Energy's Digital Future Quotes

“Promoting a stronger United States is certain to produce a better outcome than trying to weaken China; the latter approach, based on recent history, is likely to fail.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The logic of a Cold War with China is more complex. Not only are China’s digital products intertwined with the environmental and economic development goals of many countries around the world, but Beijing, with its Belt and Road Initiative, is also well placed to promote trade into strategic infrastructure alliances. China has become the top trading partner for more than two-thirds of the world’s nations.1 It has a broad industrial plan to dominate emerging digital technologies in renewable energy, advanced vehicle and mobility network services, and additive manufacturing, and it has shown a willingness to do so by taking undue advantage of the openness to the U.S. education, investment, and export control systems. To build its globalist image, China’s government has declared its intention to reach net zero emissions by 2060.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Additionally, remaining fossil fuel facilities will serve as backup for a long time. As the MIT economist Sergey Paltsev notes, aging traditional fossil fuel energy infrastructure and new installations of renewable energy could coexist for a long time into the future, reducing the leverage that either will have on consumers.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“I have been there, in the world of no electricity, on many occasions—in the aftermath of hurricanes in Houston, in the face of faulty equipment in northern California, after an ice storm in New England. You learn to cope, eating food out of a can and using the water you hopefully stored in your bathtub once you realized a problem was coming. My Houston neighbors maintained one analog phone, which was handy if you wanted to call an airline to see if you could fly somewhere else until electricity was restored—that is, if you had sufficient gasoline to get to the airport, because gasoline pumps need electricity to dispense fuel.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“China’s heavy-handed approach stimulated new investments and stockpiling that reduced China’s grip on the market and spurred actions by other countries.11 Japan found major deposits of strategic metals on the seafloor near Minami Tori-shima Island in the Pacific Ocean that could become commercial if shortages were to persist.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Also in 2020, General Motors unveiled its own new four-hundred-mile-range soft-stack Ultium battery that will reduce cobalt as an input by 70 percent compared to standard EV batteries.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Equally salient now is the need for the United States and its allies to double down to ensure that malevolent actors such as Iran and Russia cannot successfully launch a cyberattack on electric grids, petrochemical complexes, and financial services. It could be argued there is an overstated sense that, given the availability of alternative energy, the security of oil supply chains no longer matters. The reality is that there are more than 1.2 billion oil-burning vehicles on the road globally, compared to just five million electric vehicles. Thus, the idea that the world economy no longer needs to worry about a cutoff of oil supplies is questionable. But the fact that large energy-consuming governments know what they could do if oil were less available is a big change from the 1970s, when there was heightened fear of a lasting economic dislocation.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In the new geopolitics of clean energy, the powerful nations might be those best able to withstand cyber disruptions to their digital energy and transportation systems or, alternatively, those with the most credible ability to threaten to take down the systems of others.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Geography was destiny in the geopolitical race for oil, with oil reserves distributed unevenly throughout the world and, with that disparity, geopolitical concerns about access and transport routes. In the new world of clean energy, chances are that ingenuity and industrial capability will play an outsize role, potentially giving a new set of players energy advantages they have previously not enjoyed. The geopolitics of clean energy may be more about technology, patents, and workforce than controlling access to raw materials.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The examples of Russia and Iran offer a more dismal prospect to the consequences of the loss of petro-power by key states via the advent of digital transformations of the energy world. A declining need for oil might lead to more, not less, geopolitical disorder. One possibility is that oil states that were previously powerful will not be willing to go quietly into the night as their oil power diminishes, but rather will assert themselves in different ways. In the case of Russia and Iran, to date, that assertiveness has included increased exercise of hard power through cyber and military means. Another outcome, perhaps even more troubling, would be if powerful oil producers felt the need to destroy the oil sectors of their rivals, in hopes of ensuring that their own oil assets are not the ones that get stranded.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“As a result of the greater competition, Russian gas exporter Gazprom had had to move to a flexible pricing strategy and is now focused on maintaining a set share of 33 percent of the European market, even if it means lowering prices.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The share of Europe’s energy mix moving to renewable energy has soared in recent years to 30 percent of electricity generation, up from 12 percent in 2000. Almost all new power generation capacity installed in Europe in recent years has been renewable power. Renewables also power more than 8 percent of transport energy in Europe, and the European Union expects to reach its target that renewables will constitute a fifth of all energy use by 2020.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In the mid-2000s, the IEA estimated that OPEC’s share of total world oil supply would rise from 38 percent in 2000 to 48 percent by 2020.5 In 2019, OPEC’s share of total world oil supply had fallen to under 30 percent, threatening its entire enterprise of influencing world oil prices. To regain sufficient market power, especially in light of the changes in the elasticity of both oil supply and demand, it needed to add a major non-OPEC producer to its ranks—hence its changed attitude about cooperation with Russia. Moscow is now a necessity for OPEC, and for Saudi Arabia, if it is going to able to salvage any semblance of influence over the price of oil.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Experience has shown OPEC collusion is easier when oil markets are sufficiently undersupplied so that all producers can gain money from making cuts, as opposed to the more usual zero-sum environment where one OPEC member’s loss is another’s gain.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In a freely competitive market, one might have expected the lowest-cost oil supplies to be developed first to the highest degree possible while higher-cost resources would be abandoned until depletion of cheap oil made room for them at a higher price point. Under this kind of competitive structure, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and the other Gulf producers, whose lowest-cost reserves represent two-thirds of proven world reserves, could have increased their levels of investment and produced a vastly higher amount of oil. Instead, OPEC generally tried to hold oil prices up to maximize revenues over two years. In effect, OPEC had to choose between higher prices or higher market share. They chose the former. The New York University energy economist Dermot Gately noted in a 2004 paper that it was not in OPEC’s collective interests to meet rising demand for oil. He calculated that it made no sense for the cartel to add oil supplies into the market because the marginal gain in revenue from more output would be negative.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“As concentration levels rise, scientists warn we could get to the point where so much CO2 has accumulated in the atmosphere that we will need to achieve “negative” emissions; that is, we will need processes or technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere in a permanent way. One such process is pyrolysis of biofuels, whereby a biomaterial, such as algae or crop residues, is heated in the absence of oxygen resulting in a pure form of carbon known as biochar, as well as bio-oil that can be a diesel substitute and syngas that can be used to generate electricity. Biochar can be used as a soil additive, which holds the carbon sequestered in the ground.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“shadow carbon price is an internal corporate accounting figure that allows companies to incorporate the cost of an additional ton of carbon emissions that will result from some investment. Shadow carbon prices are used across the financial accounting world, from investment and procurement to risk management and strategic long-term planning. As of 2017, more than 1,400 global corporations factored an internal carbon price into business plans and investment decision making.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The international oil majors currently use an internal shadow price of carbon in their investment decision making of between $60 and $85 a ton, somewhat in line with expectations that are currently reflected in U.S. stock market valuations.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The potential of additive manufacturing like 3D printing to influence the peaking of oil demand is not yet as well studied as that of electric cars, but it could wind up being a bigger threat to the oil industry than other, better-known digital trends.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The technology for electrification of larger commercial fleets is moving fastest for buses. Global electric bus sales increased by 32 percent in 2018, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance. China is the largest producer of electric buses, with close to 20 percent of its buses currently electrified. The European Union has a target of 75 percent of new bus sales in European cities to be electric by 2030. New York City has pledged to achieve a 100 percent electric bus fleet by 2040. Shanghai will achieve 100 percent electrified buses by 2020.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Jenn notes that in California, the number of Chevrolet Bolt vehicles rented by Uber and Lyft drivers skyrocketed under GM’s business model that leases the cars to drivers who save on ownership and fuel costs.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“not been available.17 Recent work by University of California, Davis, researcher Alan Jenn has found that the environmental benefit of electrifying vehicles used for ride hailing was three times that of electrifying privately owned personal automobiles, given the higher average number of miles driven by a ride-hailing driver compared to an average household driver.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“City congestion has a large influence on fuel consumption. In the United States, for example, traffic in 2014 caused upwards of 3.1 billion gallons of wasted fuel, Texas A & M’s Transportation Institute calculates.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Researchers Fagnant and Kockelman studied this possibility of ride sharing with AVs in cities through a simulation and found that fewer cars would be needed to make the same number of trips. Their calculation was that one ride-sharing AV could replace up to eleven human-driven vehicles on the road in today’s cities.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In today’s market, consumers often buy the largest car they might need for a family vacation and use it for all purposes, regardless of whether a smaller car might be advantageous for shorter trips or where parking is limited. In a digital shared-ride system, more fuel-efficient vehicles, including electric and hydrogen vehicles, might become the preferred-choice winners for short trips. In this case, a transition to alternative fuels could be accomplished with the construction of fewer fueling stations.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“The possibility of a seamless network of electrified robo-taxis, self-driving delivery vehicles, and public transit linked to smartphone applications might seem like science fiction, but the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in 2020 gave a flavor of what is to come. In China’s pandemic epicenter of Wuhan, unmanned, autonomous electric vehicles, monitored remotely from a computer screen in a different location, were used to deliver hospital supplies, to disinfect isolation areas, and to deliver meals to quarantined people.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Chinese leaders plan to shift support for EVs by encouraging the installation of charging stations. According to the China EV Charging Infrastructure Promotion Association, China already had 1.174 million charging stations at the end of 2019, operated by eight new Chinese charging companies.19 China also has battery-swapping stations, where drivers can replace discharged batteries on certain brands of cars.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“Chinese-made EVs accounted for 96 percent of all EVs built and sold in China in 2017.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In 2015, China surpassed the United States in electric car sales, both on an annual basis and in cumulative EV sales.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security

“In 2017, China represented 45 percent of the global total of investment in renewable energy.”
― Amy Myers Jaffe, Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security