Conversation: Electrification

It is clear that electrification is no longer a concept of the future. At the same time that humanity assesses the role of fossil fuels in a sustainable world for future generations, electric transportation, solar panels and appliances are becoming increasingly common. Electric cars frequent Phoenix streets: One almost cannot drive in the East Valley for more than 10 minutes before encountering a Waymo vehicle on the roads. However, with the increase of renewable energy comes unanswered questions about implementation. Lindsay Smith, Lauren Keeler and Danae Hernández-Cortés discuss the present and future of electrification, the role of communities in shaping their energy futures and the importance of equity as the world transitions from our current imperfect energy system.

Danae Hernández-Cortés is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Sustainability within the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory. She joined ASU from the University of California Santa Barbara, where she received her doctorate in economics with an emphasis in environmental science. HernándezCortés’ research explores equitable energy transitions, environmental justice and environmental economics.

Lauren Keeler is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. She is also the chair of the undergraduate program in innovation and society and director of the Just Energy Transition Center at ASU. She works with communities, governments, corporations and utilities to envision and develop strategies to achieve just and equitable outcomes for communities impacted by the energy transition.

Lindsay Smith is an assistant professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society. She studies the role of new technological innovations in postconflict settings, and her research and teachings assess how and when new technologies can be used to address human suffering caused by violence and dispossession.

What is the current status of electrification, as you see it?

Hernández-Cortés: Right now we see electrification being one of the more viable paths to achieve some carbon neutrality. Of course, this carbon neutrality would not only deal with electrification and the replacement of natural gas stoves or cars, but also with the investment in renewables. From the consumer standpoint, we can have this supply of electricity from renewable sources that are different from fossil fuels.

So where we stand right now in terms of carbon neutrality plans for some governments, even within the U.S. or abroad, we are seeing an interaction of electrification from the consumer side, but also this increasing supply of renewables. This helps us achieve these electrification goals from the consumer side in a way that is clean. That being said, there’s a lot of heterogeneity across locations in terms of how electrification will take place, or what are the main objectives within that electrification.

To give a very simple example, California has a bunch of natural gas stoves and a bunch of natural gas appliances that are still trying to get electrified. But here in Arizona, we do not have the same rates of natural gas appliances. So that means that some areas are really pushing to electrify but at the same time, we have different levels of electrification already. So some of these policies are different in intent and scope.

Keeler: I co-authored a report in 2022 called “Pathways to a Carbon Neutral Arizona Economy.” In that report, we investigated more or less how we get to zero net carbon emissions in the Arizona economy. And when we say economy, we mean both our buildings — homes and businesses — as well as transportation. Reducing the first 80% of emissions requires substantial electrification across the board and for the sake of this report we were specifically focused on the last 20% of emissions, because that will be harder to remove.

So all pathways to carbon neutrality assume that we are moving appliances and vehicles from carbon-fuel-based sources to electrification. The other thing that I will add to that is we do not have a good, cost-effective, widely available substitute for liquid- and gas-based fuel sources that are carbon free. But we do have electrification, and that’s why you see battery electric vehicles dominating the incentives that are coming out of the federal government and the manufacturing that is being done by industry. At present, that is the best technology available for the price.

What are some of the barriers that exist to increasing electrification?

Keeler: I think from energy generation, to its distribution, and to its consumption, there are a number of barriers. They’re not insurmountable, but there are a number of barriers. On the energy generation side, one of the things that you will frequently hear is that we are transitioning from an energy system that could be ramped up in response to demand. With coal plants, when there was more demand coming from consumers, you could increase the energy output of your coal plants in response to that. That isn’t the case with electricity.

There is the need to not only add renewable energy onto the grid, but there is also the need for battery storage and there’s a need to shift when we are using energy. Previously, utilities incentivized nighttime, post peak use of energy, when energy would be really cheap. You come home and you plug in your electric vehicle, let’s say at 9 p.m., and you allow it to charge overnight. Well, that’s being charged with coal; in a decarbonized and electrified future, you’re going to want to charge those vehicles during the day. So that’s not necessarily a barrier, but it’s one of the things that’s being sorted out on the distribution piece.

The grid needs to be updated to accommodate the amount of demand. Right now you have people putting level two electric vehicle chargers in their homes. If you have enough of those in a neighborhood, you need to upgrade the transformers that are in those neighborhoods. If you have a level two electric vehicle charger and you decide to get rid of your gas stove and put in the electric induction stove, and maybe you decide to put in a solar panel, you may find that you need to upgrade the panel at your house. So we are talking about changes to the way that energy is being generated, the way that energy is being transmitted and the way that it is being received by the consumer.

And then finally, from a consumption standpoint, we have the need to access and adopt new technologies. Electric vehicles don’t feel new, but their widespread adoption is new and so they aren’t currently accessible for everyone. So many people are still priced out of the market of electric vehicles. There is an increasing market for used electric vehicles, but people also need to be able to charge them. So you need the charging infrastructure available where cars are parked, either at people’s homes and multifamily residences, or in workplaces and public spaces, so that those vehicles can be charged.

Smith: Lauren’s comments make me think about how different countries and even different local governments will make different choices. So there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to this. And even if the U.S. invests in really impactful technologies or solutions, I tried to think about how that would get applied to a different country. We are talking about replacing stoves but lots of people don’t even have stoves — they’re still burning wood, right? I mean, there’s a whole range of challenges and those challenges can vary greatly based on geography, even just within the United States. Each infrastructure that was built at a particular time relies on a particular model of energy production. As we begin to think about transitioning to a new one, I don’t think that we have invested as much in really localizing those transition processes, especially outside of the United States.

I wonder sometimes about how much our process is transferable to other places. If we’re really going for carbon neutral, how do we make sure that, you know, India and Brazil and Mexico can leapfrog these technologies? I think that will be a really, really important process moving forward.

Hernández-Cortés: To add to that, one big thing that plays a role here is power transmission lines. Right now, the way we have built power plants is very different from where renewables are being located. For example, you can see Wyoming, where we have incredible wind potential, but there’s not that many people in Wyoming. What we need is to move the electricity that we’re generating in Wyoming to get to other areas where it could be used, and there are some legacies of infrastructure that have to be corrected for that.

For example, we do not have high capacity transmission lines in all of these areas where we have these renewables. And that’s not only the case in the U.S., but also the case in other countries in the Global South. For example, there’s a very nice paper that showed that in Chile, when you invest in some projects that could move electricity from where it’s generated to where it’s going be used, it increases the potential of renewables because now people are using their electricity and their electric appliances more because it’s cheaper to do it. So I think the litigation of that, the infrastructure investments we will need on the generation and transmission side, that could be a big barrier.

As we see a push toward electrification, what might that transition look like for those who are not currently “energy secure” and may be priced out of the electric options?

Keeler: To call back to Lindsay’s point, that answer depends on where you are. Coming from an Arizona context: In the Phoenix metro area, 93 to 94% of households have at least one vehicle. So it’s a fairly car-centric infrastructure, and therefore making sure that electric vehicles are accessible and that electric vehicle charging infrastructure is accessible — and both are affordable — is an important part of equity and mobility. But an electric vehicle strategy that doesn’t also include other forms of transportation is not equitable. We should also be thinking about the role of electric vehicles in a transportation system that includes public electric transportation. As well as walking and biking, when it isn’t 118 degrees of course.

Smith: I think that the question of what an equitable future will look like is going to depend a lot on the empowerment of communities to think about what they want their transportation futures to look like. We see this with pushback on gas prices and mobility issues in cities. People are relying on cars, and now these gas prices can price people out of it. Changing infrastructure for public transportation doesn’t always meet people’s needs, but we see coalitions of activists drawing on the Sustainable Development Goals and other kinds of modes to begin to call on the government to say, “Okay, we want to have mobility, the right to move and to be transported. This is a right that we’re guaranteed.” They’re beginning to really push the government to develop community based plans for what they want that to look like.

Creating spaces for public deliberation in communities is not like a big national deliberation. It’s important that community members come together and think about the challenges they face, what they want their transportation futures to look like. And then, those local governments have to listen to people and put money and initiatives behind that.

For example, what if what communities want is an expanded light rail? Rather than just kind of letting Waymo and private industry come in and decide what the transportation infrastructure is going to look like as electrification happens, the directing force should be the communities. Without that space for public deliberation, and an active community of people who are calling for alternative futures, whose voices can be heard and listened to and supported and elevated, I think we’re going to see a lot of the same inequalities that we saw built into our previous energy infrastructure.

Hernández-Cortés: I’ll add that some of that groundwork to address disparities is already happening in the United States — the Justice40 Initiative is one example. Now that being said, I think that electrification has to consider all of the potential implications from all of the parts of the supply chain. So for example, when we think about batteries, who are the communities that are affected by mining? That’s something we need to consider because most of them are going to be from rural communities in the Global South. We’re already seeing it in Bolivia, Chile, the Congo, etc. We need to consider that from the beginning.

We also have to consider where the renewable electricity projects are going to be placed. Are they going to be placed in communities that have been historically marginalized? Additionally, there is the access issue which we’ve touched on here as well: Who has access to buy an electric vehicle? What type of electric vehicles can people buy, and are they used or are they new? Who will have access to buy solar panels? Are they renters, or are they owners who are the ones benefiting from those subsidies already? And who can benefit from all those technologies for electrifying the grid?

I see this electrification push as a tool that can help solve some of these disparities, but it could exacerbate those disparities if they are not considered from the design of the implementation.

What, if any, are the dangers as we continue to rely on electrification going forward?

Smith: To give a personal example, I’ve been paying close attention to Texas this summer. My mom is there, she had a heart surgery and was in the hospital. At the same time, there’s a heat wave and Texas has a notoriously bad grid. I was worried about what would happen to her if the power went out. It shows what can happen when we haven’t invested in the grid or all of our systems are reliant on it. And I’ve certainly seen people who are concerned that the next hurricane-level extreme weather event that’s going to hit Texas is actually going to be a heat wave. If the grid in Texas goes down, people are going to die because we don’t really have a backup system for air conditioning. And obviously, that’s not necessarily related to things like heat maintenance in a hospital, the way I was concerned about my mom, but that is a scenario where energy backup systems would be lifesaving.

Keeler: I think that the vulnerability piece is really important. I do want to highlight Texas during the freeze in 2021. That was caused by failure to maintain the natural gas plants. You don’t automatically have a robust grid with fossil energy. And so transitioning to renewables, in addition to electrification, requires updates to the grid that may be different from ways you would update a fossil-fuel-based grid. But in California and Arizona, we are in a little bit better of a position than Texas because we’re in the western interconnection, and so we can share electricity across the region as there are spikes in demand. What I do think is scary is what’s going on right now with the heat dome, where you see that the entire western interconnection is under heat warnings. So it isn’t just an isolated heat wave in Arizona, and that makes us vulnerable. Everybody is experiencing a heat wave at the same time.

I think we also need to get a lot better about how we advise people to keep cool with regards to the grid, and keeping the power on when you have extreme temperatures and spikes in demand. I don’t think that we are necessarily giving the kind of nuanced information that consumers need in order to keep themselves safe and keep the grid functioning. The other thing is maybe we don’t experience heat the same because we have health differences. And so as we think about keeping people safe, we need to think about the very different experiences that people have as a result of their very different bodies and very different infrastructure around them.

Hernández-Cortés: My concern with the idea of “over-electrification” is the danger of utility legacy costs, meaning that the way that we have our utility rates and how we price them do not incentivize people to leave some fossil fuels. So for example, the way that utility pricing happens in many places in the U.S. is that you add up all of the capital investment costs and you divide them over the number of customers that you have. This happens in electricity, this happens in natural gas, etc. What happens with natural gas, if you reduce the amount of people who are now going to be in a natural gas utility because you’re having more people electrify all of their appliances, then there are those who are staying with the natural gas utility because they can’t just replace them.

This means that you have this lower amount of people among which you’re going to divide the costs. This means that the people that are staying with the utility they couldn’t afford to replace are those who are experiencing the highest increase of the costs. So that to me is one of the dangers of electrification — that without utility and electrification rights reform, utilities can charge more to people who are not investing in these types of decisions that could help electrify and therefore the people who are still going to experience the highest increases in prices are going to be the poorest.

Keeler: I do feel obliged to say I’m not worried about over-electrification. These concerns are all absolutely valid, but there is real potential to leapfrog progress by electrifying. Our current energy system is inherently inequitable — it’s not like we’re replacing a perfectly equitable system with an inequitable system. The problem is that we are existing amidst a bunch of systemic inequalities. And if we are not careful and aware of that and responsive to it, we will reproduce those inequalities in the next system. And so, all of these updates in infrastructure are opportunities to create more equality of access to infrastructure than we have in the system.