There is a better alternative to Green energy policies
That reduces carbon emissions while promoting economic growth
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Right now the Western world is in a very bad situation due to a failed energy policy. Virtually every Western nation has adopted the Green energy transition to achieve Net Zero by 2050 as their goal. The only real variation between governments is how hard they are willing to push. The Left has convinced many people, in some cases the majority, that the only alternative to the Green energy agenda is a global catastrophe.
I am here to tell you that there is an alternative. First, let me be very clear about the goals of energy policy.
Green goal
The Green goal is to create a government-sponsored energy transition through regulations, mandates, and subsidies. Their goal is Net Zero carbon emissions by 2050 by replacing fossil fuels (coal, natural gas and oil) with:
Solar
Wind
Biomass
Biofuels
Some also include geothermal, waves or other rarer forms of renewable energy, but this is not their focus.
Most Greens also want to eliminate:
Nuclear
Hydropower
Greens also oppose:
Adaptation
Carbon capture
Carbon sequestration from the atmosphere
Geo-engineering
Any future energy system that might be innovated (such as nuclear fusion)
Any cuts to social spending or education to pay for their policies.
Greens strongly believe that if we do not follow their policy advise, we will suffer a global catastrophe. They also claim that there is no alternative policy.
I fully acknowledge that there are some Greens who are more moderate than what I listed above, but those people are in the minority within the movement. I would not consider them a true Green, and neither would most Greens.
Three Green pathways
There are three pathways through which Greens can achieve their objectives:
Energy source substitution
Energy degrowth
Energy efficiency
By “energy source substitution” I mean solar, wind, or biomass substituting for coal, natural gas, or oil. This pathway means a 1-for-1 substitution of a 1 BTU from an energy source for a 1 BTU from another energy source. And for electricity, this must be a substitution that maps to the same energy source 24/7/365.
By “energy degrowth” I mean driving down fossil fuel usage without fully substituting for that energy from renewable sources. This may be due to high energy taxes, a sluggish economy that keeps energy usage lower than normal, a declining population, or some other factor.
By “energy efficiency” I mean using less energy to accomplish the same goal. I strongly support energy efficiency, but it is clearly not as important a pathway in the Green agenda as the other two. Energy efficiency alone often has rebound effects which undermine the first two pathways.
Greens claim that whatever success they have achieved has been due to the first factor, when in fact it is largely from the second. In other words, the Green Energy transition is not a transition at all.
It is Green Degrowth or at least Green Austerity.
The Dangers of the Green Energy transition
I will go into more detail in other posts, but I believe that the Green Energy transition as described above:
Will cost tens of trillions of dollars (spending was an estimated $1.77 in 2023 alone)
Will have only a tiny effect on future global temperatures (i.e. far less than one degree)
Will inevitably fail to get anywhere Net Zero by 2050 or any other year (unless there is a global catastrophe such as an asteroid impact or they concede the use of other energy sources)
Is far less applicable to some regions, particularly Asia where half the world’s population, than other regions.
Will slow down and potentially choke off economic growth in wealthy nations
Will particularly hurt the poor, working class, and racial minorities in those nations
Will make industrialization in developing nations impossible (unless they use other energy sources)
Is completely unnecessary.
Worse, supporters of the Green energy transition are completely unwilling to acknowledge failure regardless of results. If unrestrained by other political actors, they will keep pushing until they completely destroy the material progress that took us centuries to build.
And even after the collapse, most Greens will just say that we did not push hard enough.
Green Marketing
I must give them credit. The Greens have a brilliant marketing strategy. They have convinced a sizeable portion of voters that we all face a stark choice:
Global apocalypse, or
Full implementation of the Green energy policy
According to Greens, there is no other choice. Well, I am here to tell you that there are very viable alternatives to both outcomes. And Greens do not want you to know about it.
Goals for Progress-based Energy policy
This Substack and my book series is based on the progress-based perspective. Promoting long-term increases in the material standard-of-living of as many people as possible should be fundamental goal.
Any energy policy that embraces the concept of human material progress should include the following goals:
Create an energy system that is abundant, affordable, and secure. This will keep human material progress going. This should include both wealthy and developing nations.
Mitigate the negative side-effects of that progress on the natural environment. This includes carbon emissions, air pollution, water pollution, wild habitat destruction, extinctions, and human health concerns.
Let me be perfectly clear: I believe that the first goal is far more important than the second. Promoting human material progress is my primary goal, and I reject anyone’s claim that it should not be the prime goal of public policy.
The Greens are right about one thing. There is a very real trade-off between protecting the natural environment and promoting long-term economic growth. It is just not the extreme binary choice that Green marketing presents.
Fortunately, I believe that it is possible to do both as long as we adopt the right policies. Indeed, economic growth gives us the resources for making progress on the second goal. A stagnant economy and developing nations trapped in poverty will only increase environmental destruction.
I am not the slightest bit interested, however, in trying to get to Net Zero by 2050 because I believe it is:
Unachievable
Will waste resources that can be used for other purposes
Will do great damage to the material standard of living of humanity, particularly the most vulnerable.
Gradually lowering the damage to the environment over the 21st Century, however, is an achievable goal. Notice that I am not trying to maximize progress. I am only trying to keep it going and leave open the possibility of rapid economic growth in developing nations. This enables us to simultaneously accomplish secondary goals.
Criteria for Success
Energy affects far more than the environment. A successful energy policy must include many different factors. The Greens try to scare us into ignoring all the benefits of energy, particularly fossil fuels.
I believe that any successful energy policy must meet the following criteria:
Enable wealthy nations to maintain annual economic growth rates at 2-3% for the foreseeable future.
Enable developing nations to industrialize at a rate that we have seen in East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. In other words, their national energy policies should not make economic growth rates of 5-10% impossible.
Set carbon emissions, air pollution, and health concerns on a long, slow downward trend. No arbitrary 2050 deadline. Just a long, slow decline.
Be based on energy sources that the entire world can use, not just a few geographical areas.
Include incentives for all significant nations to make the transition. Moral suasion is unlikely to change the behavior of entire nations if economic incentives are absent.
I could add in some additional criteria like energy independence and natural security, but I will not do so in this post.
While the Green energy transition will probably be able to meet the third condition, I do not see how it can meet the other four conditions.
Criterion #1: Wealthy economies
Europe has already fallen well below the first condition since 2007. I believe that a very important reason for their economic stagnation is their energy policy.
Criterion #2: Developing economies
No developing nation has industrialized using solar/wind/etc as their dominant energy source. I am willing to acknowledge that it is theoretically possible, but I will wait for it to actually occur before I concede this point.
My guess is that I will be waiting for the rest of my life (or at least until nuclear fusion becomes cost-effective at scale) …
Criterion #3: Environment
Again, I acknowledge that Green energy technologies can make progress on these metrics, but I want to point out a few facts.
Biomass generates more carbon emissions per unit of energy than coal. Why Greens favor it is beyond me. It is only with creative accounting that they do so.
Biofuels are also somewhat dubious in terms of carbon emissions, although this varies greatly by fuel source. Corn ethanol, for example, is likely worse than gasoline in total net carbon emissions.
Most types of wind and solar are very bad about destroying natural habitats and wild animals due to their large geographic footprint.
Criterion #4: Geography
Solar and wind are both heavily constrained by geography. Biomass and biofuels are less constrained, but they cannot do the heavy lifting without doing serious damage to the natural environment.
Some regions have plentiful solar radiance, but the vast majority of heavily populated regions do not.
Some regions have strong and steady onshore wind, but the vast majority of populated regions do not. Offshore wind is far more expensive.
The vast majority of heavily populated regions, particularly East Asia, South Asia, and Southeast Asia where the majority of humans live, have little or no wind or solar resources (the Gobi desert in China is the only real exception, and it is lightly populated).
Criterion #5: Incentives
The Green energy policies give no incentive to other nations to follow their path other than moral suasion and diplomatic pressure. Developing nations in Asia know that abandoning coal, natural gas and petroleum is very bad for their economies, so they are more than happy to keep using more.
Developing nations have no incentive to follow Green energy policies, so they will not do so at a large enough scale to replace fossil fuels, particularly coal.
A Progress-based Energy Policy
To maintain progress, we need an energy system that is abundant, affordable, and secure. While other energy sources can supplement their use, only the widespread use of fossil fuels enables such an energy system. Solar, wind, nuclear and hydroelectric can each play a role, but only fossil fuels can do the heavy lifting.
Rather than dangerous Green policies that sacrifice human progress in the name of the environment, the West desperately needs a new energy policy that maintains progress while mitigating the negative consequences on the natural environment. If climate activists can overcome their prejudice against natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power, there is a Progress-based energy policy that would boost human progress as well as mitigating the negative consequences to the natural environment. That energy policy can make energy abundant, affordable, and secure while also lowering global carbon emissions and pollution.
A Progress-based energy policy should focus on completing the as-yet-unfinished Third Energy Transition. In future posts, I will go into more detail on many of these points, but it should consist of the following steps.
Construct an abundant, affordable, and secure electrical grid based on natural gas, nuclear power, and hydroelectric power. The exact blend will differ based on geography and local cost structure. In the United States, this will overwhelmingly mean natural gas, due to its huge cost advantage.
Phase out coal power, by far the worst offender in carbon emissions, pollution, and degrading health. Impose a coal tax on all goods mined, processed, transported, and manufactured using coal or electricity generated from coal. This will give the entire world a strong economic incentive to move off coal.
Roll back government restrictions on the exploration, drilling, and distribution of natural gas on public and private land.
Phase out all subsidies and mandates for renewable power. The focus should be on abundant, affordable, and secure energy sources. Renewable energy sources can act as a supplement where geography and economics allow, but natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric power will do the heavy lifting.
Leverage the technical skills of the American shale gas industry to spread the Shale Revolution throughout the world. This will make natural gas so affordable that the global energy sector wants to shift from coal to natural gas.
Gradually shift the transportation sector from petroleum to electricity, starting with transport within wealthy metro regions and then expanding to longer-range transportation.
Assist Asia and developing nations with the capital and technical skills required to gradually transition from coal and wood-burning to an electrical grid and industrial sector based upon a blend of natural gas, nuclear power, and hydroelectric power. Affordable and abundant natural gas is key to this transition.
Create innovation prizes for new energy sources that have all the advantages of fossil fuels and nuclear power, but without pollution, radiation, or carbon emissions.
This Progress-based energy policy will be more effective at lowering carbon emissions, pollution, and health risks than the Green energy policy, and it will do so at a much lower cost. More importantly, this Progress-based energy policy will build an abundant, affordable, and secure energy system that can power long-term economic growth.
This is not a hypothetical policy. Many nations have successfully transitioned their electrical grid away from coal to a blend of natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric. Unfortunately, while the media and political activists focus on Green policies in Europe, they have missed far more successful energy transitions based on natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric.
Because energy is so critical to progress, the topic does not comfortably fit into a single chapter. For this reason, I will discuss my Progress-based energy policy in four separate chapters. In this chapter, I will explain energy policies to promote abundant, affordable, and secure energy in the short term in wealthy nations. Such an energy system is a cornerstone of promoting long-term economic growth.
In a later post, I will explain my proposal to establish innovation prizes to incentivize research on radical breakthrough energy technologies. If successful, this would probably be the greatest technological innovation of the 21st Century and do far more to lower global carbon emissions than current Green policies.
In a later post, I will extend my Progress-based energy policy to include the needs of developing nations. To promote progress, all developing nations must build an abundant, affordable, and secure energy system.
In a later post, I will explain how we can lower global carbon emissions while enabling developing nations to build their own abundant, affordable, and secure energy systems. While Green energy policies have failed abysmally at reducing global carbon emissions because they ignore the biggest contributors (Asian coal), my policy focuses on the most cost-effective means to reduce global carbon emissions while still maintaining progress.
Assessing the Criteria
Getting back to our original criteria listed above, I believe that all of them can be achieved with my proposed policies.
There are already many examples of wealthy nations that have energy systems based largely on natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric. I will write future posts about many of them.
While it is true that none of them have been able to do away with coal and petroleum, natural gas can substitute for each of the common uses for those two sources of energy. There is no reason to doubt that those three energy sources place serious economic constraints on economic growth in wealthy nations.For developing nations industrializing without coal and oil, I admit that there are no examples. Coal is by far the dominant energy source for Asian nations experiencing rapid industrial growth. I do believe that with Western assistance, they can build energy systems based largely on natural gas, nuclear, and hydroelectric within a few decades.
Quite frankly, I do not consider it too much of a loss if some developing nations temporarily burn large amounts of coal to fuel their economies. Economic growth should be their #1 priority. Under current Green policies, this is their only option. Only my proposal gives them another path.Natural gas, nuclear and hydroelectric are far superior to coal from an environmental perspective, and better than oil as well. Declines in environmental impact would not be as fast as with Green energy, but my proposal still achieves the desired goal.
Unlike wind, solar, and most other renewables, natural gas and nuclear can be used in the vast majority of geographical regions. Hydro is, of course, highly constrained by geography. Nuclear is not. Shale gas is very widely distributed across the globe, although many nations would have to import it. Expansion of gas pipelines and LNG ports will be a critical investment to make this happen.
The biggest difference between my proposal and the Green energy policy is that my proposed coal tax gives a huge incentive to Asian nations to shift away from coal. The coal tax will push up the cost of their exported goods.
I can understand if Asian nations do not like this but, if the necessary investments are financed via the revenues from that tax, it seems much more fair.
See also my other posts on Energy:
Thanks for this article, Michael. I've saved it in my folder on climate change research. when I get two writing my climate change multi-path adventure novel, I will reference this heavily.
💯 % agree with the main philosophy of encouraging human prosperity with abundant, affordable energy. Yes, humans will want a cleaner world, but it’s Maslows hierarchy of needs: if you’re cooking over animal dung barely able to feed your family ( like so many in the world today), you just want more, abundant, and cheaper energy. Those other environmental ‘niceties’ come later and only stay if people have access to food, water, and fuel.