No Such Thing as “Transition” Fuels

Why we don’t believe in “tran­si­tion” fuels / technologies:

Nat­ur­al gas, nuclear pow­er, bio­mass, ethanol, hydro­gen and oth­er false solu­tions have been pro­mot­ed as tran­si­tion fuels or tech­nolo­gies. It is our asser­tion that there is no such thing.

A tran­si­tion is some­thing that gets us from A to C by going through B. When eco­nom­ic resources (pub­lic or pri­vate) are invest­ed in infra­struc­ture for nat­ur­al gas, bio­mass incin­er­a­tion, bio­fu­els or the like, this does­n’t bring us clos­er to the goal of meet­ing our ener­gy needs with con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind, solar and ocean pow­er. It actu­al­ly makes it hard­er to get to our goal. This is because:

1. The eco­nom­ic resources can be bet­ter spent by invest­ing direct­ly in con­ser­va­tion, effi­cien­cy, wind and solar. There is no need to wait for these. Ocean pow­er and some spe­cial wind and solar appli­ca­tions aren’t ready to com­mer­cial­ized on a mass scale yet, but they’re close and deserve invest­ment dol­lars to bring them to mar­ket as soon as possible.
2. They are an invest­ment dead-end. Build­ing nat­ur­al gas pow­er plants, “gasi­fi­ca­tion” trash incin­er­a­tors, cel­lu­losic ethanol pro­duc­tion plants or oth­er cap­i­tal-inten­sive false solu­tions do not help get us to our goal. These projects take mon­ey that could be spent on real solu­tions and waste them on projects that need to be paid off over 10 to 30 years. No project own­er is going to run such a plant for 5–10 years, tear it down, then build a con­cen­trat­ed solar pow­er facil­i­ty in its place.
3. They cre­ate a new con­stituen­cy of investors opposed to the move to clean ener­gy. Those who invest in “tran­si­tion” projects will have an eco­nom­ic incen­tive to keep their plants run­ning for decades, seek­ing their own sub­si­dies and gen­er­al­ly pre­vent­ing the tran­si­tion from “B to C.”

Eco­nom­ic resources should­n’t be spent on invest­ments in tech­nolo­gies that aren’t the best we can do. Nat­ur­al gas, bio­fu­els and the like aren’t gen­uine tran­si­tion strate­gies. Build­ing an ethanol or biodiesel plant does­n’t get us clos­er to wind and solar, to bet­ter mass tran­sit, to elec­tric vehi­cles… it just uses resources that could be used TODAY to go direct­ly to these solutions.

A good exam­ple of a gen­uine tran­si­tion strat­e­gy is the tran­si­tion from inter­nal com­bus­tion engine vehi­cles to hybrid cars to plug-in hybrids to full elec­tric vehi­cles. We can (and should) go direct­ly to full elec­tric vehi­cles where pos­si­ble, but hybrid tech­nol­o­gy has helped make the tran­si­tion to more effi­cient vehi­cles. Plug-in hybrids will be a decent solu­tion for those who need to go beyond the com­mut­ing range of full elec­tric vehicles.

These vehi­cle tech­nolo­gies flow into each oth­er, and can there­fore be con­sid­ered tran­si­tion­al in nature. The “tran­si­tion” argu­ments applied to nat­ur­al gas and bio­fu­els are NOT tran­si­tion, how­ev­er. If the tech­nol­o­gy goal is some­thing avail­able today (if we invest in it), there’s no need for invest­ment in “tran­si­tion” tech­nolo­gies that don’t direct­ly build that goal.

As we build the new ener­gy econ­o­my, it’s bet­ter to con­tin­ue using the exist­ing dirty infra­struc­ture to build the new clean one than to try build­ing NEW expen­sive infra­struc­ture that we’ll be try­ing to get away from in the com­ing years. Hav­ing that new infra­struc­ture requires that there will be more enti­ties with eco­nom­ic imper­a­tives that will want to keep their plants oper­at­ing as long as pos­si­ble, mak­ing it even hard­er to shift reliance once more — onto the clean tech­nolo­gies we’re ulti­mate­ly aim­ing for.