Long View Future Scenarios Narratives

What will life be like when no one needs a car?

It’s May, 2040, and it’s already hot out, but so lovely after yesterday’s torrential rain. You’ll walk to work today. No one’s had a personal car since the 2030s, and you don’t understand how anyone ever did. It’s so nice to choose to have access to a car rather than be required to have one or miss out. Things are more fair for everyone. And whether you want to be fancy or bare bones, subscriptions offer so much variety and flexibility – and now there’s the public plan. No one needs a car that often anyway: Cities are much more walkable now, much safer. Even in the suburbs or the country, it just doesn’t make sense for most people to need a car. 

Yes, I’ll walk today, you decide smiling up at the sunshine through the window. But your smile fades when you open the fridge: You’re out of creamer. “Remember to go by Lenny’s Market for half-and-half” you say out loud, and your phone creates a reminder to stop by the corner grocery on your way home. 

Oh well. On the way to work, you can stop by that new coffee shop next to the hardware store – and oh! The marshes should be filled today, so you can look for toads in the reeds for a few minutes before heading into the office. You still can’t believe that park was a parking lot just two decades ago. It looks so wild. 

The kids clamber down the stairs and beeline to the door. They’re racing to their blue and yellow school-issued cycles again, which are parked along the sidewalk at the end of the block. 

“Slow down. There are still plenty of bikes left,” you remind them. “My app says five regular and four electric. And yea, yea, I know,” you say, handing them their helmets, “cars don’t hit people. But you can still bang your head on the sidewalk. Then you’ll have to wait for the emergency drone, and even as fast as they are, you’ll still be late, won’t you?” You kiss them on the head and send them on their way. 

Through the window you see your neighbor Dee seated in her wheelchair in the cooling station wearing a raincoat. You throw your water bottle into your bag and head out the door. Dee, who is going to a doctor’s appointment, catches you as you walk by. She says she had wanted to wheel there, since it’s just a mile and a half away and so nice out today. But her wheels are squeaking and the chair needs a tuneup so she’s called a car. After the doctor, she tells you, she’ll stop by the shop next door and see if they can fix the chair quickly. Then, she hopes she can just wheel home. She brought her coat just in case it rains later, but it’s already so hot, she doesn’t know why she doesn’t just take it off, she says, looking down at her phone. “Ah, here it is. Just two minutes and an empty station! What a nice day!” 

Across the sidewalk in the car lane, a ramp lowers from the public driverless rideshare. Dee rolls along the crosswalk and up the ramp which closes behind her. On a day like today, she’ll get it all to herself, you think. 

You check the weather app, sunshine for the whole week. “Pause car subscription for one week,” you say out loud. “Ok,” your phone replies. “Would you like to donate those hours instead?” 

“Good idea. Yes, go ahead,” you say as you walk down the street.

“When we create convenient, affordable mobility options, then the car becomes a choice instead of a requirement.”

– Adam Terando, Evan Arnold, and Kai Monast, Will We Build Cities for Humans or Machines?

A vote for air traffic management – what will you decide? 

September, 2041, Raleigh, NC. – Today is Wednesday – and the fourth day of the fifth heat wave this season. Lucky for you, it’s also a company-wide wellness day. You peer out the window, sipping your coffee. It’s too sunny to stay inside and waste AC, you think. The lake will be boiling, probably teeming with killer microbes, brain eating amoebas. The sand at the beach? Total flip flop melter. You’ll escape to the mountains, you and your two best friends. You’re looking forward to a hike and cooler air. 

You check your transport app to see if any air taxis are available. A three-seater eVTOL has just opened up. You reserve it immediately. The flight takes off at 9 AM so you’ll have to book it to make it there by 8:45. It’s a bit pricey, but you all agree to split the fee. At least for today, you think, it’s worth it. You love the “TarheelXP,” North Carolina’s electric high-speed rail line that runs along the old interstate routes east to west. High-speed rail is about twice as fast as air taxi, but the train will probably be packed this early. Plus, there’s a vertiport in the mountains right on top of the French Broad River. It’s close to food, shops and all the trails. Also, this could be your last time in an air taxi. 

After the Urban Air Mobility vote in November, who knows what will happen with air traffic management. You like the SkyHighway in use now, but there’s just too much traffic with all the delivery and emergency drones up there too. Maybe we’ll replace it with a File-and-fly system. Will having to lock in flights earlier raise ride prices and cancellation fees? Or maybe we’ll go the other way, hire a bunch of air traffic controllers. Surely we’ll have enough workers. It seems like ever since the DOT announced an air traffic tuition rebate, everyone’s studying it these days. There’s also a possibility that whatever we choose won’t matter. There’s growing concern about equity: It may be impossible to ever make eVTOLs affordable for everyone. You squint your eyes a little ashamed at today’s decision. Is it really fair to subject everyone to someone’s luxury? You start to feel a little guilty about your decision but you throw your bottle, a towel, swimsuit, extra socks and some snacks into your bag and head out the door. 

Outside the air above you vibrates and buzzes. It’s so hot already, but the walk to the heliport isn’t too far. It still looks silly, that super tall building in the middle of town. But hey, it took a lot to get it there, so it is what it is. At least it houses a bunch of people. You pass the park, where a crowd of people has gathered around an older man passed out in the grass. “I called 911 about two minutes ago,” someone says, calming the crowd. “I’ve got training, so I can work the defibrillator.” At that very moment, a drone drops down into the mass of people. The buzzing and beeping seems to make you walk faster and before you know it, you’re boarding your flight. 

Thirty minutes into the flight the automatic pilot announces that it is rerouting. A swarm of drones has been dispersed to put out a forest fire just east of your destination. You lean back your head, let out a sigh and wait.  Soon enough you’ll be out of the air and under a waterfall.

“We will have a vastly larger number of aircraft in the sky. They will be flying lower than what we’re typically used to in a greater quantity. And they will have to be managed by something.”

– Adam Terando, Evan Arnold, and Kai Monast, Will We Build Cities for Humans or Machines?

What if a smart grid transported energy from coast to coast?

The year is 2045. Now, when you turn on the light in your bedroom on a calm night in May in North Carolina, it’s possible that the energy lighting up the page of your favorite book was harnessed back in January when the wind was blowing in south Texas. It’s also possible the energy came from your own roof or solar panels at a farm in Halifax this morning, or even two weeks ago when the sun beat down on Death Valley. That’s because we are now capable of generating green power from solar and wind on industrial and community farms for next to nothing. And we’re transporting it anywhere in the country whenever we want. 

In the US, the EPA’s 2024 rule to phase out unabated coal has been realized for a decade now. A handful of coal plants remain, but they all have carbon capture technology, so they’re producing net zero emissions. Even these coal plants are shutting down – economically, it’s just not worth it. Coal companies now own solar and wind, which have been cheaper for decades, especially now with the new grid. That affordability is partly how we avoided a financial crisis: Coal plants remaining after 2024 shut down slowly as alternatives came online and got cheaper over time. 

Now we pretty much rely on solar and wind, and a little geothermal. That was a problem before Congress passed the Bright Unite Act. It gave the feds power to build lines anywhere they wanted, with feedback and input from the communities the lines crossed. Most of the lines are built along interstates and highways. Before Bright Unite, if there wasn’t a coal or gas plant to pick up the slack when the sun wasn’t shining or the wind wasn’t blowing in your area, you simply couldn’t get power. Some places faced a decade of rolling black outs. We never had to go fully nuclear because by the time that it got inexpensive enough, we’d already rebuilt most of the grid and didn’t need new plants. 

The grid we’ve built is massive. Beneath and above the ground, powerlines zig-zag across the whole country, from California to Kansas to the Carolinas. Energy is harvested on huge solar and wind farms, sometimes at geothermal plants, or converted into green hydrogen to burn later. With all the different options, the grid is redundant. This means blackouts rarely, if ever, occur. If the power goes out, it’s usually back on and running in minutes, all carbon-free, no matter where you are in the States. 

Thanks to technology evolving so quickly, storage isn’t a problem. We store energy for up to a year or more in batteries, hydrogen cells and pump hydro. It pumps water upstream when we don’t need electricity and lets it fall downhill to produce electricity when we do.

Being able to store and transfer energy was kind of a mess before everything came online. Now every power plant and storage facility are seamlessly connected across space through the smart grid. It’s a whole communication system, where data shared across jurisdictions contributes to real-time energy status updates. At any time of day, anywhere in the country, it’s possible to know the electricity status in your house, neighborhood, state, region or the whole country. The goal is to keep it balanced. 

Right now, you can walk into any house and find energy-efficient smart appliances. By conversing with the grid, they also help balance it. The AI-powered appliances are adaptable, pulling energy when it’s available and cycling energy when it’s running low. Everyone is required to have smart appliances because our grid works best if everything attached to it is communicating with it. Sharing data ensures the most accurate balances, and accurate balances help us distribute electricity equally. That’s important because equal distribution prevents deaths of the most vulnerable people. In the 2020s and 2030s a heatwave or winter storm could kill a person during an electricity outage. This doesn’t happen anymore. 

To make sure every home can participate in Our Green Grid, the national balancing project,  took some work. At first smart appliances were expensive. But because they were built to last to conserve resources, and the technology they contain keeps getting cheaper, they’re becoming more affordable with time. Besides time, appliance companies provide rebates, and the federal government issues tax deductions when you buy a new smart appliance. Affordability isn’t an issue for those who rent. By law, rental housing requires smart appliances before occupants move in. 

For homeowners who still struggle to afford smart appliances upfront, there’s help. There’s the Federal Smart Home Program, which provides free or affordable appliances to people making below a certain income. Or, there may be a Community Green Fund, or CGF in your area. CGFs are popping up all over the country. Contributors pitch in to provide grants for others in their community who may have less. In return, contributors get the satisfaction of helping balance the grid – but also, tax breaks. In some places, CGFs put a percentage of investments into local gardens or businesses, and their contributors can elect to receive a percentage of the produce or profits. 

Bright Unite: what if green energy were a right?

You live out in the country, and you have to meet your team in the city for a presentation. You unplug your car – everyone who needs a car has an EV now, thanks to Bright Unite – and head out on the road. As you drive, you think about the power lines built along the shoulder of the highway. You remember when lanes were backed up for hours as construction workers planted the lines that would carry green energy across the whole country. Thank goodness that’s over, you think to yourself, and you turn on the radio. 

It’s the ten year anniversary of the Bright Unite Act’s final accomplishment, the host announces. A decade ago, on September 14, 2035 the president announced the completion of Our Green Grid, which connected every home in America to an adaptable, interconnected, reliable, totally green electricity grid. 

“This was once just a dream,” says the host. “Now everyone, everything, is connected to a power system that balances and transports energy from coast to coast. So today we celebrate the Bright Unite Act. Because of it, green energy is now a right. Everyone in the country benefits from our green grid. Smart appliances, green vehicles, home electricity: By law it must be made available to every person regardless of income, race, gender or age.”

The host speaks with correspondents stationed at celebrations and street festivals in California, Texas, Idaho, Illinois, Georgia and New York. But you don’t have to gather to celebrate. The grid will deliver little surprises throughout the day.  

At 3 PM, a solar farm in Death Valley will blink the lights on and off 14 times at houses and businesses in North Carolina. A wind farm in Long Island Sound will send a shock of rainbow lights along I-70’s power lines, signaling every car from New York to Kansas City to honk as it passes. From Texas, another wind farm shoots off a “Howdy” to home appliances in Wyoming. 

As you approach your exit, a sign is flashing: “Together we did it! 1050 miles!” All along the interstate signs flash the same message with different numbers. They represent the distance energy traveled to power the signs. At 3 pm, the ferris wheel downtown will light up in green. Your meeting will be done by then, and you’ll meet up with some friends and family for an outdoor concert. 

As you pull into the city, you stop at a light next to an old gas station. People have plugged their cars in and are waiting around in a little park as they charge. A mother pushes her daughter in a swing. Some friends sip coffee at a picnic table. A couple is bickering about dishes. They’re late for a museum event because of the dishes. One insists the smart washer isn’t working. The other says they’re just doing the dishes too often. No, says the other, it isn’t connected. The balance in the house is all whacky. That’s why the car died. And that’s why we’re here, sweating in a charging park. 

You roll up your window, and the light changes. 

“Our grandkids are probably going to live technologically in a very different world, from an energy perspective.”

– Harrison Fell and Jordan Kern, Can We Reach Green Goals by 2050? Yes, But It’s Complicated