[Episode #101] – What We Don’t Know About Energy Transition

In this live conversation recorded at Stanford Energy Week in January 2019, Chris Nelder hosts a freewheeling chat with Jonathan Koomey about some of the things we think we know, and a lot of the things we don’t know about energy transition. They talked about: * the vogue concept in energy transition to “electrify everything,” sometimes also called “deep decarbonization” * energy efficiency * conservation * electrification * low-carbon fuels * how to reduce greenhouse gases that are not the products of combustion * the fast-changing trends in electric vehicles, and how we’re going to accommodate the loads of EVs on the power grid * the ways to move space heating and other thermal loads over to the power grid, and how we might be able to meet those needs without combustion or electrification * how much electricity storage we’ll really need in a deeply decarbonized future * how much seasonal storage we’ll need, and what kinds * differences between economic optimizations made today for a future 20-30 years off and technical optimizations made along the way * what the options might look like in 20-30 years, particularly if we are at the beginning of a vigorous and deliberate energy transition * whether space heating, transportation, and other loads might find themselves in competition for economic carrying capacity on the grid as they become electrified. So join us for this wide-ranging romp through some of the more interesting questions in energy transition!