Stanford Researchers Have an Exciting Plan to Tackle The Climate Emergency Worldwide
TESSA KOUMOUNDOUROS | 27 DEC 2019 | SCIENCE ALERT
Things are pretty dire right now. Giant swaths of my country are burning as I write this, at a scale unlike anything we've ever seen. Countless animals, including koalas, are perishing along with our life-supporting greenery. People are losing homes and loved ones.
These catastrophes are being replicated around the globe ever more frequently, and we know exactly what is exacerbating them. We know we need to rapidly make some drastic changes - and Stanford researchers have come up with a plan.
Using the latest data available, they have outlined how 143 countries around the world can switch to 100 percent clean energy by the year 2050.
This plan could not only contribute towards stabilizing our dangerously increasing global temperatures, but also reduce the 7 million deaths caused by pollution every year and create millions more jobs than keeping our current systems.
The plan would require a hefty investment of around US$73 trillion. But the researchers' calculations show the jobs and savings it would earn would pay this back in as little as seven years.
"Based on previous calculations we have performed, we believe this will avoid 1.5 degree global warming," environmental engineer and lead author Mark Jacobson told ScienceAlert.
"The timeline is more aggressive than any IPCC scenario - we concluded in 2009 that a 100 percent transition by 2030 was technically and economically possible - but for social and political reasons, a 2050 date is more practical."
Here's how it would work. The plan involves transitioning all our energy sectors, including electricity, transport, industry, agriculture, fishing, forestry and the military to work entirely with renewable energy.
Jacobson believes we have 95 percent of the technology we need already, with only solutions for long distance and ocean travel still to be commercialized.
"By electrifying everything with clean, renewable energy, we reduce power demand by about 57 percent," Jacobson explained.
He and colleagues show it is possible to meet demand and maintain stable electricity grids using only wind, water, solar and storage, across all 143 countries.
These technologies are already available, reliable and respond much faster than natural gas, so they are already cheaper. There's also no need for nuclear which takes 10-19 years between planning and operation, biofuels that cause more air pollution, or the invention of new technologies.
"'Clean coal' just doesn't exist and never will," Jacobson says, "because the technology does not work and only increases mining and emissions of air pollutants while reducing little carbon, and there is no guarantee at all the carbon that is captured will stay captured."
The team found that electrifying all energy sectors makes the demand for energy more flexible and the combination of renewable energy and storage is better suited to meet this flexibility than our current system.
Showing posts with label energy storage. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy storage. Show all posts
Sunday, January 26, 2020
Saturday, August 31, 2019
Climate Crisis: Senator Sanders releases a Green New Deal plan along with ways to pay for it
Bernie Sanders unveils $16 Trillion Green New Deal To Combat Climate Crisis
The 2020 Democratic candidate’s climate plan offers a detailed vision that would expand public ownership of utilities and make electricity “virtually free” by 2035.
By Alexander C. Kaufman | Aug 22, 2019 | HUFFPOST
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders released a sweeping $16.3 trillion climate plan on Thursday, vowing to create 20 million jobs and completely zero out planet-heating emissions by 2050.
The proposal outlines easily the most ambitious vision for a Green New Deal to date, with calls to massively expand public ownership of everything from power generation to groceries. With Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ending his climate-centered bid for the Democratic nomination a day earlier, the plan vaults the Vermont senator ahead of his 2020 rivals on what’s emerging as the defining policy issue of the Democratic primary.
At a moment when record wildfires are raging from the Amazon to the Arctic and Greenland is losing up to 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day, the plan is dense with detail and frank in its goals. Where other proposals, including those from Inslee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) depict expanded regulatory regimes and public spending aimed at spurring private investment, Sanders charts out a path to a hospitable global climate through Nordic-style social democracy.
“The scope of the challenge ahead of us shares some similarities with the crisis faced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s,” the plan states. “Faced with battling a world war on two fronts ― both in the East and the West ― the United States came together, and within three short years restructured the entire economy in order to win the war and defeat fascism. As president, Bernie Sanders will boldly embrace the moral imperative of addressing the climate crisis.”
The campaign declined a request to interview Sanders on Wednesday evening.
The plan opens with Sanders vowing to slash U.S. emissions 71% below 2017 levels by 2030 with 100% renewable electricity and zero-emissions vehicles. He declares war on the fossil fuel industry with kproposed bans on fracking, drilling on public lands and all imports and exports of oil and gas, and threatens companies with civil and criminal charges for pollution and obstructing climate action. He pledges $200 billion to help developing countries reduce their own climate pollution by 36% in the next decade.
Citing the nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, Sanders, long a critic of nuclear power, swears off new reactors and promises a moratorium on future licenses to existing plants. His plan rules out geoengineering the climate or deploying technologies to capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants, which he derided as “false solutions.” It’s unclear whether he’d consider carbon capture technologies for difficult-to-decarbonize industries like cement making.
Generous pledges for workers animate Sanders’ proposal. The plan, which comes the same week the campaign released its proposal to boost unions, promises five years of unemployment insurance, a wage guarantee, housing assistance, job training, pension support and priority job placement for all workers displaced by the transition. It offers “early retirement support for those who choose it or can no longer work.” It proposes high wages and union protections across nearly every sector.
What stands out first is Sanders’ clear answer to the perennial question of how to pay for it.
There’s the money saved: $1.215 trillion from “scaling back military spending on protecting global oil” and $1.31 trillion from federal and state welfare “due to the creation of millions of good-paying, unionized jobs.”
Then there’s the money earned: $6.4 trillion from selling electricity produced by the Energy Department’s regional power marketing authorities, $3.085 trillion from “making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies,” $2.3 trillion from income taxes on the 20 million new jobs the plan creates, and an additional $2 trillion from forcing “the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.”
Those pushing a Green New Deal, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the grassroots group Sunrise Movement, have shied away from talking numbers, even as Republicans fabricated a bogus $93 trillion price tag. Instead, advocates have pointed to the costs of sticking to a business-as-usual. The Sanders plan touches on that, too, highlighting that the costs of catastrophic warming could total $70.4 trillion over 80 years.
“This plan will pay for itself over 15 years,” the policy memo reads. “Experts have scored the plan and its economic effects.”
The 13,840-word document includes 85 dollar signs. Sanders sets aside $5.9 billion for regional economic development plans, with the lion’s share ― over $2.5 billion ― earmarked for Appalachia. There’s $15 billion for coal miners’ Black Lung Disability Fund. Another $25 billion goes to clearing the national park maintenance backlog. The restored Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that planted 3 billion trees in the 1930s, gets $171 billion.
The 2020 Democratic candidate’s climate plan offers a detailed vision that would expand public ownership of utilities and make electricity “virtually free” by 2035.
By Alexander C. Kaufman | Aug 22, 2019 | HUFFPOST
Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders released a sweeping $16.3 trillion climate plan on Thursday, vowing to create 20 million jobs and completely zero out planet-heating emissions by 2050.
The proposal outlines easily the most ambitious vision for a Green New Deal to date, with calls to massively expand public ownership of everything from power generation to groceries. With Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ending his climate-centered bid for the Democratic nomination a day earlier, the plan vaults the Vermont senator ahead of his 2020 rivals on what’s emerging as the defining policy issue of the Democratic primary.
At a moment when record wildfires are raging from the Amazon to the Arctic and Greenland is losing up to 12.5 billion tons of ice in a single day, the plan is dense with detail and frank in its goals. Where other proposals, including those from Inslee and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) depict expanded regulatory regimes and public spending aimed at spurring private investment, Sanders charts out a path to a hospitable global climate through Nordic-style social democracy.
“The scope of the challenge ahead of us shares some similarities with the crisis faced by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the 1940s,” the plan states. “Faced with battling a world war on two fronts ― both in the East and the West ― the United States came together, and within three short years restructured the entire economy in order to win the war and defeat fascism. As president, Bernie Sanders will boldly embrace the moral imperative of addressing the climate crisis.”
The campaign declined a request to interview Sanders on Wednesday evening.
The plan opens with Sanders vowing to slash U.S. emissions 71% below 2017 levels by 2030 with 100% renewable electricity and zero-emissions vehicles. He declares war on the fossil fuel industry with kproposed bans on fracking, drilling on public lands and all imports and exports of oil and gas, and threatens companies with civil and criminal charges for pollution and obstructing climate action. He pledges $200 billion to help developing countries reduce their own climate pollution by 36% in the next decade.
Citing the nuclear disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, Sanders, long a critic of nuclear power, swears off new reactors and promises a moratorium on future licenses to existing plants. His plan rules out geoengineering the climate or deploying technologies to capture carbon dioxide from fossil fuel plants, which he derided as “false solutions.” It’s unclear whether he’d consider carbon capture technologies for difficult-to-decarbonize industries like cement making.
Generous pledges for workers animate Sanders’ proposal. The plan, which comes the same week the campaign released its proposal to boost unions, promises five years of unemployment insurance, a wage guarantee, housing assistance, job training, pension support and priority job placement for all workers displaced by the transition. It offers “early retirement support for those who choose it or can no longer work.” It proposes high wages and union protections across nearly every sector.
What stands out first is Sanders’ clear answer to the perennial question of how to pay for it.
There’s the money saved: $1.215 trillion from “scaling back military spending on protecting global oil” and $1.31 trillion from federal and state welfare “due to the creation of millions of good-paying, unionized jobs.”
Then there’s the money earned: $6.4 trillion from selling electricity produced by the Energy Department’s regional power marketing authorities, $3.085 trillion from “making the fossil fuel industry pay for their pollution, through litigation, fees, and taxes, and eliminating federal fossil fuel subsidies,” $2.3 trillion from income taxes on the 20 million new jobs the plan creates, and an additional $2 trillion from forcing “the wealthy and large corporations pay their fair share.”
Those pushing a Green New Deal, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and the grassroots group Sunrise Movement, have shied away from talking numbers, even as Republicans fabricated a bogus $93 trillion price tag. Instead, advocates have pointed to the costs of sticking to a business-as-usual. The Sanders plan touches on that, too, highlighting that the costs of catastrophic warming could total $70.4 trillion over 80 years.
“This plan will pay for itself over 15 years,” the policy memo reads. “Experts have scored the plan and its economic effects.”
The 13,840-word document includes 85 dollar signs. Sanders sets aside $5.9 billion for regional economic development plans, with the lion’s share ― over $2.5 billion ― earmarked for Appalachia. There’s $15 billion for coal miners’ Black Lung Disability Fund. Another $25 billion goes to clearing the national park maintenance backlog. The restored Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program that planted 3 billion trees in the 1930s, gets $171 billion.
Thursday, January 4, 2018
Governor Cuomo's Proposal for New York's Clean Energy Jobs and Climate Agenda
On January 2, 2018, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo released the 20th proposal of the 2018 State of the State: a comprehensive agenda to combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions and growing the clean energy economy.
As stated in Cuomo's proposal, by further strengthening the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and welcoming new state members, New York will continue its progress in slashing emissions from existing fossil fuel power plants. In addition, unprecedented commitments announced today to advance clean energy technologies, including offshore wind, solar, energy storage and energy efficiency, will spur market development and create jobs across the state.
"New Yorkers know too well the devastation caused by climate change, and in order to slow the effects of extreme weather and build our communities to be stronger and more resilient, we must make significant investments in renewable energy," Governor Cuomo said. "With this proposal, New York is taking bold action to fight climate change and protect our environment, while supporting and growing 21st century jobs in these cutting-edge renewable industries."
Below are highlights listed in Gov. Cuomo's proposal:
For reactions to the Governor's proposal by NY Renews, a state-wide climate & energy coalition, and by local groups, click here.
As stated in Cuomo's proposal, by further strengthening the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and welcoming new state members, New York will continue its progress in slashing emissions from existing fossil fuel power plants. In addition, unprecedented commitments announced today to advance clean energy technologies, including offshore wind, solar, energy storage and energy efficiency, will spur market development and create jobs across the state.
"New Yorkers know too well the devastation caused by climate change, and in order to slow the effects of extreme weather and build our communities to be stronger and more resilient, we must make significant investments in renewable energy," Governor Cuomo said. "With this proposal, New York is taking bold action to fight climate change and protect our environment, while supporting and growing 21st century jobs in these cutting-edge renewable industries."
Below are highlights listed in Gov. Cuomo's proposal:
- Expand Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and Reduce Emissions Equitably From the Highest-Polluting, High Demand "Peaker" Power Plants
- Issue Solicitations in 2018 and 2019 to Develop at Least 800 MW of Offshore Wind Projects and Foster Offshore Wind Industry and Workforce in New York State
- $200 Million Investment to Meet Unprecedented Energy Storage Target of 1,500 Megawatts by 2025 In Order to Increase Transmission of Clean and Renewable Energy
- Create the Zero Cost Solar for All Program for 10,000 Low-Income New Yorkers
- Reconvene Scientific Advisory Committee on Climate Change Disbanded by the Federal Government
- Governor Directs the Establishment of Energy Efficiency Target by Earth Day
- Regulations to Close all Coal Plants to be Adopted
For reactions to the Governor's proposal by NY Renews, a state-wide climate & energy coalition, and by local groups, click here.
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