution energy modeling of the path to net-zero ever conducted for the U.S., when considering the combination of sectoral, temporal, and geographic detail.” This increased resolution improves earlier treatment of a wide variety of questions, ranging from where to build new transmission lines and pipelines for hydrogen and CO2, to complicated technical problems such as how to decarbonize industry, how advanced nuclear reactors might fit into the energy system, and how to produce truly carbon-neutral fuels. By modeling all other greenhouse gas emissions as well as CO2 from burning fossil fuels the research shows “how the decarbonization of the energy system needs to work in tandem with changes in the land-sink and non-CO2 emissions in order for U.S. actions to be compatible with climate stabilization,” said Jones.
The scenarios explore the effect of public attitudes and policy preferences, in areas ranging from consumer purchasing – “do I buy an EV?” – to acceptance of wind and solar farm siting, nuclear power, bioenergy, and geologic sequestration of CO2. Said co-author Jim Williams, professor of energy systems at the University of San Francisco, “if we want to reach net zero, we need to take a serious look at all the options, because we don’t know enough yet to rule anything out. One person wants only renewable energy with no fossil or nuclear. Another wants a future with a lot of nuclear. Another wants to change the existing system as little as possible, compatible with net zero, to preserve current jobs. So we considered all these scenarios, and in our analysis we didn’t stack the deck—we fairly calculated the costs, did extensive sensitivity analysis, described what resources had to be added if others were taken away, and considered the potential effects of both breakthroughs and roadblocks.”
According to co-author Ben Haley, while affirming the main findings of this research team’s earlier work starting with the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project in 2014, it also produced many new and surprising findings. “What I appreciate about the breadth of sensitivities we were able to conduct is what they reveal about competitions between different technologies, for example, that biomass competes with direct air capture, that nuclear power competes with offshore wind, and that electrolysis competes with geologic sequestration. As we make policies or business strategies or R&D priorities, it helps to have this more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of getting to net zero.”
Access the study and technical documentation.
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Contact:
Ryan Jones,
Evolved Energy Research
(240) 418-3637
ryan.jones@evolved.energy