CACOR Live | Jay Coggins | Meeting the Climate Challenge: Cheap but Not Easy

Twenty years ago, it was true that a rapid transition away from fossil fuels looked to be prohibitively expensive. That old perspective is no longer convincing. Renewable energy sources like wind and solar have become so cheap that the switch to clean, carbon-free energy now makes sense from a strictly economic point of view. If we’re smart about it, energy will be cheaper in the renewable future than it is today. The intermittency challenge (it’s not always windy or sunny) is being met by grid-scale battery storage systems that have also become much cheaper. The main challenge is not economic, and it’s not technology either. The main challenge comes from political resistance by a fossil sector that wants to continue pumping oil and gas, and digging coal. That’s what they do. A real political battle lies ahead, but there is hope in the evidence that powerful economic forces are in favor of saving our climate for future generations.

Biography:

Jay Coggins, PhD is a Distinguished University Teaching Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Minnesota. He has taught at Montana State University and the University of Wisconsin. Professor Coggins’s research interests are primarily in environmental economics and environmental policy, especially related to air pollution and climate. He has published his work in several leading journals, including the Review of Energy and Environment, the Journal of the Association of Environmental Economists, and the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, where he was Associate Editor for four years.

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