Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Jesse Jenkins

net-zero: total emissions of climate-warming gases from human activities is exactly equaled out or more so by the removal of those same greenhouse gases from the atmosphere each year due to human activities

“We need to be reaching net zero by 2050 at the latest”

“The challenge today is that about two-thirds of our demand for energy in the United States is for liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons, so that’s natural gas that we use to heat our homes, gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, other liquid petroleum-based fuels, and then the petrochemical feed stocks that we use to produce plastics and medicine and all kinds of other things. And it’s just really difficult to find drop-in substitutes for those kinds of liquid and gaseous fuels at the scale that we consume them. And so the only way that we’re going to get to net zero is to knock down the scale of demand for liquid and gaseous fuels. And so that means growing the role of electricity and steam and hydrogen, and other carbon-free energy carriers that don’t contain actually any CO2 when we use them. ”

Net-zero report: “expanding the supply of clean electricity is a linchpin in all net-zero paths.”

Right now most electricity isn’t clean. Exactly what is “clean electricity?” carbon free electricity from nuclear power plants, hydro, wind and solar power?

Economics <> Policy > individual lives

“And so when I think about the challenge of decarbonization, I think about how you unlock feedback loops and how you change the political economy of decarbonization by disrupting current interests that might oppose clean energy transitions and building and strengthening interests that would support them.”

What is this feedback loop?