{"id":13624,"date":"2015-07-14T07:16:31","date_gmt":"2015-07-14T11:16:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=13624"},"modified":"2015-07-14T07:15:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T11:15:40","slug":"100-renewable-energy-for-u-s-by-2050","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2015\/07\/100-renewable-energy-for-u-s-by-2050.html","title":{"rendered":"100% renewable energy for U.S. by 2050"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nHere’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks\r\n\r\n\"300x170<\/a>\r\nfrom fossil fuels to 100% renewable sun, wind, and water power by 2050,\r\ngenerating more jobs than would be lost from dirty energy,\r\nstopping tens of thousands of premature deaths from pollution,\r\nsaving about 4% of U.S. GDP, plus saving $3.3 trillion worldwide\r\nclimate change costs.\r\n

\r\nThat’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.\r\nNo new technology required: just existing solar, wind, and water\r\npower production with batteries and hydrogen fuel cells for transportation,\r\nplus huge efficiency savings both from using electricity directly and\r\nthrough other well-known techniques.\r\n

\r\nA cleaner, healthier world is within our reach.\r\nAnd when even the country’s most corrupt legislature can unanimously\r\npass and the Georgia governor who took campaign funds from six pipeline companies\r\n\r\ncan sign a solar financing law<\/a>, while Georgia\r\nhas already become\r\n\r\nthe fastest-growing solar market in the country<\/a>,\r\nrenewable energy is producing the political will to get this done.\r\n

\r\nStanford Report, 8 June 2015,\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nStanford engineers develop state-by-state plan to convert U.S. to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050:\r\nMark Z. Jacobson and colleagues show that it’s technically possible for each state to replace fossil fuel energy with entirely clean, renewable energy.<\/a>\r\nThis figure comes from\r\n\r\nthe referenced paper<\/a>:\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"600x339<\/a>\r\n<\/p>\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nUp through 2023 Jacobson’s graph is quite similar for solar\r\nand wind power to the one I drew two years ago, with\r\nthose two power sources rapidly overtaking everything else, and \r\nsolar overtaking wind.\r\n

\r\nJacobson shows something I didn’t: the rapid collapse of fossil fuel\r\nand nuclear power supplies, as solar and wind (and some water)\r\ndisplace thermal power.\r\nWith banks bailing out of coal\r\nand investors saying “short North American frackers”<\/a>,\r\nwhile everybody from Harvard students to the Pope\r\nsays we have to get off of fossil fuels,\r\nnobody has to be a prophet to see the carbon bubble is going to pop soon.\r\n

\r\nAbout 2025 Jacobson shows solar and wind slowing growth, apparently because\r\ndirty fuels are crashing so fast that along with efficiency improvements\r\nthere’s not as much need to ramp up as fast.\r\n

\r\nWhile I merely predicted solar would overtake every other power source\r\nwithin ten years (by 2023),\r\nJacobson takes into account transportation and everything else\r\nas well as traditional electricity uses.\r\nThe complete conversion naturally takes longer than ten years,\r\nalthough by 2023 we’ll see about a quarter of U.S. power from\r\nclean sources already.\r\nWith Tesla<\/a>\r\nand\r\nnumerous others<\/a> announcing batteries for everything from electric vehicles\r\nto house and utility storage, Jacobson’s predictions may well be conservative.\r\n

\r\nBut that’s the beauty of what he’s done.\r\nHe’s demonstrated we can do this, and we can do it quickly,\r\nwithout any magical new inventions.\r\nNothing is required beyond existing technology.\r\n

\r\nSo let’s get on with at least slowing climate change while\r\nbuilding a cleaner, healthier world, with more jobs and profit.\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Here’s how to convert everything from air conditioners to trucks 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 […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[120,47,141,216,14,264,265,16,41,6124,104,559,24,449,55,36],"tags":[8738,8719,8745,8753,8704,8754,8755,8706,8701,8718,8569,8568,8702,12,7,1706,562,8737,8782,8714,1582,8767,6,8727,8716,4687],"class_list":["post-13624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biomass","category-climate-change","category-co2","category-coal","category-economy","category-energy-conservation","category-energy-efficiency","category-environment","category-health-care","category-natural-gas-2","category-nuclear","category-oil","category-solar","category-transportation","category-water","category-wind","tag-biomass","tag-climate-change","tag-co2","tag-coal","tag-economy","tag-energy-conservation","tag-energy-efficiency","tag-environment","tag-georgia","tag-health-care","tag-hfc","tag-hydrogen-fuel-cell","tag-lake","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-lowndes-county","tag-mark-z-jacobson","tag-natural-gas","tag-nuclear","tag-oil","tag-solar","tag-stanford","tag-transportation","tag-valdosta","tag-water","tag-wind","tag-wws"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-3xK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13624"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13631,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13624\/revisions\/13631"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}