Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
gas does not take into account the full cost of energy consumption. So if full ac-
counting of fossil fuel use is made, the case for renewable energy becomes more
and persuasive, even if we discount the finite supply argument.
Despite these important caveats, Table
5.1
shows that the hoped-for dominance
of renewable over fossil fuel energy is still in the realm of hope, rather than being a
realistic reality, at least by the mid-twentieth century unless drastic policy changes
are made. Yet it cannot be denied that substantial progress has been made in the last
decade compared to the previous one. However, this pessimistic conclusion is more
a consequence of two political issues than only technological ability. One is the
ab-
sence of political will
in many countries to create more rapid change in renewables,
for many governments fear that major investment in renewables and in reductions
of pollution from generating plants will lead to cost rises in most goods, which
will put them at a disadvantage compared to countries without controls. Hence in-
ternational agreements seem essential to prevent such comparative advantages by
countries without renewable energy policies. Despite these problems many coun-
tries have set targets to increase the level of renewable fuels, while an international
agreement exists in the European Union where the 2014 revised aim is that the area
as a whole should attempt to set a 27 % level of renewable energy use by 2030. In
addition a few cities have also set their own targets, such as Copenhagen's plan to
be carbon-neutral on balance by 2025 through a variety of policies that will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter and summarized in Fig. 6.2.
Second, new
spending priorities to favour renewables are needed.
It has been
argued that if these two problems could be resolved the world could be fossil-free
by 2030, as seen in the plans proposed by two influential Californian scientists.
Jacobson and Delucci (
2009
) claim that the technology exits for a major change
to develop a 100% renewable energy solution creating 11.5 TWT world energy
capacity by only using wind, water and solar sources (WWS). They maintain that
such sources provide the best options for reducing global warming, pollution and
water use, as well as minimizing the negative effects of fossil fuel use on land use,
wild-life and human health. Certainly the scale of the required plants are enormous:
wind, contributing 51% of the total, will require 3.8 million large wind turbines and
720,000 wave converters; solar sources will produce 40% of needs with 89,000 so-
lar plants, while water-based solutions will contribute 9% from 490,000 tidal, 900
hydro-electric and 5,350 geothermal facilities. The authors estimated that geother-
mal and hydro-electric sources have 2% and 70% of potential capacity respectively
already installed, but the rest have less than 1% of the plants as of their base year of
2009. The total cost at $ 100 trillion over 20 years (or $ 5 trillion a year) makes the
project seem unobtainable. But it is worth remembering that the recent annual costs
of the Afghan and Iraq wars for the U.S.A. alone were estimated by the National
Priorities Project to be US$ 539 and $ 804 billion, as shown in the Military and
Non-Military spending allocated by Congress 2011-12, while the Defence budget
was $ 525 billion/year (COW). These calculations mean that even with existing
technology for renewables and current finances, the United States, let alone the
world, has the capacity to alter its energy balance IF the political will existed. Yet
changing the energy mix from its fossil-fuel dominance to more renewable sources
