Dive Summary:
- Elsevier's Energy Policy publication has published a new report called "Examining the feasibility of converting New York State’s all-purpose energy infrastructure to one using wind, water, and sunlight" by a team of researchers at Stanford University, University of California at Davis and Cornell University which asserts New York has the potential to power its electric grid through renewable sources only by 2030.
- The report's lead author Mark Z. Jacobson, a senior fellow with the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy, said, "You could power America with renewables from a technical and economic standpoint. The biggest obstacles are social and political — what you need is the will to do it."
- However, Alex Klein, the research director at IHS Emerging Energy Research, claims that renewable sources such as wind and solar are not reliable enough to sustain an industrial economy and fossil fuel will remain "an important foundation" for the electric grid going forward.
- The research team is currently drawing up a plan to power California's electric grid entirely with renewable energy sources.
From the article:
"I hesitate to challenge the brainiacs at Stanford University. But a just-released study from Stanford seems just plain dumb. It claims New York State could power itself 100% from renewables by 2030, just 17 years from now. It further maintains that there are no technical or financial hurdles. Uh... excuse me... what about baseload power? Are they really saying that we could successfully balance a grid that had zero baseload generation, only variable renewables? And do they really believe we could afford the massive grid upgrades and energy storage installations that would be required? ..."