Day 17: Carbon Lockin

Today you will learn from expert guest Benjamin Sovacool about the carbon lock-in, why it's an obstacle to solving climate change, and how we mitigate or eliminate the obstacle of the carbon lock-in for climate change solutions.

Summary

Guest: Benjamin Sovacool

Benjamin K. Sovacool is an American academic who is director of the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University as well as Professor of Earth and Environment at Boston University. He was formerly Director of the Danish Center for Energy Technology at the Department of Business Development and Technology and a professor of social sciences at Aarhus University. He is also professor of energy policy at the University of Sussex, where he formerly directed the Center on Innovation and Energy Demand and the Sussex Energy Group. He has written on energy policy, environmental issues, and science and technology policy. Sovacool is also the editor-in-chief of Energy Research & Social Science.

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Explain succinctly what the carbon lock-in is from first principles.

Carbon lock-in indicates how we become locked into different fossil fuel infrastructures over time: natural gas, oil and coal.  The term implies that once you start down this pathway, you then create investments and decisions that create  feedback loops that create more carbon marketing and there are terms that are used that maybe are more intuitive, like path dependence.

Carbon lock-in isn't just technological. We also align behavioral practices, financing flows, business models, and other social infrastructures to support fossil fuels as well.

Why does carbon lock-in impede us from creating solutions or overcoming climate change?

If lock in is all of these dimensions then it means that systems change can't just be one dimension. Systems change can't just be technological; it's also intimately social, and political, and cultural. And those sorts of changes often take. generations.

Why is carbon lock-in important to address? What's at stake if we don't address this obstacle?

There are 3 items at stake:

1. Risks of Climate Change: The risks of climate change are significant and severe. Once we go past 2 degrees, we start to kind of exceed the limits of most natural ecosystems to actually function, and we run the risk of things like melting ice sheets storm surges he waves droughts and wildfires. Once we get to 4 degrees change, it's hell on earth. It's like we have an unlivable planet and we have mass migration and a whole variety of other really, really toxic things that happen.
2. Risks of Toxic Pollution: Fossil fuel extraction isn't just emitting methane and carbon dioxide. It's also creating acid rain. It's creating mine tailings and a whole variety of other toxic forms of pollution. The United Nations ecosystem assessment indicated that by the end of this century, we will see 1, 000, 000 species at loss of extinction.
3. Economic Opportunities: There is a lot of money to be made with mitigating climate change, because many of the things that you should do to help fight carbon lock in, improve efficiency, improve productivity, diversify your energy sources, make energy more domestic, do more organic food, eat less meat. So the co benefits, like the non environmental reasons to act on climate and to push out carbon lock in are almost as immense.

How might we mitigate or eliminate the obstacle of the carbon lock-in for climate change solutions?

Two typologies for eliminating carbon lock-in:

1. Top down change and bottom up change together: This is a kind of simplified reading of Eleanor Ostrom who said when we solve societal problems, more common pool resource problems, like rivers and streams of the atmosphere, what you have to do simultaneously is work at multiple scales. That's why it's polycentric.
2. Lock-in as more than technological: If it's also economic, political, and social, that's beginning to give you a blueprint for how we can actually get out of carbon lock-in.

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Additional Resources

• Understanding carbon lock-in by Gregory C Unruh
• Escaping carbon lock-in by Gregory C Unruh
• Carbon Lock-In: Barriers To Deploying Climate Change Mitigation Technologies by Oak Ridge National Lab.
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

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Top Skills To Learn

Our guest recommends learning the following skills:

• Multidisciplinary approach: We need engineers. We also need sociologists, political scientists, economists, and finance experts.
• Democratic skills:  your ability to protest, your ability to vote for candidates or parties that take climate change seriously. You're investing your pension if you have 1 right or stocks in the stock market and companies that deserve it.
• Media analysis and literacy skills: credibility of information sources here is really, really key.

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Activity

Activity: Carbon Lock-In Policy Analysis

Description: Investigate government policies or regulations that have contributed to carbon lock-in (e.g., subsidies for fossil fuels). Analyze the effects of these policies and propose alternative approaches that encourage decarbonization.

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Skill Lesson Mastered

Demonstrate mastery of the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson by applying it to the above activity. If, and only if, you have a full understanding and have mastered the knowledge and skills presented in this lesson, select the next lesson in the navigation.