Credit: Fred FastiggiI remember as a 10-year-old, in the mid-60s, sitting on my living-room carpet in front of an ancient DuMont black-and-white TV attentively watching Chet Huntley narrating a story on what a car would look like in the year 2000. Like most young boys, I was fascinated with cars and sat mesmerized by the drawings and images appearing on the television screen, being most attracted to a car that looked like something from The Jetsons. When 2000 rolled around, I was dismayed that Chet’s vision fell short as I perused the latest models of the AMC Hornet, Ford’s Maverick, and Pontiac’s Astre. They bore little resemblance to Chet’s vision.
Our governor and his staff have decided to take another look at their energy vision having a goal of a “100% clean energy” economy. Their prior plans had come under criticism for being optimistic and dismissive of implementation issues, complicating achievement of worthy, but arguably, aspirational goals.
However, new plans are moving goal posts in the wrong direction. The original target to achieve 100% clean energy by 2050 has been accelerated to 2035, this despite obvious questions on attaining such an ambitious goal and the difficulty of accurately “visioning” and implementing complex strategies.
History is replete with decisions made prematurely before implications were understood. You will remember that in the mythical story of the Trojan horse, the horse appeared at the gates of the Trojans’ fortress and was assumed to be a peace offering from the Greeks. The Trojans, not realizing that the wooden horse was full of Greek soldiers, opened the gates and pulled the horse inside. After a raucous celebration, they turned in for the night. Then the Greek soldiers hidden in the horse dropped down and opened the gates for their army, resulting in the destruction of Troy. The Trojans had previously been warned by the priest Laocoön to “beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” Similar cautions were also given by the prophetess Cassandra and Helen of Troy. No one paid attention and poor Laocoön was even strangled by sea serpents for his suspicion of the Trojan horse. Decisions and plans are better with input from all stakeholders, not just those favorably inclined.
The basic questions
There are fundamental questions that make “100% clean energy by 2035” suspect. Start with the electrical grid and its inability to handle increasing capacity because of growing electrification driven by electric vehicles, heat pumps and a shift to electric appliances. The need for upgraded distribution systems, and the funding of them via needed rate increases were never considered.
Questions also arise about transmission lines. Estimates are that the U.S. must triple current transmission capacity if it hopes to be carbon-neutral in 30 years — not the 12 years being targeted in New Jersey. Lines to bring power onshore from wind generators in the Atlantic Ocean don’t even exist yet. Expanding transmission remains a minefield of challenges, hindering expansion for decades. Opposition to transmission-line infrastructure is a mix of NIMBYism, safety concerns and confrontation with wilderness preservation, alternative land use, strong property-rights sentiment, and even treaty rights for Indigenous people.
The idea that residents are required to retrofit homes with electric heat pumps, junking their gas stoves, ovens, dryers and water heaters without giving thought to the cost is capricious. Extolling projected reductions in operating costs without considering capital costs is a widespread practice. The capital cost of retrofitting a home with electric heating and appliances is estimated at up to $210,000 for a family of four, with the total cost for those living in New Jersey at $800 billion. Details on who is to pay, and where those funds will come from, have been ignored although we know the funds must come from either residents or government subsidies, either of which claw deeper into our pockets.
The misfortune of marine mammals — whales, dolphins, and porpoises — perishing and washing up on beaches in unprecedented numbers has an unknown cause. Credible suggestions are that their misfortune is correlated with increased use of sonar in mapping the seafloor by wind developers which interferes with echolocation, a biological sonar marine mammals use to determine their distance to nearby objects like cargo ships and their propellers.
Businessmen and politicians like to be involved in “megaprojects” — big important development efforts and resume builders. Megaprojects get “mega” attention and “mega” money, expecting greater benefits. However, experience suggests this is an illusion. Megaprojects carry a large learning burden because project difficulty is deceptive, outcomes are hard to predict, and the projects don’t grow in proportion to the number of possible outcomes considered in the original plan. Instead, they grow by compounding. Each new initiative added to a master plan interacts with existing ones and with each other. So, as their numbers grow with the addition of unanticipated interactions, the program becomes increasingly complex and difficult to manage, inevitably resulting in exponentially increasing costs, effort and time.
Megaprojects vs. incremental innovation
A good energy-related example of a megaproject is Yucca Mountain, the planned depositary in Nevada for nuclear waste. In development for over a half-century, it has been buffeted by dozens of unanticipated complications and now has little chance of ever being functional.
In contrast, incremental innovation calls for introducing small, but frequent changes in strategy or programs under the guidance of a master plan using stakeholder feedback to guide future steps. With incremental innovation one completes the development cycle as many times as possible over a given period. The process is like a game in which players learn a little more about how the game works each time they play, earning a “learning bonus” which can be applied to make a stronger start in the next cycle on the way to the ultimate goal.
Finally, government-sponsored programs often fail because political leaders are term-limited, along with their entourage of appointees and staff. Being ambitious, they move on to bigger and better things before completing their programs. This leaves successors to decide whether to buy into a predecessor’s vision.
We would be wise to approach our energy transformation more deliberately, given the difficulty of projecting a vision of where technology is headed, customer readiness, and the difficulty of managing government megaprojects. Innovation and technology are changing rapidly, especially in the energy space. Solandra and Compact Fluorescent Lighting were the flavor of the week a few short years ago but today their technology is obsolete. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act offers previously unavailable funding for certain energy initiatives. With such a dynamic environment, and so much at stake, doesn’t it make sense to consider probable implications before plowing full speed ahead?
We should all work toward a cleaner environment, but we shouldn’t discount the lessons of Chet Huntley, the Trojan horse and Yucca Mountain.