Read on Twitter
LONG THREAD
1. Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans provoked predictable attacks @TheBTI by some usual suspects. Most work in solar industry or for industry publications and demand we confess our sins against solar. Calling out @chrisnelder @SolarInMASS @Ben_Inskeep @perklevnas
1. Michael Moore's Planet of the Humans provoked predictable attacks @TheBTI by some usual suspects. Most work in solar industry or for industry publications and demand we confess our sins against solar. Calling out @chrisnelder @SolarInMASS @Ben_Inskeep @perklevnas
2. Because Twitter, many who identify as Team Solar or Team RE have simply accepted that there are sins to recant. So, here are those sins. Tell me, as @atrembath would say, ''where is the lie."
3. If your retort is to post something that @ShellenbergerMD wrote after 2015, you need to take that up with him. As noted earlier... https://twitter.com/TedNordhaus/status/1253429311056441350
4. Let's start with very first BTI whitepaper published w/ @tylerhnorris and @jeffnavin in 2008. Here we argued that present clean tech was too costly and that sustained public investment to make clean energy cheap was necessary. https://thebreakthrough.org/articles/fast-clean-and-cheap
5. Note we were not just calling for R&D, as many even at the time intentionally misrepresented our position (this will be a theme!!!) We called for a massive solar buy down among other things. Also advanced nuclear.
6. Skip ahead to 2010. In Post-Partisan Power, coauthored with @stevenfhayward and @MarkMuro1, we called for both reforming clean energy subsidies and scaling them up. $25 billion in subsidies and procurement annually for clean energy coauthored with @aei! https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/uploads.thebreakthrough.org/legacy/blog/Post-Partisan%20Power.pdf
7. We followed that up in 2011 with Beyond Boom and Bust, jointly published with @WorldResources and @BrookingsInst calling for reform, rationalization, and scaling up of clean energy subsidies to incentivize cost declines. Co-authors included @JesseJenkins and @ltawney
8. That same year, we published Energy Emergence, among first major lit reviews on energy efficiency rebound, lead author @JesseJenkins. That report argued that rebound effects were substantially higher than many advocates acknowledged. https://s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/uploads.thebreakthrough.org/legacy/blog/Energy_Emergence.pdf
9. The conclusions from Energy Emergence have now been broadly confirmed by IPCC, EU, and much further literature. A shift that I documented in @ISSUESinST in 2017. https://issues.org/the-energy-rebound-battle/
10. In 2013, we published two analyses that gained much notoriety among solar enthusiasts. The first, by @atrembath @J_Lovering and @max_energy found that the cost of German solar was 4x cost of Finland's Olkiluoto 3 reactor. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/cost-of-german-solar-is-four-times-finnish-nuclear
11. Note that we did not pick these two cases out of thin air. Leading green renewables advocates, including @billmckibben, were vociferously arguing that German solar miracle proved there was no need for nuclear and Olkiluoto was poster child for costly nuclear.
12. Note also that we did NOT argue that this meant we should cease policy support for solar. To contrary, Michael and I argued in @WSJ that falling costs of solar panels was a public policy success story that should be continued!!! https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323716304578482663491426312
13. The second 2013 analysis was published by @atrembath and argued leading solar advocates including @chrisnelder were wildly overestimating likely growth of solar in coming years. Alex is preparing a retrospective on full analysis but... https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/how-fast-are-the-costs-of-solar-really-coming-down
14. Nelder had predicted solar would surpass nuclear generation by 2020 accounting for 10%+ global electricity generation. Presently, nuclear generates 5x as much electricity. Solar accounts for about 2%. But see for yourself... and stay for the peak oil! https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/watts-up-vaclav
15. In 2015, @JesseJenkins and @atrembath published two analyses taking stock of RE progress and challenges. They showed RE shares lower at grid level than in leading states/nations and offered among first quantifications of value deflation problem. https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/wind-and-solar-how-far-weve-come
16. Thanks in large part to @JesseJenkins continuing work, value deflation is now recognized as a major economic challenge for high RE penetrations.
17. Also in 2015, we published the Ecomodernist Manifesto. The manifesto identified nuclear AND solar as two clean energy technologies that could scale to the multi-terawatt scales necessary for deep decarbonization. http://www.ecomodernism.org/manifesto-english
18. So this is the "bad" old @TheBTI that supposedly waged a "global disinformation" campaign against renewable energy. THAT is the lie, and the source of it is exactly those who've been pointing the finger.
19. Why the lie? Because what we really did attack was the delusion we could power a global economy of 10 billion people entirely with variable renewable energy. This idea sounds quaint to most of energy and climate twitter now but it was just a few short years ago the consensus.
20. So ask yourself why nobody but a few dead enders still believes in the 100% WWS fantasy? Progress, politically, analytically, and intellectually, has many fathers. But I think you'd be hard pressed to argue @TheBTI didn't have a lot to do with it. FIN/
