Energy Solutions to Air Pollution and Global Warming - Air Pollution and Global Warming: History, Science, and Solutions - page 323

been used worldwide for decades. In a WWS world,
they would be used to preheat water in a heat pump
water heater or electric resistance water heater.
Forhigh-temperature industrial processes, high tem-
peratures can be obtained by combusting electrolytic
hydrogen or with electric resistance heating. The elec-
tricity used to run a heat pump or resistance heater
or to produce hydrogen would be produced by WWS
technologies.

the lower efficiency of direct hydrogen combustion is
accounted for in Table 13.2. Some power demand reduc-
tions in a WWS world in Table 13.2 are due to modest
energy conservation measures and to the elimination of
the energy requirement for petroleum refining.

13.4. Wind, Water, and Sunlight Resources
Available to Power the World
How do the power requirements of a WWS world,
shown in Table 13.2, compare with the availability of
WWS power? Table 13.3 gives the estimated power
available worldwide from renewable energy in terms of
raw resources, resources available in high-power loca-
tions, resources that can feasibly be extracted in the near
term considering cost and location, and contemporary
resources used. Table 13.3 indicates that only wind and
solar resources can provide more power on their own
than energy demand worldwide. Wind in likely devel-
opable locations can power a WWS world about 3.5 to
7 times over and solar about 20 to 30 times over.
Figure 13.12 shows the modeled world wind
resources at 100 m, which is in the range of the hub
height of modern wind turbines. Globally,

13.3. Energy Needed to Power the World
The power required in 2008 to satisfy all end-use power
demand worldwide for all purposes was about 12.5 TW.
End-use power excludes losses incurred during the pro-
duction and transmission of power. About 35 percent
of primary energy worldwide in 2008 was from oil;
27 percent was from coal; 23 percent was from nat-
ural gas; 6 percent was from nuclear power; and the
rest was from biofuel, sunlight, wind, and geothermal
power. Delivered electricity was about 2.2 TW of the
all-purpose, end-use power.
If the world follows the current trajectory of fossil
fuel growth, all-purpose, end-use power demand will
increase to almost 17 TW by 2030, and U.S. demand
will increase to almost 3 TW (Table 13.2). The break-
down in terms of primary energy will be similar to that
today, that is, heavily dependent on fossil fuels. What
would the world's power demand look like if the energy
infrastructure for all end uses was converted to a sus-
tainable WWS infrastructure?
Table 13.2 estimates the global and U.S. end-use
power demand, by sector, in a world powered entirely
by WWS, with zero fossil fuel or biofuel combustion.
It is assumed that all end uses that can feasibly be
electrified will use WWS power directly and that the
remaining end uses will use WWS power indirectly in
the form of electrolytic hydrogen (hydrogen produced
by splitting water with WWS power), as described in
Section 13.2.
Table 13.2 indicates that a conversion to a
WWS infrastructure reduces worldwide end-use power
demand by 30 percent .Themainreason is that the use
of electricity for heating and electric motors is con-
siderably more efficient than is fuel combustion in the
same applications. Also, the use of WWS electricity to
produce hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles, although less
efficient than the use of WWS electricity to run BEVs,
is more efficient and cleaner than is combusting liquid
fossil fuels for transportation. Combusting electrolytic
hydrogen is slightly less efficient but cleaner than is
combusting fossil fuels for direct heating. However,

1,700 TW
of wind power would theoretically be available over
the world's land plus ocean surfaces at 100 m if winds
at all speeds were used to power wind turbines and if
wind speed losses due to turbine energy extraction were
limited to turbine wakes (Table 13.3). In reality though,
the world maximum, or saturation, wind potential is
lower due to array losses (Section 13.5) that grow with
increasing wind penetration. The wind power over land
and near shore where the wind speed is 7 m s − 1 or faster
(the speed necessary for cost-competitive wind energy;
Jacobson and Masters, 2001) is around 72 to 170 TW
(Archer and Jacobson, 2005; Lu et al., 2009; Jacob-
son and Delucchi, 2011). Data analyses indicate that 15
percent of the data stations (and, thus, statistically land
area) in the United States (and 17 percent of land and
coastal offshore data stations) have wind speeds 7 m s − 1
or faster. Globally, 13 percent of stations are above that
threshold (Archer and Jacobson, 2005). More than half
of the land and offshore power in high-energy loca-
tions could be practically developed. Large regions of
fast winds worldwide include the Great Plains of the
United States and Canada; northern Europe; the Gobi
and Sahara Deserts; much of the Australian desert areas;
and parts of South Africa, and southern South America.
In the United States, wind from the Great Plains and
offshore along the East Coast (Kempton et al., 2007)
could supply all U.S. power needs. Other windy off-
shore regions include the North Sea, the West Coast of

∼