The question re energy is that people want energy 'services' heat, light, transport, food. They care about the cost of those services (all historically quite low in 2019) but not how they are produced. They want the heat to come on when they hit the button, they really don't care about the box in the basement.
And we are having more people globally, and those people want more services, so it looks like an impossible situation. But the renewable power revolution is happening, globally, and the US is bringing up the rear to be honest, and has been for a long time. So dinging those folks overseas that aren't doing anything.... just wow.
We have spent a LOT of time around here thinking about home heating, obviously, but if you can buy zero carbon electricity for cheap enough to heat your house ... then we don't need to scrap the old place and build a passive house. So, it is ALL ABOUT decarbonizing the electrical grid AND electrifying everything. Period. We will still have emissions, from food production, land use, making stuff, etc. But we will be more than halfway there. In the milder climates of the US, heat pumps already dominate. New Englanders with oil boilers don't get it, but by far most people have electrical heat or gas already. HP tech has improved, and they are continuing to spread north. And again, its not about getting the last 10% of homes, its about getting the carbon free needle over 50%, about getting the middle.
For the grid, we can already see the outlines clearly at this point. Coal is collapsing, economically, under its own weight. Gas and renewables are taking its place. I know gas leakage is a problem, but unlike CO2, it won't stick around for 500 years, just 20-30. So it still makes sense as a bridge fuel. And by that I mean gas is great for filling in supply for wind and solar before diurnal storage becomes cheap, and for augmenting supply seasonally (like those winters New England is famous for). The utilities KNOW what is coming over the next couple decades, and they are trying, if slowly to adapt and be ready.
So the big problem now is OIL. I am at a meeting of Chem-E's right now, and no one I talk to has a clue about the coming upheaval in the oil market. That is OIL DEMAND WILL PEAK. When Coal demand peaked a few years back, the coal majors when from some of the largest companies in the world to bankrupt, in the space of a year. The CW shifted that it wasn't a growth industry, it was a permanent decline industry, despite still being massively productive. And the valuations collapsed.
The oil majors (esp Exxon) are still selling the line of 'Oil demand will keep going up for decades'. When that CW shifts, many of them will get wiped out valuation-wise, despite some continuing to operate (at a lower scale). Independent analysts indicate that Exxon is the least well positioned major to handle peak demand, and likely to go belly up first (bc its oil production is more expensive than others, and they have the least hedging in gas). The management is fighting this reality with PR, rather than moving the business model. One can only conclude that the current mgmt is parasitic, getting what the can out before the ship goes down.
And what makes all this happen: EVs. Petroleum IS liquid coal from a CO2 intensity POV, it just doesn't make your hands as dirty. It needs to go. And the oil majors, in their 'energy outlook 20XX' booklets, cite increasing auto sales outside the US as their primary evidence that oil demand with grow forever. Take that away, and the growth market disappears. So CHEAP, NICE EVs, when they arrive, will kill the oil companies. Seriously. There will still be oil in use in 2100, but not nearly as much as today. And the problem is not about making the demand zero, its about the difference in finances bw growing and declining industries in our financial system.
And the other key thing about EVs is that they will HELP the electric companies decarbonize. Electrical demand will grow, and it is much easier to rebuild the generation fleet (and borrow money to do so) when demand is growing, than it is when demand is shrinking. By slowly lifting electrical demand, EVs allow rolling out RE at scale with private finance.
As for tipping points, I don't like the term. I think there are some tipping points, where a forest gets eaten by beetles, that couldn't spread previously. Or a wildfire can wipe out an arid forest. Or the habitat in a National Part changes to the point the animals trapped within go extinct. But I have never seen any credible science about a global climate tipping point. But the little ones are bad enough.
