Today’s conversations around the transition to clean energy often neglect a fundamental issue: the costs associated with those decisions. A new website, EnergyTradeoffs.com, administered and overseen in part by Associate Professor Sharon Jacobs, aims to promote awareness and discussion of the energy transition and its associated trade-offs.
"It’s easy when we talk about energy policy to focus on a single goal and downplay the effect of pursuing that goal on other things we care about," Jacobs said. "What we are trying to do on this site is to acknowledge that making changes to our energy grid will have a number of different consequences."
EnergyTradeoffs.com is jointly operated by Jacobs and energy law professors David Spence, University of Texas; James Coleman, Southern Methodist University; Shelley Welton, University of South Carolina; and Jim Rossi, Vanderbilt University. The website features interviews with scholars working on projects concerned with the energy transition and its trade-offs, with a particular focus on research in governance, affordability, reliability, and the construction of new energy infrastructure.
While the site doesn’t put forward any particular view about what our energy system should look like, Jacobs believes that we need to move to a greener, better coordinated grid as quickly as possible through incorporation of technologies like energy storage and advanced metering infrastructure.
But we can’t pretend that there are no costs associated with this transition, she said.
"Instead of pretending that we can achieve all we want while maintaining low electricity rates, avoiding all environmental impact, and keeping everyone in the jobs they have right now, let’s find creative ways to address the problems the green transition will inevitably create."
"Instead of pretending that we can achieve all we want while maintaining low electricity rates, avoiding all environmental impact, and keeping everyone in the jobs they have right now, let’s find creative ways to address the problems the green transition will inevitably create."
