Some academics claim that the U.S. can end reliance on fossil fuels by electrifying most everything — cars, trucks, space and water heat, etc. — and supply the needed electricity solely with wind, solar and hydroelectric energy, without increasing costs. But our study of the cost of doing so just for Oregon and Washington state shows this belief to be a fantasy.
Both states have adopted California’s Advanced Clean Car rules, which require 100% of all new cars and light trucks sold to be electric by 2035. Both states require their electric utilities to eliminate all fossil-fuel generation, including imports. Both states intend to replace all fossil-fuel space- and water-heating systems with electric heat pumps to reach zero emissions by 2050.
Both states also have access to large quantities of low-cost hydroelectric generation.
If full electrification is the goal, then ensuring there is enough electricity is a must. We calculate the additional generating capacity required and the cost. The numbers are staggering: an additional $550 billion in costs for electric ratepayers — before accounting for inflation — by 2050.
That’s not a typo. Even under a “low cost” scenario in which the costs of wind, solar and battery storage fall by half, the additional costs would be $420 billion. The overall cost is large because the system must be overbuilt to account for wind and solar’s inherent intermittency, and massive amounts of battery storage must be added.
The effects on customers’ electric bills will be devastating. Accounting only for the additional electricity required for electric vehicle charging and assuming a modest inflation rate of just 2.0% annually, a typical residential customer’s bill will increase by 450%, from about $110 per month today to over $700 per month in 2050. Although customers who currently use natural gas for space heat and hot water will no longer spend money on natural gas, those savings will be dwarfed by the higher cost of electricity.
What about the impacts on the world climate that underlie the zero-emissions policies? The two states’ combined energy-related greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions totaled about 150 million metric tons in 2019, the most recent year for which data for both states are available.
Assuming these emissions were reduced at a constant rate until they were eliminated entirely by 2050, the reduction in GHGs would total about 1.8 billion metric tons. By comparison, in 2023 alone, world carbon emissions were estimated to be just over 35 billion metric tons. Thus, even if the 100% electrification effort succeeded in eliminating all energy-related GHG emissions in the two states, the total reduction in GHGs between 2024 and 2050 would amount to only three weeks of 2023 world emissions. The effect on global temperatures can be calculated using the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s climate model. The result would be a temperature reduction of less than 0.003 degrees centigrade. (By comparison, a good outdoor thermometer is accurate only to about 0.5 degrees centigrade, 170 times larger.)
Thus, even if achieved, the two states’ zero-emissions goals will have no measurable impact on world climate.
By contrast, the economic impacts will be devastating. Soaring electricity costs will cripple the two states’ economies, causing the loss of thousands of jobs. Deindustrialization will occur as energy-intensive industries shrink or abandon because high electricity costs render them uncompetitive.
Consumers will pay more for virtually everything because higher-cost electricity will raise production costs for agriculture and businesses.
As businesses relocate to other states with lower-cost energy, jobs will be lost. Energy poverty rates will soar as consumers struggle to pay their electric bills.
The costs to achieve net zero with wind, solar, and battery storage for just these two states portend the magnitude of pursuing zero emissions policies nationwide, which will cost many trillions of dollars. Europe is already experiencing these impacts because of its zero emissions policies.
Advocates for zero emissions policies are ignoring these economic realities. But those realities won’t ignore them.