Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
Plan for a Global
Green New Deal
Cell
Press
December
20, 2019
phys.org
Ten years after
the publication of their first plan for powering the world with wind, water,
and solar, researchers offer an updated vision of the steps that 143 countries
around the world can take to attain 100% clean, renewable energy by the year
2050. The new road maps, publishing December 20 in the journal One Earth,
follow up on previous work that formed the basis for the energy portion of the
U.S. Green New Deal and other state, city, and business commitments to 100%
clean, renewable energy around the globe—and use the latest energy data
available in each country to offer more precise guidance on how to reach those
commitments.
In this update,
Mark Z. Jacobson of Stanford University and his team find low-cost, stable grid
solutions in 24 world regions encompassing the 143 countries. They project that
transitioning to clean, renewable energy could reduce worldwide
energy needs by 57%, create 28.6 million more jobs than are lost, and reduce
energy, health, and climate costs by 91% compared with a business-as-usual
analysis. The new paper makes use of updated data about how each
country's energy use is changing, acknowledges lower costs and
greater availability of renewable energy and storage technology, includes new
countries in its analysis, and accounts for recently built clean, renewable
infrastructure in some countries.
"There are a
lot of countries that have committed to doing something to counteract the
growing impacts of global warming, but they still don't know exactly what to
do," says Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at
Stanford and the co-founder of the Solutions Project, a U.S. non-profit
educating the public and policymakers about a transition to 100% clean,
renewable energy. "How it would work? How it would keep the lights on? To
be honest, many of the policymakers and advocates supporting and promoting the
Green New Deal don't have a good idea of the details of what the actual system
looks like or what the impact of a transition is. It's more an abstract
concept. So, we're trying to quantify it and to pin down what one possible
system might look like. This work can help fill that void and give countries
guidance."
The road maps call
for the electrification of all energy sectors, for increased energy efficiency
leading to reduced energy use, and for the development of wind, water, and
solar infrastructure that can supply 80% of all power by 2030 and 100% of all
power by 2050. All energy sectors includes electricity; transportation; building
heating and cooling; industry; agriculture, forestry, and fishing; and the
military. The researchers' modeling suggests that the efficiency of electric
and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles over fossil fuel vehicles, of electrified
industry over fossil industry, and of electric heat pumps over fossil heating
and cooling, along with the elimination of energy needed for mining,
transporting, and refining fossil fuels, could substantially decrease overall
energy use.
The transition to
wind, water, and solar would require an initial investment of $73 trillion
worldwide, but this would pay for itself over time by energy sales. In
addition, clean, renewable energy is cheaper to generate over time than are
fossil fuels, so the investment reduces annual energy costs significantly. In
addition, it reduces air pollution and its health impacts, and only requires
0.17% of the 143 countries' total land area for new infrastructure and 0.48% of
their total land area for spacing purposes, such as between wind turbines.
"We find that
by electrifying everything with clean, renewable energy, we reduce power demand
by about 57%," Jacobson says. "So even if the cost per unit of energy
is similar, the cost that people pay in the aggregate for energy is 61% less.
And that's before we account for the social cost, which includes the costs we
will save by mitigating health and climate damage. That's why the Green New
Deal is such a good deal. You're reducing energy costs by 60% and social costs
by 91%."
In the U.S., this
road map—which corresponds to the energy portion of the Green New Deal, which
will eliminate the use of all fossil fuels for energy in the U.S.—requires an
upfront investment of $7.8 trillion. It calls for the construction of 288,000
new large (5 megawatt) wind turbines and 16,000 large (100 megawatt) solar
farms on just 1.08% of U.S. land, with over 85% of that land used for spacing
between wind turbines. The spacing land can double, for instance, as farmland.
The plan creates 3.1 million more U.S. jobs than the business-as-usual case,
and saves 63,000 lives from air pollution per year. It reduces energy, health,
and climate costs 1.3, 0.7, and 3.1 trillion dollars per year, respectively,
compared with the current fossil fuel energy infrastructure.
And the transition
is already underway. "We have 11 states, in addition to the District of
Columbia, Puerto Rico, and a number of major U.S. cities that have committed to
100% or effectively 100% renewable electric," Jacobson says. "That
means that every time they need new electricity because a coal plant or gas
plant retires, they will only select among renewable sources to replace
them."
He believes that
individuals, businesses, and lawmakers all have an important role to play in
achieving this transition. "If I just wrote this paper and published it
and it didn't have a support network of people who wanted to use this
information," he says, "it would just get lost in the dusty
literature. If you want a law passed, you really need the public to be
supportive."
Like any model,
this one comes with uncertainties. There are inconsistencies between datasets
on energy supply and demand, and the findings depend on the ability to model
future energy consumption. The model also assumes the perfect transmission of
energy from where it's plentiful to where it's needed, with no bottlenecking
and no loss of energy along power lines. While this is never the case, many of
the assessments were done on countries with small enough grids that the
difference is negligible, and Jacobson argues that larger countries like the
U.S. can be broken down into smaller grids to make perfect transmission less of
a concern. The researchers addressed additional uncertainties by modeling
scenarios with high, mean, and low costs of energy, air pollution damage, and climate
damage.
The work
deliberately focuses only on wind, water, and solar power and excludes nuclear
power, "clean coal," and biofuels. Nuclear power is excluded because
it requires 10-19 years between planning and operation and has high costs and
acknowledged meltdown, weapons proliferation, mining, and waste risks.
"Clean coal" and biofuels are not included because they both cause
heavy air pollution and still emit over 50 times more carbon per unit of energy
than wind, water, or solar power.
One concern often
discussed with wind and solar power is that they may not be able to reliably
match energy supplies to the demands of the grid, as they are dependent on
weather conditions and time of year. This issue is addressed squarely in the
present study in 24 world regions. The study finds that demand can be met by
intermittent supply and storage throughout the world. Jacobson and his team
found that electrifying all energy sectors actually creates more flexible
demand for energy. Flexible demand is demand that does not need to be met
immediately. For example, an electric car battery can be charged any time of
day or night or an electric heat pump water heater can heat water any time of
day or night. Because electrification of all energy sectors creates more
flexible demand, matching demand with supply and storage becomes easier in a
clean, renewable energy world.
Jacobson also
notes that the roadmaps this study offers are not the only possible ones and
points to work done by 11 other groups that also found feasible paths to 100%
clean, renewable energy. "We're just trying to lay out one scenario
for 143 countries to give people in these and other countries the confidence
that yes, this is possible. But there are many solutions and many scenarios
that could work. You're probably not going to predict exactly what's going to
happen, but it's not like you need to find the needle in the haystack. There
are lots of needles in this haystack."
More information: One Earth,
Jacobson et al.: "Impacts of Green New Deal Energy Plans on Grid
Stability, Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 143 Countries" https://www.cell.com/one-earth/fulltext/S2590-3322(19)30225-8 , DOI:
10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.003
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