Climate change sidelined as America pivots to fossil-fuel-heavy future

“This is not the time for energy transition, this is the time for energy addition,” said United States (US) Energy Secretary Chris Wright to cheering applause. He was speaking at one of the largest energy conferences, CERAWeek, in Houston last month, and the room was overflowing with heads of energy companies and other experts. Attending the week-long conference, it was clear to me that our world had changed. Still, it is important to understand what and why this complete rejection of climate-change policies is happening in a world that is warming rapidly with catastrophic weather impacts. This is not the time to bury our heads in the sand and think that the Donald Trump administration’s energy policy will not lead to massive changes in their world and ours.

 

What is its reasoning for this shift? First, the gross national debt of the US has reached $36 trillion; interest payments are larger than what the country spends on defence. So, the answer is to “re-industrialise” and not “deindustrialise”, in the words of the US energy secretary. This thrust on onshore manufacturing will require more energy and more energy infrastructure. Second, China has taken the lead in many new areas, from supply chains and manufacturing electric vehicles to solar. The Trump administration says it must not lose the artificial Intelligence (AI) race to China. This means building energy-intensive data centres at a pace not seen before. The country has some 5,000 data centres, which consume 3 per cent of its grid-based electricity. This is expected to exponentially increase, and data centres are projected to consume 8-12 per cent of electricity by the end of the decade. All of this means more power generation. 

Till now, as the country had reached its peak growth levels, electricity demand had more or less stagnated. Now it is expected to increase. Then, what will be the source of this “new” power generation? The Trump administration says it cannot depend on renewables to supply this electricity. Mr Wright told the audience that renewables met only 3 per cent of US energy demand in spite of the huge investment, and so the energy transition is not real. This, of course, is misleading because in terms of electricity generation, renewables have now overtaken coal in the US, contributing to 15-17 per cent of the electricity in the past year. But if all energy is taken as the measure — including the consumption of oil in transport and industry — the share of renewables in the energy mix decreases.

 

But this is not semantics for the Trump administration. It is convinced that there is a need for reversing the previous administration’s energy policies, which were “myopically focused on climate change”. It also says this has led to an increased cost of electricity, adding to the burden of households (again, there is no data on this but then the game is about perception and persuasion). So, energy growth will be from natural gas, a fossil fuel (and bringing back coal), and the US administration is fast-tracking all that is needed to increase its production and generation. This will add to emissions of greenhouse gases, but as the energy secretary said, carbon dioxide, unlike carbon monoxide, is not a pollutant. Climate change is just a footnote in the US’ plans. 

This is not to say that climate change is completely out of the door. In the US’ view, the export of natural gas, which is being pushed hard by the current administration, will displace coal in places like India because it is less polluting. There is also some talk of investment in mitigating methane emission from natural gas production and consumption — but less seriously, because there is really no driver for climate action left in this administration. The focus is now on nuclear power, particularly on small modular plants that could supply captive electricity to data centres. China (and Russia) is building hundreds of gigawatts of nuclear plants and it is “hoped” that the US will catch up, with either fusion or fission technology. But what is clear is that the promise of green hydrogen power is dead in the water. So, it’s back to brown energy and this time, with no apologies for the responsibility of the US in taking the world to climate jeopardy. 

This is really where the rubber hits the road. Instead of its proposed 50 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emission by 2030, in all likelihood, the country will increase its emission. The fact is the US has already overused its share of the global carbon budget; now it will gobble up more. What, then, happens to the rest of the world, particularly countries like India or the continent of Africa, which needs more energy for development? The plan was that countries like the US would decrease their share by making the transition out of fossil fuels. Now that the US is back with a vengeance, the guardrail of keeping the world below 1.5° centigrade temperature rise looks nearly impossible. 

I am writing all this not to depress you but to make it clear that we must not live in a fool’s paradise. This new brown-energy policy of the world’s largest historical polluter and second-highest greenhouse gas emitter annually will have horrendous ramifications. What should we do? Let’s continue to discuss this.

 

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The author is at the Centre for Science and Environment sunita@cseindia.org, X: @sunitanar