thank you—strongly upvoted for quality of exchange!
In the interest of time (this has to be my last comment), I ignore the smaller disagreements and focus on what seem like the two cruxes we have here (opposite sequence in your comment, but I think answering in this order is easier here):
(a) Does PTC or PTC-likeness causally drive adoption?
(b) Are clean energy technologies a good comparator?
On (a), here is a visual from the latest IPCC report:
Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but we know from many richer accounts than those simplistic curve displays that the story usually goes (a) high-income country heavily subsidizes R&D and/or deployment of tech, (b) tech gets cheaper, (c) we get a self-amplifying dynamic that drives cost reductions and adoptions, (d) an increasing share of adoption is in countries without those high subsidies, i.e. in settings where the cost reductions (P) but also other improvements (e.g. C-like range for electric cars) drive increased adoption, i.e. it is not just “green subsidies everywhere, all at once” but rather “green subsidies drive cost reductions that enable global diffusion”.
For example, I don’t think anyone doubts that solar will expand massively and that this was causally enabled by cost reductions which were a function of early investments. It is clear that the world could have turned out different here for example if the conservatives had won the German elections in 1998.
On (b), if I understand you correctly you seem to be saying that there are a lot of food-specific considerations that make food special and clean energy comparators inappropriate. That may be and I am not a food system expert enough to weigh the Thanksgiving holiday vs. other forms of cultural lock-in for fossil fuels.
But I would be a bit cautious here as well because there are also many ways in which the food transition is easier than the energy transition so I think a list of ways in which the food transition feels less tractable feels incomplete. Here are a couple of ways how food could be easier: alternative proteins are a better meat replacement than renewables are replacements for coal (no equivalent to intermittency), the food industry is smaller and less powerful than the energy industry, changing protein sourcing is easier than changes in the energy system that require more infrastructure, etc. The point here is that I think focusing on particular considerations only becomes really convincing, I think, when you do a fairly complete accounting in all directions.
My personal take is that including evidence from technologies that have undergone those transitions feels important and that the lack of comparability because they are of a different domain is indeed a limitation but that the effects from undergone transitions provide important additional evidence to form expectations about the future.
Ditto, really appreciate your taking the time to so thoughtfully engage. :) A good day on the Forum! I’ll try to wrap up here as well.
(a) Thanks for this reference—I wasn’t aware of it! This definitely seems like useful evidence in the right direction and I agree with the XKCD’s comic sentiment. That said, it seems like there are still many possible contingencies where price might be a partial rather than full cause. This seems like a ripe area for further research.
(b) I agree, my list is incomplete, and these are good considerations. By the same token, I am no expert in clean power, so hadn’t thought about some of these challenges like intermittency. Along the same lines of this issue, focusing only on successful technologies also introduces a bias—for example, I imagine a similar graph as above which included nuclear would tell a different story.
I also agree there’s evidence to be gleaned from studying other sustainability technologies; we certainly shouldn’t ignore these other transitions. But I would like to see them studied more rigorously and systematically, including positive and negative instances; analogies and disanalogies; and contemporary techniques in causal inference.
I also think that the energy tech analogy might be useful, in particular the case of solar panels, which, unlike nuclear and other energy sources, are also consumer products that went from “rich persons vanity project” to “you’d be dumb not to buy one”.
Decades ago, solar cells were highly expensive, and mainly used for niche applications. There was environmentalists pressure towards clean energy, but the high cost meant only a few wealthy enthusiasts would undergo the switch, and the industry was small and non-influential.
The environmentalist movement was influential in changing this in several ways, first by getting funding for R&D into developing cheaper, more efficient solar panels, second by subsidizing solar energy so it was more cost competitive for consumers, third by encouraging governments to directly build solar farms, and fourth by increasing public support for clean energy so people felt good about buying solar.
The result of this was a feedback loop. Solar was cheaper to buy, and more fashionable, so more people bought it. And the more people bought it, the cheaper solar got, thanks to mass production techniques, so the more people bought it. And then the industry became large and influential. Eventually, solar became cost-competitive without subsidies in many places, so consumers felt it was a good investment, and then everyone in the neighborhood had it, so it became a normal thing that everyone did. (I’m thinking here of parts of australia where pretty much everyone has solar).
I wonder if you polled people about switching to solar in 1990, whether they might seem as reluctant as people are about substitute meat today.
The big difference between PTC meat-substitutes and solar might be in the effect of mass production: could a “feedback loop” of cheaper meat-substitutes causing more consumption causing cheaper meat-substitutes occur? I think there could also be a social feedback loop, where the more people go veggie, the more normalised it becomes, leading more people to go veggie, etc.
In my (non-expert) opinion, PTC in addition to public pressure and opinion changing movements could be much more effective than either of the two on their own. It seems obviously easier to persuade people to make easier changes, but you actually have to persuade them.
Hi Jacob,
thank you—strongly upvoted for quality of exchange!
In the interest of time (this has to be my last comment), I ignore the smaller disagreements and focus on what seem like the two cruxes we have here (opposite sequence in your comment, but I think answering in this order is easier here):
(a) Does PTC or PTC-likeness causally drive adoption?
(b) Are clean energy technologies a good comparator?
On (a), here is a visual from the latest IPCC report:
Of course, correlation does not equal causation, but we know from many richer accounts than those simplistic curve displays that the story usually goes (a) high-income country heavily subsidizes R&D and/or deployment of tech, (b) tech gets cheaper, (c) we get a self-amplifying dynamic that drives cost reductions and adoptions, (d) an increasing share of adoption is in countries without those high subsidies, i.e. in settings where the cost reductions (P) but also other improvements (e.g. C-like range for electric cars) drive increased adoption, i.e. it is not just “green subsidies everywhere, all at once” but rather “green subsidies drive cost reductions that enable global diffusion”.
For example, I don’t think anyone doubts that solar will expand massively and that this was causally enabled by cost reductions which were a function of early investments. It is clear that the world could have turned out different here for example if the conservatives had won the German elections in 1998.
On (b), if I understand you correctly you seem to be saying that there are a lot of food-specific considerations that make food special and clean energy comparators inappropriate.
That may be and I am not a food system expert enough to weigh the Thanksgiving holiday vs. other forms of cultural lock-in for fossil fuels.
But I would be a bit cautious here as well because there are also many ways in which the food transition is easier than the energy transition so I think a list of ways in which the food transition feels less tractable feels incomplete. Here are a couple of ways how food could be easier: alternative proteins are a better meat replacement than renewables are replacements for coal (no equivalent to intermittency), the food industry is smaller and less powerful than the energy industry, changing protein sourcing is easier than changes in the energy system that require more infrastructure, etc. The point here is that I think focusing on particular considerations only becomes really convincing, I think, when you do a fairly complete accounting in all directions.
My personal take is that including evidence from technologies that have undergone those transitions feels important and that the lack of comparability because they are of a different domain is indeed a limitation but that the effects from undergone transitions provide important additional evidence to form expectations about the future.
Ditto, really appreciate your taking the time to so thoughtfully engage. :) A good day on the Forum! I’ll try to wrap up here as well.
(a) Thanks for this reference—I wasn’t aware of it! This definitely seems like useful evidence in the right direction and I agree with the XKCD’s comic sentiment. That said, it seems like there are still many possible contingencies where price might be a partial rather than full cause. This seems like a ripe area for further research.
(b) I agree, my list is incomplete, and these are good considerations. By the same token, I am no expert in clean power, so hadn’t thought about some of these challenges like intermittency. Along the same lines of this issue, focusing only on successful technologies also introduces a bias—for example, I imagine a similar graph as above which included nuclear would tell a different story.
I also agree there’s evidence to be gleaned from studying other sustainability technologies; we certainly shouldn’t ignore these other transitions. But I would like to see them studied more rigorously and systematically, including positive and negative instances; analogies and disanalogies; and contemporary techniques in causal inference.
I also think that the energy tech analogy might be useful, in particular the case of solar panels, which, unlike nuclear and other energy sources, are also consumer products that went from “rich persons vanity project” to “you’d be dumb not to buy one”.
Decades ago, solar cells were highly expensive, and mainly used for niche applications. There was environmentalists pressure towards clean energy, but the high cost meant only a few wealthy enthusiasts would undergo the switch, and the industry was small and non-influential.
The environmentalist movement was influential in changing this in several ways, first by getting funding for R&D into developing cheaper, more efficient solar panels, second by subsidizing solar energy so it was more cost competitive for consumers, third by encouraging governments to directly build solar farms, and fourth by increasing public support for clean energy so people felt good about buying solar.
The result of this was a feedback loop. Solar was cheaper to buy, and more fashionable, so more people bought it. And the more people bought it, the cheaper solar got, thanks to mass production techniques, so the more people bought it. And then the industry became large and influential. Eventually, solar became cost-competitive without subsidies in many places, so consumers felt it was a good investment, and then everyone in the neighborhood had it, so it became a normal thing that everyone did. (I’m thinking here of parts of australia where pretty much everyone has solar).
I wonder if you polled people about switching to solar in 1990, whether they might seem as reluctant as people are about substitute meat today.
The big difference between PTC meat-substitutes and solar might be in the effect of mass production: could a “feedback loop” of cheaper meat-substitutes causing more consumption causing cheaper meat-substitutes occur? I think there could also be a social feedback loop, where the more people go veggie, the more normalised it becomes, leading more people to go veggie, etc.
In my (non-expert) opinion, PTC in addition to public pressure and opinion changing movements could be much more effective than either of the two on their own. It seems obviously easier to persuade people to make easier changes, but you actually have to persuade them.