Mandates Work Best to Achieve Positive Tipping Points in the Energy Transition

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Every Monday, in “Climate on the Ballot,” we pass along a topic to help you integrate climate into your newsroom’s campaign reporting. Consider sharing this newsletter with your colleagues on the politics beat. Vea la versión en espa?ol de “El clima en la boleta.”

This Week: Positive Tipping Points

Negative “tipping points” invoke a sense of dread for those following climate change. Crossing these critical thresholds — the collapse of ice sheets, widespread thawing of permafrost, death of coral reefs, among others — will propel shifts in Earth’s climate system to an entirely new state, “often with an understanding that the change is irreversible,” scientists say. Said plainly: They mark a point of no return for ensuring we maintain a livable planet. (We offered reporting ideas about negative tipping points in a past Climate on the Ballot newsletter.)

But here’s the thing about tipping points: They’re not all bad. Positive tipping points explain the juncture at which the mass adoption of zero-emission solutions becomes inevitable. Some of them, known as “super-leverage” points, would not only accelerate the clean energy transition in their own sector, but would also produce cascades of climate progress in other sectors.

There’s good news: We’ve already passed one positive tipping point. Solar and wind energy are currently cheaper than burning coal or gas in most of the world. But there are many more, and it’s important for journalists to understand and communicate them to the public, because they hold the potential to exponentially accelerate the clean energy transition and fossil fuel phase-out. These are solutions stories waiting to be reported.

Last week, researchers at the University of Exeter released a pathbreaking new study showing that regulatory mandates with deadlines for clean energy uptake would be much more effective than carbon taxes or subsidies, both in terms of lower government spending and faster transformation.

Mandates would constitute a significant shift in climate policy in the US, which has prioritized investments and tax breaks. Although the Biden administration has introduced federal regulations for curtailing tail-pipe and methane emissions, it has not gone as far as the EU and California, for example, which outlawed the sale of gas-powered cars after 2035. (EPA approval for the California rule is still tied up in the courts.)

CCNow explored the good-news tipping points in a recent press briefing, “How Positive Tipping Points Change the Climate Story” with Professor Tim Lenton , co-author of the new Exeter report, and Christiana Figueres , a key architect of the 2015 Paris Agreement when she was executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Reporting Ideas

Where do candidates in states that have implemented climate mandates — California, Michigan, and New York —?stand on those policies? “Mandates can bring forward the tipping points in the [power, heating, light road transport and heavy road transport] sectors by up to 3 years globally, significantly more than carbon prices or subsidies,” note the report authors. Would a Harris administration consider federal mandates if she were elected?

Dig into the Exeter report’s four recommendations for mandates and write about the politics (and legal issues) involved in enacting them. Here they are, summarized:

• Coal plants: Phase out coal power by 2035 in developed countries and by 2045 in developing countries. At COP28, the US joined the Powering Past Coal Alliance. “No date was given for when the existing plants would have to go,” reports The Associated Press , “but other Biden regulatory actions and international commitments already in the works had meant no coal by 2035.” Several states and municipalities have passed mandates eliminating or phasing out coal-fired power plants, and many states have already significantly cut coal production.
• EV cars: Require a rising proportion of car sales to be zero-emission vehicles, reaching 100% by 2035. “The zero-emission mandate for cars shows the best potential for a ‘super-leverage point’ for the global transition,” writes lead author Dr. Femke Nijsse . Former president Donald Trump has falsely claimed that President Joe Biden instituted an EV mandate; there isn’t one. Only California and eight other states have committed to EV deadline mandates, according to Money magazine. Does your state have an EV mandate in place? Talk to candidates about where they stand on EV mandates.
• EV trucks: Require a rising proportion of truck sales to be zero emission vehicles, reaching 100% by 2040. In March, the Biden administration published new EPA rules that would limit the amount of pollution allowed in trucks. The EPA projects that “25% of new long-haul trucks, the heaviest on the road, and 40% of medium-size trucks, like box trucks and landscaping vehicles, could be nonpolluting by 2032,” reports the New York Times.
• Heat pumps: Require a rising proportion of heating appliance sales to be heat pumps starting in 2025, reaching 100% by 2035. Heat pumps outsold fossil-fueled furnaces in 2022 and 2023, no doubt in part due to the 30% federal tax credit included in the Inflation Reduction Act, but, so far, mandates for heat pumps have only been explored at the state and local level. What’s happening in your state?

Talk with business leaders about mandates, particularly those working to decarbonize transport, renewable energy, and technology sectors. Ask what they think mandates would mean to them for the speed of progress, for the markets, and for their ability to plan for the future.

Take Inspiration

• The Guardian’s Damien Gayle covers Exeter’s positive tipping points report.
• Reuters’s David Shepardson explains why the Biden administration decided to “soften” tail-pipe emissions rules after pressure from US automakers and the United Auto Workers.
• “As the critical swing state of Michigan hangs in the balance, experts warn that Democrats’ poor messaging over the shift to electric vehicles could lose them the state in November’s election,” writes Tom Perkins at the Guardian, pointing out that misinformation about EV production costing assembly line jobs, are partly to blame.
• “Supporting new technologies can be expensive, but deciding when to wean the public off incentives can be a difficult balancing act,” writes Casey Crownhart at MIT Review.
• Trump has never been a fan of wind turbines. It is perhaps his “oldest political opinion,” noted Philip Bump in 2022. Yale Climate Connections ' Dana Nuccitelli fact checks Trump’s current campaign rants about high energy prices, explaining how he’s “wrong about the cost of wind energy.”
• Last year, 25 state governors committed to deploy 20 million heat pumps by 2030, quadrupling the number sold in 2020, writes Katie Myers for Grist .

Spotlight Piece

CBS News launched a stellar new election series — “The majority of Americans support climate reforms. Why won’t Congress deliver?” —? about the disconnect between the majority of American voters who are concerned about climate change and the politicians who “dramatically underestimate” their support for climate action. CBS News correspondents in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Maryland, California, Minnesota, and New Jersey report out the story.

Want to share feedback and stories inspired by this newsletter? Shoot us a note at [email protected].