Seven Years: Make It So

I've barely ever mentioned Mark Z. Jacobson on here. He's a Stanford energy scientist who has published plans for how all 50 states (and lots of countries) could make their energy grids carbon-neutral.

Well, he and a group of co-authors have a new study out on the cost of all those changes, now covering 143 countries. Another clean-energy guy, Assaad Razzouk, summarized it this way on Twitter:

Must-read Christmas present: New study by @mzjacobson and team presents realistic roadmaps for 143 countries, representing 99.7% of world’s CO2 emissions, to move all energy to 100% clean, renewable wind-water-solar energy by 2050, with at least 80% by 2030.

Findings:

1. 100% renewables reduces energy needs by 57.1%
2. 100% renewables reduces energy costs from $17.7 to $6.8 trillion/year (61%)
3. 100% renewables reduces social (private plus health plus climate) costs from $76.1 to $6.8 trillion/year (91%)
4. 100% renewables creates 28.6 million more long-term, full-time jobs than are lost
5. 100% renewables needs only 0.17% and 0.48% of land for footprint and space, respectively
6. Zero nuclear needed and no carbon capture and storage assumed either

So: 100% renewables needs less energy, costs less, and creates more jobs than current energy. This should be obvious, but bears repeating: 100% renewables needs less energy, costs less, and creates more jobs than current energy.

A Bloomberg article on the Jacobson study summarized it this way:

It would cost $73 trillion to revamp power grids, transportation, manufacturing and other systems to run on wind, solar and hydro power, including storage capacity, the report found. But that would be offset by annual savings of almost $11 trillion.

For those doing the math at home, that means it would pay for itself in under seven years, not even counting the decreased cost in the long run from less climate disruption and who knows what else.

The full study is here.

Now we "just" have to get companies like Xcel to get on board with the plan…governments to stop subsidizing fossil fuels…and all the companies with balance sheets based on buried carbon to write off their bad debt.

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As a side note: Here's an illustration showing part of the reason it's possible to get to a renewable grid: Because burning carbon-based fuels is really inefficient:


That image comes from Costas Samaras, associate professor at Carnegie Mellon, but as the citation in the image says, the original source is the National Research Council, 2008. Old news.