Tapping into the potential of new energy technologies could be the key to avoiding some of the worst impacts of climate change and creating employment opportunities as global economies begin to heal from coronavirus-related shutdowns, according to former U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.
Until the pandemic struck, the transitioning energy sector created jobs at about twice the pace of the economy as a whole, Moniz told S&P Global Market Intelligence's "Energy Evolution" podcast. Moniz now leads the Energy Futures Initiative, a think tank that recently partnered with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations to create a framework focused on creating and preserving jobs in the context of addressing climate change.
"We cannot meet, in any practical sense, the net-zero target by midcentury without some innovation breakthroughs," the former Obama administration official said. "We really need to up our game. We have a great game, but we need to up it further if we are going to be able to meet those goals."
"I do think the secular trend towards very low carbon — and we certainly put our work in the context of net-zero [emissions] by midcentury — we think that's going to happen," Moniz said. "Now, the question is ... how much of a bump in the road do we have now? Well, it's not clear, but frankly, I would say acceleration of the clean energy transition is as much a possibility as the opposite."
Energy jobs present a "high-leverage" opportunity for the country to dig its way out of the economic hole left by the coronavirus, according to Moniz. It is also a chance to "go where the puck is going to be" instead of where it is now, Moniz said, paraphrasing professional hockey player Wayne Gretzky.
While renewable energy is expected to play a significant part in the transition, Moniz sees room for fossil fuels as his organization takes an "all-of-the-above" approach. "It's about the carbon, or more precisely, it's about the greenhouse gases," Moniz said. "We should not be technology dedicated. We should be no- to low-carbon dedicated. ... Those who dream of a one-size-fits-all solution to low carbon just frankly don't understand the situation very well."
Many climate advocates and other environmental groups have begun to shift the focus of their activism against natural gas as coal generation fades in the United States. Moniz, who sits on the board of power generator Southern Co., said natural gas should be considered an enabler to move away from burning more carbon-intensive fuels. Moniz also supports advancing carbon capture technology, pushing for innovations in things such as energy storage to bolster renewable energy resources, direct capture projects to remove past emissions from the air and developing hydrogen-based energy resources.
"There's a whole spectrum of issues from deployment to some incentives to supply chain development to research and development for breakthrough technology that we have to look at as a system to get to a whole, net-zero energy economy," Moniz said.
A May 18 report from BW Research Partnership said the U.S. shed an estimated 958,500 energy-related jobs in April, bringing the total to 1.3 million jobs lost in the field from the beginning of the pandemic to the end of April.
The International Energy Agency said May 27 that the pandemic has led to the biggest fall in global energy investment in history. Investment in the energy space was on track for 2% growth at the start of 2020 but is now expected to plummet 20%, or almost $400 billion, compared with 2019.
"The historic plunge in global energy investment is deeply troubling for many reasons," IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in the agency's release. "It means lost jobs and economic opportunities today, as well as lost energy supply that we might well need tomorrow once the economy recovers. The slowdown in spending on key clean energy technologies also risks undermining the much-needed transition to more resilient and sustainable energy systems."
Birol also advocates accelerating an energy transition using government stimulus programs, some of which he detailed in the previous episode of the "Energy Evolution" podcast.
Episodes of "Energy Evolution" are available on iTunes, Spotify and other platforms.