Carnegie Mellon Electricity Industry Center

U.S. and world economies must drastically lower or eliminate emission of greenhouse gases to keep the impacts of climate change manageable. Developing the full suite of technologies emitting little or zero carbon dioxide, while daunting, may not be the most important challenge to deep decarbonization. Rather, massive deployment of technologies and the wider policy and societal transformations linked to profound changes in the energy system are likely to pose greater challenges. To better understand these issues for the United States, I help launch a series of activities at the National Academies to leverage the wide-ranging expertise and activities of our volunteers and staff on mitigation efforts. This work included a 2018 workshop that resulted in the proceedings Deployment of Deep Decarbonization Technologies and a consensus study that produced Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S. Energy System in 2021. There is also a second report in review. This presentation will provide highlights of that work and perspective on what to expect in the future for decarbonization, including by looking at past experiences with addressing major environmental and climate issues in the U.S.

K. John Holmes is the senior director and scholar of the National Academies’ Board on Energy and Environmental Systems (BEES). The portfolio for BEES is broad and includes activities on climate mitigation and assessment, electricity system modernization, fuel economy technologies for light-duty vehicles, and energy innovation. Dr. Holmes currently leads the cross-Academies initiative on the technological, societal, and policy issues related to deep decarbonization of the United States energy system. That work includes public events on a host of topics related to decarbonization and the February 2021 report Accelerating Decarbonization of the U.S, Energy System. His other recent activities include: co-directing studies on the future of the electricity system and negative emissions technologies; directing a study on electricity system resiliency; and organizing workshops on sub-national climate assessment and scaling deep decarbonization technologies. He has directed studies and published on a range of topics including energy technologies, climate change, renewable electricity, sub-national climate assessment, air quality management, stratospheric ozone depletion, water resources management, and carbon emissions trading. He has a personal interest in the long-term development of technology and policy and published “A historical perspective on climate change assessment”, “A century of environmental technologies for light-duty vehicles” and “The early development of systems analysis in natural resources management from Man and Nature to the Miami Conservancy District” related to these interests. He received a B.S. from Indiana University, M.S.E. from University of Washington, and Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University.