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Andy Zhang@arkbolt.bsky.social |
39 followers 63 following 150 posts
Working on building electrification, energy efficiency, and climate at the Public Advocates Office in the CPUC. Opinions are my own.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Aspiration's failure is just further proof that the effective climate solutions are not likely to be "exciting" to VC or Wall St investors. We are talking home retrofits & public investments, not "sustainable shopping".
www.bloomberg.com/news/feature...
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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All it really takes is 1-2 convos with a career tech person to realize how disconnected they are from the average citizen. Many are drinking their own mega kool aid supply.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Sure. Vehicle saturation is already really high here. China/India/Brazil are the places of huge growth.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Similar point: growth in gasoline-SUVs is similarly making transportation sector emissions grow. Another 600k mb/day growth in oil demand above 2022 levels according to IEA.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Missing from these discussions is refrigerant load and the need to fund refrigerant destruction/low-GWP refrigerant, particularly in less wealthy countries.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Kuwait seems like a livable place...
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Interurban Era
@interurbanera.bsky.social
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Both historically accurate and on point. A rare combo for the tired "Trolley Problem" gag.
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Costa Samaras
@costasamaras.bsky.social
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fun fact: most CO2 lasts for hundreds to thousands of years in the atmosphere so we are still surrounded by some of the warming from the first steam engine in the Industrial Revolution. CO2, like Wu Tang, is forever
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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We need a global ban on all fossil fuel advertising.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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I don't think any of these issues are caused by WFH. Still a housing issue and transit story. Here in SF, I imagine if parking was drastically reduced + better public transit throughout the city, that would solve much of the sprawl from WFH. People always assume there is parking...
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Or rather, 2029-2031 assuming emissions hover around 42Gt/yr.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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This rather suggests that carbon budgets are more in line with Lamboll et al's update: www.nature.com/articles/s41..., rather than the budgets presented in SR1.5. 250 Gt left in Jan 2023 approximates to a 1.5C passing in 2030 or 2031.
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Zeke Hausfather
@hausfath.bsky.social
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Recently we've seen a vibrant debate on when the world will firmly pass 1.5C.
Over at @carbonbrief.org I weigh in with a new analysis, finding that it will most likely occur in the late 2020s or early 2030s in a world where emissions do not rapidly decrease. www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-wha...
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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In the backdrop of this however, is the growing share of SUV in automarkets. Some 600k b/d growth in oil consumption yoy vs 2022 (which also grew 500k b/d vs 2021). Trends continuing would be roughly ~1.1M b/d in 2030 which would be bad. www.iea.org/commentaries...
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Wasn't this always obvious? Hence the glaring emissions reporting differences for municipal utilites that actually own/operate their own plants vs. ones that buy annual RECs.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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CA does indeed have tiered rates, along with income-graduated fixed charges now. The issue though, is that the high income/high use folks are usually the early adopters for electrification and high rates=disincentive to do so.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Speaking of congestion charges, this was in the IEA's report on how to keep 1.5C within reach.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Impossible to hate a bike. However, every time I bike, I tell everyone about all the times I feel like a car is gonna kill me. *cough* pls give me a proper bike lane. Hopefully that pushes the Overton window for collective action although it’s just whining on my part 😌
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Individual actions also let others know about shared values. Riding a bike to work & chatting with coworkers about it = they are probably more likely to lobby alongside you for a protected bike lane.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Forget harm reduction. What about doing what is right for this planet???? It's so fucking weird that we can't just say: we should be doing more personally. There's something quite fulfilling, from a selfish standpoint, about living aligned with your morality anyways.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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By the way, we produce something like 2B lbs of meat every single day. Even if we get rid of all the billionaires, that's still 1.999B pounds of meat that are causing global warming.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Collective and individual action meld into each other. Since going plant-based, I've convinced like 10-ish friends/family to eat less meat. It takes patience and some personal sacrifice but the outcomes are like a million times better than status quo.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Ah yes, NARUC. Asking the petroleum industry how to enable clean energy. Surely there are no conflicts of interest.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Me when I mention that maybe we can use Zoom instead of flying everywhere for more pointless conferences that tell us we need to stop burning fossil fuels faster. Like guys, "quitting fossil fuels" means quitting fossil fuels. It's that simple!
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Ketan Joshi
@ketanjoshi.co
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"We need to quit capitalism" my man, you're not wrong, but you can't even quit X
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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I just think there's an opportunity here because recreating the commercial banks weren't possible before. The CBDC idea is interesting b/c the service itself is the token & you can do whatever behind the scenes. The idea is w/ digitization, another firm can provide traditional comm. bank services.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Need to think more about how this entity gets to the scale we need. In CA for instance, GoGreen clearly works, but the question is always scale when talking about climate.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Agreed, although I think I am more amenable to the CBDC-type of public banking. Something more efficient & can directly compete w/ commercial banks. Financial repression would also work (maybe?) and forcing deposits to be directed towards public banking somehow.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Brett Christopher has discussed some interesting ideas on this. The question is about fiscal capacity. I would love to see an energy-version of Fannie Mae that guarantees loans to small communities to own their own microutilities. I.e. Restoring fiscal capacity to public sector.
2 replies 1 reposts 6 likes
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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I assume any IPCC projection has 0 EOR in their projections. But pretty much every under 2C mitigation pathway has massive amounts (Gt scale) of CDR at this point. Some of the CDR companies parrot 8-11 Gt as the "needed" amount. Just ridiculous BS.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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10% would be generous. We are so unbelievably far from 4 Gt of CDR.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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One of my big questions on this is who will be liable for any battery-degradation issues. Considering the battery is like the determining value for the vehicle. Other: I need to ask some of my colleagues abt this, but industrial-battery installations seem more cost effective for ratepayers.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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(personal opinion) In any case, big centralized power generation/storage just seem way easier to deal with. In the dream scenario CA would have like 4 Diablo Canyon plants.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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The real costs for this stuff is very difficult to calculate though. This is an active thing we are deliberating, especially about obligation to serve etc. From a holistic POV, NEM3 pushes towards the truly "off-grid" possibility, but this is nowhere close to resolved.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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I mean yes. On my first day at the CPUC, a study came out about how EVs were going to increase grid reliability. I looked like 3 pages down and it assumed that people would charge their cars in off-peak. I was like: there is no way this is the underlying assumption we are going with.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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DW, I have extensively researched this as part of my "avoid flying at all costs" personal mission rn. Alas, at 1T/person, even if 6Gt of CCS/DAC was possible (IPCC pls), a single trans-atlantic flight is more than a year's worth of "sustainable" emissions.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Like are you seriously trying to convince me that you're going to get millions of people rewire for bi-directional charging, then plug in their cars for autonomous management... And you're going to charge ratepayers for this "reliability"....
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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I find the utilites to be somewhat agnostic about DERs in CA. The most vociferous voices recently seem to be the tech companies who think they can actually get virtual power plants to work. *Cough* also the Stanford profs who buy into this BS...
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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There was a Climeworks employee at the Charm Industrial (in San Francisco) tour I was on. So $Ms to remove the emissions from the flight their one employee was on.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Short/medium-term is all about turning off the taps. We have a puny amount of carbon budget left, regardless of what is renewable/sustainable in the distant future.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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*considering the other feedstocks in the report are unproven.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Maybe? All current US-SAF production uses waste oils and ag-fats. I have no idea if the 1:60 will hold true considering they are unproven.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Correction: 1.3B is the projected "plausible" amount of biomass available for energy use. Of which SAF will comprise a large/majority share.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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After all, there is only one facility making this stuff.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Agreed. Although this only holds true if the feedstock conversion ratio is correct.
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Hisham Zerriffi
@hishamzerriffi.bsky.social
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Agree that this is about "plausible" availability and that is hard to define. But given that the report is agnostic on end-uses and there are potentially other uses (current and projected), I think it would be better to reflect that ambiguity rather than label it all as SAF.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Per @costasamaras.bsky.social, the goal is some 35B gal by 2050 which would be ~580M tons of biomass at the report's 1:60 ratio. Of course, this number is subject to final aviation demand.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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It is more accurate to say that 1.3B is the "plausible" availability of biomass for energy. The report itself is agnostic about end-uses, but SAF is really mentioned as the main object for analysis.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Common practice with the CDR industry it seems. I visited Charm Industrial's facility a few weeks ago and there were definitely a lot of eyebrow raising moments. Very back-of-the-napkin kind of methodology, I felt.
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Andy Zhang
@arkbolt.bsky.social
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Well, some of the things on the mature-market scenario graphs don't currently exist so presumably there has to be some sort of productivity growth assumption....
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