100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050

Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks

300x170 End-Use U.S. Power Change over Time, in 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, by Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 27 May 2015
from fossil fuels to 100% renewable sun, wind, and water power by 2050,
generating more jobs than would be lost from dirty energy,
stopping tens of thousands of premature deaths from pollution,
saving about 4% of U.S. GDP, plus saving $3.3 trillion worldwide
climate change costs.

That’s 100% as in no coal, oil, natural gas, nuclear, or biomass, just clean solar, wind, and water power: 90% by 2035, 80% by 2030, and 25% by 2025.
No new technology required: just existing solar, wind, and water
power production with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for transportation,
plus huge efficiency savings both from using electricity directly and
through other well-known techniques.

A cleaner, healthier world is within our reach.
And when even the country’s most corrupt legislature can unanimously
pass and the Georgia governor who took campaign funds from six pipeline companies

can sign a solar financing law, while Georgia
has already become

the fastest-growing solar market in the country,
renewable energy is producing the political will to get this done.

Stanford Report, 8 June 2015,


Stanford engineers develop state-by-state plan to convert U.S. to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050:
Mark Z. Jacobson and colleagues show that it’s technically possible for each state to replace fossil fuel energy with entirely clean, renewable energy.
This figure comes from

the referenced paper:


600x339 End-Use U.S. Power Change over Time, in 100% clean and renewable wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) all-sector energy roadmaps for the 50 United States, by Mark Z. Jacobson et al., 27 May 2015



Up through 2023 Jacobson’s graph is quite similar for solar
and wind power to the one I drew two years ago, with
those two power sources rapidly overtaking everything else, and
solar overtaking wind.

Jacobson shows something I didn’t: the rapid collapse of fossil fuel
and nuclear power supplies, as solar and wind (and some water)
displace thermal power.
With banks bailing out of coal
and investors saying “short North American frackers”,
while everybody from Harvard students to the Pope
says we have to get off of fossil fuels,
nobody has to be a prophet to see the carbon bubble is going to pop soon.

About 2025 Jacobson shows solar and wind slowing growth, apparently because
dirty fuels are crashing so fast that along with efficiency improvements
there’s not as much need to ramp up as fast.

While I merely predicted solar would overtake every other power source
within ten years (by 2023),
Jacobson takes into account transportation and everything else
as well as traditional electricity uses.
The complete conversion naturally takes longer than ten years,
although by 2023 we’ll see about a quarter of U.S. power from
clean sources already.
With Tesla
and
numerous others announcing batteries for everything from electric vehicles
to house and utility storage, Jacobson’s predictions may well be conservative.

But that’s the beauty of what he’s done.
He’s demonstrated we can do this, and we can do it quickly,
without any magical new inventions.
Nothing is required beyond existing technology.

So let’s get on with at least slowing climate change while
building a cleaner, healthier world, with more jobs and profit.

-jsq