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A 100% renewable global energy plan

Promoting his new book ‘100% Clean, Renewable Energy & Storage for Everything’, Prof. Mark Jacobson from Stanford University says that ‘this book is a culmination of my life’s research so far. How to eliminate up to 7 million air pollution deaths per year, global warming, energy poverty, and energy insecurity’. It certainly is very comprehensive- and radical. It examines the science, engineering, economic, social, and political aspects of transitioning towns, cities, states, countries, businesses, and the world to 100% clean, renewable wind-water-solar (WWS) energy & storage for everything. Such a transition will, it says, address air pollution, global warming, and energy security simultaneously. The book also examines ways to reduce non-energy emissions. All in all, a full assessment of the options and of the way ahead to a sustainable future.   It concludes that a transition among all energy and non-energy sectors worldwide is technically and economically possible.

It starts by defining the air pollution, global warming, and energy insecurity problems we seek to solve (Chapter 1). Chapter 2 then discusses WWS electricity and heat generating technologies; transportation technologies; building heating and cooling technologies, high-temperature industrial heat technologies; appliances, and machines needed for a transition. It further discusses energy efficiency measures, electricity storage, heat and cold storage, and hydrogen storage. Finally, it discusses methods of addressing non-energy sources of greenhouse gas and aerosol particle pollution. Chapter 3 goes into depth about why we do not need natural gas as a bridge fuel, fossil fuels with carbon capture, nuclear power, biomass (with or without carbon capture), biofuels, synthetic direct air capture, or geoengineering.

Because a 100% WWS world is mostly electrified (with resultant major primary energy and conversion loss savings), Chapter 4 focuses on electricity basics. Solar photovoltaics (PV) and wind will, it says, likely comprise the largest share of a WWS world. As such, Chapter 5 discusses solar PV and solar radiation in depth. Chapter 6 discusses onshore and offshore wind. Chapter 7 moves on to discuss steps in developing a 100% WWS roadmap for a country, state, or city. Chapter 8 explains how to match power demand with supply with 100% WWS plus storage. Finally, Chapter 9 outlines the authors personal journey toward 100%; the movement that has arisen around the 100% WWS roadmaps; laws and commitments that have been implemented to date due to them; and the policies needed in the future to finally solve the problems of air pollution, global warming, and energy security.

Drawing on his work with colleagues at Stanford and the University of California Davis over the past decade or more, and fleshing out the initial vision outlined in Scientific American in 2009, this much anticipated book seems likely to become one of the main defining texts of the renewable era. Several extracts have already been circulated: e.g. showing the path to 100% wind, water, solar by 2050, with no nuclear or biomass and no fossil fuel.

The rejection of biomass use is likely to be contentious, not least given the commercial incentives to find green fuels for road vehicles and aircraft and the use of forest derived biomass for power production, as well as for heating- currently its main use. Jacobson does concede that biogas produced from the anaerobic digestion of waste might be acceptable. The use of all the other biomass sources however has major land-use and ecological implications, so they are left out.

Bold steps like that, and the rejection of nuclear and CCS, may make it harder to win wide-scale acceptance from the more traditionally minded, but those of a more radical bent may actually welcome its challenging targets, and also the scenarios produced by the LUT University in Finland. They say PV solar can expand even more, and even faster, so 100% renewables may be possible well before 2050. See for example the recent Solar Power Europe/LUT report which looks to Europe getting 100% of all energy from renewables by 2040.

At present renewables supply around 27% of global electricity and although that is expanding, so far less progress has been made for heating, cooling and transport, so that, overall, renewables only supply around 11% of total final global energy.  So while getting to 100% of power may be possible by 2050, or even earlier in some countries, reaching anything like 100% of all energy globally will be harder and will require some dramatic changes in policy and support levels for renewables, as well as major commitments to cutting demand. These changes will have social implications, and although, as Jacobson notes, the energy transition will have major social benefits, there will also be social costs- and obstacles

In ‘Empowering the Great Energy Transition’ (Columbia University Press) Prof. Marilyn Brown, Prof. Benjamin Sovacool and Prof. Scott Valentine argue that, although an energy transition is inevitable, there are key obstacles which may slow down the transition - engendering unacceptable costs as the perils attributed to progressive climate change worsen. However, there are ways ahead. It’s a good basic policy primer looking at how to attenuate the obstacles. To support class use of the material in the book there are videos which focus on the themes in each chapter. So its ideal for educational use, from a social science perspective, hopefully complimenting Jacobson’s more technical treatise. Hopefully my new book ‘Renewable Energy: Can it deliver?’(Polity), which tries to combine both technology and policy, will find a niche somewhere in there too, pulling it all together into a short, accessible text.


Although, one way or another we are now quite well equipped with texts, what really matters is action. However, despite the constraints, thankfully that does seem to be happening around the world, with many countries now having adopted zero net carbon targets, most of them being focused on renewables. And according to IRENA, an annual $4.5 trillion post COVID-19 economic stimulus package based on renewables could boost world’s economy by 1.3% and create up to 19 million jobs by 2030. That might help overcome some of social and political obstacles to wide-scale deployment.

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