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Stanford, UCD Researchers Say 100% Renewable Energy Possible By 2050
thecarchik writes with news of an analysis published in Energy Policy by researchers from Stanford University and the University of California-Davis. "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.' During this decade, the two 'fuels of the future' will be electricity and gasoline. Beyond that, we can't project."
Niiiiiiice. $19 trillions just for the wind turbines (around 5M each), $100 trillions for the rooftop PV systems (around 60K each), but there is no economic issue. Right.
85 million bbl/day oil consumption (2007)
At $100 per bbl that's $8.5 billion per day or, by 2050 $120 trillion, almost exactly the same cost as you've given above.
Oil is less than $100/bbl now but is almost certainly going to be a lot more than $100/bbl by 2050 (unless, of course, we've switched most of our power generation to alternatives so that there's no longer the same demand)
Right now, migrating off oil is looking approximately economically neutral. There's a cashflow issue - if we do it over the next 40 years we're going to need about $3 trillion tied up in building new infrastructure (assuming it takes about 1 year from starting building to bringing something on line - dams are obviously slower, wind farms seem to be quicker). But the longer we leave it the more urgent it's going to become (eventually there will be a time when we have to be off oil) and the more cash we'll have to tie up in order to build the infrastructure more quickly.
Tim.
God said, "div D = rho, div B = 0, curl E = -@B/@t, curl H = J + @D/@t," and there was light.
The Sahara is not a desert because of humans. It's a desert because of the motion of the Earth. The Earth wobbles like a top, it's why your astrological sign doesn't correspond to where the sun rises on the day you were born anymore. They were accurate about 2000 years ago, Leos being born with the sun in the constallation of Leo, and so on, but the precession of the Earth screwed that up. Similarly, the Sahara goes through forest->desert->forest every few thousand years. It's how Neanderthals were able to leave Africa and settle in Europe, but no members of our species were found in Europe until relatively recently. The Sahara dried up after some Neanderthals went through, and after it became a desert, our species was unable to traverse it. Until we got more advanced technology.
Learn something new.