100% Clean Energy–Worldwide–could be Decades Away, Report Says
100% Renewable Energy in 40 Years No Limited to Our Wildest Dreams: Study, Fast Company
According to research conducted by Mark Z. Jacobson, a Stanford professor, and his team, clean technology, mostly solar and wind powered, could provide for 100% of the world’s energy needs within a handful of decades. Fantastically, accomplishing this does not necessitate “peppering” global landscape with windmills. The amount of space needed to power have the earth’s population with wind is projected to be less than the size of Manhattan.
As for cost concerns, when taking into account the medical and other societal costs the old energy economy inflicts, making the necessary changes–building up the green technology and taking apart fossil fuel infrastructure–will not cost more. Nor will energy bills cost more in the future.
The Stanford plan suggests global energy needs would drop by 30% due to this efficiency boost, meaning we’d actually need less power–and if the business models evolve to support this norm, individuals may pay less for their energy.
Success on this front requires an immense amount of cooperation, both here in the United States and worldwide–admittedly, not an easy task. But we’ve overcome feats of similar scale, Jacobson notes,
‘comparable to the Apollo moon project or constructing the interstate highway system,’ just compressed into a short timescale and requiring action from a majority of nations.
A truly difficult mission, this is not an impossibility.
