100% Renewable Energy Panel Recap
On Thursday November 17th, Georgetown Renewable Environment and Energy Network (GREEN) hosted a panel in conjunction with the DC office of Environment America. The panel featured advocacy and activism for the Congressman’s Grijalva’s bill for 100% renewable energy, a piece of legislation formed in the hopeful glow of the Paris climate agreements, a rapidly changing energy market, and political momentum for American commitment to the environment. GREEN and Environment America had arranged the panel under similar conditions, but recent events had shifted the political climate. Instead of an expected Democratic victory, Republican candidate Donald Trump won the presidency about a week earlier, and in his short time as President-Elect, appointed Myron Ebell, well-known climate change denier, as his transition team leader of the EPA. Despite the changes, however, the panel seemed cautiously optimistic.
“I never believed change would come from federal legislation,” said Arjun Makhijani, President of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research.
The prevailing consensus was that market forces would continue to do their work, so long as Trump’s promised coal subsidies wouldn’t alter the balance. Solar energy, it seems has begun to beat coal in the dollar-for-dollar race in energy.
Anna Aurilio, DC Director of Environment America, stressed that these changes would occur worldwide with or without American leadership. Germany, a country with less sunlight than Seattle, already has heavily invested and expanded the solar panel industry, becoming leaders in a market that Americans used to own. The Chinese are doing similar, creating more efficient panels for less money than American companies were able to. The panelists emphasized that it’s good for both Americans and the world if the US would take leadership on renewable energy, but that if Americans wouldn’t, than other countries would take on those leadership roles.
Particularly interesting was the Q and A, where many specific questions on energy implementation came up. One individual asked about fracking, while another asked about the potential for nuclear fusion. Here, Arjun Makhikani was particularly impressive, putting his engineering degree to work with intensely thoughtful and detailed responses that catered to the thrust of the questioner. When I asked about the future of science, and scientists’ duties in the coming years, his answer was thoughtful and measured. While Anna Aurilio and Felipe Floresca praised the sciences and their importance, they didn’t really address the changing landscape of climate change – they saw science as an unchanging entity, responsible for informing the public, but not much beyond that. Arjun’s answer did more.
“In my opinion, scientists have not done their job so far. While they have done a good job of researching and understanding, they do not do such a good job on informing and communicating to the public. Have you read the IPCC Report? Even I have to go over it several times before I understood it.”
Arjun emphasized an important focus for those of us in the Environmental Biology major. The world exists beyond the laboratory, and it’s part of our job to inform that world as best we can.