Tag Archives: electrification

August 2025 in Review

Good bye summer 2025!

Most frightening and/or depressing story: A gigantic incoming object could be the alien ship that will put us out of our misery. Okay, probably not. The interesting and scary thing is that as our ability to look at the nearby universe improves, we are seeing more surprising stuff. But how are we supposed to think about let alone do anything about a very low probability existential threat like this one? We are not even responding to the “somewhat likely” (nuclear war, pandemics) and “likely happening right now” (a climate tipping point leading to future collapse) existential threats in front of us. I suggested that the tipping point will be called in retrospect, and 2025 might be a nice round number for the history books.

Most hopeful story: No matter what impression we are being given in the U.S., economic forces continue to push towards renewable energy and electrification worldwide.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Designer babies are here, and the trend towards the rich and powerful accelerating their own evolution (and a few governments making this available to the masses) can only accelerate.

electrification in China, US, EU

Here’s an interesting stat from OilPrice.com:

According to a study, China’s electrification rate has hit 30%, significantly ahead of the U.S. and the EU and US where the electrification rate has plateaued at ~22% in recent years.

The study defines the electrification rate as the share of electricity in final energy consumption versus energy coming from fossil fuels. According to the study, the U.S. still leads the world in the electrification of buildings; however, China recently caught up to the U.S. and Europe in industrial electrification, and has overtaken both in the electrification of transport. In 2024, electric vehicles (EVs) made up approximately 47.9% of the total passenger car sales in China, a huge increase from 2020, when plug-in EVs accounted for just 6.3% of total sales. In comparison, electric vehicles accounted for less than 23% of new car sales in Europe over the timeframe.

I’m all in on electrification. For one thing, it reduces air pollution and carbon emissions even with our current energy supply mix, as I understand it. But it also allows us to substitute cleaner fuels for electric generation over time, starting with natural gas for coal and oil, and moving towards nuclear, renewables, and as an aspirational goal, maybe even fusion.

I’m not surprised the US is lagging on electrifying transportation, because the oil, auto, and highway lobbies are politically powerful and have money at stake. The regulated electric utility and nuclear industries don’t have the same political pull. (There is no particular reason oil couldn’t have been a regulated public utility.) It surprises me a little that the US and Europe are at the same level.

fun stats on U.S. blackouts

Electric blackouts are yet another area where the hard data shows the U.S. is slipping behind other developed countries.

To put it bluntly, this kind of situation doesn’t happen everywhere. In fact, it happens more often in the U.S. than in any other developed country, according to the University of Minnesota’s Massoud Amin, a founding expert in smart-grid technology. Amin has found that utility customers lose power for an average of 4 minutes annually in Japan, compared to 92 minutes per year in the Upper Midwest.

“We are behind all other G7 nations in our infrastructure, including the power grid,” Amin said.

Yale Climate Connections

One simple (i.e. low tech but expensive) solution suggested is to bury power lines, which provides protection against both storms and freezing. I have always thought it would make sense to put utility tunnels under roads and streets. Then you could put all your utilities in there (electric, gas, water, sewer, communications) and have access to them through manholes rather than having to dig up the street. Of course, this would require up front planning and expense, it might be hard to retrofit an existing city this way, and it would require coordinating the patchwork of mostly uncoordinated public and private entities that fund and operate our infrastructure systems. Or we could try to untangle that patchwork into something that makes more sense.

We’ll need to figure something out just to keep the system functioning as it ages. At the same time, extreme weather and other disasters seem to be getting worse. There is talk of electrifying vehicles on a large scale, and some locales are shifting away from natural gas and toward electrifying more homes and businesses. Then we have the move toward more decentralized, intermittent sources of energy. And finally, there is the risk of cyber attacks and plain old fashioned attacks, whether by a serious foreign adversary or just mischief makers. Right now, foreign adversaries and mischief makers may just be sitting back and laughing at the United States as we manage to spread deadly biological agents and let our critical infrastructure fail from neglect without their help.