The United States still gets most of its energy by setting millions of tiny fires everywhere. Cars, trucks, homes and factories all burn fossil fuels in countless engines, furnaces and boilers, creating pollution that heats the planet. To tackle climate change, those machines will need to stop polluting. And the best way to do that, experts increasingly say, is to replace them with electric versions — cars, heating systems and factories that run on clean sources of electricity like wind, solar or nuclear power.
But electrifying almost everything is a formidable task.
To electrify industry, perhaps the biggest hurdle is the lack of incentives. Tax credits exist for electric cars and home heat pumps, but it has largely ignored the industrial sector, whose energy use is expected to keep growing. How electrification became a major tool for fighting climate change.
Transforming the economy so that more things run on clean electricity is a cornerstone of President Biden’s plan to slash emissions to nearly zero by 2050.
The New York Times used data from Evolved Energy Research, an energy modeling firm, to visualize what the nation’s energy use might look like in 2050 if the United States were able to meet the president’s climate change goals, using technology available today or just over the horizon, while minimizing costs.
Read the full article here.
