Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security
Mark Z. Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. and has amongst his qualifications a B.S. in Civil Engineering and a B.A. in Economics.
With Jacobson’s credentials, and the fact that this is a peer reviewed journal, the paper has to be taken seriously. He indicates that wind powered battery electric vehicles not only offer the most reduction in CO2 compared to other options, but is also better than the other options when other environmental impacts are considered. CCS is a poor option, and corn to ethanol or cellulosic ethanol are very bad indeed.
He notes, that as does Claverton, that the intermittency effects can be dealt with using a combination of geographic dispersal, demand management, storage, use of vehicle to grid, and weather forecasting.
He says the “US could theoretically replace all 2007 on road vehicles with BEVs (Battery Electric Vehicles) powered by 73 000–144 000 5 MW wind turbines, less than the 300 000 airplanes the US produced during World War II, reducing US CO2 by 32.5–32.7% and nearly eliminating 15 000/yr vehicle-related air pollution deaths in 2020.”
Also that the US could theoretically replace 100% of its 2007 carbon-emitting pollution with 389 000–645 000 5 MW wind turbines and goes on to state that globally, wind could theoretically replace all fossil-fuel carbon with about 2.2–3.6 million 5 MW turbines (assuming the use of new vehicle technologies, such as BEVs)
This paper reviews and ranks the major proposed energy-related solutions to
global warming,
air pollution
mortality, and
energy security,
while considering impacts of the solutions on
water supply,
land use,
wildlife,
resource availability,
reliability,
thermal pollution,
water pollution,
nuclear proliferation, and
undernutrition.
To place electricity and liquid fuel options on an equal footing, twelve combinations of energy sources and vehicle type were considered to replace all the on road vehicle fuel currently used in the US.
The overall rankings of the combinations (from highest to lowest) were
(1) wind-powered battery-electric vehicles (BEVs),
(2) wind-powered hydrogen fuel cell vehicles,
(3) concentrated-solar-powered-BEVs,
(4) geothermal-powered-BEVs,
(5) tidal-powered-BEVs,
(6) solar-photovoltaic-powered-BEVs,
(7) wave-powered-BEVs,
(8) hydroelectric-powered-BEVs,
(9-tie) nuclear-powered-BEVs,
(9-tie) coal-with-carbon-capture-powered-BEVs,
(11) corn-E85 vehicles,
and (12) cellulosic-E85 vehicles.
The relative ranking of each electricity option for powering vehicles also applies to the electricity source providing general electricity. Because sufficient clean natural resources (e.g., wind, sunlight, hot water, ocean energy, etc.) exist to power the world for the foreseeable future, the results suggest that the diversion to less efficient (nuclear, coal with carbon capture) or non-efficient (corn- and cellulosic E85) options represents an opportunity cost that will delay solutions to global warming and air pollution mortality.
His paper clearly implies that there is sufficient evidence for government to “pick winners” and design incentives to cause the prompt introduction of these technologies – he says “The sound implementation of the recommended options requires identifying good locations of energy resources, updating the transmission system, and mass-producing the clean energy and vehicle technologies, thus cooperation at multiple levels of government and industry.”
Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program at Stanford University. He has received a B.S. in Civil Engineering (1988, Stanford), a B.A. in Economics (1988, Stanford), an M.S. in Environmental Engineering (1988 Stanford), an M.S. in Atmospheric Sciences (1991, UCLA), and a PhD in Atmospheric Sciences (1994, UCLA). His work relates to the development and application of numerical models to understand better the effects of air pollutants from energy systems and other sources on climate and air quality and the analysis of renewable energy resources and systems.
Image courtesy of Lina A. Cicero/Stanford News Service.
‘His paper clearly implies that there is sufficient evidence for government to “pick winners”’
Then the guy is economically-illiterate, albeit he has a BA in Economics. Apart from anything else, you can’t justify the economic approach of picking winners by the act of picking winners. That’s like justifying genocide by the act of killing people of other races.
I imagine this is yet another economically-illiterate misinterpretation by someone who is determined, without even a semblance of economic understanding, to justify an approach so dear to him that he cannot separate himself from his ignorance, and invents support for it wherever he sees the slightest opening. But if it really is Jacobson’s argument, then he is a twit. Wouldn’t be the first in academia.