2 Very Different Visions of Our Energy Future

Farewell, fossil fuels

In the November issue of Scientific American, two professors presented a plan to put the world on 100% renewables (i.e. wind, water, and solar) by 2030. This makes other recent studies on how to get the U.S. to 20% wind or 10%-20% solar within the same time frame look pretty unambitious. More to the point, those other plans make this one pretty hard to take seriously.

The authors call for 3.8 million 5-megawatt (MW) turbines, 1.7 billion rooftop photovoltaic systems, and 40,000 300MW photovoltaic power plants, among other installations. I guess it’s conceivable that the world could build and install this much equipment, but I don’t think we would get much sleep.

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