Environmental Science and Engineering Seminar

"Electrify Everything" is widely believed to be a practical solution to climate change. However, even under a global generously estimated willingness to pay of $396 billion per year, there is no defensible economic pathway to complete electrification. Assuming only lower-cost solutions will scale fast enough to meet UN climate goals, I will present an economy-wide techno-economic analysis of dominant electrification approaches. I and my co-authors have found that transportation and building electrification could be lower cost than fueled approaches; however, some sectors would require a cost reduction equivalent to a four-fold reduction in US electricity prices and a 50% capital equipment cost reduction. With dominant strategies, we neither find a lower-cost nor a lower-than-willingness-to-pay electrification pathway for industry. A drastic shift in the energy technology research agenda is therefore necessary. I and my co-authors propose that electrothermal and cogeneration approaches could economically electrify everything provided low-cost CO2-free electricity becomes widely available. I will then expound on a specific solution to cement, steel, and aluminum emissions (~15% of global GHG emissions) which I have been working on through my capacity as co-founder and CEO of the startup Brimstone, a company that has received over $60M in venture funding from Bill Gates and others in addition to nearly $200M in government grants and commitments.