Going from combustibles to renewables

According to a recent New York Times article, renewable energy is growing globally at an unexpectedly fast pace, with wind and solar on track to overtake coal as the chief source of electricity around the world by 2025.

As someone who worked with offshore wind for six years, starting when in this country it was the idea existed only on a PowerPoint presentation, I was fascinated to read this. My firm was a consultant to a municipal offshore wind center at the time, and our task was to help state legislators, the governor and the general public see that establishing offshore wind off the shore of the Massachusetts South Coast, was both feasible and desirable.

A decade ago, talk of the potential of offshore wind met blank faces, at best. There was also scoffing and even outright hostility. Some dismissed the experiences in Europe, where offshore wind was growing fast in Denmark, Germany and the U.K., as being for fools willing to tolerate expensive electricity because of the nebulous threat of climate change. The fact that land-based wind power was overtaking coal in Texas and the Midwest seemed to make no dent in skeptics’ thinking.

Theory tells me that efforts to persuade others can intensify polarization. So I set myself the challenge of presenting information as neutrally as possible without investing myself in an outcome — even though my job was to change minds for a desired result. My thought was to present facts, and leave room for doubters to think, even though there was plenty of cajoling and pressuring also going on.

I cannot say how successful my efforts to employ theory were. Momentum was building behind offshore wind and mine was just one voice among many. The federal government leased areas of ocean off the Massachusetts coast to offshore wind developers, and the University of Delaware issued a report that showed the cost electricity produced by offshore wind on track to drop below gas and coal-produced electricity. It was that report’s promise of lower costs that finally convinced Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker around 2015 to back wind.

There are plenty of problems with building wind and solar farms and relying on them for energy. Nothing we humans do seems to occur without consequence. But I resonate with what climate activist and author Bill McKibben says, noting that the down sides of wind and solar farms pale in the face of the climate challenge we face. Had we acted as a society when clear warnings about climate emerged 40 years ago, we would have had time to worry more about cod spawning grounds, bird migration paths and the creatures on the ground cooked by the heat generated by solar panels. But for now, he said, we have to do the best we can to produce energy without burning things while science develops better sources of energy that may cause less harm.

I no longer work with offshore wind, but I do wonder what it takes for humans to go from doubting and resisting a solution to working toward a solution. How do you work effectively on behalf of something you believe in while not investing yourself getting others to join you, especially when facing an existential threat? And how do you present information in a way that enables, rather than shuts down thinking?

The Clean Energy Future is Arriving Faster than you think.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2023/08/12/climate/clean-energy-us-fossil-fuels.html