Living in Bomb Time — 29

We are moving too slowly.

We are going to need billions of these panels over the next 20 years.

Speeding up our clean energy build-out could reduce related emissions

The construction of wind and solar farms comes with a price. The energy for them comes from fossil fuels right now.

But, a rapid scale-up of these facilities could dramatically decrease related emissions, according to a new study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Adapting to increasing climate risks while deploying renewables to stabilize the climate will require large amounts of energy and materials, which will initially cause emissions. Fossil fuel energy use to deploy renewables contributes the vast majority of embedded emissions, with a much smaller contribution from adaptation.

As a result, embedded emissions increase substantially for slower decarbonization pathways.

However, when renewables are rapidly deployed, the ongoing transition can be powered by cleaner energy, minimizing embedded emissions. Our results demonstrate an underappreciated benefit of enhanced climate ambition and the importance of accounting for embedded transition emissions to achieve climate objectives.

Translation: What we should be doing is allocating all of the new PV produced to…