A 30-year Plan to Electrify US Transportation

I’ve written about my frustration with the typical political conversation about electrifying transportation and getting off fossil fuels.  People generally imagine this will be done easily or quickly.  It’s truly a massive engineering problem, with deep social and political considerations.  I wrote a friend that I would love to see someone lay out a 30-year transition plan, with some details, so we could dialogue about solving these challenges. 

He wrote back, “Why don’t you do it?  What would a 30-year plan need to include?  You’re smart, so figure it out.” 

Challenge accepted.  I’ve read dozens of articles, looked up details where I can find them, and tried to map out the factors that would go into a good plan. 

Though I don’t have a finished plan, I thought it would be worth sharing what I’ve learned so far, and illustrate how you can approach a multidimensional challenge like this. 

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I decided to put boundaries on the project:

• US focus.  Meet needs of a sophisticated and 20% larger population.
• Plan for economic success through creating an abundance of cheap energy.
• Focus on private transportation and trucking
• Reduce air and water pollution.
• Reduce carbon emissions as a side benefit, not primary target
• Recognize that we will still use some fossil fuels for particular needs in 2052
• Plan is not a one-time solution but a new vector for continuing improvement
• Exclude use of fossil fuels for plastics, graphite, manufacturing (e.g., metalworking)
• Exclude plane fuel, railroads, ships
• Remain economically competitive in world commerce

Based on some preliminary estimates of energy requirements I created an ambitious list of objectives – all measurable:

• Create 30x more electricity than 2020 levels while reducing environmental impact (air, water, soil, landscape)
• Reduce fossil fuel use in private transportation to 5% of 2020 level
• Reduce fossil fuel use in heating, cooling, and all residential electrical demand to 15% of 20220 level
• Install a gen-5 electrical grid with resilience to solar flares and EMP weapons

To guide my thinking and research efforts I created a high-level mind map of issues, obstacles & limiting factors, and areas where I needed more facts.  I find this exercise helps me stay balanced across the effort.

We tend to overestimate what could be done in a few years and wildly underestimate what could be accomplished in 30 years.  A few critical points based on my work to date:

Fundamentally we would need to increase electricity production 30x over today, and replace 95-98% of our vehicles, while establishing a comprehensive battery and transmission grid. This is a massive engineering challenge.  Our digital capabilities help but only a little.  This is very much a physical engineering challenge.

I’m assuming that solar, wind, hydro, tidal contribute about 10% of overall electrical need.  That’s significant (though there are environmental tradeoffs).  I’m also assuming that biofuels only offset gas and diesel, so reduce dependence on gas and diesel fuel, but they don’t contribute to electrification. 

We can phase out existing coal and natural gas-powered plants as we replace their capacity with nuclear power. We can build the nuclear power plants (both big central plants and many self-contained mini reactors) to create the 30x electricity required.  There are reasonable engineering solutions, and the basic materials like thorium, uranium, and steel are available.  We primarily need the political will sustained for decades. 

However, there simply isn’t enough of the raw materials, with the way that we build batteries, transmission lines, generators, and electrical devices today, to electrify all US ground transportation by 2052.  My estimates: We need 12-18x more copper, 48-65x more lithium, 90x more cobalt, at least 40x more nickel, and multiples of rare earths than are mined each year globally today, all going into the US market.  This mining & refining is an ugly business that no one wants to live near.  We could get a fraction of the metals (copper, steel, aluminum) needed via recycling from motors and wires that we’re making obsolete. The US has abundant natural resources, but insufficient known supplies to build all this infrastructure. 

I’m mindful that technological breakthroughs can happen.  There were serious papers analyzing the unsolvable problem of accumulated horse poop in New York city in the years leading up to affordable automobiles and electric trolleys.  Perhaps we’ll see commercial fusion reactor capability within 30 years (like we confidently said in the 1970’s).  We need transformational technology in batteries and transmission systems which lose less electricity over distances. 

Engineers already know how to improve the electrical grid.  They know what would be required to minimize damage from solar flares to the transmission lines and electrical motors.  Multiple studies have been done on creating a more resilient grid (fail-overs from one sector to another).  We can employ algorithms to optimize electricity production and flow.  In this area, we only need funding and will.

My focus is on the US, but global factors are considerable. One of the biggest technology transformations is simply to address the fundamental issue that 1-2 billion people are still dependent on burning wood, dung, and grasses to fuel their life.  India and China are still building 4 to 7 coal-powered electrical plants every month, with plans to continue for many years.  (Fortunately, many of those are designed so that an alternative fuel source could be swapped in.)  All the major nations will be competing for raw materials. 

The US does not currently have the workforce required for this transition.  We would need many more people working in construction and manufacturing to build the required infrastructure and vehicles.  We’ll need a bottom-up solution to educate and skill these workers.  I’m optimistic that a combination of public/private investments can fund the necessary efforts.  I’m also optimistic that we can recruit and develop the necessary workforce if we recapture the American spirit of building things.

Skilled, trusted, and sustained political leadership will be required to engage the diverse people interests to achieve this kind of goal.  There were fewer political and social constraints in the era of building thousands of gas stations, early pipelines for fuel distribution, the interstate highway and state road systems, spread over about 80-100 years.  This 30-year plan will require political and social leadership unlike anything the US has experienced since 1941-1945.  Or maybe the “space race” in the 1960’s-70’s. Kennedy’s speech at Rice University exemplifies the kind of leadership which will be required: 

“We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we’re willing to accept. One we are unwilling to postpone. And therefore, as we set sail, we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure that man has ever gone.”

Project results are rarely linear with effort.  This electrification engineering challenge is the kind of project where the big payoffs happen later in the overall effort.  This reality will complicate the leadership challenge because there will be relatively few early wins – and those will go to certain people, not everyone.

One area I can’t reasonably address with this assessment:  What’s the cost?  We can’t rely solely on private enterprise because many components of the plan simply won’t be profitable for a very long time. There are massive build/transition/maintain costs to individuals, family, communities, businesses, and local/state/federal government.  Gasoline taxes are a primary means governments use to raise funds for road maintenance and more.  Other countries will be competing for the same raw materials – which will drive up prices. There are disposal costs for exiting fossil fuel production (won’t need as much), distribution infrastructure, and vehicles.  Even making electricity “too cheap to measure” doesn’t reduce build and transition costs very much, also it’s possible that once achieved the ongoing costs of electric would be lower than gasoline and diesel.  There are trillions of dollars associated with fuel and transportation infrastructure today — converting this will likely require trillions of dollars, too. 

Another area which will require more thought:  What constraints on political and economic liberty might shift as this transition goes forward?  Gasoline-powered transportation has a different autonomy profile than a massively electrified infrastructure.  There are unknowns here.  

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I haven’t created a workable 30-year plan.  I have a far better picture of the scope of the challenges.  Generating 30x more electricity is feasible.  We can create electricity abundance so that it’s incredibly cheap and thereby incentivize more electrification.  I don’t know where the get the raw materials in the quantities needed using existing technology for batteries and wires.  Transitions will be uneven and difficult to manage.  The overall program is deeply susceptible to sabotage, corruption, and failing political will. 

Hopefully sharing this much helps sharpen your thinking on this topic and gives you a model for how to tackle research on complex problems.

And…I would still like to hear political leaders outlining substantive, ambitious 30-year plans rather than implying instant solutions.