Clean Electrification and a Just Transit

Clean Electrification and a Just Transition

Powering our lives with affordable renewable energy in a way that cleans our air, builds local wealth, and provides maximum resilience to climate instability.

Transitioning from fossil fuels to clean electrification will dramatically improve health and is the most important way to fight climate change.

Burning fossil fuels for energy directly poisons our air and water and causes 75% of carbon emissions driving climate change, profoundly harming our health. Fossil fuels are wasteful, dirty, and expensive. The electricity sector is Wisconsin’s largest source of fossil fuel and greenhouse gas emissions and must be cleaned up. Because renewables and batteries are cheap and safe, we have the tools we need to do so. Meanwhile, transitioning from burning fossil fuels to renewably generated electricity in other sectors, such as buildings, shrinks overall energy demand and shifts that demand onto a sector where we can have renewables and batteries as cheap, resilient, and healthy solutions.

Clean electrification is the foundation of all efforts fighting climate change. It is a two-part effort: electrify energy use and power it with renewables.

To create healthy and vibrant communities where all Wisconsinites can thrive, we must transition all possible energy use to electricity (i.e., transportation, heating, and cooling our buildings, and industry) and power it with renewables and batteries. This can reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 70-80% by 2035 while saving Wisconsin lives, reducing billions in healthcare costs, and boosting jobs and our economy. The great news is that electricity is often more than twice as efficient as burning fossil fuels, so we can cut the problem in half simply by running things on electricity. Having cut overall energy needs in half, we then get that energy from local renewables rather than sending money out of state to ship in oil, coal, and gas.

The end of fossil fuels is a new beginning for health.

Burning fossil fuels makes people sick and is the main driver of climate change. From the moment of conception to their last breath, Wisconsinites are made sick because we burn fossil fuels for energy. Particulates and other pollutants from fossil fuels pass through our lungs into our blood, brains, and even cross the placenta. Air pollution from fossil fuels has been shown to cause preterm births, stillbirths, delayed cognitive development in children, asthma, heart attacks, COPD, cancer, strokes, and dementia. Electrifying all possible energy use in Wisconsin and powering it with renewables would save nearly 2,000 lives each year and ~$20 billion in health costs. Meanwhile, fossil fuels are also the main driver of climate change, which over 200 leading medical journals agree is the largest threat to our health and well-being in the 21st century.

Our electricity markets are broken, so utilities want to keep running coal and building expensive, unnecessary, and dangerous methane gas plants. We can’t let them.

Unfortunately, utilities don’t make their money by providing the best option to their customers. Utilities make their money by building the most expensive option for which they can get the Public Service Commission to let them charge their customers. This means they are incentivized to build large, overly expensive, and polluting infrastructure rather than cheap, clean, and resilient renewables. They are currently trying to spark panic about electricity demand growth from electrification and data centers to delay closing coal plants and build unnecessary, expensive gas plants. Methane gas plants may not be as bad as coal, but they still pollute our air and harm our health.

Wisconsinites deserve the best sources of energy, not the second worst.

We all want reliable, clean, affordable electricity. Utilities want to build gas, so they argue renewables are intermittent and unreliable. The reality is that utilities in Wisconsin haven’t yet built nearly enough renewables to need to worry about how to back them up. Meanwhile, those utilities continually fail to meet their commitments to transition to renewables and retire coal plants. We have the tools to build a resilient grid relying mostly on renewables, batteries, demand control, and transmission. Furthermore, clean dispatchable forms of electricity are quickly being developed which will likely make these gas plants obsolete before the end of their lifespan, but Wisconsinites will be stuck overpaying for them for decades.

Renewables are good for our health and our communities, we need to build a lot of them, both on rooftops and in rural areas.

We need to build as much renewable energy as possible as quickly as possible, both distributed and utility-scale. Electricity policy and rates must be updated to encourage as much rooftop solar as possible. At the same time, we need utility-scale renewables. Unfortunately, the fossil fuel industry is funding astroturf groups to advocate against renewable energy being built in rural areas. Often these efforts rely on lies about the health impacts of renewable energy. The reality is that solar, wind, and batteries are healthy for people and healthy for the land, they give farmers the freedom to take back power, so we can build communities where we can thrive and not just survive. Renewables bring many benefits to rural communities. The property tax boost for local townships helps keep schools open and roads repaired.

We need a balanced electrical system that gives local communities control.

In the past, our society only had the technology to build large centralized electricity generation and could not easily shift electricity demand. Neither is true now. We have the technologies to smooth out electricity demand, lowering electricity prices for everyone.The cost of our electricity system isn’t primarily determined by how much energy is used, but by how much is used at once. This means we’ve built a system to have big power plants that sit unused 90% of the year even though we’re paying for them. The cheapest and most resilient energy system is one that has both large centralized renewables and transmission lines to share electricity between regions combined with neighborhood-level solar, batteries, and smart load control systems (VPPs). To minimize cost and maximize both benefit and resilience, we must transition to an energy system where end-users participate in, and benefit from, the production and sharing of that electricity.

Local energy production and sharing builds physically interconnected, resilient communities. We can use our electricity system to take care of each other.

This not only saves us money- it allows us to protect each other when we need it most. A balanced electricity system is the most affordable option, making sure people aren’t burdened by having to spend too much on energy. Meanwhile, having neighborhood-level solar, batteries, smart load control systems (VPPs), and microgrids can keep the power on when heat waves, severe storms, and flooding threaten our health. This is essential for people who rely on medical devices for their safety. It is also critical for people with health conditions that make them vulnerable to heat waves and other climate extremes.

The clean energy transition is an opportunity to right the wrongs of fossil fuels, if we get it right.

Fossil fuel polluters have purposefully located power plants near low-income and BIPOC communities and as a result, these communities have unfairly suffered the most from environmental health harms. We embrace our core values of justice, equity, and collective action to make sure the transition to renewable energy benefits all Wisconsinites. That means shutting down existing fossil fuel generation, avoiding new gas plants, and making sure all communities have adequate air quality monitoring and protections. It means pursuing a mix of centralized and distributed renewable generation and making sure local communities have input into the location of and maximal benefit from clean energy projects. It also means making sure workers in the fossil fuel industry are supported economically as fossil fuel generation decreases.

By transitioning our energy use from fossil fuels to electricity powered by renewables, we can save lives, save money, slow climate change, and build communities where everyone has the freedom to thrive, and not just survive.

How can you talk about this?

No matter what we look like, where we come from, or how much money we have, we all want a bright future for our families, one with clean air, pure water, and safe communities. But fossil fuel CEO’s and the politicians they own divide us so they can keep profiting while they pollute our air and threaten our futures. By joining together across races and places, we can demand safe, clean, locally-made energy from the wind and sun that will ensure a future in which we all have the freedom to thrive and not just survive. We can build a future where we all breathe easy. Join us in building that world together.

-We Make the Future