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Hi I’m Wendy Zukerman and you’re listening to Gimlet Media’s Science Vs, the show where we pit facts against our future on today’s show we’re asking:  could the US be run entirely on renewable energy? Like… is it even possible? 

      

<<Da Dun Da>>

<<Scoring starts here>>

Imagine a world… where air is clean…. where every car…. instead of guzzling dirty petrol… is powered on electricity…. It’s a world where houses are plastered with solar panels… and in the distance… factories no longer pump out smoke…. but instead wind turbines taller than trees blow in the wind… YES! ALL around us … our computers… heaters… jetpacks…  are powered by the sun and the wind…  JUST IMAGINE

<<KS: Wendy, we get it…>>

Really

We get it.

Ok… well, this is the dream of the  renewable future. And we need to start making it a reality soon. Because the best science[1][2]  tells us that to reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change[3] ...we have to drastically cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 2050… that’s only 33 years away. 33 years to completely change the way we live. And one path to save our planet is to run the world on 100 percent renewable energy. Can we do it? And for today’s episode let’s make it easy - and just focus on the United States.

Two scientists who reckon the US can do it! Are Mark Jacobson, a professor at Stanford and Mark Delucchi [Del-u-k-i] at the University of California at Berkeley. Here’s Mark. ah… the second Mark. the one at Berkeley.

We don’t need engineering miracles, we don’t need new Nobel prizes in physics, we just don’t.

Yes. Mark thinks that we already have almost all the technology that we need to make this renewable dream a reality. But many scientists don’t agree[4], and this debate over how far renewables can take us has snowballed into a bar fight, well the academic version of it. 

.

The battle reached fever pitch just a few months ago…when a paper was published  by 21 academics[5]… criticising Mark and his team’s work. And this fight got international attention .. it was picked up by the New York Times[6].. Washington Post and The Economist… and more.. And Mark? He was pissed.

MD: jesus christ! -01 Frankly I'm astounded and surprised at the degree of vituperousness…. vituperativeness

WZ: Vituperativeness, what exactly does that mean?

MD: Vituperative saying nasty sharp insults-01

WZ: Wait, I’m going to look this up. Vituperative, bitter and abusive.

MD: Yeah. 

And part of the reason why this fight has gotten so bitter is because Mark's work cuts down the energy sources we get to use to the cleanest and greenest … right now we get our energy from a range of sources: coal and petrol, obviously,  but also natural gas, nuclear power, biomass, solar power, wind and hydropower. And Mark’s work strikes all of those out: except three… he’s looking at whether the US can be run on wind water heart

<<Go planet!>>

Nope that’s captain planet. He just looks at whether we can use wind, solar power and a little bit of water from hydropower to run the US. And some say this is too starry eyed....

I think frankly, that's chicken shit cop out, I think it's a little bit of an unwillingness to say -- I think it’s an unwillingness to be hard headed-02

And for the academics who criticised Mark and his team… this isn’t about not being hard headed. They say the stakes are high. And Mark’s 100 percent renewable future has problems that you just can’t overlook.

CC: If you just ignore them, and think this utopia, we're going to have a sharp realisation

This is Christopher Clack, a renewables researcher at Vibrant Clean Energy in Colorado, and Chris was the lead author on the paper that criticised Mark’s work. He says that if we just use wind, water and solar[7] our power might not be reliablewhich could mean mass blackouts. Now, that’s ok for you and me… so long as Game of Thrones isn’t on. But it’s… 

A bit more difficult for hospitals who have ICU units, people tend to die when those things happen-01…

And actually just day to day, this is serious

Just even simple things like, if you want a drink of water, electricity has to be available because that’s how you get water into your taps. if you don't have electricity you don't have running water-02

And Chris says… if the energy situation becomes dire… we might end up crawling back to burning dirty coal and other fossil fuels[8]

So, who’s right?

<boxing ding ding ding> 

Is a 100% renewable future just a pipe dream? How far can renewables really take us?

      

When it comes to renewable energy… there’s a bit of <<vituperativeness>>> but then there’s SCIENCE

AHHHH

That’s coming up… on Science Vs Renewables… 

PRE ROLL

 

Welcome back… today we’re asking how could the US be run entirely on renewables? And to do that… we’ll look at the following pieces of the energy puzzle:

  1. Transport
  2. Homes and businesses

And

  1. What happens when the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Will we always have access to HBO? <<game of thrones theme>>

And… our guide isn’t someone in the vituperative debate … Instead… our referee will be David Connolly.

Hey Wendy how are things, yeah i can hear ya-07

David worked for years gaming out how European nations could be run entirely on renewables in Aalborg University in Denmark -- one country that’s leading the charge on renewable energy[9][10]. And he’s now at the Irish Wind Energy Association, at home in Ireland[11].   David says that if we want to go to 100 percent renewable…  the task we have ahead is … huge.

I think the scale of that change cannot be defined in a few words or even sentences, it’s just so enormous it impacts everything we do, it’s just so fundamental from the very bottom to the very top-02

Right now around roughly five percent of America’s energy comes from wind, solar and hydropower… could we really bump that up to 100 percent… in just 33 years?

Ok. The race is on. Let’s go.

<<Mario Cart>

Here’s what we need. To start us off -- we need A LOT of solar panels[12] [13]But that doesn't mean whole chunks of the countryside will become solar fields... because solar panels in the future might just become a part of the buildings around us.

It may be a case that you don't even know what a solar panel is in the future. In the sense that maybe it won't look like a piece of steel or glass sitting on top of the roof, but it might just look like any material in the roof

Yep scientists are working on solar panels that look like clear glass!. And you can already buy solar roof tiles… Cool huh. And it’s estimated that by 2050, we really could power millions of U.S. homes using just solar power. [14].     

Next: wind turbines![15] Right now there are around 50,000 in America.We’d need to build hundreds of thousands of them… … ... And big report from a U.S Department of Energy lab couldn’t see any “insurmountable[16] problems to building all those wind turbines by 2050.

And the thing is, David has seen big changes in wind energy happen fast in Ireland.. Just a few decades ago… there was practically no wind power[17]. And now? It gives enough electricity to power almost 2 million homes[18]...which is really impressive for a country of less than 5 million people[19].

 

The first thing that comes into my mind, is progress, and innovation, good and positive. Everytime I see do things-03 You get a sense of pride in humanity that we can do this- if we put our mind to them 01

Record scratch…>>

Woah woah woah! Before we have too much pride in humanity… 

<<we need some global warming… it’s freezing>>

Ok ok. So say we build our solar panels and our wind turbines…What next? Well, they’re going to create electricity… But the problem is that a lot of the stuff that we use every day doesn’t run on electricity. And that needs to change. Which means… we’ve got to electrify

<<It’s electrifying>>!

To get a sense of what that would take… we’re going to look at four areas sucking up a lot of power - Transport, Industry, Homes and Businesses.

Let’s start with Transport… This includes planes, trucks and car[20]. This is where around a third of carbon emissions in the US come from[21] And David says that when it comes to getting cars to run on renewables, this will be straightforward. We’re going to switch to Electric cars.

10 years ago it was definitely one of the solutions, whereas now it's THE solution.

There’s so much excitement about electric cars that this year the UK[22] and France announced that they’d stop the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040. And in September China started talking about the same thing. If we’re going to get a 100 percent renewable future… we have to go even further… and replace every single car in the US with electric… there are around 250 million cars on the road in the US right now[23]…  which could mean that in 30 years… we’ll need some 300 million electric vehicles[24].  And we’ve got to convert our petrol stations into stations to charge the car batteries

But still. For cars, we’ve got the technology to do it. Where things starts to get tricky is here… is powering trucks and planes using electricity[25]. The problem here is that these big guys are heavy… Which means you need a big, heavy battery to power them[26]. And that becomes a vicious cycle.  

You imagine a plane needs to be light to get it to go great distances and as you put more batteries it becomes heavier and heavier-01

But people are working this… In the last couple of weeks a company announced they would try to power planes using battery for short flights...two hours or so but that technology could be a decade away. So, for flights longer than two hours we’re going to need a different solution.

And one of them that has some scientists excited is using... Hydrogen[27] .  Here’s how that can workyou split water… to get hydrogen. So you’re taking the H from H2O. Once you have that hydrogen, you can use it to create electricity… It’s more complicated, but that’s the basic idea…

Hydrogen vehicles have been tried in pilot projects for some years now[28] But there are a few problems with hydrogen. According to a big detailed report [29] on California’s energy future… hydrogen is  “very expensive and storing hydrogen, they said, “is not yet technically feasible”....[30]. Plus.

<<BLOWING UP SOUND>>

Hydrogen is very explosive… 

Which is pretty scary when you’re talking about flying commercial passenger planes. But Mark Delucchi - our wind, water, solar guy -  doesn’t think it’s as scary as it sounds. Afterall, think about how people might have felt when the first gasoline cars were being developed.

MD who is ever going to want to be driving around sitting on the equivalent of 400 pounds of TNT. We managed, gasoline has terrible risks,

And in a 2012 report the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote that the big issue with hydrogen[31] is cost rather than technical feasibility. 

MD We can make a hydrogen plane that flies a bunch of people across the ocean. We can do it. Something close to it's already been done, it's not a technical issue-02

But here’s the thing.[32]. The closest we’ve gotten to a commercial hydrogen plane is  a four seater that flew for 10 minutes… It was a pilot project…

boom tish*. 

 A survey published this year of more than 100 energy experts[33] from around the world found that aviation was "a weak link in the chain to a 100% renewable energy future"

Conclusion: Can we power all transport with electricity? Not entirely. We could power all of our cars . But for trucks and planes… we need something different. And we haven't quite worked that out yet

-- Industry

Ok so. The next sector that needs to be run on renewables is Industry[34]. Here, think factories, manufacturing plants, mining, concrete and glass production, basically everything in the built world… and all that Industry accounts for about thirty percent of our carbon dioxide emissions[35]

A lot of industry - like manufacturing those electric cars we’ll need, making clothes and canned food[36] - can be run off electricity[37],[38] …  That’s according to a report by the IPCC. But they said that some industrial processes just need so much heat it becomes really tricky to run them on electricity. [39] So for example, to create iron ore[40] or steel… which - by the way -- we’ll need to make wind turbines[41]you need almost 3000 degrees Fahrenheit[42]... That’s over 1600 degree celsius for everyone outside America[43]. Here’s our referee, David.

DC: So to get to those extremely high temperature levels, is really really difficult in some processes and we don't simply have the technology we need using electricity as the fuel source to get there-01

And right now -- burning fossil fuels is one of the only ways we know how to get those crazy high temperatures. But David said that those processes are still a relatively small part of industry… so maybe we don’t have to sweat it so hard.

Conclusion: When it comes to running Industry on 100 percent renewables…  we can go a long way.. But we don’t know how to do it all just yet[44].

HOMES AND OFFICES

Let's take a look at the last piece of the puzzle that we'd need to convert to renewables.... businesses… like banks, law firms, and supermarkets as well as our homes… According to the EPA[45], all of that pumps out just under 40 percent of US carbon dioxide emissions.  

And technically we could run all of our lights, and vacuum cleaners and computers on electricity powered by wind turbines and solar panels. And technically we could convert all the gas stoves and gas heaters that we have into electric. But here’s the thing.

When it comes to heating our houses… using an electric heater[46] sucks up a lot of power. So here’s another idea… 

David reckons we should use something called a heat pump, which looks a lot like an air conditioner[47].              

 

That's a device that uses electricity and  it’s basically moving heat from one area to another,

And the key is: that it does that really efficiently. Good news! This technology is so well proven, you’ve probably got a similar device[48] in your house right now.

Have you ever noticed on the back of the fridge you’ll see a lot of coils and you can hear a hum, what your fridge is doing it's taking the heat from the fridge, and putting the heat into your kitchen[49]

Part of David’s idea is that in the cities -- there would be a huge centralised heat pump[50]… -- and then that heat would be shuffled through hot pipes to each building using a system called district heating[51]. And the IPCC is on board with this plan[52].

And I know this sounds, it is a bit hard to fully grasp what is happening there, but i suppose the key point is just to let you know that this is not a new technology, it’s mainstream in many countries[53] 

Conclusion: When it comes to business and homes we could use 100 percent renewable energy… to run our lights, internet and warm us up…

But the thing is[54]...  in Sweden and in Denmark -- where district heating and heat pumps are used -- these countries aren’t just relying on solar and wind power to drive[55] the heat pumps. They actually rely on biofuels[56] and some fossil fuels -- which are not allowed in our perfect renewable future. So the BIG question is will we have enough power from the sun and the wind to warm up all of our houses across the US come winter? Because

<Winter is coming>>

And what happens if the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow? Do we freeze?

That big problem. Coming up after the break.

BREAK

Welcome back. So we’ve learned that we have the technology -- right now -- to power a lot of our lives using renewables. With giant wind turbines and fields of solar panels we could create a tonne of electricity that could power our new snazzy electric cars, and we could convert our homes into efficient heat pump machines that get warmed and cooled by electricity….  

But there’s one big crack in the 100 percent renewable dream. And that is this. What happens when the sun doesn’t shine… and the wind doesn’t blow? Sure we’ve still got water -- hydropower -- the third pillar of the renewable future. But even in Mark Delucchi and his team’s work[57] that would only give us a fraction[58] of the power we  need… You see… what’s been so great about fossil fuels is that we can shove them in a barrel, leave them there, and burn them whenever we need it. Here’s our referee David Connolly.

That has been an absolute gift for humanity in the last 150 years, because it has meant that we could move energy around very easily, in other words we could just put the oil in barrels and ship it around the world.

But with wind and solar…

You can't tell the wind to blow and you can't tell the solar panel to produce electricity to get the sign to shine[59]

WZ: You can't put sunshine into a big barrel and leave it there-03

No no, and you can't move it around quite as easily either 

So we need something else. We need a way to store power for a rainy day. Batteries. But There is one problem….

<<Money money money>>

Batteries are expensive… particularly the ingredients that make them[60] - like lithium and copper. No academic that I spoke to thought that we could use batteries as the only thing to rely on when the wind and the sun aren’t co-operating. Here’s David.

The price would be far too large to realistically imagine-03

WZ: How much would our electricity bill go up?

It's such a high number that we've never gone to the trouble of calculating it, like it’s so beyond what we would… 09 You might not be as big of a fan of renewables by the time you add all of those numbers together

So if money was no object…   maybe we could use batteries to store a big chunk of power for the US. But because money is an object…[61] [62] [63] we need another plan.  In fact. We need to think of storage in a whole new light.  

<<Lightsaber SFX>>

Like…a giant Smart Power Grid…. Now this means different things to different people… but the way we’re going to talk about it is a hypothetical GIANT GRID… that spans coast to coast… carefully shuffling power wherever it needs to go…and this grid would be supplied in large part or really completely by renewable energy sources like wind, solar and hydro-power. So if it’s a windy day in the Great Plains[64]but cloudy in the California desert... you could send the wind power over to the west coast.

Yes that’s right…

Here’s Mark Delucchi

you have probably high voltage power lines, and then you might be able to use solar energy in the southwest of the US, California, Mojave Desert to balance the load on the east coast

To work out whether we actually will have enough wind and solar power to keep our lights on and our HBO running… Mark and others use what are called models. These look at how much energy we’ve used in the past ...to try to predict how much energy we’ll use in the future[65]. And this is complicated stuff. Because they also have to include the weather in their models. That’s because the weather affects how much energy we need … is it freezing outside? Is the heat cranked up? …

<<Winter is here>>

AND how much energy we’re going to get from the sun and the wind. And if we don’t want ANY blackouts… not for a single minute… these models need to predict how much energy we will use -- and have -- for every single minute in the future[66], [67]. It’s a big ask[68]. And if they get it wrong… and it’s night, and there’s not enough wind power around... What are we going to do?

MD: There's never no wind across the US

WZ But you can't take all the west's wind. Because they need it. It's not like it's all free for New York. Would they be playing tug of war with the energy grid?

MD: Well this is exactly where the need for backup comes in. There could be scenarios, that's right, where you have to have back up capacity for individual days-01

And by back up, Mark means, building extra wind turbines.

WZ: What happens if your backup is in a place where there's still no wind blowing?

MD: It is possible I suppose where you have a system where a situation where even with your planned back up you planned wrong but all of the analysis that I have seen suggest that that's really unlikely at continental scales-01

One group from the University of Delaware modeled[69]. what a big grid could look like… across 13 eastern states… by analysing four years of data from 1999 to the end of 2002…And they found that most of the time, using a little bit of battery and their enhanced grid, you could actually run these states on almost 100 percent renewables.… But not always. There were a handful of times - often in summer - when they did have to go back to the fossil fuels [70],[71].

But when we asked our referee David Connolly about this idea of the giant grid… he just wasn’t sure about it. After all there’s just so much uncertainty in these models[72] -- and if they’re wrong you can’t just flip a switch to get more wind.

You simply cannot call upon wind and solar to be there whenever you need it. You would be taking a risk assuming it's always windy or sunny somewhere-03

WZ: I have heard that it's always Sunny in Philadelphia?

You never know so maybe that's the magic solution we've all been waiting for!  if my culinary genius was to result in a Philly cheese steak i think i’d always see the sun shining as well.

<<MACK (it’s always sunny) these are the smartest scientists on the planet and they were wrong>>

Conclusion: To power the US on just wind, water and solar power we would probably need to create a giant grid connecting renewable energy sources from all over the United States. And even that might not be enough.

BIOFUEL!

 

BUT! Here’s the thing. There are countries around the world that are committing to renewables… Denmark is aiming to be 100% renewable energy by 2050.[73] And they think they can do it…. But how? how are they solving these problems? Well, they’re not restricting the tools they have to get to that future… to just wind, water and solar,

<<Go Planet>>

they have a broader definition of “renewable”... and it includes things like Biofuels[74] This is where you can take plantsor even manure and heat it up… to make fuel. And the name -- biofuels -- sounds better for the environment than fossil fuels. And it is. But it’s not perfect. For example, making and heating biofuels can still release some greenhouse gas into the air. [75] [76]Which is the whole problem we’re trying to avoid… But David says we shouldn’t rule it out entirely…

 We don’t want to end up in the situation where we’re using nothing because we're missing the opportunity to have cheap sustainable energy-07

There’s a middle ground… where David says that we could use a little bit of biofuels when we have to. And this is what the IPCC, the leading body on climate change… kinda says we should do. In their latest report they wrote that to rein in climate change we should consider biofuels[77] along with other things like nuclear energy which emits no greenhouse gas when you use it to create power. We actually did a whole episode on nuclear energy and safety last season -- you should check it out.[78] [79].

CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

And just quickly… there’s one final thing we want to talk to you about...  you.

In this renewable future… we’re going to have to be a lot more thoughtful about the way we use our energy … and that means we’re going to need to change the way that we live. Right now Americans use -- on average -- around 4 times[80] more energy than your average person anywhere else in the world. But that can change..

<<THE POWER IS YOURS>>

It’s not crazy to imagine that your future house… which can talk… will tell you that there isn’t a lot of wind power… and you need to stop charging your jetpack.

<<We are planeteers and you can be one too>>

So when it comes to Science Vs 100 percent renewables…. Does it stack up?

With current technology… we could definitely ramp up our use of renewables. We could build enough solar panels and wind turbines to run a lot of America’s power… [ding]

Our houses  could run on electricity fueled by the wind and the sun… [ding]

When it comes electric cars, we have the technology … [ding]

Now…  the rest of the transportation sector…  planes and trucks…   as well as some industrial processes… [bah bow]  they are a bit of a puzzle right now Scientists are working on it…

But the big question will we have reliable power when the sun doesn’t shine? And the wind doesn’t blow? There’s lots of debate about this -- but if we broaden our renewable vision and include biomass or nuclear power… we could get pretty darn close.

But for David… he wishes that right now… we didn’t get bogged down in the details of a perfect renewable future. After all America uses so little renewable power…why not just bump that up first… ? Or in other words

Don't waste time looking at the finish line when you're first challenge is to get moving-02

You go to a country like Denmark where over 40 percent[81] of the electricity comes from wind power already today. Why could America go to 40 percent in the future, without getting caught up in the details of what might work in 20 years or 30 years?

There’s so many things we can do. Right now.

We have so many wind turbines to build, solar panels, and electric cars to sell and produce that we'll be more than busy enough in the 10 20 years to do all of that,

With so much to do, why aren’t we moving faster? Well David says it’s not the gaps in  technology that’s holding us back… It’s the Lizard People. Nahhh. It’s something else.  

The changes that we need in the 20, 30 , 40 years are so enormous that somebody is going to lose out, and lose out badly, the people who sell oil, who sell gas, who sell coal, they’re all going to lose out very badly if we move into a 100 percent renewable energy system. And that’s why politically it can be very very challenging to get policy to move-01

That’s Science Vs Renewable Energy

<<Music to finish the episode…>>

And before we finish off today, we spoke to a lot of different academics for this show, but unfortunately we couldn’t include them all. But in the mix we spoke to Jim Sweeney a professor at Stanfordand our senior producer Kaitlyn Sawrey asked him a kind of personal question. We wanted to share it with you

KS I’ve got a question that goes to optimism. Would you have kids now?-01

JS: Absolutely-01 I'm not going to give up on the future because there are challenges. There are always challenges. I was born in World War 2, my parents had children. So I don't see that there is any reason for believing that we're going to go to hell in a handbasket. We will have challenges there is no doubt about it.

CREDITS

This episode has been produced by Wendy Zukerman, Heather Rogers and Shruti Ravindran. Production help from Rose Rimler. Our senior producer is Kaitlyn Sawrey. We’re edited this week by Blythe Terrell and Annie-Rose Strasser, with extra help from Rachel Ward. Fact checking by Michelle Harris. Sound design by Martin Peralta. Music written by Bobby Lord. For this episode we also spoke to Professor Vijay Modi, Professor Mark Jacobson, Dr Gorm Bruun Andresen,  Professor Willett Kempton, Dr Dylan McConnell, and Dr Jane CS Long. And an extra thanks to the Zukerman family. THANKS GUYS

Next week we’re tackling one of the biggest mysteries of all… Big Foot…DOES IT EXIST?

        **Phone ringing* Parks and recreation how can I help you

Hi my name is Wendy I’m calling from Science Vs. I heard you had a bigfoot sighting is that true? Uhuh.

I’m Wendy Zukerman, fact you next time.


[1] Table on pg 22 -- shows that the only way we are “likely” to stay below 2 degrees by the end of the century is to reduce our global carbon emission by between 40 to 70 percent by 2050.

[2]  (pg 19 IPCC) 

[3] Pg 70 shows the risks of going above 2 degrees --ice melting, species going extinct, forces displacement from homes. Arctic sea ice and coral reefs are in serious trouble -- “are subject to very high risks” with additional 2 degree warming (pg 72 IPCC) “Extensive biodiversity loss” at 3 degrees and risks of tipping points -- irreversible changes to our planet the risk “increases at a steepening rate” at 2 degrees  (pg 72 IPCC)

[4] One survey of more than a hundred energy experts calls this the "Great Debates"...

[5] http://www.pnas.org/content/114/26/6722.full#aff-16

[6]  New York Times. National Review. Mashable. Washington Post. MIT Technology Review

[7] Chris noted: I would say that if we use the 100% WWS as a road map we will not meet our climate goals, and won't be able to afford a fully reliable system. (To Michelle)

[8] After Germany turned off their nuclear power plants “Electricity sector CO2 emissions in 2011 were only slightly higher (+0.7%) than in 2010 (UBA, 2012) as the reduction in electricity supply from nuclear energy 10 was almost entirely compensated by the combined effects of more renewables, lower net electricity exports and slightly lower domestic electricity demand. Fossil fuel use and related emissions, however, would ceteris paribus have been lower in 2011 than in 2010 if the eight NPPs (six of which were actually in operation in 2010) had not been shut down….

[9] https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/earth/denmark-aims-for-100-percent-renewable-energy.html

[10] Wrote a 100% renewable energy strategy for Europe in collaboration with the European Commission; David reviewed  .. it’s fine

[11] David: correct, he is Irish too; http://www.iwea.com/

[12] DC says you’d need half a percent of the landmass of America to power ALL of America just on solar: 0.5 percent of 3.797 million miles = 18 985 miles; https://www.nrel.gov/news/press/2013/2269.html: A previous NREL report, “Land-use Requirements and the Per-capita Solar Footprint for Photovoltaic Generation in the United States,” had estimated that if solar energy was to meet 100% of all electricity demand in the United States, it would take up 0.6% of the total area in the United States. Math = CIA World Factbook USA land area: 9,147,593 sq km x .006 = 54,885.558 square km [54,885 square km to square meters is 54,885,558,000]

[13] 30 years ago solar "was by far the most expensive power generation technology" and now they "are now amongst the cheapest options for power generation."

[14]  The technical potential of utility-scale PV and CSP technologies is estimated to be approximately 80,000 GW and 37,000 GW, respectively, in the United States. Distributed rooftop PV technologies are more limited, with approximately 700 GW available.. Volume 2, Chapter 10: Rooftop PV has a technical potential of nearly 700 GW in the United States, as shown in Figure 10-17. Distributed utility PV has a technical potential of approximately 2,000 GW, which could be sited in urban and suburban regions near load centers. The technical potential of central utility PV was calculated using only marginal land—including shrubland, bare rock, sand, and clay land types—and is approximately 80,000 GW. Including additional land types would increase the technical potential significantly. The marginal land resource, however, is hundreds of times greater than the levels of deployment explored in RE Futures, and land availability is not likely to limit PV deployment. The CSP land resource is similarly large, with a technical potential of approximately 37,000 GW for systems with 6 hours of energy storage and a solar multiple98 of 2.

https://energy.gov/eere/articles/how-much-power-1-gigawatt

I billion watts = 1 gigawatt

https://www.eia.gov/electricity/annual/html/epa_01_01.html

Production in 1,000 megawatts = 1 billion watts

All energy sources, 2015: 4,077,601 gigawatts

Math: 1 giga watt hr = 1,000,000 kilo watt hr; 117,000 x 10 to the 9th divided by 10,812 x 10 to the third = 10.821309 x 10 to the 6th  - or -- 10,812,309 homes.

[15] The United States has diverse and abundant renewable resources, including biomass, geothermal,
hydropower, ocean, solar, and wind resources. Later they note “ Wind technical resource estimates exceed 10,000 GW in the contiguous United States.”

[16]  No insurmountable long-term constraints to renewable electricity technology manufacturing capacity, materials supply, or labor availability were identified. “Manufacturing and installation suggests that manufacturing need not be a major constraint to the continued growth that would be necessary to meet an 80%-by-2050 generation level.”

[17] See graphs on page 12; David reviewed correct, 25 years ago zero

[18] Based on this figure, an installed capacity of 3025MW can provide enough electricity to power over 1.97 million homes. . In the Republic of Ireland (ROI) the government has set a target of 40% for renewable electricity generation (RESE) by 2020

[19] As of April 2017 population of Ireland was 4.79 million http://www.cso.ie/en/index.html 

[20] The largest sources of transportation CO2 emissions in 2015 were passenger cars (42.3 percent), medium- and heavy duty trucks (23.6 percent), light-duty trucks, which include sport utility vehicles, pickup trucks, and minivans (17.1 percent), commercial aircraft (6.8 percent), rail (2.5 percent), other aircraft (2.3 percent), pipelines (2.2 percent), and ships and boats (1.9 percent).

[21] “When electricity-related emissions are distributed to economic end-use sectors, transportation activities accounted for 34.5 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2015” but it also says “When electricity-related emissions are distributed to economic end-use sectors, transportation activities accounted for 27.5 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2015.”

[22] “The UK was the first country in the world to announce in 2011 our intention that conventional car

and van sales would end by 2040, and for almost every car and van on the road to be a

zero emission vehicle by 2050.” “... as we move towards 2040, by which point the government will end the sale of all new conventional petrol and diesel cars and vans.”

[23] https://www.rita.dot.gov/bts/sites/rita.dot.gov.bts/files/publications/national_transportation_statistics/html/table_01_11.html

2015: number registered vehicles = 263,610,219, just light duty vehicle just under 250k

[24] Extrapolating from Figure 3. Paper is based on expected population growth of 0.8% per year and "vehicle ownership saturation level" of 850 vehicles per 1000 people."

[25]  Specifically for applications such as long-distance driving or for heavy-duty transport such as trucks, aviation, and ships, electricity is not technically feasible.

[26] We find that in order to enable a driving range of over 400-miles for LCVs at a realistic battery pack weight, specific energies of over 400 Wh/kg at the cell-level and 200 Wh/kg at the pack-level needs to be achieved.

[27] Hydrogen is supplied either from renewable electricity through electrolysis or from the hydrogen in syngas produced from biomass. Heating up waste from livestock in a process called “gasification”…

(e.g. waste or woody biomass). And https://energy.gov/eere/fuelcells/hydrogen-production-electrolysis

[28] Earlier this year, Toyota announced that they were putting a heavy duty hydrogen trucks onto the road in Los Angeles

[29] “Hydrocarbon fuels (both gaseous and liquid) are imperative for some uses which cannot be electrified and where CCS cannot be deployed. These include transportation sectors (especially heavy-duty trucks and airplanes),”

[30] Pg 44  “Hydrogen storage is not yet technically feasible, and fuel cell technology, while progressing is still very expensive”.

[31] Hydrogen derived from RE sources by electrolysis has cost barriers rather than issues of technical feasibility or resource availability. 

[32] Bringing hydrogen to large numbers of vehicles would require building a new refuelling infrastructure that could take several decades to construct.

[33] 114 experts

[34] “Industrial CO2 emissions, resulting both directly from the combustion of fossil fuels and

indirectly from the generation of electricity that is consumed by industry, accounted for 27 percent of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 2015.” (see Page 30/ ES-6 for a list)

[35] Industrial CO2 emissions, resulting both directly from the combustion of fossil fuels and

indirectly from the generation of electricity that is consumed by industry, accounted for 27 percent of CO2 from fossil fuel combustion in 2015

[36] Less energy-intensive ‘light’ industries, including food processing, textiles, light manufacturing of appliances and electronics, automotive assembly plants, and saw-milling, although numerous, account for a smaller share of total energy use than do the heavy industries… In general, light industries are more flexible and offer more readily accessible opportunities for the integration of RE than do energy-intensive industries

[37]  For many energy-intensive processes, the main option is indirect integration of RE through switching to RE electricity from the grid,

[38] Cement, glass and lime manufacturing: “These industries have in common that they need high temperatures usually above 1400 C

[39]  Overall, emission sources in the Industrial Process and Product Use chapter account for 5.7 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2015. (Pg ES-20)

[40] First, iron ore is either solved or suspended in an acid or alkaline solution or it is melted in a saline solution for high temperature electrolysis (above 1600 C). If the iron is not melted the electrolysis can be performed at 110 C.

[41] “The U.S. Geological Survey developed estimates of future requirements for raw (and some recycled) materials based on the assumption that wind energy will supply 20 percent of the electricity consumed in the United States by 2030… achieving the market goal of 20 percent by 2030 would require an average annual consumption of about 6.8 million metric tons of concrete, 1.5 million metric tons of steel, 310,000 metric tons of cast iron, 40,000 metric tons of copper, and 380 metric tons of the rareearth element neodymium.”

[42] To meet process heat demand above 400°C, RE resources, with the exception of high-temperature solar, are less suitable p 118  

[43] https://www.google.com/search?q=3000+degrees+fahrenheit+to+celsius&oq=3000+degrees+fahrenheit&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j6j0l4.9967j0j1&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 

[44] DC this is OK it is unclear

[45] Residential and Commercial End-Use Sectors. The residential and commercial end-use sectors accounted for 20 and 18 percent, respectively, of CO2 emissions from fossil fuel combustion in 2015 (Pg 26).

[46] Because of electricity’s generation and transmission losses, electric heat is often more expensive than heat produced in the home with combustion appliances, such as natural gas, propane, and oil furnaces.

[47] “ During the heating season, heat pumps move heat from the cool outdoors into your warm house and during the cooling season, heat pumps move heat from your cool house into the warm outdoors.”

[48] Installation that transfers heat from a colder to a hotter place, opposite to the natural direction of heat flows. Technically similar to a refrigerator, heat pumps are used to extract heat from ambient environments like the ground (geothermal or ground source), water or air. Heat pumps can be inverted to provide cooling in summer. (From the IPCC)

[49]. “The recovered or generated heat is distributed in pipe networks to substations that transfer the heat to customers to cover their heat demands.”

[50] Another research team out of Latvia: Integration of heat pumps into district heating (DH) systems is also considered as one of the methods to increase consumption of renewables based electricity.

[51] District heating (DH): Hot water (steam in old systems) is distributed from central stations to buildings and industries in a densely occupied area (a district, a city or an industrialized area). The insulated two-pipe network functions like a water-based central heating system in a building.

[52] District heating systems can use low-temperature thermal RE inputs such as solar and geothermal heat, or biomass, including sources with few competing uses such as refuse-derived fuels. Also…The high share of total building energy demand for heating and cooling is usually met by fossil fuels (oil burners, gas heaters) and electricity (fans and air-conditioners). In many regions, these can be replaced economically by district heating and cooling (DHC) schemes…  heat pumps (including ground source)” (Also, see diagram on 110)

[53] Today, district heating systems are found in almost all Swedish municipalities and account for about 60% of the heating of buildings in Sweden [5]

[54] “Studies have been conducted on the European scale confirming that district heating and thermal heat storages can increase the fuel efficiency significantly”

[55]  Solar, geothermal, and biomass energies are examples of renewable energy sources that are used in district heating systems

[56]  “Essentially all biomass used in Sweden originates from the forest”

[57] See figures on Table 2

[58] Currently Hydropower = 6.5% of electricity (even less of total energy)

[59] Wind and solar PV have little dispatchability—the output from these sources can be reduced, but

not increased on demand.

[60] Page 79 - Pie graph Breakdown of unit costs, 49% from materials. “The materials and purchased items are the largest costs for the battery.” “ The top eight contributors to total battery price including the active materials, copper current-collector foil, electrolyte, separator, and SOC controllers (see Appendix).” “ The archetype Li-ion positive electrode material, lithium cobalt oxide (LCO), was the original material commercialized in Li-ion batteries for consumer electronics.” (also see page 55 for more ingredients)

[61] Technologies such as batteries or fl ywheels that store smaller amounts of energy (minutes to hours) can in theory be used to provide power in the intra-hour timeframe to regulate the balance between supply and demand. (IPCC)

[62]David Connolly, Jim Sweeney, Jane CS Long

[63] Storage technologies such as batteries or flywheels may have a function as a means to manage the grid in few extreme situations, but should be avoided as the main mean of integration

[64] See diagram on pg 17.

[65] Annual CONUS loads are first estimated for 2050 assuming each end-use energy sector (residential, transportation, commercial, industrial) is converted to electricity and some electrolytic hydrogen after accounting for modest improvements in end-use energy efficiency (22).

[66] Within the limits of the tools used and scenarios assessed, hourly simulation analysis indicates

that estimated U.S. electricity demand in 2050.

[67] Inputs include time-dependent loads (every 30 s for 6 y)

[68] There are significant inherent uncertainties with respect to future electricity demand, technology

improvements,

[69] “During this week, fossil was dispatched to meet load”

[70] “We simplify our grid model by assuming perfect transmission”

[71]  In summer, when wind generation is low and storage energy is depleted, fossil generators are run, albeit infrequently.

[72] In a system where variable renewable resources make up over 95% of the US energy supply, renewable energy forecast errors would be a significant source of uncertainty in the daily operation of power systems

[73] “The Danish government having seen the writing on the wall has set an ambitious target of weaning Denmark off fossil fuels by 2050.” Includes biomass!

[74] While both of the case studies used an integrated approach for the transition towards renewable energy in the transport sector and while electrification was prioritised, the use of biomass in parts of the transport sector was crucial for achieving 100%

[75] "Our purpose is to evaluate some of the costs and benefits of the energy options that clearly have the lowest impacts according to a wide range of criteria: air pollution, land use, water pollution, biodiversity, potential for catastrophic risk, long-term sustainability, energy-security, and, of course climate change. " - Email from Mark Delucchi to Wendy

[76] Combustion of biodiesel in engines leads to lower smoke, particulate matter (PM), carbon monoxide (CO) and hydro carbon (HC) emissions, but higher nitrogen oxide (NO2) emission, keeping engine efficiency unaffected or improved

[77] Bioenergy can play a critical role for mitigation, but there are issues to consider, such as the sustainability of practices and the efficiency of bioenergy systems (robust evidence, medium
agreement).

[78] The IPCC pg 82 says that “Scenarios that are likely to maintain warming at below 2 degrees celsius include more rapid improvements in energy efficiency and a tripling to nearly a quadrupling of the share of zero- and low-carbon energy supply from renewable energy, nuclear energy and fossil energy with carbon dioxide capture and storage CCS or BECCS by the year 2050”

[79] See page 15 A big report from the National Renewable Energy Laboratories looked at how the US could get to 90 percent renewable energy and in their models  -- to keep the lights on every hour - they needed a little bit of biomass and nuclear power to get over the line

[80] In 2015, total U.S. primary energy consumption per person (or per capita consumption) was about 303 million British thermal units (Btu). The world per capita consumption of primary energy in 2011 was about 75 million Btu. (2011 is the most recent year for which EIA has published population estimates.)

[81] Today, more than 40 per cent of Denmark’s energy supply comes from wind power and the plan is to reach 50 per cent by 2020,