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Researchers: 100 Percent Green Energy Possible By 2050 Page 2

 
10,058 views Feb 16, 2011
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Is it real? We're not capable of assessing the paper, which comes in two sections: Part I and Part II, both of which we invite you to read for yourself. 

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For cars, electricity and gasoline

But for cars and other vehicles, the conversion to electricity is real. It's just starting now, but electric cars will expand substantially this decade, and become a substantial part of total vehicle production after 2020. During this decade, the two "fuels of the future" will be electricity and gasoline.

Beyond that, we can't project. Carmakers will presumably have reduced the cost of hydrogen fuel cells by then to parity with gasoline engines, piggybacking on the work done in electric propulsion for battery electric cars. Then there's just the distribution problem for hydrogen.

Still, it's nice to know that smart people believe a largely green energy future is possible, and achievable, and offers enormous measurable benefits to offset the obvious costs and challenges.

So here's the question: Do we have the will to do it, as a country and, even more importantly, globally?

Leave us your thoughts in the Comments section below.

[Stanford News]






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Comments (27)

  1. fb_1001015277 avatar John Briggs Posted: 2/17/2011 4:33am PST

    Gradually, I think we will develop the will to move in the right direction. A number of states (California in particular) are already moving agressively. California has made bold moves in to renewables, but perhaps even more importantly has basically banned coal (less than 1% of CA electricity). As California leads, other states have followed and will continue to do so.
     
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  2. By cdspeed Posted: 2/17/2011 7:55am PST

    This is why electric cars will help us clean up our act. Because electricity can be produced cleanly, whereas coal and oil will never be 100% clean to use. And thats another reason I'm for EVs, yes the power they use now is made by burning coal but that can and will change, and yes batteries need to be better to meet the needs of everyone but that too will change, batteries will only improve, maybe will even find a better way to store energy. Electricity has the ability to change, the only thing you can do with coal and oil is try to use it efficiently but it will always be harmful to use and produce, and we will run out of them someday. We don't even need to waste our time and resources on producing hydrogen, yes you can produce hydrogen with water but electricity can be made with solar, water, wind, and someday we may discover something even better. Coal and Oil will only end up in history books, it may not happen in our life times but it will one day.
     
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  3. By Tony H Posted: 2/17/2011 4:32pm PST

    What a pipe dream. With the rising living standards of developing countries the use of fossil fuel will sky rocket in the next 40 years unless we have a nuclear war that wipe out a significant chunk of the world's population. The researches making this claim are from universities. They don’t earn their money like the working public but obtain grants from government to create outrages reports. As for John Briggs comments about California leadership, the only thing California will lead this nation is toward bankruptcy.
     
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  4. fb_100001479115187 avatar Maxie Coale Posted: 2/18/2011 2:02am PST

    We have to achieve 100% renewables sooner rather than later, here's why: http://greenenergyinsiders.com/?p=1386
     
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  5. By David Collyer Posted: 2/18/2011 5:06am PST

    Car manufacturers have a massive incentive to convert to electricity: eliminating the staggering cost of petrol from the cost of running, a car consumers will be willing and able to pay more to the manufacturer for the vehicle. Bye bye oil.
     
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  6. By Jim Posted: 2/18/2011 5:25am PST

    @cdspeed: Fossil fuels sources will never run out. Anybody who says this does not understand economics and the basic concepts of supply and demand. As the quantity of a particular fossil fuel able to be supplied approaches zero, the price has to rise with an increasing slope. It is an asymptotic problem, it may look like it will go to zero but never actually will. This will happen naturally as well, no need for government to artificially raise the prices. As this happens it gives great distributed benefits to companies and individuals to research and come up with alternatives to the rising price of a fossil fuel. Just look at when the price of a barrel of crude oil shot to $4 a gallon: it naturally fueled the most alternative energy response ever that no government could ever induce.
     
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  7. By Scott Posted: 2/18/2011 5:37am PST

    I believe the "keepers" of the status quo - oil companies, private utility companies and the rest have to be leading the change. I would like to think a grassroots movement could change this, but I believe the government(s) of the world have to give more incentives for this conversion to pry the grip of the oil companies from their current piggy bank to a greener paradigm shift.
     
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  8. By  waitingGuy Posted: 2/18/2011 6:08am PST

    Here's the point: they "greatest generation" had spoiled children (the baby boomers). We have to wait for them to die before anything will really change. The boomers didn't fund their future, they paid for old age of their parents with a greater than 1 worker to 1 retiree leverage. They also figured out how to build things up by consuming ever greater amounts of energy. Until they die off the rest of us don't have enough votes to really change anything.
     
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  9. By  waitingGuy Posted: 2/18/2011 6:09am PST

    Here's the point: they "greatest generation" had spoiled children (the baby boomers). We have to wait for them to die before anything will really change. The boomers didn't fund their future, they paid for old age of their parents with a greater than 1 worker to 1 retiree leverage. They also figured out how to build things up by consuming ever greater amounts of energy. Until they die off the rest of us don't have enough votes to really change anything.
     
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  10. By Paul Posted: 2/18/2011 6:10am PST

    I think it's a nice goal. But 100%? Really? I can't envision massive passenger planes flying on electricity or renewable fuel like bio-diesel. ("bio-JP7"???) And what about the world's military forces? Fighter jets, main battle tanks and armored vehicles... I don't see any research in how to make those even "fuel-efficient" leave alone run on "earth-friendly" fuels!
    I suppose it CAN be done by 2050 -- a WHOLE generation away! But I just don't see the world's governments having the "political will" to do so.
     
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  11. john_v avatar John Voelcker Posted: 2/18/2011 6:27am PST

    @Jim: Or as a close acquaintance in the oil & gas industry told me, "We can provide all the fossil fuels you need for the next century. Just tell me how much you're willing to pay, and how much environmental degradation you can tolerate, and we'll tell you how much."
     
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  12. By GG Posted: 2/18/2011 6:36am PST

    Nonsense, Every country that has gone down this yellow (Or grteen if you will) has reversed course. Germany,France,Holland,Spain - all have had to reduce the level of subsidies to green energy (Usually 4 times the rate of oil&Gas) in order to prevent economic disaster. The sad fact is, at this present time in our technology, we still have to have a large non-green infrastructure available to take up the slack for when the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine. We will soon not be allowed to turn good food into fuel with ethanol plants in order to avoid food riots. Untill the advent of cold fusion we are stick with the Century of fossil fuels we have left in reserve.
     
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  13. By A guy Posted: 2/18/2011 6:50am PST

    hmmm...didn't read the Stanford article but the idea of staking claim to saving 2.5 - 3 million lives a year is downright naive. Certainly a sea-change such as this would impact lives but people will die inevitably and the prolonging of a life (which is what they should be articulating) is both a benefit and a burden. How will we house and feed, this increasing population? If you're taking a macro view, you can't just cherry pick the positive impacts and use them to bolster your case.
     
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  14. By dell Posted: 2/18/2011 6:56am PST

    FWIW, my son is dedicated to essentially the same goal. He insists (privately and publicly) that it's doable--but rather more a question of will, political and otherwise. See www.rmi.org
     
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  15. By cdspeed Posted: 2/18/2011 7:35am PST

    @ Jim, what I was basically pointing out was that electricity has the ability to change and upgrade to be made through cleaner sources. And yes our oil supplies will dry up, oil is not an unlimited resource. The biggest issue lies in its cost, as supplies go lower and lower the price will go higher and higher. I've always tried to look at both sides of the coin, how about you? And let me ask you, what do you plan to drive when gasoline gets so expensive you can no longer afford it?
     
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  16. By AC Posted: 2/18/2011 7:36am PST

    Nuclear is not entirely skipped. So I'm skeptical the feasibility without taking account into this energy.
     
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  17. By Darren Posted: 2/18/2011 7:40am PST

    @Paul. Paul just because you "can't envision massive passenger planes flying on bi-diesel" doesn't mean it's not possible. Boeing is doing that already. Today. Not a pipe dream. It's 100% practical.
    http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/biofuels-biodiesel-boeing-intelligent-technology-biofuels.html
     
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  18. By Cherax Posted: 2/18/2011 7:41am PST

    Because of cost and the inertia of entrenched interests, no significant improvement will take place in this area, except in response to a crisis. The Oil Wars of 2050 should do the job, but it will not be pretty.
     
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  19. By scareduck Posted: 2/18/2011 8:03am PST

    The fact that this is published in a journal called "Energy Policy" tells you an awful lot. Also, this:
    "There are no technological or economic barriers to converting the entire world to clean, renewable energy sources," said author Mark Jacobson, a Stanford professor, saying it is only a question of "whether we have the societal and political will."
     
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  20. By ThundrNeon Posted: 2/18/2011 10:56am PST

    Just a note on needing a better electricity grid. Currently in Indiana smart grid technology is not being used because the state has not approved even running a small portion of the state for testing. Hence better electric grid deployment at least in Indiana is held up by the state government. I imagine other areas will run into the same problem.
     
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  21. By Reddy Kilowatt Posted: 2/18/2011 1:17pm PST

    I recommend anyone interested in this topic to read this paper -
    From the Proceedings of the IEEE (including introductory articles):
    "Keeping the Energy Debate Clean: How Do We Supply the World's Energy Needs?"
    http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/publications/PIE_abbott2010.pdf
    -Regards.
     
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  22. By jimh Posted: 2/18/2011 2:13pm PST

    Sorry - Wont happen. Its all very well to do a spreadsheet and figure out the amount of windmills etc needed to equal todays power usage. However, I have never seen a single one of these studies address the fact of the materials needed to build these green energy items. Check out how many pounds of Neodymium is needed for a Prius battery. Check out how many hundreds of pounds of Neodymium are needed for a wind turbine. Now check out how much Neodymium is available per year that comes out of the ground. Now check out the fact that rare earth metals (Neodymium is one) are in severe under supply versus demand. And that will not change going forward. There is not enough of these in the ground to do the things they want. Oh, and many deposits of rare earths also contain radiation making the removal and purification an ecological nightmare.
    Good luck with that one.
     
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  23. By eye Posted: 2/18/2011 3:19pm PST

    Some of this is political will, but if you think that alternative sources will replace the 166 exajoules of energy input that oil currently provides, complete with working support infrastructure, I think you may need some remedial arithmetic lessons. Power use worldwide is going to decline dramatically as oil output declines and our costs for liquid hydrocarbons increases - like it or not. Is it the end of the world? Only for those who starve because of it. Humanity, however, will likely survive.
     
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  24. By charles Posted: 2/18/2011 9:59pm PST

    It is too bad that "Green Car Report" forgot to link to the part 2 of the study. They would have found out that the "cheap" source of energy storage that was going to be used are car batteries or Vehicle to Grid storage. Essentially, car owners will be supposed to pay big bucks for the battery ( currently a cool 9000 $ for a Leaf battery), but not use their battery pack too much (10,000 miles per year for 10 years, commercial drivers will appreciate...) and be kind enough to sell it back to utilities @ only 10 or 20% residual value when there is still 80% capacity available.
    This is the missing link for part 2
    http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/DJEnPolicyPt2.pdf
    Go and see David Mackay's work if you want to read a self contained and consistent document about energy transition scenarios. http://www.withouthotair.com/
     
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  25. By Ralph Posted: 2/19/2011 3:42am PST

    "100 Percent Green Energy Possible By 2050"
    If people wish to see a large part of their population freeze during the winter months, than yeah it's a great idea. Ask Scotland how green energy worked for them this winter.
     
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  26. By Paul Posted: 2/19/2011 7:59am PST

    I live near Hamilton Ontario(Steel Town). Just wondering how we are going to make steel with windmills. Aren't windmills made out of steel.
    Hydrogen is not realistic. Decreasing oil supply will dramatically alter humanity and many will starve. Try and feed eight to ten billion people with no oil. That would be a miracle.
     
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  27. By  Sherwood Botsford Posted: 2/19/2011 5:54pm PST

    Storing energy as hydrogen, then reconverting it in fuel cells may make sense for centralized nodes. E.g. a wind farm complex. LH2 is a difficult material to handle safely, and while light weight, has a very low energy per cubic foot. Gaseous H2 is easier, (but heavier) to store.
    Converting surplus energy to gasoline may be an option. It makes sense as we have the infra-structure to handle gasoline.
    Ethanol from food crops is just stupid. Ethanol from cellulose shows promise, but it will be a niche market. Coal gas (CO + H2 CH3OH + assorted hydrocarbons) from ag waste, with the carbon going back to the soil is also a possibility at least for ag regions.
    Methanol makes the most sense as a direct fuel replacement for gasoline. Much safer to handle, can be moved around in pipes. Many engines can use it with either no or minor modifications.
    At present it we get more bang for our buck by reducing energy use, than we get by developing new energy sources.
    Some of this is social engineering: If we encourage firms to developing housing onsite or near by, we potentially can reduce the commute of many people. Smaller cars use less fuel.
    Some of it is building standards: In Canada we use as much energy for heating as we do for transport, and we use a lot for both, being a large cold nation.
     
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