Maxwell School News and Commentary

David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs, notes that while new factories will be needed to build electric vehicle batteries, the vehicles will require fewer suppliers producing parts. Many assembly workers will also need to be retrained. “We may also need fewer workers,” Popp says. But, he says, “there doesn’t seem to be a consensus yet on whether that is the case.”

In his two-part essay on the Build Public Renewables Act (BPRA), Professor of Geography and the Environment Matthew Huber examines the labor question and assesses dubious campaign claims that BPRA is a climate victory.

“The UAW…strike action is ultimately trying to realize one of the Biden Administration’s core policy goals and political selling points: you can have good, family-sustaining union jobs alongside climate action. The problem is the automakers see EV production as a way to trim labor costs and shift production to non-union plants,” says Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment.

"If we want to meet timelines to reduce emissions, we have to build wind and solar at a totally unprecedented rate,” says Ethan Coffel, assistant professor of geography and the environment.

“This is a perfect sweet spot for a public power entity to take on some of that risk, to try to really get a technology that we need off the ground,” Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment, says of TVA’s small modular reactor program. ​“They have the resources and the social mission to do that, where private capital wouldn’t.”

“It’s a generational thing,” says Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment. “A lot of younger generations are really fixated on climate and understand that nuclear is one our best options to deal with climate, so we gotta keep it on the table.”

"Exploring factors shaping transportation electrification in American cities," co-authored by Saba Siddiki, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition.

"Powering the next wave of green energy innovation," co-authored by David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in PLOS Climate.

Rather than generating heat, these devices transfer heat from the cool outdoors into the warm indoors and vice versa during warm weather. Heat pumps rely on electricity instead of natural gas or propane, both of which have a higher carbon emission than renewable electricity such as wind or solar, says Jay S. Golden, Pontarelli Professor of Environmental Sustainability and Finance. 

“The environmental benefits are largely going to impact disadvantaged communities if you think typically about tailpipe pollution,” says David Popp, professor of public administration and international affairs.