Ever wonder how we get from the dirty present to the clean future? Professor Mark Jacobson of Stanford and his colleagues have been working on just that, as published in new journal Joule:
SUMMARY
We develop roadmaps to transform the all-purpose energy infrastructures (electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, industry, agriculture/forestry/fishing) of 139 countries to ones powered by wind, water, and sunlight (WWS). The roadmaps envision 80% conversion by 2030 and 100% by 2050. WWS not only replaces business-as-usual (BAU) power, but also reduces it 42.5% because the work: energy ratio of WWS electricity exceeds that of combustion (23.0%), WWS requires no mining, transporting, or processing of fuels (12.6%), and WWS end-use efficiency is assumed to exceed that of BAU (6.9%). Converting may create 24.3 million more permanent, full-time jobs than jobs lost. It may avoid 4.6 million/year premature air-pollution deaths today and 3.5 million/year in 2050; $22.8 trillion/year (12.7 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 air-pollution costs; and $28.5 trillion/year (15.8 ¢/kWh-BAU-all-energy) in 2050 climate costs. Transitioning should also stabilize energy prices because fuel costs are zero, reduce power disruption and increase access to energy by decentralizing power, and avoid 1.5C global warming.
I must admit that, due to time considerations, I haven’t gone farther than this summary, but it’s certainly an intriguing and exciting proposal. I wonder which variables they’re holding constant improperly and other such mistakes – not that I mean to criticize, but in a project of this magnitude, those errors are inevitable.
