To make clear the extent of those hurdles – and how they could be overcome – they have written an article in Scientific American. In it, they present new research mapping out and evaluating a quantitative plan for powering the entire world on wind, water and solar energy, including an assessment of the materials needed and costs. And it will ultimately be cheaper than sticking with fossil fuel or going nuclear, they say.
Jacobson and Delucchi have presented new research mapping out and evaluating a quantitative plan for powering the entire world solely on wind, hydro and solar energy, including an assessment of the materials needed and costs. According to their findings, it will ultimately be cheaper to go down this route than sticking with fossil fuel or going nuclear.
Their research shows that the key is to make a massive commitment to wind, hydro and solar energy to generate electrical power in order to eliminate combustion as a way of generating power for vehicles as well as for normal electricity use. Why? Because fossil fuels and biomass combustion are notoriously inefficient at producing usable energy. For example, when gasoline is used to power a vehicle, at least 80% of the energy produced is wasted as heat, while electric vehicles convert approximately 80% of the energy supplied to the vehicle into motion, with only 20% lost as heat. Other combustion devices can similarly be replaced with electricity or with hydrogen produced by electricity.
Global energy demand would drop
Using data from the US Energy Information Administration, Jacobson and Delucchi projected that if the world's current mix of energy sources is maintained, global energy demand at any given moment in 2030 would be 16.9 TW, or 16.9 million MW. They then calculated that if no combustion of fossil fuel or biomass were used to generate energy, and virtually everything was powered by electricity – either for direct use or hydrogen production – the demand would drop by a third to only 11.5 TM.
In order to make this wholesale shift away from fossil fuel and biomass, the world would have to build wind turbines; solar photovoltaic and concentrated solar arrays; and geothermal, tidal, wave and hydroelectric power sources to generate the electricity, as well as transmission lines to carry it to the users, but the long-run net savings would more than equal the costs, conclude Jacobson and Delucchi. "If you make this transition to renewables and electricity, then you eliminate the need for 13,000 new or existing coal plants," Jacobson said. "Just by changing our infrastructure we have less power demand."
But why wind, solar and hydro power and not other renewable sources? Jacobson and Delucchi chose to use these energy options based on a quantitative evaluation Jacobson performed last year of renewable energy comparing each energy sources potential for producing energy, how secure each source was, and their impacts on human health and the environment. His results which showed that the best overall energy sources were wind, hydro and solar were published in Energy and Environmental Science.
Are their enough of these energy sources?
In order to assess whether the world could turn solely to wind, solar and hydro power in the future, Jacobson and Delucchi quantified global solar and wind resources and found that even if wind were the only method used to generate power, the potential for wind energy production is 5 to 15 times greater than what is needed to power the entire world. For solar energy, the comparable calculation found that solar could produce about 30 times the amount needed.
Their study also provides examples of how a combination of renewable energy sources could be used to meet hour-by-hour power demand, addressing the commonly asked question of whether variable energy sources such as wind and solar can consistently produce enough power? The two researchers believe so, although they stress that improvements to transmissions grids would be needed to carry power from new wind farms and solar power plants to users and to handle the overall increase in the quantity of electric power being generated.
Barriers to full deployment of renewables
Jacobson and Delucchi also concluded that supply shortages of certain key raw materials such as lithium for lithium-ion batteries could become an issue in the future if measures are not taken to ensure that these materials are recycled and potential alternative materials are identified.
Finally, they conclude that perhaps the most significant barrier to the widespread adoption of their plan is the competing energy industries that currently dominate political lobbying for available financial resources. However, “if the world allows carbon- and air pollution-emitting energy sources to play a substantial role in the future energy mix, global temperatures and health problems will only continue to increase,” Jacobson warned.
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