Policy Scissors

A reminder from Bill Henderson that we need “both halves of the policy scissors,” working on fossil fuel demand and fossil fuel supply at the same time.

Both arms are complimentary: a (carbon budget based) schedule for winding down production would lead to much more time and money invested in innovation for getting to that post-carbon economy; and a speeded up energy transition could speed up the pace of the wind-down and therefor of emission reduction.

But to argue for only innovation and policies on the demand side to speed up the energy transition while not making the case for using both sides of the policy scissors is helping to ensure that we will fail to meet our 2030 imperative.

Photo by Chris LeBoutillier on Unsplash