Electrify Quotes

“For reference, the area of all US land is about 2.4 billion acres.”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“Incidentally, a fully loaded modern jet aircraft gets the equivalent of around 60 miles per gallon (MPG) per passenger, so for traveling long distances, they beat solo road trips in cars (but if you take four friends with you, even a gas-guzzling American car is not so bad—”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“Transportation Sector The transportation sector is a close second to industry in terms of energy use. While air travel gets a bad rap, it is transport on highways that by far dominates this sector’s energy use, using more than 10 times the energy of air travel. Of this highway energy, about 75% is expended by small vehicles, the passenger cars and trucks used to move ourselves around. Amazingly, almost half of this is used on trips of less than 20 miles, mostly to get to and from work and for family responsibilities—things like church, shopping, and school. Of non-highway transport, air travel is the largest contributor, followed by ships and then trains. Incidentally, a fully loaded modern jet aircraft gets the equivalent of around 60 miles per gallon (MPG) per passenger, so for traveling long distances, they beat solo road trips in cars (but if you take four friends with you, even a gas-guzzling American car is not so bad—something hyped by the ride-share community). We can even see that the energy required to transport fossil fuels is significant, with about 1% of US energy use committed to transporting natural gas (we’ll come back to this later). Nearly half of freight-rail transportation is used to move coal—most of the other half is wheat and food. A not-so-surprising revelation from a close study”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“their lifetime is 30 years, then we need to sustainably produce wind turbine generation capacity at 133 GW per year. That is only a little more than two doublings from our current 25 GW, and a production rate we would hit in 2029 if the current industry growth rate of 19% is sustained. If we assume all solar technology lasts 20 years, we need a production rate of 200 GW per year, a rate that we would hit in 2027 if we maintain current growth rates. Once we hit those maintenance levels of production, the industries won’t need to grow any more; they just need to continue to produce at that level to sustain the output required for global clean energy.”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“Whereas with COVID we needed to act 20 days ahead of the virus, with climate change we need to act 20 years ahead.”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“They spend their time matching supply (generation) to demand (load).”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future

“In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a group of United Nations scientists who summarized the worldwide findings on climate change, concluded that meeting the Paris target of 1.5°C/2.7° F would be possible, but it would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.”10”
― Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist's Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future