During last night’s State of the Union Address, president Obama essentially abandoned AGW proponents, and shifted the focus to energy, including uttering the greens most dreaded term: “clean coal”. He also set a bold goal that raised some eyebrows:
I challenge you to join me in setting a new goal: by 2035, 80% of America’s electricity will come from clean energy sources. Some folks want wind and solar. Others want nuclear, clean coal, and natural gas. To meet this goal, we will need them all – and I urge Democrats and Republicans to work together to make it happen.
I’m wondering if this idea from Standford might have been part of the thinking at the White House. In this presser, the implementation timelines are about the same, and both make references to the U.S. space program. Stanford mentions the moon landings, Obama mentions “…our generation’s Sputnik moment.”
From Stanford University:
The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today’s technology, in 20-40 years
VIDEO: A new study — co-authored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson and UC-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi — analyzing what is needed to convert the world’s energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today’s technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. What is needed most is the societal and political will to make it happen.
If someone told you there was a way you could save 2.5 million to 3 million lives a year and simultaneously halt global warming, reduce air and water pollution and develop secure, reliable energy sources – nearly all with existing technology and at costs comparable with what we spend on energy today – why wouldn’t you do it?
According to a new study coauthored by Stanford researcher Mark Z. Jacobson, we could accomplish all that by converting the world to clean, renewable energy sources and forgoing fossil fuels.
“Based on our findings, there are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources,” said Jacobson, a professor of civil and environmental engineering. “It is a question of whether we have the societal and political will.”
He and Mark Delucchi, of the University of California-Davis, have written a two-part paper in Energy Policy in which they assess the costs, technology and material requirements of converting the planet, using a plan they developed.
The world they envision would run largely on electricity. Their plan calls for using wind, water and solar energy to generate power, with wind and solar power contributing 90 percent of the needed energy.
Geothermal and hydroelectric sources would each contribute about 4 percent in their plan (70 percent of the hydroelectric is already in place), with the remaining 2 percent from wave and tidal power.
Vehicles, ships and trains would be powered by electricity and hydrogen fuel cells. Aircraft would run on liquid hydrogen. Homes would be cooled and warmed with electric heaters – no more natural gas or coal – and water would be preheated by the sun.
Commercial processes would be powered by electricity and hydrogen. In all cases, the hydrogen would be produced from electricity. Thus, wind, water and sun would power the world.
The researchers approached the conversion with the goal that by 2030, all new energy generation would come from wind, water and solar, and by 2050, all pre-existing energy production would be converted as well.
“We wanted to quantify what is necessary in order to replace all the current energy infrastructure – for all purposes – with a really clean and sustainable energy infrastructure within 20 to 40 years,” said Jacobson.
One of the benefits of the plan is that it results in a 30 percent reduction in world energy demand since it involves converting combustion processes to electrical or hydrogen fuel cell processes. Electricity is much more efficient than combustion.
That reduction in the amount of power needed, along with the millions of lives saved by the reduction in air pollution from elimination of fossil fuels, would help keep the costs of the conversion down.
“When you actually account for all the costs to society – including medical costs – of the current fuel structure, the costs of our plan are relatively similar to what we have today,” Jacobson said.
One of the biggest hurdles with wind and solar energy is that both can be highly variable, which has raised doubts about whether either source is reliable enough to provide “base load” energy, the minimum amount of energy that must be available to customers at any given hour of the day.
Jacobson said that the variability can be overcome.
“The most important thing is to combine renewable energy sources into a bundle,” he said. “If you combine them as one commodity and use hydroelectric to fill in gaps, it is a lot easier to match demand.”
Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day. Using hydroelectric power to fill in the gaps, as it does in our current infrastructure, allows demand to be precisely met by supply in most cases. Other renewable sources such as geothermal and tidal power can also be used to supplement the power from wind and solar sources.
“One of the most promising methods of insuring that supply matches demand is using long-distance transmission to connect widely dispersed sites,” said Delucchi. Even if conditions are poor for wind or solar energy generation in one area on a given day, a few hundred miles away the winds could be blowing steadily and the sun shining.
“With a system that is 100 percent wind, water and solar, you can’t use normal methods for matching supply and demand. You have to have what people call a supergrid, with long-distance transmission and really good management,” he said.
Another method of meeting demand could entail building a bigger renewable-energy infrastructure to match peak hourly demand and use the off-hours excess electricity to produce hydrogen for the industrial and transportation sectors.
Using pricing to control peak demands, a tool that is used today, would also help.
Jacobson and Delucchi assessed whether their plan might run into problems with the amounts of material needed to build all the turbines, solar collectors and other devices.
They found that even materials such as platinum and the rare earth metals, the most obvious potential supply bottlenecks, are available in sufficient amounts. And recycling could effectively extend the supply.
“For solar cells there are different materials, but there are so many choices that if one becomes short, you can switch,” Jacobson said. “Major materials for wind energy are concrete and steel and there is no shortage of those.”
Jacobson and Delucchi calculated the number of wind turbines needed to implement their plan, as well as the number of solar plants, rooftop photovoltaic cells, geothermal, hydroelectric, tidal and wave-energy installations.
They found that to power 100 percent of the world for all purposes from wind, water and solar resources, the footprint needed is about 0.4 percent of the world’s land (mostly solar footprint) and the spacing between installations is another 0.6 percent of the world’s land (mostly wind-turbine spacing), Jacobson said.
One of the criticisms of wind power is that wind farms require large amounts of land, due to the spacing required between the windmills to prevent interference of turbulence from one turbine on another.
“Most of the land between wind turbines is available for other uses, such as pasture or farming,” Jacobson said. “The actual footprint required by wind turbines to power half the world’s energy is less than the area of Manhattan.” If half the wind farms were located offshore, a single Manhattan would suffice.
Jacobson said that about 1 percent of the wind turbines required are already in place, and a lesser percentage for solar power.
“This really involves a large scale transformation,” he said. “It would require an effort comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system.”
“But it is possible, without even having to go to new technologies,” Jacobson said. “We really need to just decide collectively that this is the direction we want to head as a society.”
Jacobson is the director of Stanford’s Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow at Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Murray Duffin says:
“For ICE cars, petroleum energy in the ground to wheel to road energy is about 15% efficient.”
Right, I get it. You factor in the whole product cycle of drilling the wells, pumping the oil, refining it, shipping the refined product to the gas stations and from thence filling the car. But did you bother to apply the same extensive costing to windfarms? Did you for example, cost the energy consumption in manufacture of the blades, the smelting of the steel for the rotor shafts, the mining of the copper for the armatures, the manufacture of the concrete for the footings, the transport of the turbines to the sites, the erection costs, and the mining and smelting of aluminium and more steel to extend the grid?
Thought not.
To fight climate change we need more biological or “eco” technology – maybe like this:
http://www.wimp.com/sheeplight/
There is an excellent critique by Kent Hawkins of the overly optimistic forecasts of wind power generation. Particularly interesting when placed alongside the message of Obama and others, is the conclusion that wind penetration above 7% is very difficult, if not impossible. I quote the paragraph below:
“The net of this is that wind introduces a larger, less predictable net demand that must be continuously met with other generation sources by the system operator, as already indicated. At low wind penetrations, say in the range of 1-2% (in energy terms, that is watt-hours), this might be “manageable” in some cases without undue perturbation or changes. As wind penetration increases this cannot be easily masked and becomes a significant problem, as experienced elsewhere, especially in Denmark and Germany. These two countries, in combination, appear to be able to handle wind penetration of about 7%, albeit with some difficulty, and only due to access to the regulation capabilities of the other Nordic countries, the large hydro power in Norway and Sweden. This actual experience likely represents the upper limit for wind. It is also quite unique because of the availability of very large hydro resources.”
The whole article can be found here:
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/01/kleekamp-part-iis/
“”””” analyzing what is needed to convert the world’s energy supplies to clean and sustainable sources says that it can be done with today’s technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. “””””
I wonder if Jacobson knows what an oxymoron is !
#1 “”””” it can be done with today’s technology at costs roughly comparable to conventional energy. “””””
#2 “”””” But converting will be a massive undertaking on the scale of the moon landings. “””””
#2 trumps #1. Clearly it CAN’T be done with today’s technology at comparable costs; because if that was true, it already would be in place. These “experts” love to point out that we have the technology, and all we have to do is solve a trivial economics problem. And it is trivial; simply slap a tax of $1million per barrel of oil or oil equivalent, on oil, gas, and coal (hydrocarbons), and give the money to the clean green free renewable abundant energy folks. There; economic problem is solved; don’t talk to me about the costs any more, just make it so.
NO we DON’T have the technology to do it which is why it isn’t being done; and what is being done is being subsidized by energy we already have.
Technically, we wouldn’t be building those turbines, someone else would be. And financially more important, we would be paying for everyone of them and, in addition, paying for higher electric rates. Doesn’t sound very sustainable to me.
Every one of these goals start with the assumption that the goal is not only desirable but also urgently necessary requiring the scientific devotion and political will of a moonshot and Manhattan project. The urgency is utterly false. It is also a dubious benefit at best with unbearable costs in terms of money, free markets and government.
The incandescent light bulb replaced the oil lamp by market choice of a superior technology. Every fantasy about replacement energy implicitly acknowledges that the replacement is not superior.
In other words, it’s a control freak’s utopian fantasy where he saves the world with his idea, but by using force for our own good. Hence the appeal to the current administration. The President’s goal is not to just clean up coal a little and then declare the goal reached. His goal is the utopian fantasy.
Obama’s speech sounds like what the Spanish premier was saying four years ago.
How can a University hire people who promote hydrogen from solar PV, the most expensive and inefficient fuel ever?
Here are some reviews of Jacobson and Delucchi papers: http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/2009/10/jacobson-and-delucchi-half-baked-at.html
Murray Duffin says: “The interesting thing for the know-alls is that we will do this, because fossil fuel is finite, and will no longer be economically competitive before 2100.”
I believe you left out something in your sentence. “. . . because fossil fuel is finite on this planet . . .” We now know that one of the moons of Saturn, Titan, has huge lakes of fossil fuel on the surface. If you can dream about windmills and solar cells replacing our current energy needs, I can dream about tankers being sent to Titan to siphon off energy-dense fuels. A shame we’ll neither of us be around to see which one happens first (or at all).
We have talked about . . .
wind, water and sun would power the world . . . natural gas, oil, coal . . . .
I hope we do not forget . . . one that is free and frequent . . . Lightning . . . .
To me it is why battery research is important too . . .
Sincerely, “Pollyanna”
This is from the Stanford department of eco-religion?
“The world can be powered by alternative energy, using today’s technology, in 20-40 years”
Not the world, just the developed nations, and only by bankrupting them – thus handing over conventional energy to the developing world. If we can fend off this insanity, then the correct statement should be:
The world will be powered by alternative energy, using tomorrow’s technology, when it is cost-competitive.
The variability of solar and wind energy stress distribution grids. The grid experts figure that the grids can’t handle more than 30% wind/solar before becoming unstable.
Maybe we should require Standford campus to go 50% renewable energy itself, then maybe they’ll understand the issues they’re ignoring.
This link is to California’s ISO… it shows the connected power at any given time of the day, of all the windmills that are connected to the power grid in (almost) real time.
One time last year the total power was 22 MW. A heat wave was going on the total power needed for the State was about 45,000 MW…. Yippee windmills provided about .004% of the power needed that day.
Today the wind is producing about 70MW.
One thing that would be nice to see would be the total power maximum rating, of all the windmills.
http://www.caiso.com/outlook/SystemStatus.html
Wave action machines are even more of a crock!
http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/2010/05/23/wave-power-takes-on-water-huge-swells-sink-oceanlinx-generator/
I can tear the fanny off this intellectual flight of fantasy in about one hour flat, but there is little point. The world prefers to believe in “The Energy Fairy”. What these Stanford academics don’t know about electric power production and distribution would fill a very large book.
CH
Fossil Fuels are only as finite as carbon . . . .
until railroads, shipping ect. . . it was very inefficient to move coal, en mass . . . .
“Come on people now” . . . . think . . . windmills used to be more cost efficient for energy because it was mechanical . . . in an undeveloped world . . . solar heating or the hot springs were “less work”.
Pie in the sky. Low density power like wind and solar will not be major contributors until the power storage problem is solved in a way that is massively scalable. The idea of converting this lower density power to stored hydrogen is interesting but I doubt its practicality.
The “wind power footprint the size of Manhattan” is pure fantasy. What he says in the end is that it would take (wind and solar combined) 1 percent of the Earth’s land surface. Make a square, ten feet by ten feet, gridded at 1 foot intervals. 1 percent means one of those little squares. Imagine this in your town….in a ten block square area, one whole block is power plant (wind/solar/whatever). Worldwide, 1 percent is huge, not little, considering all the land surface that must be excluded from the calculation — mountain ranges like the Himalayas, Sierras, Rockies, coastal marshes, tourist beaches, already existing urban areas, truly productive farmland, and vast deserts. For wind, there must be adequate wind potential, very few areas are suitable. For solar, the same is true, though larger areas are suitable, many are worthless — too cloudy too often, too high a latitude therefore seasonal. Recently a solar power project in the American southwest desert was blocked by environmentalists…..think they’re going to give over 1 % without a fight? Impossible politically.
My vote goes to hundreds and hundreds of “cookie cutter” modern-design nuclear power plants – they don’t explode, they don’t make waste, they don’t make bomb fuel. They just make power — clean power.
I’ve been saying this for AGES:
It is not about “containing” global warming. It is about reducing America’s energy dependence on flaky Arabs and Russians. It doesn’t matter what the source of energy is as long as it is American energy, that’s what Obama’s doing here. That’s why clean coal and natural gas can be uttered in the same breath as solar power and wind turbines and it makes complete sense.
It’s the subtext, stupid.
According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, implementing the Stanford plan over the next 20 years would cost $100 trillion and require the installation of 130,000 square miles of solar panels and 2.7 million square miles of wind farms.
And we would still have to keep the coal-fired plants running to fill in during those periods when the sun don’t shine or the wind don’t blow.
Yes, it’s a complete oxymoron. What they are saying is that after the transformation of the whole energy infrastructure it wouldn’t cost more than what energy costs today. Even if that was true (obviously it isn’t unless you factor in “2-3 million saved deaths” etc.), they still leave out the cost of that transformation. Obviously countless of trillions of dollars, that, if improving the world was the aim, could be much more productively spent on vaccinations, clean drinking water, GM crops for barren environments etc. as argued by Lomborg among others.
Living in a new house wouldn’t cost any more than living in your current house. So you can demolish your old house and build a new one. It’s free!
The whole CAGW / clean energy scam is intellectually so weak, it’s truly fascinating how it keeps on surviving. With respectable institutions like Stanford producing most outlandish declarations with straight face.
Utopian energy dreams have evidently been part of SOTUA’s for a few decades.
I vaguely recall Gerald Ford in about 1975 during the “energy crisis,” proclaiming that soon the U.S. would have a couple thousand Fast Breeder Reactors providing cheap electricity and producing more nuclear fuel than they consumed.
Well it’s been 35 years, so if you live in the U.S., you’ve undoubtedly noticed the fast breeder powerplant just outside your town!
Buddenbrook: And now it gets even more oxymoronic, because I forgot that solar is going to supply most of the power in the day and wind most of the power at night, which means I must beef up my wind and solar installed capacity. Now I am up to a cost of $160 trillion, 200,000 square miles of solar panels and 4 million square miles of wind farms.
Wind and solar are complementary, Jacobson said, as wind often peaks at night and sunlight peaks during the day.
These Stanford people need to get out more.
The wind ‘backs and slacks’ at night and ‘veers and increases’ during the day. Building your energy policy on a basic misunderstanding of nature will not get you far.
Stanford University: They train lawyers and blog trolls. Bah humbug, it is all humbug!
Only a politican or a fool would believe these guys. pg
These guys are complete fools. Anyone familiar with how an electric utility works will tell you that even with the most massive grid, such a grid cannot be maintained with more than 20% of wind or solar based power at its disposal, because of the inherent unreliability of such sources. Such power will not be base power, either; it would only be used to supplement peak load demand. So their 90% solar and wind power assumptions are pure Disneyland fantasy.
The grid they are describing will take years to design, years to build, and trillions of dollars we do not have right now. And the efficiency and footprint of solar/wind plants as they describe them are totally misleading. Why is it that even environmental groups balk at the locations of some of these plants?
Perhaps a little late with this comment on wind turbines, for which I apologise.
In UK at the begining of December we had very cold weather associated with an anticyclone, hence very little wind. I understand that on 7th December at 17.30 GMT the electricity demand was the 4th highest ever recorded. 39% was satisfied by oil and gas, 39% by coal, 18% by nuclear and the balance from other sources such as hydro etc. Wind contributed just 0.4%. This provides little confidence in our ability to rely on so called renewables in the forseeable future.