From the beginning, federal climate politics in the US have been dominated by symbolism and signaling. Republicans dismiss climate change or call it a liberal plot. Democrats say, “We believe in science!” Activists argue over long-term targets and who cares most.

With the brief exception of 2009-2010, when the Waxman-Markey climate bill was up for debate, the national focus rarely stays for long on the nuts and bolts of policy itself.

Lately, though, climate change has become, according to a recent CNN poll, the single most important issue to Democratic primary voters. After years and years of stumbling along as a second- or third- (or tenth-) tier concern, it’s finally getting its moment in the spotlight.

The Green New Deal and the grassroots energy behind it have ensured that every one of the Democrats running for president will be forced to prioritize climate change. There’s finally going to be a policy discussion.

All right, we’re transitioning off fossil fuels. How? Where are we starting, how are we sequencing, and what tools are we using?

Most of the candidates are not ready to talk about it. Their hearts are in the right place, for the most part, but they don’t have much depth on the issue and don’t speak on it with much authenticity. Very few national Democrats really do. You don’t have to know much to say, “I believe in science.”

Last week, 2020 hopeful Beto O’Rourke opened the climate-policy bidding with a climate plan. It’s a somewhat peculiar creature, best described by Julian Noisecat of the think tank Data For Progress: It reads “like the movement had a baby with a consultant.”

That’s dead on, with both positive and less positive implications.

In the positive column, it is quite clear that the Green New Deal and the movement behind it have indelibly shaped the Democratic primary. Beto’s plan targets economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050, proposes a moratorium on oil and gas leasing, promises to prioritize frontline communities, and headlines $5 trillion in investments. All of that bears the imprint of the GND. The consultant-speak, focus on leveraging private investment, and attention to the incremental possibilities of executive power to create a kind of gloss over the proposal, help it appeal to normies.  In the less positive column, it feels like a product of the moment, designed to tick various boxes. I don’t hear any singular sensibility or coherent approach in it, something that might offer a hint of how O’Rourke would prioritize as president.

All of which brings us to Washington governor and presidential contender Jay Inslee, who on Friday released the first of what he promises will be a series of proposals on climate policy. Together, they will form what he calls his Climate Mission agenda.

It is probably fair to say that Inslee is not a favorite to win the Democratic contest. But if this first salvo is any indication, he is at the very least going to substantially elevate the level of climate policy debate. This is policy made by a team that’s been sweating over the details for years, bringing a level of sophistication and experience that is much needed.

All the policy discussion may all be for naught if Democrats fail to take Inslee’s advice and kill the Senate filibuster. But Democrats need the debate regardless, to be better prepared whenever a window of opportunity opens.

Step one of Climate Mission: electricity, new cars, and new buildings

The Climate Mission agenda will target economy-wide net-zero carbon emissions “as fast as possible, and by no later than 2045.” (The Sunrise Movement activists behind the GND feel strongly that the US should target net-zero by 2030.)

That’s the overall goal. But the focus of the agenda will be a ten-year mobilization, per the GND. That will involve an array of policies targeted at various sectors, which the campaign will release over the coming months.

The first piece is the “100 percent Clean Energy for America Plan.” It lays out high-level targets for 2030:

• 100 percent carbon-neutral electricity;
• 100 percent zero-emissions in new vehicles and construction
  • 100% clean light- and medium-duty vehicles and all buses
  • 100% zero-carbon pollution in all new commercial and residential buildings

Collectively, electricity, transportation, and buildings are responsible for 70 percent of US carbon emissions, so in many ways this is the central and most significant plant of the agenda. (The campaign promises policy on existing vehicles and existing buildings — in many ways trickier problems — in subsequent proposals.)

Let’s look at a few quick highlights from each area.

Getting the carbon out of electricity

Here, Inslee’s policy is modeled after the 100-percent-clean bill his own state of Washington just passed. It sets a clean energy standard (CES) whereby all utilities must deliver carbon-neutral power by 2030 and 100 percent “clean, renewable and zero-emission” electricity by 2035.

Two notes. First, “carbon neutral” is a specific term of art. It means that if utilities fall short of 100 percent clean electricity in 2030, they can make up the difference by investing in other carbon-reducing projects, like, say, energy efficiency retrofits for customers. It’s a clever way to induce non-federal investment in those projects.

Second, the language here — “clean, renewable and zero-emission” — pointedly leaves room for hydro, nuclear, and fossil fuels or biomass with carbon capture, a small-c catholic approach to “clean energy” that I think makes sense. 

Getting to zero-carbon electricity also involves a host of complementary policies:

• offering refundable tax credits for clean-energy projects, tied to job-quality standards, such that developers can only get the full credit if they make good-faith efforts to pay union wages, hire union labor, seek out woman- and minority-owned contractors, etc.; this both spurs clean energy development and ensures that it creates high-quality jobs;
• investing in frontline communities (like communities where coal plants are shut down) for worker and community transition assistance and community-based projects;
• working with utilities to encourage on-bill financing of efficiency and distributed energy projects;
• accelerating the evolution toward performance-based utility regulation (more on PBR in this post);
• increasing renewable energy development on federal lands and waters;
• expanding existing federal energy financing programs like the Department of Energy Loan Guarantee Program;
• expanding the long-distance transmission system to better distribute renewable energy (here, in particular, Inslee’s team shows its familiarity with existing regulatory structures and how they can be tweaked to perform better; there’s a reference to “Dynamic Line Ratings,” a phrase you probably won’t hear again in the primary).

This is good stuff, centered on what ought to be the first item on any serious national climate agenda: a CES that gets to zero-carbon electricity as fast as possible. Clean power will make everything else easier. It’s technologically feasible, and there are state models for how to do it, including Washington.

Also, it can be used as a lever to move the transportation sector. Speaking of which …

Getting the carbon out of new cars

Inslee’s policy focuses on “new light-duty passenger vehicles, medium-duty trucks, and buses,” which together represent about 70 percent of transportation emissions.

The centerpiece here is cranking up CAFE standards until they effectively mandate 100 percent zero-emission vehicles (ZEVs) for all new sales in 2030 forward. (This is, notably, something within the president’s power to do without Congress, though it will by no means be easy or straightforward.)

That core piece is again attended by a host of complementary policies:

• a national low-carbon fuels standard (LCFS), which would encourage low-emissions transportation fuels
• investments in the US ZEV manufacturing base and in battery recycling
• expanded ZEV tax credits and feebates
• a “Clean Cars for Clunkers” program that would establish “fuel-economy based trade-in rebates for consumers to exchange their fuel-inefficient cars or trucks for new ZEVs”
• rapid electrification of the federal vehicle fleet and efforts to work with states to do the same for state fleets
• massive investment in EV charging infrastructure
• federal financing for state and local efforts to retire gas and diesel buses in exchange for electric buses (which, as I have argued, are going to be the cutting edge of the EV market)

This stepwise increase in the market for electric vehicles will work in sync with clean electricity to tackle two of the biggest carbon problems at once. And cleaner, quieter vehicles — especially quieting the incessant din of city buses — will provide an immediate and tangible benefit to the public.

This leaves plenty in transportation (notably heavy trucks and airplanes) untouched for now. The campaign promises subsequent policy on that stuff and, crucially, on efforts to reduce vehicle use through urban density and public transit. But this is a solid foundation.

Getting the carbon out of new buildings

Finally, full decarbonization means squeezing the carbon emissions out of buildings, one of the most difficult challenges of all. Efforts on that score have already begun at the state level, including in Washington, and Inslee’s policy builds on those efforts.

The centerpiece is the creation of a national Zero-Carbon Building Standard by 2023, working with states to integrate it into state and local codes, along with stronger federal incentives for states and cities to adopt building “stretch codes.” (Los Angeles recently announced a similar plan, targeting all zero-carbon new buildings by 2030.)

Again, along with that comes a suite of complementary policies:

• eliminating fossil fuel use in “all new and renovated federal buildings” by 2023
• accelerating appliance energy efficiency standards and promoting zero-emission appliances
• establishing tax incentives for energy efficiency and electrification in new residential and commercial construction
• increasing financing for upgrades of schools and public buildings
• renewing the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant (EECBG) Program to help fund local zero-carbon construction projects
• some even wonkier stuff, about REITs and ESPCs and what have you

The is a push-and-pull approach, with stronger building and efficiency standards pushing and greater federal funding and investment pulling. As I said, it leaves aside the rather more difficult task of what to do about the carbon emissions of existing buildings, but the campaign promises to address that in the next tranche of policies.

Getting into the policy details can make radicalism seem more manageable

The problem with climate debates waged over symbolism is that they encourage everyone to retreat to their identity-based camps and dig in.

Nothing can entirely prevent polarization in these most polarized of times, but one thing that can help dampen it is to take the discussion out of the clouds, out of the realm of competing symbols, and into the dirt and soil of policy work.

Approach a small city and tell it socialists are coming to steal its cows, you’ll get backlash. Tell it there’s a national push to decarbonize buildings underway, and that there will be an array of regulatory sticks and investment carrots ensuring that everyone moves along together, and that the city can prosper — economically and reputationally — by adopting stretch goals and outpacing other cities … it’s just a different kind of conversation.

Policy, even if people don’t track the details, implicitly makes all the grand goals and targets seem more tangible and achievable. “Decarbonize by 2050” is unwieldy, almost purely symbolic to most people. But a program of sticks and carrots — tightened vehicle fuel-economy and fuel carbon-intensity standards coupled with investments to stand up US ZEV manufacturing capacity and make ZEVs cheaper for consumers — well, that you can wrap your head around. That you can begin to envision.

Policy is how we stop discussing “whether” and start discussing “how.” Mainstream Democrats need to become more fluent in this policy language and familiar with these policy options. Perhaps Inslee’s thoughtful proposals will, if nothing else, spur the other candidates to devote the resources and staffing to this area of policy that it deserves. It’s time to raise the bar.

Buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of the greenhouse gases in the US. Those emissions come, in part, from the fossil fuels (primarily natural gas these days but also heating oil) burned to heat (and cool) the water and space inside buildings.

 Central & Wolfe

That means the solution, alongside reducing and eliminating emissions from the electricity sector, is getting all those heating and cooling systems replaced by systems that are hooked up to the grid. In other words: electrification. (Electrify everything!) Happily for nervous conservatives, most of this work will be done by the private sector, guided by public regulation, so your home will not be invaded by jackbooted efficiency thugs.

I wrote about the need for building electrification last month, in the context of some news out of California (a new alliance formed to advance best practice in the space). California is, unsurprisingly, leading the pack on building electrification, but word is spreading and more and more jurisdictions are beginning to investigate or implement electrification programs.

The range and ambition of these programs puts the lie to conservative fears: It’s difficult, but tackling the building sector is possible. And it’s happening without federal bureaucrats.

Here are six jurisdictions taking the lead.

1) California

Last year, then-Gov. Jerry Brown signed an executive order that targeted statewide net-zero carbon emissions by 2045. Buildings are about 25 percent of state emissions, so that necessarily means building decarbonization.

Accordingly, the legislature subsequently passed a law (AB 3232) mandating that the state’s building sector reduce its emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, and another (SB 1477) establishing a system to encourage the market for low-carbon building technologies.

In December, the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC) approved $50 million in utility investment in clean, all-electric building for low-income residents in the San Joaquin Valley.

 Meritage Homes

The city of San Jose has implemented building standards requiring all new residential buildings to be net-carbon-neutral by 2020, and all commercial buildings by 2030. (See also this great op-ed on electrification from San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo.) Marin County and Palo Alto have also tweaked their standards to encourage electrification.

The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is offering its 1.5 million customers rebates for heat pumps, induction cooktops, and other electrification investments, which, combined with other market trends, has made all-electric construction the default for new residential buildings in Sacramento.

And then there’s Berkeley, where this is brewing:

View image on Twitter

Justin Gerdes

✔@JustinGerdes

.@CityofBerkeley Councilmember @KateHarrisonD4 introduced an ordinance on Monday that “prohibits builders from applying for building permits that include establishing new or connecting to existing gas utility service for heat water, space, food etc.”

7:01 PM – Feb 27, 2019

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One intriguing side tale here. The Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) has generally been a bad actor in the electrification push, for obvious reasons: Electrification would mean lots less natural gas.

But the threat of electrification has pushed it to accelerate its renewable natural gas (RNG) program. RNG is derived from various forms of organic or agricultural waste, from landfills, dairies, and the like. It is carbon-neutral or carbon-negative, since it recycles gases that would have been released to the atmosphere anyway.

SoCalGas has pledged to replace 20 percent of its gas with RNG by 2030. It cites a studyshowing that doing so would reduce more greenhouse gases than fully electrifying all of California’s buildings, two or three times more cost-effectively (though it acknowledges that much of the RNG would need to be imported from other states).

Energy wonks are divided on the promise of RNG. On one hand, it would be extremely helpful to have a drop-in substitute for natural gas — switching out fuels is a lot easier than switching out machines. On the other hand, the total potential for RNG is limited. It will never be enough to decarbonize the natural gas system. So why spend years building the infrastructure?

One way or another, this is an interesting tug-of-war to watch.

 SoCalGas

2) New York City

Notice how many of the building initiatives being announced these days deal with newbuildings, where net-zero construction is relatively cost-competitive. But the real problem in most places, especially older cities, is existing buildings and their already installed equipment. Replacing that stuff is more difficult and expensive.

New York City is about to become one of the first big cities in the world to grapple with this problem squarely.

Some 90 percent of the 2050 building stock in the city has already been built. And in the aggregate, buildings are responsible for 70 percent of the city’s emissions. There is no way for NYC to reach its long-term goal of 80 percent carbon reductions by 2050 without tackling existing buildings.

The city council is now considering a remarkable bill, championed by Queens Council member Costa Constantinides, that would mandate a 40 percent reduction in emissions from large buildings by 2030, rising to 80 percent by 2050.

In an excellent deep dive, the Nation’s Sophie Kasakove reports:

[The bill] would do this by mandating hefty fuel-efficiency upgrades for all buildings that are 25,000 square feet or larger — a category includes more than 50,000 buildings. That’s only a fraction of the city’s million-building inventory, but a little can go a long way when it comes to emissions: According to a report by New York Communities for Change, the People’s Climate Movement NY, and other local environmental advocacy organizations, 50 percent of the city’s climate-altering emissions are produced by just 2 percent of buildings.

The bill would also create an Office of Building Energy Performance to monitor compliance and levy penalties for failure to hit these (mandatory!) standards.

Wikipedia

New York City’s powerful landlord associations have succeeded in bottling up this bill for years, but with the addition of supplementary legislation that would establish a loan program for landlords to make upgrades, it is widely expected to pass this time, as early as next month. And Mayor Bill De Blasio, who has been supportive of the bill, is expected to sign it.

Among the buildings certain to be affected: several Trump properties. Expect officials from New York City — Resistance Central — to make much of that fact if the bill passes. Perhaps it will occasion a few presidential tweets.

3) Washington, DC

The nation’s capitol, which unjustly remains not a state, has taken some incredibly ambitious steps on climate change. Last December, it passed some of the strongest clean energy requirements in the country. Among other things, the omnibus bill requires a 100 percent renewable energy supply by 2032 (the fastest such goal in the US) and pledges the district to total carbon neutrality by 2050.

And it would tackle buildings, which represent 74 percent of the city’s emissions. The bill expands and strengthens a mandatory program of benchmarks and minimum standards for whole-building energy performance, which will apply to buildings all the way down to 10,000 square feet.

A special task force will spend the next two years establishing these Building Energy Performance Standard (BEPS) for each category of building.

 Hickok Cole

As for financing, the city is kicking in $40 million more to its newly established Green Bank, which helps fund clean energy projects. These and other financing tools, like the DC Sustainable Energy Utility, will help DC’s building owners make the substantial investments needed to hit its targets.

4) Washington state

Democrats now have control of both houses of Washington’s legislature, and in December, governor (and presidential candidate) Jay Inslee introduced an aggressive suite of climate and clean energy bills, which would, among other things, commit the state to 100 percent clean electricity by 2045.

Another of the bills contains a clean-buildings policy that would:

• Establish building “stretch codes” that local municipalities could adopt if they’re feeling ambitious (and give municipalities the authority to adopt them)
• Invest around $78 million of public money in a range of net-zero buildings and programs, including leveraging state-owned building stock
• Implement an incentive program for early movers
• Establish new performance standards for commercial buildings, equipment, and natural gas use

Just 27 percent of the state’s emissions come from buildings (cars are the big problem in these parts), but deep decarbonization means getting started on it now.

 Bullitt Center

The bills are working their way through the legislature. The 100 percent electricity bill recently passed the Senate and will now move to the House; the clean-buildings bill will get a vote in the House next week and then move to the Senate.

5) Massachusetts

Massachusetts has always been a national leader in energy efficiency, but it upped its game again in January, passing a three-year energy efficiency plan that recognizes the benefits of electrification.

For the first time, the state’s utilities will offer financial incentives for “fuel switching” — leaving behind the oil and propane boilers common in the region in favor of air source heat pumps.

There are also several bills in the state legislature that would affect buildings. One, H 2836, would target economy-wide renewable energy by 2045. Another three would boost heat pump deployment, establish a program to publicize and train a workforce for electrification, and integrate incentives for electrification into zoning law.

 AIA

Elsewhere in Massachusetts, the city of Boston is working on an update to its Climate Plan(due this summer). It is expected to draw on a report it commissioned in January, showing that two-thirds of the city’s emissions are produced by buildings.

Among the three strategies the report recommends (alongside energy efficiency and purchasing 100 percent clean energy) is electrifying the building stock as much as possible — which will be no small feat in a city rich with very old, very famous, and very leaky buildings.

6) Honorable mention

A list like this can’t hope to be comprehensive — there’s too much going on! — but here are a few runners-up to fill things out.

Buildings generate 65 percent of the emissions in Minneapolis, but the city has ambitious climate goals and a history as a leader in energy efficiency. It is focusing tightly on efficiencybut has also formed an innovative Clean Energy Partnership with its electric and gas utilities, focused on offering customers alternatives to fossil fuel heat.

The city of Boulder, Colorado, though fairly small (around 100,000 people), is doing cutting edge work in this area. It has vowed an 80 percent drop in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050; in order to do that, it’s going to have to replace all the natural gas furnaces heating homes. To that end, it has developed a sophisticated tool for modeling the energy use of each detached home in the city, enabling it to create a “Roadmap to Renewable Living” for each participating homeowner. It’s part of a comprehensive program for building electrification that aims to reduce residential natural gas use by 85 percent by 2050.

 RMI

The city of Boise, Idaho, has a massive geothermal system — the largest in the nation — that carries heated water from a batholith (a large mass of cooled magma) underneath the nearby mountains to buildings in the downtown core. About a third of downtown buildings heat their space and water this way. The city is now seeking to expand the system and get more buildings hooked up, part of a larger plan to power the city with renewables by 2040. (Where geothermal is available, it is quite cheap, especially when designed in concert with district heating systems and hooked up to new buildings. Don’t sleep on geothermal!)

Finally, and this is slightly cheating, but attention must be paid to Vancouver, British Columbia, just north of the US border. The city has an ambitious plan to completely decarbonize — electricity, transportation, and buildings — by 2050. (Read my interview with the city manager about the challenge.) The city has done extensive planning around the goal, involving some deep and fascinating research on buildings. The focus, other than old-fashioned energy efficiency, is to try to get as many buildings as possible hooked up to the city’s district heating system, which will be shifted to renewable biomass. Vancouver has been at this for several years now, so it is serving as a preview of the challenges facing all the cities above.

So there you have it! The long, difficult, and labor-intensive task of shifting the nation’s building stock to zero-carbon sources of heating and cooling has begun. For now, it’s only a few trailblazers really tackling the challenge head on, but as the leaders learn and develop best practices, expect the effort to spread.

Conservatives don’t believe the US can do something big like this. Across the country, state and city leaders are beginning to prove them wrong.

Further reading:

• This year, a new version of America’s model building energy code, which will eventually find its way into federal standards, will be developed in in Albuquerque and Las Vegas. You can read the whole story from the Alliance to Save Energy, but the long and short of it is that the once-every-three-years process will produce a new International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), and “thanks to a citation tucked away in federal statute (42 U.S.C. §6933), the latest version of the IECC becomes the basis for federal energy efficiency policy for buildings.” Worth following!
• The best work on “beneficial electrification” has come out of the Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP), which has a whole series of papers diving into electrification of various sectors.
• Here’s the NRDC on beneficial electrification.
• Here’s the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) on it.
• Turns out there’s a Beneficial Electrification League.