Current Stanford research outlines the possibility of a future plan to power California completely with renewable energy, creating a healthier environment and to generate more jobs to stabilize energy prices.
Stanford believes it’s possible to create a Los Angeles, where electric cars run silently along the freeway, solar panels cover rooftops and energy is provided from the blowing winds and the blazing desert sun.
A new Stanford study finds that it is technically and economically possible to convert California’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one that is powered by clean, renewable energy. Published in Energy, the plan shows the way to a sustainable, inexpensive and reliable energy supply in California that could create tens of thousands of jobs and save billions of dollars in pollution-related health costs.
“If implemented, this plan will eliminate air pollution mortality and global warming emissions from California, stabilize prices and create jobs — there is little downside,” said Mark Z. Jacobson, the study’s lead author and a Stanford professor of civil and environmental engineering. He is also the director of Stanford’s Atmosphere/Energy Program and a senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy.
Jacobson’s study outlines a plan to fulfill all of the Golden State’s transportation, electric power, industry and heating and cooling energy needs with renewable energy by 2050. It calculates the number of new devices and jobs created, land and ocean areas required and policies needed for infrastructure changes.
It also provides new estimates of air pollution mortality and morbidity impacts, including the costs based on multiple years of air quality data. The plan is analogous to one that Jacobson and other researchers developed for New York state.
The study points out that, while a wind, water and sunlight conversion may result in initial capital cost increases, such as the cost of building renewable energy power plants, these costs would be more than made up for over time by the elimination of fuel costs.
The overall switch would reduce California’s end-use power demand by about 44 percent and stabilize energy prices, since fuel costs would be zero, according to the study. It would also create a net gain, after fossil-fuel and nuclear energy job losses are accounted for, of about 220,000 manufacturing, installation and technology construction and operation jobs. On top of that, the state would reap net earnings from these jobs of about $12 billion annually.
The study’s authors are developing similar plans for all U.S. states. They didn’t accept funding from any interest groups, company or government agency for this study.
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