Judging by the surging sales of green technology, U.S. households appear to be on the verge of a low-carbon future. Millions of Americans are buying electric vehicles, heat pumps and induction ranges.
But those numbers belie a starkly different present. Just about 3 percent of Americans, for example, reported owning an induction stove in 2022.
That’s close to the share of the U.S. population that owned a cellphone in the late 1980s, a few years after the first models came out. It took more than two decades for wireless technology to eclipse home landlines.
Time is tighter for the climate. To meet net-zero emissions targets, and avoid the worst effects of warming, most households will need to embrace a new suite of low-carbon technologies by 2050, says the electrification nonprofit Rewiring America.
To make it happen, they’re betting on the “S-curve.”
Virtually every major technology over the past two centuries has followed the same swooping S from virtual obscurity to near-ubiquitous adoption. Economists can now predict this basic shape with surprising accuracy, though the exact nature of the curve or slope change varies by product.
Some technologies that spread across the U.S. in the early 20th century took several decades to become ubiquitous.
But more recent innovations were adopted more quickly.
Experts say green technologies such as electric cars and rooftop solar panels could follow a similar pattern of rapid adoption even if they require you to spend tens of thousands of dollars upfront.
Not all new technologies make it big: Segway, Palm personal device, 3D television. But those that start ascending this curve tend to transform societies.
How fast Americans reach that point with green technologies is up to early adopters, about 15 to 20 percent of the population. They set the stage for this exponential growth by trying products before others do.
Take the thousands of die-hards who leased the first modern electric car, the EV1, released by General Motors in 1996. It had a 74-mile range at a time when drivers had virtually nowhere to charge except their garage.
“They are a special group of people that are willing to go through the pain of an early product,” says Carolina Milanesi, president of the technology research firm Creative Strategies, “and they take pride in that.”
Then mainstream customers, roughly 60 percent of the public, only embrace the technology once it matures into familiar, established products, well after its arrival, fueling years of sustained and exponential growth.
The final stage is dominated by “laggards,” those least willing to adopt the new technology, such as flip-phone owners in the age of smartphones.
How fast will you adopt the clean technologies needed to decarbonize America’s homes and driveways?
Rewiring America modeled the S-curve that products must follow to meet the Biden administration’s zero-emissions targets by 2050.
Americans are on track to meet those goals, but reaching higher levels of adoption will require overcoming barriers such as high costs and a limited number of available models.
“We have every reason to believe electrification technologies are following the same S-shaped curve that other technologies have followed in the past,” says Cora Wyent, Rewiring America’s director of research. “We haven’t missed the boat on any of them.”
The steepness of the slope depends on how many households have already adopted the technologies, and what percentage could reasonably adopt it by mid-century. The calculations assume Americans replace these technologies roughly every 15 years.
Here’s a look at where we are and where we need to be over the next couple of decades, and the role for early adopters.
Heat pump HVAC
(space heating and cooling)
U.S. households installed 4 million new heat pumps last year, about half of new sales of residential heating systems, eclipsing gas furnaces for the first time.
Since several regions of the country have been installing them for years, 16 percent of U.S. homes already use electric heat pumps for space heating.
Heat pumps, in many parts of the country, are already cheaper to install and operate than fossil-fuel-powered furnaces, saving up to about $1,000 annually over conventional furnaces, while slashing emissions by several tons per year. Layer on generous new incentives from state, local and federal programs, and many units can pay for themselves over their lifetimes.
“Heat pumps make economic sense for many U.S. consumers,” says Erich Muehlegger, a professor of economics at the University of California at Davis. “The main driver is not people who want to be the first one on the block to own a heat pump, but someone who needs to replace something and sees heat pumps as a nice opportunity.”
The biggest barrier may be awareness: In a 2020 survey, the home electrification and insulation company Sealed found half of the respondents had no idea what heat pumps were.
Electric Vehicles
Though most EV owners are still early adopters, early mainstream buyers are likely to switch to EVs in the coming years as the technology gets cheaper and more convenient.
In the first half of 2023, EVs accounted for 8 percent of all passenger vehicles sold in the United States, according to BloombergNEF, a clean-energy research group.
Still, the vast majority of the more than 280 million cars on U.S. roads run on fossil fuels, and just 4 percent are electric.
A skeptical public and spotty changes in infrastructure are acting as a drag. A Washington Post-University of Maryland poll found nearly half of adults say they still prefer owning a gas-powered car or truck. Only a third or so say EVs are better for day-to-day driving.
“As the EV market pushes into higher and higher levels of adoption, it bumps into groups that are going to have to make meaningful sacrifices,” says Muehlegger. “The technological adoption of EVs is not going to occur smoothly since it’s occurring at the same time all these other pieces of the transportation network are falling into place.”
A more likely scenario may be that regional, urban markets take off early, while areas with fewer charging stations and incentives lag.
Home solar panels
Five percent of U.S. homes have solar panels on their roofs, most of them in California.
Not all roofs are suitable for solar panels, and other options such as utility and community solar exist, so Rewiring America is targeting well under full adoption — 65 percent, or 80 million homes — by mid-century.
This will be a gradual transition that won’t fully pick up speed until later this decade. But with solar panel and battery prices set to fall, and as new incentives for building owners kick in, we will probably see a massive surge in installations.
Home solar installations have risen steadily, adding a record 6.4 gigawatts in 2022, enough to power about 1 million homes, according to data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. A 2022 January Pew Research Center survey found 39 percent of homeowners had seriously considered installing solar panels in the past year.
Cooking
About 39 percent still rely on gas and propane stoves. Induction stoves are the leading contender to electrify them, but so far they’re only in about 3 percent of households.
It will take a while for Americans to get to the 43 percent of homes Rewiring America estimates should make the switch by 2035 to meet climate goals. To get there, the nonprofit estimates an additional 1.8 million induction stoves above the current pace of sales in the next three years to keep the technology on track. By 2032, it estimates, sales must soar five times above the current trajectory.
The S-curve for induction stoves is relatively flat since so many homes already have electric stoves. It plateaus around 43 percent of homes by 2035, ensuring almost all homes switch out gas and propane well before mid-century.
Fortunately, induction stoves are having a moment. A record number of models are being rolled out by brands from GE to Viking at lower price points, although they remain more expensive on average.
Water heating
Even well into next decade, only a sliver of households will have one, according to Rewiring America’s estimates. To meet climate goals, then, heat pump water heater sales will have to dramatically ramp up from 2030 to 2040.
Only about 140,000 units were sold last year, less than 2 percent of total water heater sales, according to the latest Environmental Protection Agency data.
Few homes have these appliances installed. Since heat pumps are much more efficient than both electric-resistance water heaters and natural gas, they are expected to fully displace all other kinds of water-heating technology.
Sales are growing fast, roughly doubling since 2017. Early adopters have the biggest role to play here, says Wyent. “Very few people know they exist,” she says. “They have the longest way to go. That’s an exciting place for early adopters to play a role.”
The biggest reason to switch is saving money. The appliances are as much as four times more efficient than comparable gas water heaters, saving one ton of CO2 annually on average, reports the nonprofit New Buildings Institute. The appliances cost about $117 annually to operate for a family of four compared to $200 for a gas water heater or $550 for electric resistance.
Gas-fired water heaters, now around half of all water heater sales, may have already begun their terminal decline.
Are we on track?
Early adopters may be driving growth of electrification technologies, but without a concerted effort behind them — incentives, tax credits, public education and workforce training for installation — the process will move too slowly.
Economics, policy and technology are finally pushing in the same direction. The Inflation Reduction Act and state and local incentives are expected to bring down the costs of climate technologies by about 40 percent, according to an analysis by market intelligence firm Sightline Climate. When it comes to clean-energy options, people have never had better products, lower prices or more generous incentives.
“Are we on track?” asks Doyne Farmer, director of the complexity economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. “We’re more on track than people realize. … The thing about exponential [growth] is it’s small, it’s small, it’s small, and then suddenly it gets very big.”
“Are we on track?” asks Doyne Farmer, director of the complexity economics program at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. “We’re more on track than people realize. … The thing about exponential [growth] is it’s small, it’s small, it’s small, and then suddenly it gets very big.”
In the early 1980s, AT&T asked consultants from McKinsey to estimate how many wireless customers it might have at the turn of the century, according to a report in the Economist.
Their answer — 900,000 subscribers — turned out to be the number of new customers joining mobile phone services every three days by 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment