We can do it

We can mitigate the destabilization our devilishly, ingeniously, productive industrial capitalist civilization has inflicted on the global climate if we Electrify Everything.

New Mexico Senator Martin Heinrich laid out the basics as technologists currently understand them.

Your Next Car and Clothes Dryer Could Help Save Our Planet 

Home "juice box"

... We must start with our homes and vehicles because, according to research from Rewiring America, a nonprofit organization focused on the widespread electrification of the U.S. economy, 42 percent of all of our energy-related carbon emissions come from the machines we have in our households and our cars. To keep global warming at livable temperatures, we need to replace existing machines that use fossil fuels with clean electric substitutes when they reach the end of life. 

... We need to get started today. And that requires three things. First, we need to invest in upgrading the breaker boxes in American homes so that they can take higher-capacity electrified appliances. These new breaker boxes will help to manage the load on a decarbonized grid. 

Second, we need to bring down the upfront costs of electrified appliances through rebates, incentives and low-cost financing to encourage consumers to buy them. Fossil-driven machines may be cheaper initially, but operating electrical machines will be cheaper far into the future, and their price will come down with economies of scale. 

Last, we need to help organize very fragmented local markets, train workers, reduce regulations that make electrification and distributed generation more expensive, and encourage business models that make it easy and intuitive for homeowners to replace and install their share of these one billion machines.

You know electrification is advancing when you begin to see home vehicle charging stations like the one pictured here that have been unobtrusively retrofitted on homes in upper middle class city neighborhoods. This is not some big new apartment building -- it's a San Francisco 1920s bungalow, ready to charge the family car. Do new houses being built in more construction-friendly areas come fitted for these things? If not, why not? Buyers are going to want them.

David Roberts shared a fascinating discussion with an entrepreneur who is making this happen. It's good tech and very good business:

Listen to Lynn Jurich, the co-founder and CEO of America's largest residential solar company. Sunrun has been around since 2007 and seen some ups and downs, but lately it has been all ups. 

The company adapted relatively quickly to the pandemic shutdown, invested heavily, and had a banner year in 2020.  

Then, to top it off, it bought Vivint, its leading competitor, for $3.2 billion. It is now sitting at the top of a burgeoning residential solar market, with a valuation of some $22 billion.

That's one lady riding a wave the crisis demands.