Jakob & Irma Ehrlich

My father’s grandparents Jakob and Irma (my great-grandparents) lived in Austria in the 1900s. Jakob Ehrlich was a well established lawyer and politician, known for helping Jews in a bigoted society, and was prominent in the Zionist movement which led to the creation of Israel 10 years after his death.

In 1938, the Austrian Nazi Government raided their home while they were out, ransacked the place, and took their passports (in a coordinated raid that included Sigmund Freud’s house and others). Jakob refused to flee the country, believing in the work he was doing supporting his community. In her nineties, Irma told the story to a tape recorder. Here’s what she said about this moment:

> It is hard to revive the feelings and agonies of the next weeks. I was in complete shock. There was certain protective numbness, which made it possible for me to function reasonably well, and also an outrage. Suddenly you have been transformed from a respected citizen into a non-person. Dangers were all around. People were picked up in the streets and disappeared. Nobody knew what was going on and what would happen next. Any moment anything could happen. I thought the world would not allow it. That Roosevelt would stop it. There were ominous knocks on the doors in the dark hours. Prominent people, mostly Jews, but also Marxist and noted Catholics were arrested. I heard of friends, political allies, who disappeared. Who would be next?

Jakob was taken from his home, in front of his family. He was sent to Dachau. The closest Irma and their fourteen year old son Paul ever came to seeing him again was when his casket was returned two months later, sealed, hiding the beatings which killed him. The camp had been operating since 1933 to end political opponents, before being scaled up 100-fold in the Holocaust.

> Long after the funeral people visited Jakob’s grave as that of a martyr’s to pray and leave small stones, an old Jewish custom. I was told it was covered with innumerable tokes from these visits.

Irma stayed in Vienna in weeks of shock after that, until Paul asked one day “Everyone is leaving – when do we go?”. Their story out is a riveting one which I won’t detail here. One moment that stands to memory is when an old acquaintance comes back to help Irma escape through the Netherlands – someone whom she had spent an entire mountain hike with as he spouted hatred and death to Jews, before becoming quite abashed when Irma let him know she was one.

Irma and Paul ended up on one of the last flights out before the state-sponsored violence of Kristallnacht. Their bank accounts, property, and passports were seized by the government. They arrived in Britain, and later the US, penniless and stateless, but with their story. Irma spent the rest of the war as a traveling speaker to help get kids out of Nazi-occupied Europe.

Paul Ehrlich

After coming to the states, Paul served in the US army in WWII. Thanks to being multi-lingual and having obtained a chemistry degree, his job was to drive a jeep behind enemy lines as part of T-force, stealing German secrets before they could be destroyed by the Germans or captured by the Russians. In a stroke of luck, this re-assignment kept him out of the Battle of the Bulge.

In 1951, with a new PhD, he was working for the National Bureau of Standards and slated for a job designing new rocket fuels. That all changed when he was suddenly denied security clearance, and for decades he had no idea why.

Harvard professors saw the opportunity, and hired him there instead. He went on to do much interesting work - including research on the polymerization of polyethylene at very high temperatures.

Decades later, he put in a Freedom Of Information Act request. I am proud and unsurprised to learn from these documents that Paul was stubbornly against political persecution, and recognized McCarthyism for what it was, despite it being anti-communist, not anti-fascist.

He did not like communism, and he did not think communists should be working for the US government. But he did not discriminate, kept communist friends, and called out war crimes and propaganda when done by his own country. That was enough to cost him his job.

It appears that a pro-McCarthy grad student at University of Madison reported Paul to the FBI for the following:

1. Had a friend who was a Communist, but declined to tell the name because he feared that might cause them harm.
   

2. Commented on a photo of POWs killed by North Koreans that it was propaganda, that in a war all sides commit such acts.
   

3. Thought the South Korean authoritarian government was unworthy of our support.
   

4. Had a wife that did not support Communists in government, but also did not support “Hooverism” – spying on the American people (often in support of senator McCarthy) – which continues strongly to this day.

America 2025

Too much today feels like evil playbooks of the past are being used by those countries which sacrificed so much to defeat them. ICE is one small example - Stephen Miller’s starting point for what may be his vision and Trump’s vision of a police state. Their military helicopters pull people out of their homes in the night, and deport them en-masse - sometimes to offshore torture & concentration camps.

Deportation, and even denaturalization, is nothing new in the US – for example the Obama administration deported more than three million immigrants, where the focus was on those who had recently crossed the border, and were not yet embedded in US communities. Historically, courts have been very strict on denaturalization – limiting it to cases of fraud committed during the citizenship process.

The current administration’s approach is far more violent and direct, seemingly built to test the limits on what a US police-state could be. Even citizens are being rounded up and held, even without warrants (170 temporary detentions, by a recent count).

On Sept 25th, Trump issued a new directive to the three letter agencies, NSPM-7, (Also see: ACLU’s writeup and The Intercept’s). In it, the FBI’s ~200 task forces are directed to fight “terrorism”.

> This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include
- anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity;
- support for the overthrow of the United States Government;
- extremism on migration, race, and gender;
- hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality

If one were to write about how the United States Government may be illegal, which I did, could that be seen as supporting the overthrow of the current U.S. government? So far, their work to expand powers on removing citizenship has been through exploiting naturalized citizens (such as Mamdani), but in their words, Homegrowns are next. How many will be stripped of their assets and deported, on threat of being sent to an offshore concentration camp?

Unfortunately, this is not unprecedented within the United States. 105 years ago, president and KKK supporter Woodrow Wilson unleashed the “Palmer Raids”, sending 4,000 American Citizens to prison because of “Hostility to American Values”. This was among a litany of abuses, including asking Americans to spy on one another (queue J Edgar Hoover), having postmasters ban magazines for being critical of the US, France, or Britain, and sending a competing presidential nominee to 15 years of prison. [Source: fee.org – The Palmer Raids: America’s Forgotten Reign of Terror]

Hope for the Mid-terms? That depends on us.

As these numerous outrages “flood the box” the one I keep coming back to is the simple fact – one which appears more likely every day – of the outright theft of enough votes to change the 2020 election outcome.

> I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this—who will count the votes, and how.
– Joseph Stalin

Many Americans – particularly Democrats – hold unshakable faith in the security of our voting systems. We push to the 2026 mid-terms to change the balance of power. But to do so puts total trust in voting systems which are almost certainly crooked.

In some of his latest work, journalist Scott Carney outlines a few things, including:

1. The research-backed psychology behind cheating in politics. If every candidate is committing fraud, new participants have to play the game, or become pariahs. This can create a hedonistic downwards spiral, which we are now in.
   

2. There are well known flaws in our voting machines, full stop. Published security vulnerabilities are well documented and have not been fixed. It is illegal for private citizens to test the security of our voting machines.
   
   This “security through obscurity”, an arguably flawed principle to begin with, has failed completely. At least one, if not both, of our main political parties have stolen both physical machines and their accompanying source code.
   

3. The reaction of people when they learn of Carney’s work. Generally: anger at the messenger, and disbelief that fraud happens in the US, which it does. And then: despondency.
   

4. In this video, he covers it all to a shocking (but not sensationalized) degree. With needing to discuss voter and vote manipulation, which is odious and rampant, there is enough scale of theft to potentially have changed the election outcome.

There’s so much more on this topic. We have increasing evidence from the Election Truth Alliance. In one example they did a hand recount of paper ballots in MN, and found significant differences from the automatic vote tabulators. And on Friday, they filed suit for election audits in PA.

And in the meantime, while we’ve seen most swing states using one brand of voting machine and potentially seeing significant fraud, the other main brand covering 27 states, Dominion, was just bought by former GOP rep Scott Leiendecker.

Israel’s Hypocrisy

When I was probably in my early teens, I had a book called Great Escapes. It had some pretty graphic stories:

It told stories of endurance of men and women walking thousands of miles to escape Siberian gulags, Nazi prisoner of war camps, cattle-cars filled with people and abandoned on sidings, and so on. People told of maulings by German Shepherds, and scrabbling on the floor in straight jackets, trying to eat potato skins.

I didn’t think I’d stumble on to another such example written about Israel’s treatment of Palestinian Aid volunteers, and by extension, certainly any Palestinian prisoner they get their hands on. The following quotes Greta Thunberg on a recent aid trip to Palestine, which was intercepted by the Israelis:

> At one point, around 60 people were put in a small cage outdoors, in the middle of the sun… Most of them did not have enough room to sit down… It was so hot, like 40 degrees [104°F]. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us…

When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that. They held up a gas cylinder and threatened to press it against us…

In the words of Israel’s National Minister of Security Ben-Gvir: “I will personally make sure that you are treated like a terrorist and that you rot in prison.”

Shame. This is not what Jakob Ehrlich died for.

Appendix | Films

Getting friends together for documentary & discussion of these issues has been one of the more cathartic ways to handle recent news. Here’s some favorites in case they’re interesting to you. (Comment yours below!)

- Winter on Fire – A Ukrainian Netflix documentary with terrific background on Ukraine, and the successful deposition of their Russian Puppet Leader 2014 via mass unrest.

- Good Night and Good Luck – on McCarthyism and how it was ended, in part, by journalist Edward Murrow.

- The Sound of Music – On the ascent of Austrian Nazi power, and the escape of political opponents

- Where’s My Roy Cohn – On the lawyer who worked for McCarthy and took Trump under his wing.

The scary part – perhaps even crazy-making – is that to a layman there does appear to be fraudulent data patterns. Understanding them fully, and what they mean (there may be boring explanations, or there may not), will take both time and heavyweight emotional processing.

We place nearly blind trust in a system which has tremendous power over our future, and is meant to represent our personal choices. We have every right to understand why we should trust the results even when we are not technical experts. And regardless of what the data may show (personally, I expect seeing fraud from both sides), this right is what keeps our country democratic, not dictatorial.

On March 7th 2025, Trump on video declared without context:

“What happened is… they rigged the election, and I became president. So that was a good thing.”

Well Mr. President, in whose favor was it rigged? Let’s take a look. 🫡

There’s four sections to this post:

1. Election fraud is possible in the US. There’s a court-proven track-record

2. Putin’s regime has expertise in election fraud, and we’ve learned how to see it

3. Looking at the data 2024: Weird things happened with the votes

4. How you can help

Election Fraud in the United States

Sources include Harpers - How to Rig an Election (2012), ChatGPT (which links to further sources in turn), and HBO’s 2006 documentary Hacking Democracy.

The USA has both a long and rich history of election fraud, and has simultaneously maintained a virtually un-assailable reputation for election integrity. We are in many ways so conditioned to trust our elections that in earnestly questioning them we often must work through layers of fear, insecurity, shame, and re-evaluation.

That has certainly been the case for me. It has helped to accept that one: there is always fraud, at least at some scale, and two: we have a right to demand open and scientific study of the data.

Here are some examples of historical fraud, carried out by both parties:

• [New York City’s Mayor’s Office] Tammany Hall was bought for more than a century.

• [Lyndon Johnson’s] biography describes buying votes from his “fixer” to get his Senate seat in Texas

• [2003, Mayor of East Chicago, Indiana] The mayor had such widespread absentee ballot fraud that it was nullified by the state supreme court.

• [2009, Troy NY Primary] Four officials plead guilty in absentee ballot fraud in the party primary.

• [2014-2016, Philly Primary] An election worker plead guilty to adding fraudulent votes in primary elections for years, focusing on specific precincts in which he was bribed. A congressman was indicted for organizing the scheme.

• [2018, North Carolina U.S. House] Ballot tampering of absentee ballots led to a do-over of a U.S. House election. One of the rare elections invalidated due to ballot fraud.

• [2000 Presidential Election] Touchscreens were on video, in mass, casting votes for a different candidates. Florida counties were caught changing vote totals and sending false receipts, including negative votes for one candidate. The entire Diebold source code leaked, and it turned out any election worker could change vote totals using a spreadsheet.

• [2004 lost ballots] During the 2004 presidential election, North Carolina experienced an electronic voting machine malfunction that caused 4,438 votes to disappear​ forever. “Random” selections for spot-checks in Ohio were not actually random. Memory cards were able to be “preloaded” with negative votes. And the list goes on.

The past 100 years of US voting machine technology goes back and forth between reliability and convenience. In the 1900s, the first machines which mechanically tallied votes were used, but they had no paper trail or way of auditing. These were switched out for paper ballots until the onset of touchscreen Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines in the 2000s, which again had no papertrail. Over the next 20 years those machines were decertified as fraud-ready and replaced with what we have today: paper ballots which are filled in, and then optically scanned by tabulator machines.

Meanwhile, Europe skipped all this and just stayed on classic paper ballots. The ability to verify ballot-counting with one’s own eyes and without technical knowledge is even considered a German constitutional right.

U.S. States have guidelines and thresholds for when to do a recount, when and how to do spot checks, how to test machines and verify results, and so on. These are not always perfect, as we’ll see below.

Election Fraud in Russia

It is widely believed by many analysts that electoral manipulation under Vladimir Putin’s leadership dates back to the early years of his presidency. Since his first presidential win in 2000 observers have noted unusual patterns in vote tallies. These include margins exceeding 70% in key contests, such as a constitutional amendment to allow him more terms.

One of the most compelling indicators of potential fraud in Russian elections is what researchers refer to as the "Russian Tail." In a genuinely free and fair election, the polarity of one candidate across polling stations typically forms a smooth bell curve—a natural outcome of statistical variation. Most polling stations are near the average for the election, and a low number are heavily favoring one candidate or another.

However, in several Russian and Russian-influenced elections, the shape of the curve instead appears to be made up of two bell curves overlaid. This indicates a second normal distribution consisting of false votes which were injected. An alternative explanation for the shape has yet to be found.

The U.S. 2024 Presidential Election

Without publicly available election audits being pursued by Kamala or (as far as we know) intelligence agencies, several volunteer organizations have sprung up in their stead.

• Election Truth Alliance is a small volunteer group which has so far found the Russian tail in data available in the swing states of both Nevada and Pennsylvania. If their data is correct it would mean the election outcome should have been different. They’re running a petition to audit the votes, and a fundraiser for when the petition fails.

• SMART elections is one of the first volunteer groups to have raised the alarm. They published the first findings of a phenomenon called ballot drop-off, which is a measurement of how often ballots vote entirely for one party, but the opposite party for president. When widespread, consistent, and with one-sided biases, this can be a sign of vote tampering.

Let me be clear: these organizations are not claiming this is evidence of fraud. Weird data patterns alone are not enough for that. But they are reasonable cause to keep digging. And that requires time, money, and loud public demands.

Per-Machine “Turnout” Analysis

The data made available for analysis by counties is limited. They release the proportion of vote which went for each candidate, with the highest granularity ranging from the precinct level (Pennsylvania) to the voting machine itself (Nevada). When data is analyzed carefully however, one can learn a lot.

One angle to look at the data from with a histogram. In the following chart, datapoints are lined up in percentiles left to right. A precinct all the way left would have had nobody show up to vote, and on the right would have gotten votes from everybody who’s registered. The Y axis is the number of votes which each candidate got in that precinct. Just mail-in votes first:

Some things stand out:

• Harris got a lot more votes. This makes sense, as cities are expected to lean heavily blue, as is mail-in voting.

• This looks at total vote numbers, so as expected the right-hand side of each line is a little higher than the left-hand side.

• There’s big spikes in the blue line. I haven’t looked at which counties those are, but I’m guessing some counties pull strongly towards Harris.

Now, looking at election-day results:

What stands out?

• Still, Harris got more votes here. Also note the absolute numbers are different, topping out at ~30k votes, not ~10k. Curves are correspondingly less jaggy.

• It’s hard to be sure, but there’s what could be a tail on the right hand side of the red votes. It looks like it’s dropping off, but around 60% turnout it spikes back up again sharply. This is far from conclusive, but I built a little tool so you can try for yourself fitting curves to these charts.

This doesn’t really seem too crazy by itself, but it demonstrates a concerning trend. This same shape appears in precinct after precinct in Pennsylvania, and tabulator after tabulator in Nevada. The research is still ongoing.

Counting Votes-Per-Machine in Nevada

Election Truth Alliance’s analysis is able to look at the results of individual voting machines in Nevada. They look at each machine, count the number of votes on it at the end of the day, and look at the fraction per candidate.

For machines with low numbers of votes, you should expect to see a wide range of percentage from each candidate, as a small number of polarized people in that area can make a big difference. There should be a convergence as number of votes per machines goes up.

..And it does cluster, but not in the way one would expect:

• In a fair election, you would expect to see the right hand of the graph converging in about the middle of the dots on the left hand. In this graph, that would be at about a 50% share.

• In a fair election, you would expect to see the convergence happen gradually as counts per machine go upwards.

Neither of those is the case here. Around the 300 votes-per-machine mark, there’s a sharp upswing towards 60% trump. That line is held out to exactly 60% at the very rightmost dot.

Votes are Aligning to Exactly 60% Trump

Another analysis also counts votes per machine, but this time at a tabulator level, not per-voting-machine. Similarly, we would expect a noisy/jaggy line in the beginning (where sample-sizes are smaller), and convergence to the average outcome as the number of votes per tabulator go up. Indeed, we do see this. The line is thicker on the left (especially obvious in the flattish looking part), and narrow on the right.

But we see something else as well: a seeming convergence around 45% trump on the left for low numbers of votes, then a sudden jump, and then an asymptote heading towards 60% of the vote.

For reference, an asymptote is a curve which always approaches a certain value, but will never reach it.

What could explain this? Could it perhaps be a rural-versus-city difference again? Unlikely. Once you take the geographic location of individual tabulators into account. Mail-in versus in-person selection-bias? Nope – these are all early voting. And neither of those would explain the perfect asymptote.

What could cause this is an algorithm which is designed to fix the vote at 60%, but not activate until there are enough votes in the system to obscure its own operation.

In an adversarial frame-of-mind, this would make sense. Such an algorithm could get past the initial tests done by election staff, and make a high enough margin to be outside of any default hand-recount thresholds❗️

To test this idea, I implemented the same algorithm myself. My script makes 10k tabulators, each with one more vote than the previous. When a tabulator has less than 300 votes, each vote is random. For the 301st vote and onwards, it is biased 60/40. The orange line in this chart should take the same shape as the first chart above:

And it does. There’s the same extremes in the less-than-30 votes area, a flat line around 50 when less than 300, and then a sharp increase after that point, gradually reaching an asymptote around 60%.

For comparison, I included a blue line which is an election which pulls 60% to one side, regardless of how many might have people voted before you at the polls. It stays centered on 60% the whole time, and is always just a little bit above the orange line (because it doesn’t have those first 300 votes on each tabulator dragging it down).

Comparison to other elections

In comparison, we can look at the 2014 Wisconsin governor's race. The green line is fair, and the red lines are stuffed with more fake votes as more votes go into the machine. This was a slightly different algorithm (going up forever, instead of targeting 60%), but a sign of fraud.

Ballot Drop-off Analysis

The simplest way to fake a ballot is to change the selection of their vote for President, while leaving the rest of the ballot unchanged. This is simple enough, but leaves a tell.

People often vote consistently and predictably along party lines. If you change just their vote for the office of the president, it will show an increased-from-normal fraction of people not voting along party lines. This is called Drop-off.

People broke party lines a shocking amount in the 2024 election. To the extent that immediately afterwards, AOC took to social media to ask why.

SMART Elections did some of the first data-science here, comparing the drop-off in swing states and other states. They found that the Drop-off was always a little bit in Trump’s favor, but it was hugely in Trump’s favor in the swing states.

Again, this doesn’t mean much on its own. Swing states are swing states for a reason, after-all. Probably because they don’t like to vote on party lines.

Where it gets weird is when we look at every county – here’s North Carolina and Ohio.

What I see is drop-off favoring Trump, which is expected. But we also see total uniformity. Not one county had more Republicans that favored Kamala than Democrats who favored trump. Not even in Deep-Blue Durham, NC and Columbus, Ohio – where Kamala won 78% and 95% of the vote, respectively.

Below are some more typical elections. Note that bars of both colors appear on with both positive and negative dropoff.

In software engineering, we have the term a "code smell" to indicate something that is not objectively wrong, but a sign of something which feels like it will lead to trouble later. Indeed, these explorations from SMART Election’s are what inspired Election Truth Alliance to take on their first analysis of Nevada.

These are not a sure sign of something wrong. For example in Vermont we essentially had no Democrat competing with our incumbent Republican governor, despite the state being very Democratic-leaning in general. That meant that 100% of counties had strong negative Republican Drop-off.

You can hear directly from researchers at Election Truth Alliance, here:

What's next for Election Truth Alliance?

You may be wondering why, if we’re trying to find fraud, we’re just looking at end-of-day totals for voting machines, or even higher up at the tabulator or precinct level. Unfortunately, no state makes better data publicly available by default. In order to get it, you either have to not concede the election (we’re way past that), the state needs to ask for a recount, or a third party organization needs to sue for the right to do forensic audit.

We learned from the 2000s, and the paper ballots at least exist. Suspicions of the source of fraud center on how the ballots were scanned, not how they were marked. So a hand recount has a chance of actually showing something different. You can support that by signing this petition on Change.org.

It won’t always be possible to get states to intervene. To that end, they are establishing a legal fund to get the data anyway. This is not cheap – estimates range from $30k to $4M depending on scope. They are running a fundraiser on GoFundMe.

Until Next Time

Unfortunately, the story doesn’t end here. In my next post, I’ll be talking about hypothetical attack vectors which could have made possible an attack of this magnitude. The post will be both grounded in past computer-hacks and also, in parts, far more speculative than some of my other posts.

We’ll talk about election-day bomb threats, Elon Musk’s odd campaign to get signatures in swing states (and why he’s doing it again now in Wisconsin), and DOGE’s crazy purges (including defunding the agency which made the russian tail explainer used in this post). We’ll also discuss members of the DOGE team, and the large disparities seen on election betting sites in the days leading up to the election.

The simplest way to answer this is by looking at the ratio of new pieces of equipment made in the world, and making sure as many of those are the clean version as possible.  I.e., the way to reduce the most CO2 emissions is to buy a new electric car, and sell your old car to someone who would otherwise buy a new ICE vehicle.  Not only does this maximize the electric equipment being deployed at home, but dollars spent frequently support new companies developing these products at a time when they need the sales the most.

There are many other nuances to this question, from analyzing the emissions of a particular widget being manufactured, to gauging the cultural influence of someone seeing their peer make new technology choices - and be happy with them.  Let's dive in.

Electric Vehicles

Emissions from Manufacturing

Large corporations will typically produce annual sustainability reports.  These are intended to be easy for anyone to read.  Partially thanks to pressure from ESG investor groups like Parnassuss this is becoming more of a reality.  (I'm linking to parnassus because their website has third-party vetting material, including their own impact studies.)

Tesla's annual report shows their cars need to be driven about 13k miles for emissions of manufacture to be net-zero.

This depends on a number of factors, such as where the vehicle was produced and the cleanliness of the grid where it is operated.  Bottom line - even if Tesla is padding by a factor of two, vehicles would be likely to be net-zero within two years for most drivers, and then just keep getting better as vehicles are used on increasingly clean grids.  When a vehicle reaches its end of life, that battery can be recycled (such as on Currents Marketplace) or used for static grid-storage.

On average, EVs emit roughly a quarter more CO2 during manufacturing than ICE cars, but this quickly pays off even on the dirtiest electric grid, as the images below show.  Even mining itself is showing its first hints of electrification– this electric excavator has been operating in Australia since 2023, and has moved more than one million tons of ore.

Global emissions are reduced the fastest if the ratio of new cars sold moves quickly to electric.  For someone in the position to do so, buying a new EV and selling a good used ICE car helps EV manufacturers on the one hand, while discouraging the purchase of new gas cars due to a healthy used-car market.

Emissions from Driving

It may be a surprise to hear that even an EV on North America's dirtiest electric grid is still a cleaner choice than operating a vehicle with an internal combustion engine.

We can explore the data with CarbonCounter, a little gem out of MIT.  The tool creates a chart of emissions (Y axis) vs cost (X axis) of all sorts of cars, and even lets you see results set to the electric makeup of particular US states.  

Even a grid with coal is more efficient than a gas car. This is partially due to the efficiency of industrial-scale generators, which can sometimes get to 50% efficiency compared to the 30% of a gas car, and partially due to the fact that every EV has regenerative braking, letting it charge up when slowing down or going downhills.

Emissions from the Home

Emissions from heating a home can be notoriously high – for most households, slightly more CO2 is emitted annually from heating than from driving.  Modern Heat Pumps are state-of-the-art, as they use electricity to move heat from outdoors to indoors at about 25-35% the cost of the traditional electric-resistance heating briefly popularized in the 70s.  For 98% of U.S. houses today, a heat pump will produce less emissions than what is currently installed.

How it works: A heat pump can be thought of as a large sponge, soaking up heat outdoors and "wringing it out" inside.  You can learn more on my Homeowner's Guide to Cold Climate Heat Pumps.

Manufacturing emissions of heat pumps is rarely talked about.  I suspect this is because they don't have a battery requiring co2-intensive mining.  Nonetheless, I took a quick look at Mitsubishi's sustainability report, and confirmed they do have Net-Zero commitments with milestones at 2050, 2030, etc.

A secondary source of emissions occurs if a heat pump leaks high-pressure refrigerant into the atmosphere.  Even accounting for this, a heat pump is by far the preferable choice.  Also, modern refrigerants, such as R-454B, Propane, and CO2, are working their way to North America, reducing the cost of leakage.

In New England, Heat Pumps + Wood Stoves are a popular combination, in part thanks to the sentimentality of woodstoves and the unreliability of the electric grid.  There's a huge range between the CO2 of a tree cut in your own lawn with emission-free tools, and wood trucked in with diesel, or even brought across the Atlantic ocean (shipping wood to England for their "green" bio-fuel has become a recent scandal).  Modern woodstoves have secondary burners and catalysts in their exhaust manifold, letting them burn all night, and pushing efficiency up to 80% or more.

Cook-Stoves

Induction and electric stoves may have a longer CO2 payoff period than a heat pump water heater or mini-split at home, as they typically use less fuel annually and don't have the greater-than-100% efficiency which heat pumps have.  Still, there's a strong rationale to switch, including well-documented asthma correlations.

Cultural Effects

A single homeowner cannot solve climate change on their own, but they can as part of a movement.  That only happens if one follows a piece of entrepreneurial advice I saw years ago: Do Things, tell people.

Any new technology, from heat pumps to green steel smelting, will fall somewhere on the "market penetration" curve below.  As we electrify everything, myriads of people are working in every industry to move their particular puzzle piece forward and incrementally more "green".  And almost every one (perhaps outside of solar and wind) is in an early adopter phase.  And none of them get out of that phase without those early adopters buying in, trying the tech, and telling people.

Right now US steelmaking is in its infancy – it's in the "innovators" phase for green steel.  Green steel plants have been being built across the US for years, with billions more in funding being awarded just weeks ago.  In a world perfectly optimized for fastest CO2 reduction, this curve for green steel might overlap exactly with that of electric stoves and other manufacturing – but trying to time your purchase to force that is guesswork at best.

US households might be somewhere in the "Early adopters" phase with our electric or induction stove usage. Although the technology is mature, their popularity is more nascent.  Reasons for this range from from induction stoves having taken longer to invent and being more costly, to the more adversarial "Operation Attack" in which the American Gas Association, funded by your utility bills, went on the offensive to downplay stove emissions while glorifying the superpowers of cooking on gas (including an infiltration of Julia Child's wonderful TV show).  

Contrary to the belief that gas cooktops can't be beat, If you ask a person who owns an induction stove they will probably tell you about how quickly it boils water and how easily it keeps constant heat.

Electric vehicles are in the early majority, with Europe and China leading the way.  Back in 2022, 22% of vehicles sold in China were all electric!

The Hard Part - Living with it

Like it or not, the world we live in is built on fossil fuels.  It's the unfortunate truth that, as Bill McKibben says, to care about one's own emissions today is an uncomfortable exercise in hypocrisy.  There's usually no easy or fun way out.  But we can take some solace in the fact that every EV on the road, heat pump installed, or stove electrified brings down our own emissions and that of the fields we work in.  If it wasn't for the very first EV drivers, there would not be infrastructure for today's EVs to use. If it wasn't for the first homes with solar, we wouldn't see today's homes with negative power consumption.

Special thanks to Jordan Angerosa for reviewing & contributing to this post

Over time I’ve learned that many cities/towns and even several states have passed laws requiring renewable or clean energy be used in any new buildings built. These include California, New York State, Colorado, Montreal, Quebec, and many others. These places see how much easier it is to build without fossil fuels in comparison to retrofitting existing buildings, and they see great benefit in being proactive. Burlington and South Burlington in Vermont have passed similar laws, but the state as a whole remains silent on how we build our buildings. (Vermonters are of course known for being both stubbornly independent and intentionally considerate – two competing & complementing elements in this decision).

Over time I’ve gotten to know the stories of Seattle WA, Beacon NY, and South Burlington as citizens have enacted change in their cities. Those stories proved inspiring, and so I teamed up with my neighbor Maeve to give this a shot. In December we held a pot-luck for anyone curious about the conversation, and to our amazement, about twenty people showed up, of different ages, political parties, and knowledge levels on the issue. We shared a rough plan, designed in imitation of South Burlington: require that 85% of heating and water needs in a new building can be met with renewable energy (effectively that means installing heat pumps). Engaging discussion left us motivated to continue, and connected us with folks on the Planning Committee and Affordability Committee.

In January I presented to the Jericho Affordability Committee – 30 minutes on the costs of new construction with heat pumps (in most cases there’s small savings, in almost no cases is it an outsized expense), and another 30 minutes of discussion with committee members. Some folks found it hard to believe that a heat pump is 300% or more efficient, while others had already gone fully-electric and were happy to share their experiences with the technology.

From there we went to discussions with the Jericho Energy Task Force (which I’m a member of), where we met up with Andrew Chalnik from South Burlington to learn from his experience, and even one of our district’s house-members stopped by.

At this point, the Planning Commission has agreed to a joint meeting between them, the Jericho Energy Task Force, and the Affordability Committee. Scheduling is to be determined. If that goes well, the Planning Commission would hold a series of public hearings, and eventually update our zoning.

I’m eager to see where this goes, have met many lovely people, and have immensely enjoyed the process so far. There’s so much that I’ve learned about climate-friendly technology over the past year, so it’s gratifying to find that there are many folks who are eager to learn what steps are feasible for them to take as the whole world muddles through that same question.

The Stove

We have a propane stove.  Perhaps some love them, but for me it means a dose of asthma and venting all the heat out of the house.  Fortunately, there's one very simple solution I got from a friend - we bought a couple of $50-$100 induction hot-plates online, and placed them on top of the stove.  They serve most of our cooking needs, and give us a chance to learn what pots work (cast iron: yes, enamel and steel: yes, glass and aluminum and copper: no).

In some respects this is a poor facsimile to a proper induction stove-top, however.  The burners, although more responsive than either "classic" electric or propane, are still small.  At some point, we hope to finish our upgrade, either to a normal induction stove (perhaps keeping our propane camp-stove around in-case of multi-day power outages), or getting one of those swanky stoves with a built in battery and a 110V hookup which avoids requiring any electrical work.

The Water Heater

We looked at our water next.  It was right before summer, and some A/C in the house would be a nice perk.  Besides that, ditching our propane water heater in favor of one with a heat pump would save us money - $300-$400 or so a year, and so we wanted to start saving right away.

Out-of-pocket cost was around $2k, with a few hundred more for tools.  We went from a 50-gallon tank to a 65-gallon one.  The small price difference seemed worthwhile to make sure we had a good experience with the new technology.  The heater comes with four buttons, which let you change modes from full heat-pump (most cost efficient, but puts out cold air you might not want in the winter) to full classic/resistance electric (more expensive, but doesn't remove heat from the house).  We've found the cooling effect to be mild.

If I were to do this again, I would consider getting one of Rheem's 110v versions instead of a hybrid on 240v.  That wouldn't have the classic/electric heating element, but we've been fine only using the heat-pump mode, and that would have saved us the extra wiring as well as valuable space in our circuit-breaker box.

Heating our House

The trickiest job, saved for the end.  Our home has a wood-stove on one end, and a propane monitor on the other.  To do this by the book, one would first weatherize the home, and then have mini-splits installed to replace the propane, while leaving the wood-stove for backup.  We decided to take the Window Dressers approach for weatherization, and move on.

We gathered a few quotes for the mini-split, which ranged about $6k-$7k, without including wiring from one end of the house to the other.  While I was obsessing over the technicalities, I discovered that Senville makes a decent cold-climate rated heat pump, available online.  (Note: make sure any heat pump you consider in this area is rated for full heat output at -13°F or below). (Second note: the current Senville heat pumps are unfortunately significantly less cost-effective to run than the Mitsubishi, Fujitsu, Daikin, and others. Typical COP of 2 vs 3).

Joining forces with a friend, we undertook the significant task of teaching ourselves to become amateur HVAC technicians.  On the plus side, we'd get heat pumps for one third the cost for both of our homes.  On the downside, we would not have warranties on the completed projects, and if we messed up, we would run the risk of destroying the units, or venting refrigerant into the atmosphere with thousands of times the Greenhouse Warming Potential of CO2.

After about a month of prep, $600 in tools, and a couple of days' install per-house, we have two units installed and holding strong as the winter months kick in.  Yes we messed up along the way, and no we didn't accidentally leak refrigerant.

If I were doing this again, I would consider a monobloc unit. These are uncommon, but far friendlier to install DIY.  A monobloc heat-pump keeps all its refrigerant inside a single machine (the block), avoiding the need to run refrigerant lines into the house - the hardest part of the install.  Instead, air or liquid enters the house after being warmed.  These are far more common in the UK, but I'm not sure if they provide cooling in the summer. 

Heat pumps in the US often have an efficiency factor (COP) of around 4.  They output four times the energy in heat as they take in in electricity.  This factor drops as outdoor temperatures drop.  A seasonal average for Vermont is typically around 3, or less if you're at higher elevation.  New heat pumps will eventually get here, with Propane, CO2, or R32 as refrigerants, which can push that COP up to 5x.

Total costs: $150 induction burners + $2,100 water heater + $2,000 mini-split + $600 tools + $300 misc = $5,150

Subtract 30% tax credit and $650 Efficiency Vermont incentive for the water heater and we get: $2,955 total cost!

Through writing that post I also discovered Citizens’ Climate Lobby, which exists to forward carbon pricing programs in the U.S.  Their approach intrigued me for being outspokenly civilized: bi-partisan, respectful, and earnestly valuing relationships over demands.

As a CCL member, I recently made a trip to join a thousand other volunteer lobbyists on our annual visit to the offices of our Senators and House-members in Washington D.C.  Until talking with congressmen myself, I couldn't fully understand why we were invited back year after year to visit with red and blue representatives alike. After participating in our democracy for the day, I feel we played some small part in moving a constructive dialog forward in our country’s national decision making body: the U.S. Congress.

Carbon Fee & Dividend

Citizens’ Climate Lobby was founded in 2007 with the goal of advocating for one simple policy: put a fee on carbon emissions at the source: be that a coal mine, an oil-well, or a port-of-entry.  The funds raised will not go to the government but would be returned to citizens by a monthly check.

This is carefully designed as bi-partisan through years of work to hear concerns across the political spectrum: the price on carbon is about as free-market as can be, leaving it up to businesses to transition fuel sources in the least wasteful (and most cost-saving) way possible. At the same time, the dividends go back to the American people rather than growing the size of government programs.

There's a brilliant simplicity to the model.  Of course a fee on energy stands to increase the price of all goods which are transported or grown with energy.  This causes not only a push towards a clean energy transition, but also incentivizes domestic and local economies, narrowing the wealth gap.  While prices rise, citizens get checks to help offset these costs. The majority of Ameicans use below-average amounts of energy: the wealthiest Americans fly and consume many times more, and can more afford the increased costs of those things.  The majority of American households benefit under a Carbon Fee & Dividend.

This model has been well proven time and again.  British Columbia has had a carbon tax since 2008, and has a well studied small economic gain relative to other Canadian provinces.  Alaska has a similar program whereby fees from oil leases are returned to Alaskan citizens by check.  New energy projects require predictable economic models in order to make large long-lead investments – such as Arkansas's investment into "green" Steel.  A price on carbon protects new businesses which are developing cleaner manufacturing techniques.

Carbon Fee and Dividend is shown to be an incredibly effective climate policy.  Those curious about the science behind it can start with the MIT modeled EN-Roads online simulator of global temperatures.

The EN-Roads simulator.  The black line represents our current future with no policy intervention of any sort, and the blue with a price on carbon.

You may be concerned about countries without a carbon price undercutting the U.S. domestic market - and rightly so.  Europe, with one of the strongest carbon prices, is solving this by introducing in 2024 a tariff on imported goods according to their "embodied" carbon, which matches their domestic carbon price.  

This is already having a pronounced effect.  The U.S. congress is considering its own Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) in response, with some groundwork being laid out in the PROVE-IT act in the Senate. 

The People of Citizens’ Climate Lobby

I find that one of the many valuable qualities a person can have is the ability to think about how the smallest details of action fit into a narrative far larger than themselves.  This, in addition to compassion, drive, and empathy, is what "CCLers" have in spades.

When you think "environmentalist", you may think about someone chaining themselves to a bulldozer or throwing orange slime on a painting.  You may think of someone with a blind hatred of some development, but without the ability to work constructively within a system to manifest the change they wish to see.

When you think "lobbyist", you may think about someone with two briefcases of money and a head for nothing but selfishness and greed, looking for the first representative he or she can buy.  I learned a new term this weekend - congressmen call them "Lizard Lobbyists".

CCL bucks both of these ideas.  Instead, CCL embodies by-the-book de-escalation, nonviolent communication, and relationship-based negotiation. The proof of success is that CCL has been welcomed into the offices of the Capitol building every year for more than the past decade.  

I didn't understand why this worked until hearing  second hand, and eventually first hand, about the positive reputation which precedes us to any office.  Legislators are used to being cursed out by those who feel angry and wronged by lack of climate action.  They are used to having their heartstrings yanked out of their chests by dying cancer patients.  And they are used to being bought and sold by companies who seek power over them.  

Their job is to meet with the people they represent.  And when those people come in politely, interested in learning about their needs, and with an ask for a simple and well researched bi-partisan policy? It's music to their ears.

Of course, it is not always like that.  There are 535 members of congress, and collectively we were only able to meet with about 80% of them.  Some of those meeting requests were canceled, cut short, or ignored.  But others were not.  It might surprise you to learn that the Conservative Climate Solutions Caucus is the second largest conservative caucus.  It might surprise you to learn that one conservative congressperson, to the lobbying team's shock and surprise, greeted them with beers, food, and a personal capitol tour. 

What Works for Everyone

As someone who's almost always lived in blue-leaning areas, I was interested in what conservative folks would say about this policy, and climate change in general, in a safe and educated environment.  I was certainly rewarded for my efforts, when at the start of a meeting with a conservative staffer, I was greeted with something to the effect of "Dems may not be used to this idea, but we're not a party of climate deniers".

By and large, we saw immense relief from conservatives when they saw that our policy, the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (or EICDA for short), does not put the funds towards residential weatherization, or clean-tech research, or anything specific at all - but just back into the pockets of Americans.  Given the sometimes even life-or-death effects of even marginal price increases for the many Americans living close to the poverty line, this makes a heck of a lot of sense.

We also saw a strong desire from lawmakers, especially on the right, to build up American innovation.  They understand the cost of outsourcing our labor to the developing world in the name of cheap stuff, and the benefit of having our own local economy buoyed instead: our own steel making and other industries are already cleaner than the world average, and pricing for clean energy would have an immediate effect locally.  

Heck, even speaking as someone who is like-as-not to be labeled as environmentalist, I would rather see battery-mineral mining happening on-shore where we can regulate the pollution caused.  

"Environmentalists" Become Pro-Development

Transitioning our nation to clean energy will require substantial new infrastructure, and CCL advocates a bi-partisan approach to developing it.  The clean energy sources we have to work with are solar (especially in the southern states), wind (especially offshore and on the plains), and maybe nuclear power (if we align new technology and public sentiment).  That's pretty much it.  Nothing new is going to appear and be scaled-up on the time-horizons at which we as a species must move.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, known as FERC, has the ability to site Natural Gas and other pipelines using eminent domain, with minimal input from the states through which the pipelines are built.  If that same amount of energy were transmitted electrically instead, the project could easily have an added 5-10 years of high-risk permitting negotiations. As a result, Pipelines are fast-tracked while fossil-free projects are faced with complex, often duplicative, bureaucratic delays. 

Many states have ambitious clean energy goals by 2030, and the power transmission has to exist at significant scale at that point; current permitting rules make it unlikely we can reach the emissions reduction goals we have set for ourselves.  David Roberts has some more detail in one of his posts.

Furthermore, research has shown that 80-90% of new projects blocked under environmental NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) review are clean-energy ones, and calls are strong to speed up the review process to approve and deny projects more quickly.

In the halls of Congress we were chatting with one Democratic Senator when he asked us about these issues.  Hearing we were for electric transmission, he broke out in a wide grin and "Where have you been all this time?"

Lobby-Day Weekend

After a certain amount of climate reading, it feels almost impossible to stomach non-essential air travel.  Fortunately for us, Amtrak service in Vermont works well, and CCLers make good company on a day's train ride.  Once in D.C., Sunday and Monday were spent in all manner of talks and conferences, before a Tuesday of meetings with members of Congress.

CCL did a superb job of welcoming everyone with a willingness to show up, regardless of specific climate or policy knowledge, age, &etc.  Sessions ranged from how to tell a good and relatable story to role-playing on how to hold a line of listening and respect in the face of differing opinions.  We heard from ex-staffers, former members of congress, retired generals, clean-energy & policy experts, non-profit directors, deans, and student leaders in an inspiring buffet of creativity, drive, and passion.

Evenings were spent in teams preparing for our meetings. Who were we meeting with?  Are we meeting in-person or with staff? What have their policies been? Do they know about Carbon Fee and Dividend? What do we want to hear from them about? And what do we want to share?  In all cases, we were prepared to go back and find common values if not already aligned on specific issues.

Becca Balint is a ball of energy with a drive for kids' mental health

There were seven of us from the Vermont chapter who chose to make the trip down for lobby day.  Impressively, we had one highschool student and one college student who joined for the trip with just a few weeks' notice, determined to make a difference.  We met with both Vermont senators and our Congresswoman, who was an absolute bundle of energy.  Although each office had a different lead focus– Sanders on broad & deep climate solutions, Welch on permitting reform, and Balint on mental health, all were excited to have us back and hugely supportive of our work.

As the day drew to a close my poor introverted self could finally unwind.  I left the hotel building and stood on a nearby street corner, watching the night-life of the upper-middle-class neighborhood.  As I watched traffic go by, for at least a little while I did not feel the usual pit in my stomach as I watched a succession of gasoline cars roll by, and as the city exhaust smells lazily wafted towards me in the heat of the D.C. night.

I am cautiously optimistic today. Perhaps we did have some positive effect in lobbying. Just maybe we had some effect on the powers that be in helping navigate this gargantuan nation of ours through the biggest crisis of our time.  I do know one thing for sure though – just by showing up, we did a hell of a lot for one another.

Legislation you can support:

• Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (to be reintroduced)

• Permitting reform (many bills are under discussion here, with no clear #1)

• The Prove-it Act

• Maritime Pollution Accountability Act 

• Save our Sequoias (H.R. 2989)

• Increased TSP Access Act of 2023 (S.1400/H.R.3036)

P.S. There is a huge difference between a citizen lobbyist who is a U.S. citizen versus one who lives in the state or district of the Congressperson. If you think you might enjoy this sort of activity let’s not be strangers!

When I first started this blog, I did not have a clear single idea of how I wanted to be spending my time. But I figured if I tried enough different things, one clear motivating concept would show up – and it has.

Over the past few posts I’ve enjoyed researching and writing about climate & energy. What I’ve enjoyed even more has been the numerous one-on-one discussions which have resulted as folks come with their own ideas and are happy to have someone to conference with.

It has made me wish I could do a deep dive into each new technology, policy piece, or climate business idea which begins making waves - but there’s no way I could have time for that. But I can do something better: write a software platform — and build a community around it — which enables people to turn their own climate frustration into high-impact action on climate change.

Three Hurdles of Personal Action

There are three major hurdles which must be crossed before someone takes action on climate change. And because almost everyone uses fossil fuels to heat their home and move them around our planet, almost everyone must face these hurdles in the coming years.

1. Social acceptance: Will my neighbor or family judge me? And will I have the facts I need to stand up to scrutiny if necessary?

2. Time: Do I have time to learn what the problem is and how to fix it?

3. Finances: Can I afford the changes? What will I be giving up?

The Zero Percent Club

The Club fosters a community base which starts with social acceptance. When taking steps towards personal net-zero, it is easiest to move ahead with those who are already mission-aligned, rather than moving forward alone, or by trying to convince some who happens to be nearby, but not care as much. The Zero Percent Club will facilitate this by allowing the creation of small “accountability groups” of 5-10 people to support one-another as they learn about climate change, their impact, and their personal solutions.

Many “personal infrastructure” projects are major projects like buying a new car, with the added difficulty of an entirely new set of evaluation metrics. Here we speak in terms of kWh instead of mpg, CO2 efficiency instead of fuel efficiency, and investment instead of cost. Both technology and regulation are changing rapidly, highly localized, and filled with mis-information and the fear of mis-information. In many cases, the best way to navigate these challenges is directly with the help of someone you know and trust who can share the load, coupled with access to the best resources available.

We want the work you put in to have the largest decarbonizing impact possible. This can be done by showcasing your progress towards zero and helping others along the same journey. We’ll have a personal tracker you can share with friends, encourage members to write guides as contributions to a common knowledge base, and will even have lawn signs available to showcase your mission and the work you’ve done.

Finally, changing personal infrastructure can sometimes be prohibitively expensive or require ownership of a residence. Our mission is to include everyone with a mission of decarbonization, even if they don’t have the means to do all of the upgrades, or even any of the upgrades, in rapid order.

There are many ways in which a group of mission-aligned people, especially when sufficiently localized, can have a much larger impact that any one person could alone. Whether this means changing banks, having solar pay for itself, or showing up at your town council meeting with a voice for — and knowledge of — decarbonization, there are ways for everyone to make a dent.

Demo Time

Enough talk - let’s do a demo of the tracker. Here I show an example of what a personal tracker can look like.

That’s it for now! A big shout-out to Ben Eidelson and Jordan Angerosa for numerous brainstorming sessions around this concept.

Next we’re getting together a “Pod Zero” – the first group of folks interested in decarbonizing together, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. What project would you want to learn about or share your work on the site was live?

(P.S. You can also check out the placeholder site at thezeropercentclub.org)

Also: I work fully remotely, and often miss many of the casual in-person interactions to be had among new faces and old. I invite you to book time on pehrlich.com/meet, or simply drop in and say hello on our brand new Discord Server.

A Personal Note

How my eyes were opened to the effects of Climate change.

I was astonished when I visited a glacier in Alaska while on vacation in 2018. The following story made a huge impression on me at the time, and has stuck with me ever since.

At the Harding Ice Field, my partner and I parked our rental car in the tidy National Parks lot, slathered on sunscreen on a hot July day, loaded up our Nalgene water bottles, and started our hike out from the trailhead. We were excited for our first chance to walk on a real glacier, but it wasn’t yet anywhere to be seen. Instead was a thick forested path, some typical Alaskan bear warnings, and a small wooden sign labeled “1926”. “That’s odd” I thought, and kept walking.

About a half mile later, we passed another sign, this time labeled “1951”. Our perplexion led us to check the visitor’s pamphlet, which described the trail we were walking on as the old area of the glacier. The signs indicated how far the glacier had extended on a given year. The path was miles long. We continued walking, passing more signs, sweating, listening to the cicadas, and eventually wound up in the hills finally sighting the snow and ice. The next day we went on kayaks around the other side, and watched at a distance as blocks as big as buildings broke off and fell into the ocean every few minutes.

Ever since then, I’ve been struck by the immensity of the problem before us. Is this proof of human-made climate change? Of course not. But it is proof of warming in this part of the world, which I regard as a tragedy and a personal responsibility not to be side-stepped.

Today’s post is the first in a series on what I’ve found since 2018 which a person can do to impact climate change positively.

The process at its core is very simple: find everything you do which emits greenhouse gases either directly or indirectly, and find an alternative to replace it. With this guide, you can personally hit net-zero far before the 2040 or 2050 national timelines. It falls on those who are already thinking about these issues to lead the way by showing this can be done. It is my hope that you will join me for the journey.

Electric Cars - What’s on the market?

If you, like many people, are considering the jump from an internal combustion (ICE) vehicle to an electric one, it is most likely you are considering one of two philosophies.

1) The two-car mindset. In this case, buy a lower-cost EV for daily use. Save money on lower range and slower charging, but maybe fall back to internal combustion for longer trips. The car will still be comfortable and nice to drive.

2) The one-car mindset. Pay 50-100% more for an EV which does “all the things” - long range, super fast charging, spacious, handles terrain, and whatever your requirements may be.

To evaluate a vehicle, you will likely have to learn at least one new term: Level 3 “DC fast charging”. Level 3 charging works at a rate of more than 150kW, and can probably get your car charged in 20 minutes. Both car and charger need to support it, and vehicles supporting this are rare outside of Tesla today, as is the charging infrastructure. Level 2 chargers and car combinations are typically around 50-70kW, and a complete charge is measured in 1-4 hours. This vlog is less than flattering towards Electrify America's and EVGo’s charging infra in comparison to Tesla’s. (correction: level 2 is up to 20kW. "Level 3” charging covers a wide range in experience between that and 150kW.)

Also know that charging rates are not constant for batteries - the rate is highest between 15% and 80% battery capacity, so you may see some variety in reported charging speeds online. The best standard is to use that midrange, as that is where most of the charging happens except for carefully planned single-shot trips or trip segments which use 90%+ of a battery.

For the “two car mindset”, the Chevy Bolt and Kia Niro are good examples. They top out at 60-70kW charging speed, or about 150 miles (of range) per hour. Reports from acquaintances are that they love their Chevy Bolts ❤️ and that the Ioniq 5 is good for fast charging and large capacity, while making the ID.4 feel “heavy”.

Note: In researching for this blog, I found ev-database.org to be a wonderful resource, particularly for European readers, as it has 184 EVs documented, quickly filterable by range, price, make, availability, and so on. They say US support is on their roadmap.

My Tesla Experience

In February 2022 I received my Tesla Model 3 Long Range. I chose this car because I wanted the cheapest zero-emission car I could find which would have access to the best charging infrastructure. The long-range version is recommended in colder Northeastern climates due to the 10-20% cold-weather drop in usable battery capacity. Because of that and some occasional trips across the country, the Model 3 Long Range is what I went with. By now I’ve gotten used to a standard set of questions from curious folks, which I will detail below.

The Driving

Needless to say, the car is stupidly fun to drive, as is universally reported. My experience was particularly good on the snow, with traction-controlled AWD being a huge step up from a 2wd Kia Soul. I can just drive on through conditions where I used to need chains.

Although the car comes with two keycards, most of the time I just use my phone in my pocket as the key. The car feels somehow like driving a big smartphone: I just sit down and go. No ignition. Quiet electric hum. It is particularly nice when you want a warm space to sit in the winter - no need to keep the engine running to generate heat or cold.

The Range

In 2022, I drove more than fifteen thousand miles in the car. I’ve taken it to the shop zero times, and had zero issues more severe than figuring out how to operate the gear-shift lever on day one. I was worried about the build quality scare going around at the time, and need not have been.

The pickup experience was, for me, exciting. I installed the app on my phone, pressed the “blink lights” button to find my car in the Tesla lot, and drove away. I didn’t even step inside to talk to anyone.

Naturally I started with some range anxiety, but after a few trips I came to really trust the vehicle for the following reasons:

1. Estimated range has been spot-on, with a variance of a few percentage points at most. I’ve had stress only once when driving between multiple far-flung destinations in northern New Hampshire where I also was not able to charge overnight. This is the one time I had to wait for a few hours at a (free!) Level 2 non-Tesla charger at a grocery store.

2. To give you an idea of mindset: I very casually keep the battery at the recommended 80%, and make a two hour weekend trip, arriving at 40%. For longer trips, nothing really changes: If I’m on a four hour drive instead, it will automatically insert a charging stop on my route as I type it into the nav system.

3. Charging stops are fast. You might not realize it, but you can easily spend 5-10 minutes pumping gas when you need to fuel up and use the bathroom. This car charges in about 15-20 minutes (note: this a standard charge from 20 to 80%), which gives me time for a bathroom break and maybe a snack. After 3-4 hours of driving, a few minutes to respond to messages is a blessing. Finally, this may sound odd, but I really do not miss the smell of gasoline at the pump, or standing out in the cold waiting for the hydrocarbons to make their journey into my tank before the next step in their journey.

I’ve driven from NY to CO and back twice now - once in a Kia Soul and once in the Tesla, each time doing the driving in just two days. The extra charging turns an ~18 hour day of driving into a little over a 19 hour day. Of course, about two hours are spent charging, not one, but it seems that I spend about an hour fueling and eating even with the gas car. I’m getting to know the charging stations well by now - and have a new love for the midwestern grocery store HyVee for its delicious sandwich fixins and on-site superchargers.

Overall, my fuel stress is less than when I owned the Kia. Why? Because you always have to pay attention to fuel levels on a gasoline car. Sometimes, you need to go on an errand, and the amount of time it takes doubles because you parked on “empty”. On the contrary, even with only a 110v charger at home, I know I’m always going to have enough juice for my daily routine (see the grey bars in the chart in the “Cost” section below. Red bars were trips to CO and elsewhere).

The Emissions

Skeptics will be quick to point out the embedded cost of carbon in a Tesla. That is, the amount of CO2e emitted during manufacture. This is a little overblown.

The carbon is offset within about 13,000 miles (See the Tesla Impact Report). For me, this is less than a year. What you don’t see mentioned often is that the purchase of a new electric car, when combined with the sale of an old gas car, replaces the purchase of a new gas car. For a full comparison of embedded carbon in different vehicles, see the charts in this article. (edit: Note of course Tesla’s impact report is not third party audited. Even if they’re fudging numbers down by 50% though, or even if your electricity comes from coal (via NYT) it will still pay off).

Of course the carbon makeup for electricity generation really matters - there’s not a lot of point if we stay tied to coal. This is why Community Solar and International Carbon Taxation are so important.

To the skeptics who demand an all-green supply chain

Any study of the history of technology will quickly reveal that one must use existing technology in order to build next-generation technology. This is hardly more clear than at one the the my favorite museums, even: the American Precision Museum in Windsor, VT, where my boyish brain was melted by thinking how they could use a milling machine of one accuracy to build another of much higher accuracy 🤯. In short, we can go ahead and replace the transportation sector by leveraging our existing manufacturing sector. And we’ll get to manufacturing in due time. In fact, the world’s first electric lithium mine is already underway in the UK.

The Cost

Teslas are, of course, expensive. The Model 3 comes in at $44-54k, and the long range is now only available on the Model Y at $53-57k. However, some savings take the edge off the price.

• You’ll probably spend about half as much on fuel (depending on local electric rates, gas prices, etc). There are nice metrics in the Tesla app, which line up with my experience of $15-$20 for a tank of fuel full charge (about 300 miles, leaving some buffer in each case).

• Individuals making less than $150k in a year (or households @ $300k) qualify for a tax credit of $7,500 for a new EV, or $4,000 used. This means you get the full $7,500, not that amount off of your taxable income for the year. This only applies to the now wide number of vehicles with final assembly in the US, including Tesla. You can see the list of 20 options in Consumer Reports.

• You might think you also have to upgrade your home with a fast charger for your car to be usable. I have found this not to be necessary due the many hours I spend sleeping and the car spends charging. However, your situation may be different if you have a large commute or no 110v line to charge from*. Or you may think you need solar in order to be making an impact on the environment. However electric grids are generally growing in their proportion of renewable energy, whereas gasoline refineries are not. (Or at least, not any time soon enough, as direct-air-capture-based fuel is far away).

• If you do want a fast charger at home, you may be fine with a standard 240V receptacle, rather than an entire Powerwall type battery solution.

*As an aside: I’m working on a project to produce low-cost 110v metered charging outlets which apartment buildings and HoAs can install without a major rewiring investment. If you’d like one installed in your building, please get in touch for private beta access! (Edit: actually, Orange just announced a big funding round for exactly this!)

How to fly Net-Zero

Like it or not, aviation is a major source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions at about 2-4x more per mile than a typical internal-combusion (ICE) car with two people in it. (Full ICC Report).

There are some technological solutions being worked on. Beta technologies, local to Burlington VT, makes small electric Vertical-Takeoff-and-Landing (VTOL) aircraft specialized on point-to-point flights. (The founder previously worked on organ transplant transportation).

Nasa has prototype X-57 Maxwell electric airplane with 12 small motors along the wings. Electric airplanes have some neat advantages due to their high-torque. Besides being ideal for VTOL, these engines maximize airflow at low speed and can be independently controlled for steering, like traction control on an automobile. The Maxwell is scheduled to fly in 2023.

Boeing has no electric aircraft themselves, and says electric jumbo jets are decades away. They have invested almost half a billion into Whisk Aero – a company which is making small autonomous air-taxis.

Airbus is a bit of a mixed bag. They have some very neat promotional designs: a standard jetliner converted to run on hydrogen. It’s all very exciting, and then disappointing when word from the inside reports that the company is abandoning their 2025 green aircraft launch plans to instead "hit the gas pedal while nobody is watching". In a riveting blog post, a resigning employee polls his colleagues on their views, expecting them to be in some sort of climate denial, and instead finds a silent majority in disagreement of company policy.

One true answer is simply not to fly, and France has even banned short-haul flights (where train is a viable alternative) accordingly. While this has worked for me largely, professional off-sites make an exception which I must allow. Furthermore I will not recommend austerity to others, as I discuss in the next section.

There are websites out there which offer carbon offsets at $8-$80 per 1,000lbs of carbon offset. These likely do some good, but that price seems a bit lower than what it should be. Often these kinds of funds go towards solutions which may help but are ultimately limited in scale (such as forest preservation) or effectiveness. I prefer my funds to go towards building a machine which takes carbon right out of the air, and dumps it into the ground where it came from.

Climeworks offers carbon capture at about $600 per 1000lbs, which likely means you won’t be offsetting your whole flight this way. (That would cost $300 for a round trip from Denver to SFO). However, the funds are going to a scalable solution which is early in its development cycle, and costs will come down with continued investment. (This is the general philosophy of Stripe Climate, which I am in agreement with).

One final question on this topic —

Can I Drive a Tesla without being a conceited jerk?

Yes. Stay humble. People often have many genuine questions, and it is fun to answer them. Just don’t be like this guy:

Closing Thoughts on Austerity

I’d like to wrap up this post with the topic of “austerity”. This is a term which applies in both contexts of economic policy and in cases of someone pushing their own values… which can happen very easily in political contexts.

Let’s start by looking at the 2008 financial crisis reaction as a case for why collective austerity can be a counterproductive or even a dangerous thing, and then see from that why it’s not a great tool for creating change, especially on the scale needed to decarbonize our lives.

After the 2008 crisis, governments were deeply ($2 Trillion) in debt, and Europe in particular responded to this not by issuing more currency (which would have been inflationary) but by practicing fiscal austerity (which was deflationary). Either can cause a recession, and although the diffrences between the two are technically fascinating, you can study those without my help with this fantastic ebook by Ray Dalio.

The bottom line with fiscal austerity is that less spending can cause “deflation” which can cause people to hoard money at home while feeling less financially secure. It’s an ugly cycle. Mark Blythe, everyone’s favorite economist-who-sounds-like-Shrek, describes it very well in five minutes:

I believe the same trouble with austerity holds true in social contexts as well, sort of like the Shakers - a celibate religion which has all but died out thanks to their own values. In both cases, I believe leadership through positive action, not self-repression, is a stronger choice.

Along a similar vein, although a person may choose to not fly, not eat meat, and so on, trying to achieve an ethical goal by imposing values of austerity upon others is often a losing proposition which generates strong adverse reactions. There are many examples of this such as preachy veganism, complaints about COP27 members using private jets, and so on. Although I admire Greta Thunburg’s tenacity and integrity in crossing the Atlantic in a racing sailboat, it is just not a scalable solution. It is much better to find solutions which make people’s lives better while also making the world better.

If you liked this post, please share it!  Many thanks to Jordan, Sarah, Edward, and Brad for a critical eye in reviewing.

Emission Trading Schemes Go Global

I’ve found the scale of Emissions marketplaces and carbon taxes to be surprising in scope. According to the 2022 World Bank Report, there are 68 (!) programs implemented today, covering 23% of global emissions, including a giant spike in 2021 as China’s program came online covering 5% of global emissions. Although the U.S. is not present nationally, New England (RGGI) and California each have their programs, as well as Canada. (Of course, this still leaves 75%+ of emissions as not-yet covered).

In no cases are emissions credits fungible (exchangeable) between programs. I expect that will come much later, once the world has worked out practical and effective standards of quality.

There is a wide range in prices (cost per ton CO2 emitted), but most fall short of the $50-100/ton estimated as necessary to hit net-zero 2050. For example, presently RGGI in New England comes in at $13/ton emitted, where it is capped. Compare that to Sweden and Switzerland’s >$100/ton prices, and the EU-ETS market price of about €90. Note that Germany also has a standalone ETS program, which additively covers land transport, which are not covered by EU-ETS.

And here is the 2022 coverage map:

Although ETS programs are slow to claim victory (conservatively, the price point needs to be $50-$100 in order to hit 1.5°. Estimates go as high as $100/ton), there are some little wins. In countries which are even considering starting a Carbon Tax or ETS program, companies are five times more likely to implement an internal corporate carbon price. The United States is leader in number of companies implementing or planning internal pricing.

This is of course not the end of the picture. US H.R.2307 proposes a revenue-neutral carbon tax, and is advocated for by Citizens Climate Lobby. There are many more regional, state, county, and city resolutions as well - but will have to wait for a followup post.

I thought this state-of-global-ETS overview given on a webinar for Indonesian climate policy was quite good: Video from Ernst & Young - April 2022. If you are surprised to see Indonesia here, it might be helpful to know that they burn a lot of coal, process on-site many raw materials necessary for batteries, and are, as an island nation with a high ratio of coastal to land area, going to be one of the nations most effected by climate change.

The report also acknowledges both that both explicit policy as we’ve been discussing so far and implicit policy affect the carbon prices. Fossil fuel subsidies are one example of an implicit policy. A 2021 study published by Nature Finance shows how different country’s COVID stimulus packages have affected “green” goals.

The Catch - International Trade

Everything discussed so far has had to do with counties or regions enacting regulation within their own borders. This a powerful lever, and can have international leverage as well. For example, Ukraine has built its own ETS compliance with EU standards.

However, Carbon Taxes & Marketplaces can be their own ruin if not balanced against foreign competition. As local taxes go up, business will leave the region. This effect, known as “Carbon Leakage”, is minimal so far as taxes are light, but in order to reach necessary levels, the effects must be stronger.

Now like me you might be wondering: why in the heck would a country tax their own businesses when they could sling down a protective tariff which taxes everyone else instead? This has been discussed in some depth in a This 2010 World Customs Journal Paper. Indeed, the WCO Secretary General is quoted as saying

Protection of the environment is often regarded as a policy matter of other ministries, but the customs community has the effective means to contribute to this increasingly important policy objective — Kunio Mikuriya

And there is precedent with Ozone-depleting substances under the Montreal Protocol. In 1995 the US created what’s known as a Border-Tax-Adjustment (BTA) corresponding to the amount of a material multiplied by how strongly it depletes the earth’s ozone layer. Twenty years later and the ozone crisis is a thing of the past.

The Customs Journal paper discusses how the same BTA mechanism could be used to push back against what’s called “Embedded Carbon” — a somewhat paradoxical term which refers to the amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere during the manufacture of a raw material.

The difficulty lies in the risk of WTO adjudication for an import tariff which is not coupled with a domestic tax of the same proportion, which could be found in violation of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, established 1947).

There is however a carveout: GATT Article XX, which is an allowance for rules necessary to protect human, animal, or plant life or health, but a tariff must not constitute “arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries”, etc. Embedded Carbon Tariff’s have not been litigated at this point, and it is not known which decision would result.

There is one other obvious drawback: Embedded carbon only covers a fraction of global carbon emissions. Even a BTA on Embedded Carbon there leaves significant room for additional incentivization.

Europe’s New Tariff (CBAM)

In July 2021 the European Commission presented a new proposal to reduce & eliminate carbon leakage: a tariff levied on the cost of Embedded Carbon products entering the EU which matches domestic carbon prices. This is called a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism.

The plan has gained significant momentum, and as of this article written the 13th of December, it is close to passing. EU-CBAM is designed to backstop the EU-ETS regulation for a meaningful impact on decarbonization, rather than letting industries leave the region and form pollution hotspots, as they say, outside of the environment.

Until October 2023, reporting obligations would only apply. After that importers will need to purchase carbon certificates on an open market, just as domestic producers do on the EU-ETS.

The U.S., in full predictably, is considering responding with both protest and its own version of an import tariff. Of course, the U.S. has much less of a leg to stand on as it would be doing a BTA without corresponding internal tax, but for those desperate for any climate change measure, it could be a step in the right direction. Congressional Research Report R47167 is actually not too dense a read on the subject. And, there are two relevant bills in congress currently: H.R. 2307 and S.2378.

Notably (!), the US has instituted a price on methane emissions with the Inflation Reduction Act. It begins in 2024, starting at ~$30/ton Co2e, and going up to $60 over a few years. See the CRS report R47206. This is a great start.

Closing Thoughts

The case for “viral” tariffs on grid emissions

Part I of post started with me not having an inkling of what ETS is, much less its growing global scope (despite needing higher prices in general). I would have thought that tracking embedded carbon would present an impossible task, and was thinking instead on how we might structure a tariff of energy, for which emissions are more easily tracked due a smaller number of large electricity-generating plants. This seems like a new idea, and in-line with much of what I’ve seen, so I’ll describe the concept here:

Consider that Embedded Carbon only accounts for a fraction of emissions coupled with a product. Even the least energy-intensive product still is manufactured by people who use the electric grid when not at work — we can see on the chart above from Speed & Scale that fully a third of carbon emitted is from grid-based Electricity.

Countries could adopt an import tariff according to the exporter’s grid’s carbon-efficiency. This could be made viral in nature by reducing the tariff on countries which implement a similar tariff on their imports. Ultimately, the tariff is self-limiting as grids become fully de-carbonized.

There are some obvious downsides here of course - one would want to tune it so that trade restrictions don’t damage the global economy at a time when we need the largest possible per-capita productivity — the funds gained would have to be used in a way to offset their own cost. International trade is so important that even a very small rate would produce a large effect.

Non-Partisan Values

Although Climate Change Regulation is typically seen as a “Liberal” issue in the U.S., I see this kind of regulation as aligned with republican values for freedom (produce our energy domestically, don’t import it), and our ability to enjoy the natural world (especially for hunters and what-not). Citizens Climate Initiative has a bit on this:

(Also worth a watch: Ted Halstead introduces The Conservative Case for Carbon Dividends in this talk).

New Law in Values-Based Trade Regulation

This whole area touches on a relatively new area in our legal system: punitive trade rules based not on the product, and not on the country, but upon the technique used to produce the product.

One other similar area jumps to mind - California Prop 12: a ban on pork from pigs raised in crates, passed by referendum of the Californian people, and now being contested by the DOJ on behalf of industrial pig “farmers”.

Both restrict the import of goods based on certain principles, as did the ban on imports of solar panels made with Chinese Slave labor. The connection between trade regulation and social or societal values, I think, could make for an interesting study.

What You Can Do

While the world sorts itself out, you don’t have to sit idly by.

• Of course if you like this post, please share it out a bit! You can also write me directly your thoughts or leave a comment below - it’s quite motivating.

• In writing this, I’ve learned that across the U.S. and the world, Citizens Climate Lobby is organizing to put a price on carbon, and is accepting volunteers.

• Finally, DegreesPod has a three part series on what you can do personally, professionally, and politically to reduce your emissions. This will also be the subject of my next post.

That’s all for now, and I hope you’ve learned something new.

Thanks,

—Peter

In this post, I dive in to atmospheric carbon taxation as it exists in the world today, and what major initiatives are underway presently. Over the course or the research, I became pleasantly surprised with the extent in which systems are in place, and the rate of growth evidenced — mostly outside the U.S.. 

As the European Union has for a long time had the world's most extensive Carbon Tax, I start by with a preface about Ukraine and the EU as a (hopefully fun) tangent which explores the workings of EU power structures.  You can skip over this if just interested in Carbon.

Standards Bodies

What is humanity’s most powerful self-organizing tool? I believe it might be standards bodies. Here’s how I interpret the term:

A standards body is a focused group of one or more people dedicated to the creation of a set of rules which may be followed at large, either voluntarily or by force. A standard can have as wide an effect as a national regulation or be as small as a household rule for dinner time.

Standards affect every aspect of our lives. They define how web browsers choose to display web-pages, give us decentralized email as a backbone of the internet age, allow money to move around the world, allow you to plug in a printer, and the list goes on.

This is a field which benefits greatly from a careful study of human incentives, and when the rules are right, can have a strong positive effect. I think two things are important for any standard

1. A rule should accurately reflect reality - such as by internalizing and externalized pain, in order to tighten a feedback loop

2. When the rule is “exploited” by humans with intentions not matching those of the authors, a positive outcome still results.

Throughout this post, keep those two in mind as a litmus-test for well-designed policy.

Ukraine’s Accession to the EU

As the world has watched the war in Ukraine unfold, a continual theme has been Ukraine’s membership in the EU. A close look at what changes are required by Ukraine reveals the power of EU standards.

The Istanbul Convention

The Istanbul convention, signed in 2011, is “the first legally-binding instrument which ‘creates a comprehensive legal framework and approach to combat violence against women’ [It] is focused on preventing domestic violence, protecting victims and prosecuting accused offenders”.

In summary of the wiki section: Ukrainian leaders have been trying to ratify the Istanbul convention since 2011, but faced opposition in parliament (apparently largely due to churches and some politicians disliking the use of the term “gender”). This passed in 2022 due to an increase in crimes in the occupied territories, and due to increased political will to join the EU.

WTH is Anti-Corruption Law Anyway?

For over two decades, Ukraine has consistently ranked ~120 out of 180 most corrupt countries. The EU requires that members have in place “Anti-Corruption” measures. But what does this mean exactly, and how can you actually fight corruption without getting corrupted?

Well, there’s a French-based organization called the Group of States against Corruption, or GRECO, with 50 member states, including the EU states, the US, and others. They run a periodic round-based evaluation process whereby officials investigate and then rank a given country. A passing grade here is typically required for EU membership.

Reports are typically publicly published after some months delay for evaluation, and I took a look at the Ukraine 2021 report (published on the Council of Europe website).

If you’re inclined to read it yourself, here’s a couple of tips: 1) each recommendation has a premise in italics, followed by an evaluation from GRECO, a response paragraph, an acknowledgement, and a final grade. 🟠 An emoji grading system would really liven it up. To make things easier, you can 2) jump to the conclusions on page 26, which form a bit of an executive summary.

Key sections include:

• Judicial review (removing laws that could criminalize judges based on their verdict, providing physical security such as guards)

• Parliamentary review (disclosure of assets, separation of entrepreneurial concerns, broadcast meetings and publicly posted plans), and

• Prosecutorial office changes (adoption of concrete & actionable ethics standards & self-recusal standards, appeals for promotions or dismissals, and random assignment of cases).

And in conclusion:

Ukraine has implemented satisfactorily or dealt with in a satisfactory manner nine out of the thirty-one recommendations contained in the Fourth Round Evaluation Report.

For those eager for Ukraine’s admittance, perhaps this should give some pause. I for one will be eager to see the 2022 report when it is released.

In a narrative of international organizations from the past 100 years such as the League of Nations, the United Nations, and many Continental Unions, the EU forms the world’s only Supranational union — where governance by the union can take precedence over national government.

Designed to entice Iron Curtain countries, it is this hard power which makes the union scope anti-corruption legislation enforceable, and this same power which gives membership such strong value.

I can’t be alone in thinking it is a shame that such a powerful and novel anti-corruption force is self-limited to just a single continent.

Carbon Taxes As They Exist Today

A Carbon tax usually has two components: a bit which charges a fee for emitted carbon, and a bit which spends that money in a way which boosts the economy. There are many ways to implement these two components. Fees can be charged through carbon credits carbon price fixing.  Money can fund decarbonization efforts or backlogged local issues.  Despite the variety, it seems any sub type is better than no regulation at all, and the selection largely comes down to political ideology and implementation skill.

“Cap and Trade” is perhaps a familiar term, and indicates a prescribed budget for corporate emissions, after which companies must purchase or sell allotments on an open or closed marketplace. This has gotten pushback sometimes for allowing emitters to skate by, but as we’ll see, that fear is lifted with a properly maintained system. Here’s a quick video introducing the idea of cap and trade:

For the past decade, the European Union has been leading the world with their Cap-and-Trade / Emissions Trading System. Let’s see how it works and then compare it to the rest of the world.

Europe’s Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS)

Since 2005, the European Union has been operating a cap-and-trade emissions marketplace. Any factory emitting carbon must purchase allotments at a government auction in order to do so. The revenue goes to a decarbonization budget distributed among member countries.

Unlike a fixed-price carbon tax, the price fluctuates according to free-market forces of supply and demand. Interestingly, speculators and investors have market access (this is not the case for all ETS markets), which have the Jekyll and Hyde effects of both smoothing volatility and creating it, at different times and for different reasons.

The goal is to transition Europe away from fossil fuels, and the belief stated in the report is that by being a world leader and driving domestic innovation, Europe will have a strong competitive advantage in the long term.

Every 2-3 years the governing body revisits how the system is working, and tune parameters which affect the market dynamics — much like the management of any other economic currency system (such as the U.S. Monetary Supply). These parameters include:

1. The total amount of carbon allowed to be emitted in Europe each year (specifically: the rate this decrements annually)

2. The amount of “free allocations” given out to keep European industry competitive with international industry

3. (Since Phase 4) The operations of their “Stability Reserve” in buying and selling surplus allotments.

The April 2022 Annual Report describes the 2013 rollout as first cautious with many “free allocations”, a gradual per-year reduction, and a corresponding weak effect on emissions. As economic and political reactions have stabilized, the free allocations have been decreasing and rate of scarcity increasing. The report is careful to point out that their approach encourages stable markets, and recent energy spikes can be attributed to other causes.

A couple of cases illustrate the effects of carbon pricing.

• We can read a short 2020 interview with the CEO of a Swedish net-zero steel plant which was supportive of ETS, but was of the opinion that it didn’t go far enough.

• According to the report, increased demand for coal in 2022 has pushed up both the price of coal (orange) and the cost of carbon permits, but the permit price was not sufficient to drive a switch to natural gas due to high prices there as well. (However, war with Russia made a nudge.)

Where the money goes

€14B is raised annually at 2020 rates, of which 70+% is budgeted towards emissions reductions. For comparison — this is 1.4% of the quoted €1 Trillion which Europe needs annually to hit net-zero by 2050.

Where the funds are spent is particularly important because a carbon tax, which affects the cost of all goods and services in a broadly inflationary manner, is considered to be regressive. (Having an outsized impact on the lowest income earners).

Particularly countries from Northern and Southern Europe used the funds mainly to develop renewable energy to meet the EU’s target, while Central and Eastern European Member States gave preference to encouraging a shift to low-emission and public forms of transport. Countries from Eastern Europe invested in energy efficiency measures.

We commonly highlight (including in my previous post) Co2e-per-kWh, but that does short shrift to investments in reducing energy usage. In one measure, Germany (580g/kWh) is 4-8x worse than France (66-148g/kWh). However on a per-capita basis, they are “only” about twice as GHG-polluting as France. Then again, your author’s home country comes in at a per-capita carbon cost three times that of France 🙄.

Last but not least EU-ETS funds a €38 Billion Innovation Fund and €48 Billion Modernisation Fund which are supporting entrepreneurship and infrastructure respectively. Unfortunately, I’ll have to await some future day to review their annual reports.

This is the end of Part I.  Next week in Part II I will talk about some exciting developments in ETS and Carbon Taxes around the world, and then focus in on US policy.

Thanks,

–Peter

As someone who enjoys winter, a lack of inundation from climate refugees, and living within my values, I would like to understand my carbon footprint, and hit net-zero well in advance of 2050. Although an Electric Vehicle provides a purchasable answer for transportation, as a renter I have less control of how I heat heat my living space and water, or of my electricity. Short of asking my landlord to put in heat pumps (good luck with that, I hear there’s a shortage even if they did want to drop the money), my best option might be to build or buy in to a free-standing solar installation which can offset natural-gas, oil-based, or coal power generation.

We can see on electricitymaps.com that New York State uses about 75% non-renewables, for an average output of 271 grams CO2 emitted per kWh of energy produced. (Compare to France, which comes in at 66g).

The obvious thing to do would be install solar panels on a rocky field somewhere and sell the power to bring myself net-zero, but there’s some nuance to it. There is a spread in between the price I pay for electricity as a consumer, and what I can sell it for as a producer. This is necessary in order to maintain a distribution network to move that power around, and because that grid must still supply power when people need it (as opposed to only when the sun is up).

The historical way utilities have handled this is with a policy called Net Metering, which looks at your summed monthly power consumption (adding what you take and gave to the grid one-for-one), and charges you the normal kWh rate. This is of course unsustainable: it treats the grid as a free and infinite energy bank for your house, while actually it is neither. Many states and countries having to discontinue their programs (and on doing so cause people to become upset with what is viewed as a slight or a political move).

Selling Power

A 33kW installation in New York State costs about $100k out of pocket, and about ~60% comes back as tax credits when you next file. (Note: kW in this context refers to the DC power rating of all the solar panels added together. A 33kW installation may consist of 127 360W panels).

A small house would use about a 6kW solar installation, a large one would use 2-3x that easily (especially w/ A/C or EV charging). Here’s the economics broken down for net-metering – where the power is used on-site.

New York State has put a great deal of effort in solving the Net Metering problem, in order to allow photovoltaics at scale. They have replaced Net Metering (NEM) with a new pricing model: Value Stack. This is a complex model which bakes in many factors - such region within the state and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs). The above revenue is roughly cut in half with their new model. You can see for yourself with the NYSERDA spreadsheet.

There are ways to improve the economics here - such as installing a 2-axis mount to keep the panels always facing the sun directly, promising a 40% power generation improvement, in return for some (unknown-to-me) maintenance factor.

Finally of course, it possible to sell power wholesale on the electricity auction. This is where the utilities bid in a sort of a dutch-auction to see who can provide power in the coming 5-minute interval for the lowest cost. An additional layer of complexity, called a Capacity auction, allows bids on a further out time-horizon. However, membership costs a good chunk of change ($5k/year IIRC), and the rates one would receive are lower than you get from the Value Stack (aka selling to the distribution network instead of wholesale).

Politics

One thing which has become clear to me doing this research is that it can seem like everyone has something bad to say about whatever power source is not their preference. Photovoltaics are an eye sore, wind turbines kill birds, nuclear waste is dangerous, oil will roast the planet, hydro hurts fish, and so on. And these are generally all true to some degree. Which puts us in the precarious position of trying to rank one person’s needs against another. Fun.

Rather cynically, one could image that photovoltaics have a large amount of federal funding not only because they are renewables which are demonstrating forward progress along the technological-readiness scale, but also because they are one of the least effective at scale; and therefore non-threatening to the status quo. If you’re going to pay for lobbyists, you’ll have them focus on things like nuclear, which really could effectively take oil out of the system, as France has demonstrated for decades.

Federal Tax Credits

That being said, there are a good number of tax incentives for Solar, which makes them a great choice for those paying a lot of Federal income tax. The details are here. In short, you get about 60% of your up-front cost back within a year. Most of that is in the form of Investment Tax Credits, which can be either claimed directly or re-sold to another party. They can even be applied to earnings from the previous year or the 5-6 following years.

One interesting approach here would be to attempt to scale up a solar installation beyond my own personal financial with a wide-scale community action. (If you would be interested in adding capital to a pool here, get in touch. Actual rates of return are TBD, and depend on state and technology used.)

20 Year Plan

NYISO, the company which keeps the New York State utilities talking to one another, has recently published their first (ever!) 20 year plan. It is impressive to see them responding to our growing climate crisis in this way, and you can check out their neat little 20 minute podcast on their new plan.

The most interesting part to me was this stacked bar chart, which shows NY electricity make-up in years to come. Major growth is predicted, due to a switch to electric for EVs and heating.

The last 5 years are notable. Here we see +30 GW in DEFRS, or Dispatchable Emission Free Resources. Or in laymen’s term, big batteries. Dispatchable is the most important part here, as neither solar nor wind fit the bill for on-demand energy. As they note in their report, energy storage technology has yet to be invented at an economically feasible and scalable manner.

We can also see oil (orange) disappearing suddenly in a five year span at the end, which is handled in part by "out-of-state imports”. 🤔

My 2c

I see two actions that make sense as a result here:

1. Continue researching energy storage. There are many many people working on this, such as thermal energy storage (Matt Ferrell has a good video here), and nano-technologic solutions (such as EnergyX), but the proof will be in the pudding. It would be interesting to explore high-temperature thermovoltaics, which might allow thermal batteries to generate electricity efficiently, not just heat. Perhaps this would be a good subject for a future post.

2. Nuclear + DAC. It is a pretty damn safe bet to say that we will not get by in a couple decades (or more) without producing any CO2 — many chemical and industrial processes generate CO2. In answer to this, Direct-Air-Capture plants are being developed (Carbon Engineering, ClimeWorks), and in some cases, are already operating on volcano power. These plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere and dump it back in to oil wells as liquid. Pretty damn cool.

1. Nuclear plants can generate a large amount of power, but cannot be scaled up and down responsively for day-to-day needs of humans depending on the grid. This seems to me like it could be a great match — instead of expensive batteries for DEFR, we perhaps can let DAC have an economic purpose as well as an environmental one by using the excess nuclear power when it is cannot otherwise be used.

Fin

In conclusion, I wish I could get an at-home nuclear reactor + DAC module, but I probably can’t. The DAC price tag is a cool $0.7-1.2B (See Table 3 in the Carbon Engineering paper) so, I will probably stick to solar unless I have some very clever ideas.

That’s all for now. WDYT?

Cheers,

—Peter

F.A.Q.

Does Solar actually save co2, when manufacturing costs (scope 2 emissions) are included?

There’s plenty of rumors going around like “Wind turbines produce more co2 in construction [aka Scope 2 emissions] than they will ever save”, and similar smear on solar and so on. Although there are of course of disadvantages to those two types of renewables, it is not in co2 emission.

Coal         675–1689  gCO2eq/kWh
Oil          510–1170  gCO2eq/kWh
Natural Gas  290–930   gCO2eq/kWh
PV [Solar]   18–180    gCO2eq/kWh # co2 due to manufacture
Nuclear      4–110     gCO2eq/kWh # co2 due to uranium enrichment
Wind         7–56      gCO2eq/kWh # larger turbines = less co2/kWh

Here’s the report, with links to studies referenced: 2018 IPCC Report CH7 (see page 539)

How much space will this all take?

The NYSERDA report calls for 200k GWh/year in 2040, with 4-20% covered by utility PV (that is, not on people’s roofs).

200k GWh in 2040 spend * 3 acres / GWh/year * 4-20% = 24k-120k acres covered by solar panels.

In comparison, the state of NY is 35M acres in total —> so 0.06-0.3% of would be NY covered.

Roads on the other hand: 250k lane-miles * 13 feet per lane (standard lane widths are 10 feet, I fudged in another 3 feet for shoulders) = about 400k acres of roads in New York, or about 1% of the state.

New York doesn’t seem to have any oil refineries, but that would make a fun comparison as they do take up a bit of space themselves.

Upshot? Yes it’s a lot, and there may be more space efficient solutions. However, it’s also not an impossible number in comparison to some of our largest infrastructure projects (roads).

What about recycling solar panels?

Glad you asked. Solar panels are mostly glass, and some facilities focused on recycling solar specifically. (Note first however - panels will keep running long after their rated 25 year life span. A friend of my who had panels installed in 1987 had a peak day last year - 34 years later). If you want to see more about recycling, there are many examples on Youtube. I found that Veolia Group had a well made video.

Are we better off putting our Solar in the SW where it is sunny all the time?

On central Solar - there is certainly an argument for that from an efficiency standpoint, as sunny areas can generate a lot more electricity per $ invested (and square foot used).  Unfortunately moving that power is what I call a grade-A coordination problem: on the Federal level. As such, it will move at the speed of mud.  I enjoyed this blog post / podcast on the subject: 

Volts

Transmission week: how to start building more big power lines

Listen now (32 min) | Welcome back to Transmission Week here at Volts! In my previous post, I explained why the US needs lots of new high-voltage power lines. They will help stitch together America’s balkanized grids, connect remote renewable energy to urban load centers, prepare the country for the coming wave of electrification, and relieve grid congestion. And oh yeah — we…

Listen now

5 years ago · 31 likes · 8 comments · David Roberts

The upshot here is that the Federal Government (FERC) has the power of eminent domain for natural gas pipelines, but not for high voltage lines. This means that the lines need to go through permitting for each state they pass through, in which those states are legally required to only act in their own best interest, likely not in the interest of the line.

For what it’s worth, I have heard of high voltage lines being planned from AU to SG and from Morocco to the UK.  Somehow it’s easier internationally, it seems.

P.S. If you like the post, please do subscribe and, if so inclined, share!

Many projects are potentially on the table, which I will describe as they are investigated. First posts will be on solar & grid, and one on robotics.

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