100% Clean and Renewable Energy from Wind, Water, and Sunlight
All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World.
“Marty: Hey, Doc, we better get back up. We don’t have enough road to get up to 88.
Doc: Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”
Rephrasing this famous line from the movie Back to the Future to “We don’t need any Coal” makes me wonder how our future is going to be without fossil fuels, especially Coal.
The effect of Climate change is slowly dawning on us, and the documentary Before the Flood by Leonardo DiCaprio, shows us how Global warming is affecting the ice-caps. Burning of fossil fuels to power our homes, offices, industries & transportation has taken a big toll on the Environment in the last decade. Increase in mortality rates due to air-pollution, global warming raising the temperature by 1.5 C, increase in power disruption, and increase in energy costs to the society are some of the consequences we will have to face if we do not take necessary steps today.
What if we could generate power from only Wind, Water and Solar (WWS)?
The report estimates the total demand will drop by 42.5% if we switch to 100% WWS. This is because WWS requires no mining, transporting, or processing of fuels.
Solar energy accounts for 57% of the power generated which includes Utility Scale PV, Rooftop PV and Concentrated Solar Power (CSP). 100% power generation from WWS will also avoid 3.5 million / year pre-mature air pollution deaths and create 24.3 million more permanent, full-time jobs.
India accounts for nearly 7% of the world’s CO2 pollution causing 1.2 million premature deaths in the year 2016. In the documentary by David Letterman where he visits India to understand the power issues in the city of Delhi. What was most intriguing was the fact that India has enough back-up generators to power Australia!
As of mid 2017, India ranks 7th globally in total installed solar PV plants 10 GW which includes commercial and residential solar PV plants. India has an estimated potential of 4.6 TW in Residential rooftop PV sector and 1.2 TW in Commercial rooftop PV sector by the year 2050. It is also estimated that by generating electricity from only WWS, India will create 46.72 Lac total jobs by 2050 in construction and operation sector. The number of premature deaths avoided will be 16.68 lacs.
Having 100% electricity generated by WWS, sounds impossible but the only limiting factors is social and political. Business-as-usual power will reach a peak demand of 20.6 TW by the year 2050 putting more pressure on the environment.
“Marty: Lorraine, my density has bought me to you.”
Marty’s “density”, wouldn’t have mattered to travel through time, but it will surely matter if we reduce the mass of CO2 and increase the volume of Renewables.
