We Need To Keep Our Eye on the Ball to Save the Planet

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Last Updated on: 19th February 2025, 06:41 pm

Air pollution, global warming, and energy security are three of the biggest problems facing the world today. Each year, at least seven million people die from air pollution and hundreds of millions more become ill. About 90% of this pollution is from energy. Global warming is already causing tremendous damage, and we have until only 2030 to eliminate 80% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions and until 2035 to 2050 to eliminate the rest to avoid much more than 1.5 degrees Celsius global warming since the 1850 to 1900 period. Third, the world faces several energy-security risks — economic, social, and political instability that will arise when fossil fuels and uranium run out; blackmail by some countries that control the supply of fuel to other countries; high costs of shipping energy long distances; blackouts when a centralized fossil-fuel or nuclear power plant unexpectedly goes down; and health and environmental problems associated with fossil fuels and nuclear. 

These three problems require immediate and drastic solutions — solutions that can be implemented quickly at low cost while solving all three problems simultaneously. We need to keep our eye on the ball to solve these problems. We cannot wait until a miracle technology arrives to solve the problems or distract ourselves with poor technologies that either do not help, help minimally, or address only one problem but not the others. Poor technologies include carbon capture, synthetic (as opposed to natural) direct air carbon capture (direct air capture), blue hydrogen, electro-fuels, new small and large nuclear reactors, and bioenergy.

For example, investing in carbon capture and direct air capture increases air pollution, carbon dioxide emissions, fossil-fuel mining, fossil-fuel infrastructure, carbon dioxide and fossil-fuel pipelines, energy requirements, private energy costs, and social energy costs (by a factor of 9–12) relative to investing the same money in clean, renewable energy. What is more, over 82% of all carbon dioxide captured worldwide, in reality, is used for enhanced oil recovery. During this process, 30% to 40% of the carbon dioxide captured is released back to the air. Further, another 20% to 80% captured is released due to the additional oil obtained, so a total of 50% to 120% of the carbon dioxide captured during enhanced oil recovery is released. 

Blue hydrogen is hydrogen made from fossil gas, but with two sets of carbon capture equipment added to it. As such, blue hydrogen faces the same problems as carbon capture and is not helpful. Electro-fuels are synthetic fuels containing hydrogen and carbon for transportation proposed to be made from blue hydrogen plus captured carbon dioxide, so similarly, they are not helpful. Plus, they are burned in vehicles for energy, creating air pollution. 

The fossil fuel industry promotes all four technologies (carbon capture, direct air capture, blue hydrogen, and electro-fuels) because such technologies give them an excuse not to stop burning coal, oil, or fossil gas. In fact, all four technologies are opportunity costs whose real impacts are to extend the life of the fossil-fuel industry without helping air pollution, climate, or energy security one bit. 

New nuclear suffers from a 10- to 21-year time lag between planning and operation (too long to be useful for solving the three problems), costs per unit energy that are 5 to 8 times those of new wind and solar (too expensive), weapons proliferation risk, meltdown risk, stored radioactive waste risk, underground uranium mining lung cancer risk, and carbon dioxide emissions that are 9 to 37 times those of onshore wind (thus too risky). Burning biofuels for transportation, even with carbon capture, attached to ethanol refineries produces far more air pollution and greenhouse gases than electrifying transportation and providing the electricity from clean, renewable sources, while using rapacious amounts of land and water. 

Rather than searching for a miracle, we find in front of us existing wind, water, and solar (WWS) technologies. WWS includes energy from the wind (onshore and offshore wind electricity), the water (hydroelectricity, tidal and ocean current electricity, wave electricity, geothermal electricity, and geothermal heat), and the sun (solar photovoltaic electricity, concentrated solar power electricity and heat, and direct solar heat). When combined with storage; techniques to shift the time of electricity use (demand response); a well-interconnected electrical transmission system; and efficient electrical appliances, such as heat pumps, induction cooktops, electric vehicles, and electric furnaces for industry, WWS can solve all three problems at low cost worldwide.

The biggest reason why a WWS system is low cost is that it uses much less energy than does a combustion-based energy system. Worldwide, the energy that people use goes down by over 54% with WWS. The reduction is for five reasons: the efficiency of electric vehicles over combustion vehicles, the efficiency of electric heat pumps for air and water heating over combustion heaters, the efficiency of electrified industry, eliminating energy needed to obtain fossil fuels and uranium, and some efficiency improvements beyond what is expected.

On top of that, WWS reduces the cost per unit energy by another 11% on average, resulting in a 60% lower annual energy cost worldwide. Adding health and climate cost savings gives an overall 92% reduction in annual social cost (which is the energy plus health plus climate cost) relative to a conventional system.

The worldwide upfront capital cost of such a 2050 WWS system is around $58 trillion. However, due to the $10 trillion annual energy cost savings, the payback time is less than six years. A 100% WWS system may also create about 23 million more long-term, full-time jobs than lost worldwide and may require only about 0.51% of the world’s land for new energy, less than the land required for the current energy system.

What is more, we have 95% to 97% of the technologies we need to solve the problem. The ones we don’t have include long-distance aircraft and ships and some industrial technologies, but we know technologically how to transition those. We also have solutions for “hard-to-abate” cement and steel and for non-energy emissions. So, if we have almost all that we need, why do we need “miracle technologies?” We do not. In fact, to solve our problems, we need to avoid policies that divert funds from true solutions. We need to educate the public and policy makers about what works and what doesn’t, thus overcoming the distractions and false advertizing that have plagued us to date.

Mark Z. Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. He is the author of seven books, including “No Miracles Needed”.

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