Can we please have a nuanced discussion of development and fossil fuels?

The NYTimes is making it harder than it needs to be

I was quoted yesterday in a New York Times piece that presents a pernicious strain of black-or-white thinking about climate and poverty. It’s pernicious both because it’s widespread and because it’s false: The real debate on climate and poverty is not 100% renewables now vs climate deniers. And while posing these two extremes as the only choices for global development might make good clickbait, it’s terrible for civil discussion or constructive policymaking. If we’re going to make faster progress on clean energy development, we need to call this false binary out.

But first: I get why this binary thinking is so seductive. The future of fossil fuels elicits a lot of emotions. Politicians and the media have exploited this, so many people are genuinely terrified that the planet will burn up very soon. Others are fearful that the government is coming to take away their favorite gas grill and ruin their landscapes with wind turbines. Such beliefs can lead to radical positions, such as zero tolerance for any fossil fuels – or total resistance to any changes in the marketplace.

This polarization has unfortunately infected the very important debate over the role of fossil fuels in poor countries. I often see misleading arguments that poor people don’t need any fossil fuels because offgrid lighting is available or because solar and wind are “cheaper.” Yet this entirely misses all of the reasons why people need energy for far more than lighting and why some countries will need gas to balance renewables or to power 24/7 manufacturing. At the same time, I’ve also seen some advocates for large-scale gas or nuclear power say they’re needed to help the extreme poor gain their first connection.

Both of these are bait-and-switch arguments. I used to assume they were unintended mistakes, but now I think they’re usually deliberately disingenuous. The moderate pragmatic middle must resist both.

Keep your culture wars to yourself

Debates over how to provide energy to billions of people must accommodate nuance and local context. Energy decisions and climate policy don’t take place in a vacuum. That’s why I try to always take time to speak to reporters about tradeoffs and the difference between, say, providing lights for the poorest versus building power plants for industrial parks.

And it’s essential that a country’s energy mix is just that: a portfolio of different technologies that balance each other out and enable a country’s entire energy system to deliver what people and the economy need to grow and prosper. Diversity is a feature because countries need to withstand market volatility and local weather effects.

The specific energy choices will be very different in different places, depending on what’s on hand. Iceland and Kenya have hydro and geothermal. Senegal and Nigeria have gas and lots of solar potential. The lucky energy abundant United States has just about every kind of energy source. Arguing that any one technology is always the best everywhere is just dumb. That’s why the moralistic renewables-only versus fossils-only debate is wholly unconstructive.

The nomination of Chris Wright as US Energy Secretary, who has some strong views on all these issues, should be a perfect vehicle for an open discussion about all of this. (Yes, hahaha, boy, am I naive. Read on…)

The case for the pragmatic middle

To start, a few facts I think are pretty indisputable – and should be non-controversial:

• The purpose of an energy system is to enable human flourishing. Energy is the foundation of everything, from better living standards to higher incomes to providing a healthy environment.

• Burning fossil fuels has provided a massive benefit to humanity, helping provide a high energy foundation for all now-rich countries and lifting billions of people out of poverty.

• We now have alternatives to coal, oil, gas, and wood that are far cleaner and (often but not always) cheaper and widely available. The power systems of tomorrow will look completely different than they do today.

• Given market trends and changing technology, increasing energy abundance for poor countries is not going to blow the global carbon budget. For instance, if sub-Saharan Africa tripled its electricity generation using only gas (and no country would possibly do this), the additional emissions are 0.6% of the world total.

So when we’re thinking about the multitude of options for billions of people who are still poor and need more energy, it seems obvious to me that we should not prejudge every technology based solely on carbon emissions. At the same time, smart policy should encourage countries to make choices that limit the negative costs of all energy production (like local pollution, land use, or carbon emissions) and to stay ahead of the technology curve.

So, how should people get electricity? In some places for some services, solar and wind will be cheapest and fastest. But that’s definitely not true everywhere all the time. People use what’s locally available, what's the lowest cost, and what’s most convenient. The same goes for cooking. And heating and cooling. And transportation. And all the other ways we rely on energy for living modern lives and growing our economies.

A binary world seems easy, but it’s not

So I find it annoying that some people on the right argue that fossil fuels are always best because they’re available and proven reliable. And it's equally annoying that some, usually on the left, argue that fossil fuels are wholly unnecessary – or even immoral.

Alas, Trump’s Choice to Run Energy Says Fossil Fuels Are Virtuous in yesterday’s New York Times explains the world as the good renewables versus evil fossil fuels. It openly implies that we all must choose which camp we’re in and that the correct choice (100% renewables) is obvious. This framing polarizes the debate, demonizes each side, and (worst of all) is just not how the real world works.

Instead of wasting time and energy fighting this false moral battle, we should be finding ways to deliver the most and cleanest energy to the most people. That means flexible, practical approaches that balance the developmental benefits and the environmental impact of different kinds of investments. That should mean less fossil fuels than the past, but certainly not zero fossil fuels tomorrow.

I tried my best, and the reporter Lisa Friedman was kind to ask for my views:

Todd Moss, executive director of the Energy for Growth Hub, a research organization, said tackling climate change was not the responsibility of the world’s poorest countries who have done little to cause the problem. In some countries, fossil fuels may still be needed to power factories and industries to spur economic prosperity, he said. Any effort that is too strict and “puts climate above development” would hurt poor countries, Mr. Moss said.

But my call for nuance and balance feels lost among all the shouting in the rest of the piece – shouting that exemplifies the black-or-white thinking that’s holding us back. If we can’t find a better way to think about wicked global problems like solving global energy poverty and protecting the habitability of the planet, the losers will be all of us.