EuroWire May 2019

Transatlantic Cable

investment of about $9.5 trillion, spread over all the years of transition: this investment will be recovered by electricity sales over the life of the infrastructure. Under no circumstance will the government simply go into debt by $9.5 trillion. The government will set and enforce transition targets in each energy sector, the private sector will make investments, and the system would pay for itself through user charges. This is the plan in Hawaii, California and Washington DC, which all have laws requiring 100 per cent WWS in the electricity sector by 2045, 2045 and 2032, respectively. Federal government could help hasten the transition by moving subsidies away from fossil fuels and handing them to technologies such as renewable energy, storage, transmission, and electric high-temperature industrial heat technologies. The consumer cost per unit energy sold in a 100 per cent WWS system will be similar to that paid in a fossil fuel world. However, because WWS uses less energy, consumer energy bills in a WWS world will be much lower. And the authors are prepared to put a figure on that – a WWS system needs almost 58 per cent less energy than a fossil fuel system due to the efficiency of electric alternatives over fossil fuel in vehicles, electric heaters and heat pumps, for example, as well as savings in mining, transporting and processing of fossil fuels. The cost per unit energy may be similar, but WWS consumers will pay for at least 50 per cent less of it. Then to consider air pollution and climate benefits. “A WWS energy system eliminates up to $600 billion annually in health costs that occur today due to US air pollution mortality and illness, and $3.3 trillion annually in 2050 world climate damage from US emissions. These enormous benefits are added to the consumer energy cost savings to produce a total economic benefit of $4.9 trillion per year. In other words, whereas a fossil fuel system has a total economic (energy, health and climate) cost of $5.9 trillion per year, a 100 per cent WWS system costs only $1 trillion per year – an economic saving of 83 per cent.” Turning finally to employment, the estimate is that WWS would create two million more full-time long-term US jobs than would be lost, and 24 million more jobs worldwide, easily displacing coal, gas, oil, nuclear and bioenergy job losses. In review, transitioning to 100 per cent WWS in all energy sectors “dramatically benefits the economy

The energy debate

Why the Green New Deal cuts consumer energy costs and unemployment “The Green New Deal is a proposal to transition the US entirely to clean, renewable, zero-emission energy in all energy sectors, to promote removal of carbon from the air through natural reforestation and land preservation, and to create jobs. “By focusing on renewable energy that is both clean and zero-emission, the Green New Deal reduces, in one fell swoop, the energy insecurity of the fossil fuel and nuclear industries; the annual 62,000 deaths and millions more illnesses caused by energy-related air pollution; and the contribution of the US to global warming.” So writes Mark Z Jacobson, professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, in a 9 th March article published on cleantechnica.com . Jacobson and his co-researcher, Mark A Delucchi, a senior research scientist at the Institute of Transportation Studies, UC Berkeley, countered the New Deal’s critics who claim the proposal to be “unaffordable and uneconomical, and will sink the US into more debt”. They wrote: “Having led the research team that developed science-based plans to transition each of the 50 states to 100 per cent wind, water and solar (WWS) in all energy sectors (electricity, transportation, heating and cooling, and industry), we conclude the opposite is true: the benefits of clean energy systems greatly exceed the costs.” (Ten other independent research groups similarly find that 100 per cent renewable energy systems are low cost.) The researchers admit, however, that a 100 per cent transition of all energy sectors by 2030, while technically and economically possible and desirable, may not occur “for social and political reasons,” and instead propose a goal of 80 per cent by 2030 and 100 per cent by 2050. Converting the US energy infrastructure to 100 per cent WWS, they say, will reduce both consumer costs and full economic costs (consumer costs plus air pollution and global warming costs) and create many more jobs than are lost. Jacobson and Delucchi consider consumer costs first. A rapid transition of all energy requires an up-front capital

Image: www.bigstockphoto.com Photographer Adrian Grosu

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May 2019