A study by Stanford scholar Mark Z. Jacobson and a team of researchers at both Stanford University and the University of California at Berkley in 2015 created a road map for a 100% renewable future. Ambitious? Sure. Unlikely? Perhaps.
Skeptics shot it down, optimists pointed to it for inspiration. Since 2015, it’s been basically debunked. (It made deep assumptions about the hydroelectric availability that’s even technically achievable in the U.S.) But this study brought a 100% renewable future to the forefront, and it made a point to say that it wasn’t just possible, it was affordable.
According to the study’s analysis, 80% to 85% of our energy demand can be supplied from wind, water, and solar by as early as 2030. The remaining 15% to 20% would take another 20 years — as long as everything goes right — which is probably the best-case scenario as it stands now. This included a rapid uptake of electrifying everything — vehicles, aircrafts, rail and bus transport, and all appliances — not to mention one of the most coordinated efforts of government action probably ever.
To say it’s ambitious is probably an understatement.
But, despite all of these assumptions, one thing remained. The first 80% appears to be the easy part, and it’s one thing most engineers, scientists, and researchers agree on — skeptics and optimists alike. So, let’s see what it takes to get there first.
A unified grid
To begin producing more renewable energy, the renewable energy we generate must have somewhere to go. Today, that’s not exactly the case.
Right now, our existing grid is divided into three major parts and exchanges very little power between them: the western interconnection, the eastern interconnection and Texas. A national grid would allow the states that produce more renewable energy than they can consume to export it to states that don’t.
Let’s take wind energy for example. According to a report from the Wind Energy Association, 15 states account for 87% of the wind energy potential but are projected to only account for 30% of the nation’s energy demand by 2050. Our transmission infrastructure and our grid are in the way.
It comes as no surprise that the 15 states that generate the most wind energy lie in the central-U.S.: Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas and Louisiana.
It should also come as no surprise that the demand for this energy lies outside the renewable-rich region.
By connecting these regions together via high-voltage transmission lines, congestion can be relieved on both ends of the line. The central states can produce as much renewable energy as possible without worrying if it’s going to be consumed or not, maximizing the use of generated renewable energy while balancing load demands across the country.
What will it take to unify the grid and unlock the full renewable potential of this region and the U.S.?
Wood Mackenzie says we need to double the network of our existing transmission lines from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles. Not only would this help unify the grid, but it’d also establish a transmission infrastructure that could actually transfer the amount of energy required to power the U.S. completely on renewable energy alone.
The sooner this happens, the better. Right now, 20 states have already committed to 100% renewable energy goals, and virtually all of them lie outside of the wind-energy-rich central U.S.: Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Virginia, Washington, California, New Mexico, New York, Maine.
Overbuild electrical generation capacity
Okay, so if reaching 80% of total energy generation through renewable sources is feasible within the next 10 years, what about the last 20%?
Forecasting load demand and generating 100% of our power through renewable energy is certainly a challenge. The best way to overcome it? Overbuild… by a lot.
In Jacobson’s 2015 study, the authors estimate that the average U.S. energy demand will reach 2.6 TW by 2050. How much energy capacity do we need to account for that much energy demand? About 2.5 times as much, or 6.5 TW of total energy capacity. Today, we’re at about 1.2 TW.
To give an idea of how much that actually is, Jacobson and his team laid out one of the more affordable ways that can be done, focusing solely on wind, water, and solar:
- 328,000 new onshore 5 MW wind turbines (providing 30.9% of U.S. energy for all purposes)
- 156,200 off-shore 5 MW wind turbines (19.1%)
- 46,480 50 MW new utility-scale solar-PV power plants (30.7%)
- 2,273 100 MW utility-scale CSP power plants (7.3%)
- 75.2 million 5 kW residential rooftop PV systems (3.98%)
- 2.75 million 100 kW commercial/government rooftop systems (3.2%)
- 208 100 MW geothermal plants (1.23%)
- 36,050 0.75 MW wave devices (0.37%)
- 8,800 1 MW tidal turbines (0.14%)
- 3 new hydroelectric power plants (all in Alaska)
Of course, there are many generator mixes to help us reach 100% renewable energy when overbuilding energy capacity by 2.5 times as much as what’s needed. The point remains, if we want to hit 100% renewable energy while excluding alternative methods of getting there, such as nuclear, natural gas, etc., then this is one way of building a sustainable energy system.
Waste: the heart of the problem
Renewable energy is highly variable, referred to as variable renewable energy (VRE).
The sun shines, the wind blows — until it doesn’t. On the flip side, sometimes it’s too sunny out, or too windy. This leads to large spikes in power that dip way below and rise way above consumer energy demand. However, because renewable energy is variable, it can’t be dispatched, meaning it can’t be turned on and off. If the energy can’t be absorbed into the supply or transmitted along the line, it’s wasted.
One of the best ways to make sure VRE is not wasted? Store it.
In a paper written by Benjamin Kroposki, the Director of the Power Systems Engineering Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), he examines how to integrate high levels of VRE into electric power systems despite the variability and uncertainty. He comes to a rather simple conclusion, but an important one.
“Energy storage” Kroposki writes, “can help deal with all aspects of the integration challenge, but also is one of the most expensive options. At the very highest levels of VRE penetration, energy storage is crucially important to allow for significant energy shifting and grid availability when the renewable resource is not available.”
If the energy can’t be dispatched and it can’t be distributed along the line, storing it is one of the best ways to handle consecutive days of low wind or solar availability.
The good news? According to the Environmental Defense Fund, the energy storage market is expected to grow by 9 times its size by 2022.
This growth has already helped accelerate the shift to cleaner energy. Since 2014, there’s been a staggering 60%+ price drop in utility-scale energy storage. Today, thanks to more cost-effective storage options, utilities are now moving toward renewable energy (and energy storage) in favor of new natural gas power plants.
The Renewable Energies Division at City Electric Supply sees this cost reduction as a huge catalyst for the industry.
“We have seen tremendous growth in the battery storage sector over the past couple of years in both our utility division and our residential and commercial division,” Robbie McNamara said, who is the National Renewable Business Development Manager at City Electric Supply.
“Since the initial drastic cost reduction — and continued reduction — in lithium-ion technology, as well as the collected data proving a palatable ROI when coupling storage with renewable power, adding energy storage to new projects and retrofitting it onto existing solar farms is now the new norm.”
Is renewable reliable?
Because renewable energy is highly variable, is it reliable? Short answer, very.
It’s true that there may be days where we don’t see much wind or don’t capture as much power from the sun, but there is nonvariable energy generation happening in the background to support limited solar or wind availability.
Hydroelectric and geothermal energy can be ramped up and down to meet demand while providing a more stable backbone to VRE.
What happens in the event of a storm or other natural disaster?
For one, coal, natural gas, and oil operations can be severely disrupted during an emergency event and require a lot of manpower to bring back online, especially if there is a natural gas or oil spill that not only disrupts our power supply but also pollutes the environment around it.
With renewable energy, it’s much safer and easier to bring wind turbines and solar panels back online than it is to fix pipelines. In terms of disaster relief, a single national grid will provide even more stability to disaster-prone areas, and if each region is connected, areas that cannot generate their own power can draw from the overall supply.
How much will this cost?
The question on everyone’s mind. Given that the energy industry is motivated enough to decarbonize the grid and agrees to shut off natural gas plants, say, within the next 10 to 20 years, how much will it cost to go renewable?
Analysts at Wood Mackenzie crunched the numbers and found that it’ll cost around $4.5 trillion, assuming current technology. The real kicker? The price tag doesn’t change if the U.S. completes the transition in 10 years or 20.
And what if we keep nuclear energy in the mix? It’d still cost in the ballpark of $4 trillion.
The steps to getting to a 100% renewable future, however, remains the same with recent findings and what’s been mentioned above.
First, we need to dramatically build out wind and solar capacity.
Second, we need to add plenty of storage for energy availability.
Third, we need to overhaul the grid by doubling the miles of high-voltage transmission lines from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles.
The next question remains. If it’s going to cost the same in 10 years as it will in 20, what’s the point in waiting?
***
Starting in 2018, Brad McElroy has worked as a copywriter for City Electric Supply. He writes regularly about the electrical industry, covering a range of topics that include anything from smart tech and lighting to industrial developments and renewable energy.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those held by pv magazine.
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The wind and water can generate year around but solar drops off in the winter in Europe, Northern Asia and North America. However, there are land bridges that can reach the tropics where daytime sunlight is never ending. Noth America to South America through Central America. Europe to Africa through the Arabian peninsusla and Northewrn Asia to Eqitorial Asia through Viet Nam and other south east asian countries. Instead of thinking East to West, we shoud be thinking North to South. for Electrical power transfer and Storage. If you go far enough North, you begin going south over the top of our globe into the next day or the other side of our globe. Following the land bridges from Noth America to Asia, the whole globe could be interconnected, bu,t that would take International Cooperation and a World wide electrical distribution and accounting system. We already do this with Fossile fuels with natural Gas and Oil Pipe lines because of the “Profit Motive” but what about Electriicity? Big Corporations invest in Global Oil but Utilities are not Big International Corporations. Maybe there could be one for Electricity out of the United Nations that could set fair prices and distribution requirements for the planet. A world wide grid could save our planet from ecological disaster but can it save us from our own lust to dominate others and thus instigate rebellion.
Why would we waste the money and effort on tidal energy, for such a low percentage of power needs?
Why does battery storage have to be ‘close to impossible” at the 24/7 scale? Consider that Tesla is about to make it for about ten cents per watt hour of capacity. Figure double that for a thirty year solar life. Figure fifteen hours worth at (overall) $3. And another dollar to make a 4 dollar 24/7 (reliable) solar watt.
Now, not always will we have the perfect solar generated storage for energy day. That’s where that last 15-25 percent comes in. In life, the first 90% of any endeavor is easier than the last ten percent (trust me, I know)!
However, unlike life’s struggles, we don’t need that last ten percent to achieve “success” in the clean energy transition! Ten percent of today’s fossil fuel emissions will be taken care of, for us, by nature.
We do not need to propose authoritarian laws, just more science based solutions!
The State of Florida has not committed to a 100% renewable energy goal.
The concluding point about “Cost” is wrong — the “cost” will be “Zero” … it’s all about just redirecting the ever present drain of wealth from fossil energy into RE/EE equipment! We already know that for at least 10 years advanced EE such as GHP (geothermal) needed for Net Zero Energy Buildings is “Effectively Free” — that is the cost after financing is zero or a profit (actually a large profit with looking at >20 yr time frame). This is why all new schools are going in PV+GHP. And we now also know that Solar PV is “Effective Free” such as just now Asheville/Buncombe Co. NC installing Solar on 40 buildings at a net “Profit” from day 1 due to power bill savings — and that includes a lot of “rooftop PV” which is far more expensive than Utility-Scale.
In fact, then ONLY piece of the Clean Energy puzzle that still costs more than effectively zero is EV’s … and they will be at full parity with gas and diesel within just a couple of years … 5 max!
Not only is all the Clean Energy power generation already past “breakeven-cost” point but it will also continue to ramp more and more to “Profit” as we #EndFossil and stop the ever drain of wealth fossil energy has brought to our entire society. And the geo-political disruption and corruption fossil has wrought and the damage to health are simply off the scale — we couldn’t change soon enough on these fronts.
There is a very positive and “Effective Free” Clean Energy future emerging, and we look forward to the day that all start report on this amazing and revolutionary moment in time!
There are no perpetual motion machines. Everything humans do requires energy from a source. The amount of energy required to manufacture a wind turbine is never recovered in the turbines lifetime. Just the maintenance if nothing fails, consumes enormous resources. Solar on an industrial scale, required to keep our cities running at the current levels would require tremendous amounts of component materials mined from the Earth. They would cover tremendous amounts of surface.
This is standard bupkis trotted out by opponents, for whatever reason, of zero Carbon energy.
On the face of it it is ridiculous. What do you think we are? Chumps?
Just make a 1-1 comparison between the energy and mining needed for a huge wind farm and a natgas combined cycle plant, AND the pipes required to supply it and the wells and their supply trucks, and the mines required, the smelters required to make their metal. And fossil is recurring.
Please consider that once our factories are 100% powered by RE, then the “embedded energy” issues falls apart. This is already happening with some industries, and is growing fast as everyone figures out that #RE100 is also a “profit”. There will be a mining cost for the aluminum and steel for sure, but that is just spent once in history with future PV being mostly from recycled materials. And at some mines, electric/H2 ore transports are already being used[1][2][3]. Clean Energy is coming!
[1] “Why electric mining vehicles are starting to take off”, 13 Dec 2016, https://www.abb-conversations.com/2016/12/why-electric-mining-vehicles-are-starting-to-take-off/
[2] “A new all-electric 40-tonne truck unveiled for the mining industry”, Mar. 16th 2018, Electrek/@FredericLambert, https://electrek.co/2018/03/16/all-electric-40-tonne-truck-mining-artisan-vehicles/
[3] “This Mining Truck Will Be the World’s Largest Electric Vehicle”, Feb 13, 2020, Popular Mechanics, https://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/infrastructure/a30873539/electric-mining-truck/
A modern wind turbine “pays off” it’s embodied energy in 3 to 6 months. Solar a little more but a small part of it’s design life cycle output and even less of its practical output including post-design life output at 80% or less of nameplate capacity. Assuming all embedded energy is from FFs is not necessarily the case going forward, especially if the turbines are manufactured in EU countries with strong wind energy resources already in their grid.
This kind of trolling would be funny if it wasn’t so obviously malevolent in this era of climate crisis.
I wonder how long the payoff time for equivalent fossil fuel generation would be if that portion were generated with zero Carbon energy.
The review of the Jacobson, et al studies (*) above missed a key part. The part is so basic and so should be so well known by “experts” that it is difficult to believe it is simply oversight rather than malfeasance or even malice.
That oversight is that fossil fuel generation loses a tremendous amount of its input energy to conversion losses, Carnot efficiency losses, and losses in energy (which are usually not counted) having to do with extraction, transport, and refining. For sure, the extraction energies are typically not counted against zero Carbon energy, but the ‘required energy for generation’ that fossil fuels supply most often is. And that’s a hugely unfair comparison.
Any Sankey diagram of, say, the U.S. energy system has a huge and understated (typically given as about 40%) waste line. The actual amount of energy needed to make things work is what their inputs are less more than 40%, say 50%.
Moreover, if it’s accepted that generation should be close to consumption, and generation by solar and wind is distributed over synoptic scales (something which critics also seem to miss), generation can be decoupled from weather, with the exception of the biggest of tropical storms.
I wish people would really read and understand such deep investigations rather than jumping to the recommendations and ruling them out as ridiculous.
Surely, a transition to such an energy system will be difficult. But failing to make the transition — or opposing it because because of aesthetics, as is often the case here in suburban Massachusetts — will have serious economic consequences for the towns and people that do not aggressively pursue it. That’s because inexpensive energy is the lifeblood of commerce, and a magnet for home ownership. People who oppose will find themselves price disadvantaged. In such a position, it can be difficult to catch up, particularly when the town income they were expecting begins to dry up.
I’m sorry about that, because the transition will happen whether they like it or not, but I really do not have much sympathy for them.
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(*) I emphasize STUDIES because there have been several, and they have been updated. Most of these are open source. You can look at the code and data yourself.
Not even close. If you persist in this fantastic thinking you won’t even get the fringe benefits of alt energy because nobody will take you seriously.
Facts. Information, not opinion, please.
If is so fantastical, you ought to be able to provide a physical and quantitative proof that it is in a couple of paragraphs, even here.
After all, this site may even be capable of
.
Besides you didn’t address my key argument above, regarding waste energy, but simply dubbed it “fantastical thinking”. That suggests either (a) you’ve got nuthin’ to counter it, or (b) you’re too lazy to do it, or (c) you’re not even a human but a robot troll launched to oppose zero Carbon energy anywhere you find it being promoted, probably paid for by the Koch Bros meta establishment.
The author’s proposition that we need to have electrified (all) passenger aircraft in order to achieve 100% RE grids is fanciful. Aircraft will not impact that reality one way or the other in any meaningful way. It’s either more demand or less, but time of day use and any seasonal variation are largely irrelevant to a goal of 100% RE. Or a goal we talk about in Australia now of 700%+ RE as fuel switching from FF to electricity gobbles up new markets which were using fossil gas, diesel, petroleum and hey, maybe even avgas and bunk fuel.
“The point remains, if we want to hit 100% renewable energy while excluding alternative methods of getting there, such as nuclear, natural gas, etc., then this is one way of building a sustainable energy system.”
Sorry, since when was nuclear and fossil gas renewable energy? We aren’t choosing to exclude them, by definition that are nonrenewable energy sources.
In the case of nuclear extremely expensive and if they ever become affordable Governments will throw even more subsidies at them I’m quite sure, because of the lobbying power of centralized generation technologies like FF and Nuclear and the governance capture they have demonstrated over the last 60 years.
In the case of fossil gas it’s just as warming, certainly in the near term, as making electricity by burning coal to boil water and spin steam turbines.
Good conclusions:
“The steps to getting to a 100% renewable future, however, remains the same with recent findings and what’s been mentioned above.
First, we need to dramatically build out wind and solar capacity.
Second, we need to add plenty of storage for energy availability.
Third, we need to overhaul the grid by doubling the miles of high-voltage transmission lines from 200,000 miles to 400,000 miles.
The next question remains. If it’s going to cost the same in 10 years as it will in 20, what’s the point in waiting?”
Moreover, given our present financial circumstances, it is very unlikely doing big projects using a loan won’t have as low a cost of money as it does now, not for decades.
Experts from the Finnish University of Technology Lappeenranta and the Energy Watch Group are confident that the planet can fully transfer its energy balance to renewable resources by 2050. We are talking about the generation of electricity and heat, transport and water desalination. Together, they painted a more than 300-page roadmap for this process, where they described in detail the possible consequences of such a step for humanity and specific regions. In their opinion, the new energy system will be more economical and more efficient than the current one. But how it all will be conduct from a business point of view? Are there any software to lead these processes? I have only heard about https://fluix.io/industry-renewable-energy, are there more?
I want to be informed about the possibility of my “forces saver”, that is applicable to all systems to generate energy, obtain the help of your company to quickly double the energy power of the United States, from oil production, all sistems electric generation, or vehicles autogenous.
Nice article!
Renewable energy has been an important topic for a long time. We have seen a lot of progress in the last few years. But there is still a long way to go.
The steps to get to 100% renewable future are:
1) Educating people on the benefits of using renewable energy and reducing their carbon footprint
2) Developing more renewable sources of energy like solar, wind, hydro power, geothermal power, and biomass
great article indeed https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2020/08/11/the-u-s-can-be-powered-100-by-renewable-energy-how-do-we-get-there/
If you want to write a good nature essay, you need to focus on the natural resources. Pick specific arguments for your topic, such as why it is important to protect certain areas. Try to convey the emotions nature causes you, both positive and negative. Try to present contradictory feelings, too. For instance, you can express how you feel about an activity, but are angry at the same time. This will make your essay seem more convincing and interesting.
Anyway, we should remember of the environmental fact!
As a reader, I found this blog post about the possibility of the U.S. being powered 100% by renewable energy quite insightful. It provided an optimistic outlook while acknowledging the challenges ahead. The idea of a unified national grid to efficiently distribute renewable energy across states resonated with me, especially considering the potential of wind energy in the central U.S. region. Thank you for this informative post!