With Christmas days away, I can’t bring myself to continue to lambast COP. I’ve decided to take next week off, so I’ll complete my critique and offer a framework to fix the COP process in the new year.
One final comment: keep in mind that my goal in tearing COP down is to offer evidence that the process isn’t working. The hope is that a reset can occur that will make this key annual climate meeting truly effective.
I want to finish the year on a positive note. The world has a great deal of work to do to limit global warming. The good news is that 2023 marked a year of many successes.
The Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill passed by the Biden administration began the process of the United States taking back control of critical supply chain components. This will allow us to lessen our dependence on an untrustworthy supplier in China.
The development of hydrogen hubs will kickstart the long road to making green hydrogen viable. Despite the many technical obstacles faced in the hydrogen production process, I remain bullish and believe hydrogen will prove to be an essential component to mitigating global warming.
Breakthroughs were made in geothermal technology that may allow that source of clean energy to expand. And long-duration storage – a must to effectively integrate renewables within the electric grid infrastructure – also made advances.
On the horizon, the world is showing renewed interest in resurrecting nuclear power. Despite its detractors, and technical and cost issues, nuclear still provides the bulk of clean energy in the U.S. I believe advances in nuclear technologies can help reestablish it as a major source of emissions-free power.
Finally, the world seems to have gotten the message that we should focus more on carbon capture in all its various forms. The reality is that we will not stop emitting carbon fast enough. To buy time, we need to figure out how to cost-effectively remove some percentage of it.
Major headwinds remain, but that’s the nature of any sea change. Transitioning from a carbon-based economy was never going to be easy. And the environmental community’s desire to go “cold turkey” was never an option. Also true is that the complexity of the challenge meant that the effort wasn’t going to be mistake free.
Simply installing more solar and wind isn’t going to get it done. Moving forward, we need to objectively assess what’s worked and what hasn’t and be flexible enough to make continuous adjustments.