The Answer, in April, in Charlotte
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm,” formerly an expert witness that testified before utility regulatory commissions of six states, the District of Columbia, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and in Canada, and a faculty member at Georgetown University teaching undergraduate microeconomics, macroeconomics and statistics. He’s a busy guy but there’s no way he’ll miss Electrification 2020 this April.
Concerned about climate change? Want to decarbonize to slow it down? Well, the answer — it turns out — is to electrify the economy as much as is practicable.
The Electric Power Research Institute figured this out a few years ago with its massive models. That's why it held the Electrification 2018 mega-conference. And that's why it's holding the Electrification 2020 giga-conference this April.
The math demonstrating the central importance of electrification isn't complicated. In the U.S., in 2018, an astonishingly low 17.3 percent of the energy used by residential, commercial, industrial, and transportation consumers was electricity. The lion's share was petroleum, combusted by consumers, accounting for nearly half of the energy used, 48.1 percent. Holy smokes! How can electricity be such a low percentage?