Takeaways from the Jacobson Stanford Study on a 100% Renewable Grid

by Roy Harvey and Kent Wittenburg on behalf of the FTG Technical Committee

 

To counter the view put forth by many power industry authorities in New England and elsewhere that fossil fuels are essential for grid reliability, there are two forms of evidence-based arguments available to renewable energy advocates.  The first is reports from regions or countries that have actually succeeded in building close to 100% renewable grids such as Uruguay. (See recent New York Times Magazine article and podcast.) The second is academic studies that have modeled, in considerable detail, 100% renewable energy systems. (See Breyer et al., “On the History and Future of 100% Renewable Energy Systems Research.”) The article by Jacobson et al. that we summarize here is an excellent example from a burgeoning field of research showing that 100% renewable energy systems are not only possible, but can be as reliable, cheaper, and of course healthier for the planet and all its living inhabitants than fossil-fuel-based energy.  The Jacobson study directly addresses the issue of grid stability (reliability) in the US for a 100% renewable energy system for electricity, transportation, heating, and industry. The methodology uses a tool that models meeting projected demand without blackouts throughout the US in variable weather and compares business as usual with a 100% renewable+storage energy system.  The analyses include electricity use, total energy demand, costs, payback periods, and land use, showing that a 100% renewable energy system is the clear choice.

Study Summary

Goal and constraints

    • Electrify everything: industrial heat, long-distance trucking, ships, aviation, etc.

    • All power comes from wind + water + solar (WWS) with storage.

    • Demand response (e.g., delay 85% of EV charging and 70% of industrial heat to avoid peaks)

    • No blackouts; meet continuous load every 30 seconds

    • No new hydro generation; small amount of tidal and wave power; some new pumped hydro storage. No imports from Hydro Quebec, etc. No nuclear fission or fusion.

Findings

    • Electrification halves (-57%) total energy use but doubles (+103%) electricity use compared to Business as Usual (BAU).  96% of WWS energy would come from solar and wind.

    • Interconnecting regions increases long-distance transmission costs, but reduces total energy costs by reducing storage and excess generation capacity; also reduces land requirements. 

    • The upfront capital cost of transition of 50 states is $8.9 trillion if the lower 48 states are well-interconnected and $11.0 trillion if the 50 states are divided into eight isolated grids. 

    • Battery storage systems with 4-hour duration (MWh energy/ MW peak discharge rate) are adequate.  Batteries with 8-h to 62-h storage may match demand better and be more cost-effective.

    • WWS plan could create 4.7 million long-term net jobs. 

    • WWS plan would save 53,200 deaths from air pollution in US and millions of illnesses a year.

Financials

    • The time to pay back the cost of the WWS system is the capital cost of the new WWS system divided by the difference between the WWS and Business as Usual (BAU) annual cost.  Cost may represent only the private cost (fuel, maintenance, cost of financing, etc) or total social cost (private cost + climate and health impacts).

    • The time to pay back the cost of the infrastructure needed for the USA due to private cost savings from WWS is 5.7 years. 

    • The payback time due to social cost savings (including health and climate) is 1.5 years.

    • WWS energy use is less than half that of BAU.  Also, WWS costs less per kWh than BAU.  Thus, total energy system costs are much lower for WWS than BAU.

Land use

    • Footprint area of new utility photovoltaic (PV) & concentrating solar thermal power (CSP) generators would need 0.29% of US land.

    • Spacing area for new onshore wind turbines would need 0.55% of US land but some spacing area can be used for utility PV, reducing total land use

    • Total area needed for footprint plus spacing is 0.84% of U.S. land or less. For comparison, ~1.3% of U.S. land today is used by the fossil fuel industry.

    • Footprint and spacing in MA are 2.25 and 2.03%; in ME, 0.18 and 0.07%.

Conclusion

    • WWS + storage is technically feasible by 2035

    • It would cost $10T, but that’s less than Business as Usual (BAU)

    • It would take a lot of land and a doubling of electrical infrastructure

New technologies (not included in the report) such as long-duration storage, small modular reactors, or fusion would give more options to improve cost, land use, resilience, etc. 

Comments from Fix-the-Grid Technical Group

A key finding of this study relevant to ISO-NE future planning is that a reliable grid is possible by 2035 without fossil fuels. How this is accomplished is by, essentially, building sufficient renewable energy generation capacity along with storage and transmission to be able to meet all projected peak demand periods. Renewable energy generation that is not needed to service immediate demand can be stored in some form for future use. The study looked primarily at ramping up battery storage requirements since permitting and building additional pumped hydro and hydro storage may be more difficult. They found that concatenated 4-hour storage batteries, technically feasible today, supplemented by hydrogen storage, would be able to meet the requirements. 

The transition to all-renewables might be considered expensive, but the payback period, including health and environmental costs, is just 1.5 years according to this study.  And ongoing costs are radically less than business as usual, which is today’s mix of fossil fuel generators, nuclear, and limited renewables.  

The major obstacles to accomplishing the needed tasks to achieve the vision of the Jacobson study are (1) political will and (2) bureaucracy and cost related to siting and interconnection of generation and transmission equipment. These significant challenges were not covered in the study.

Limitations of this study acknowledged by the authors include an assumption of a perfectly interconnected transmission system in each region.  Another is some uncertainty about the weather model–whether it is representative of the real world up to 2050 and whether it captures extreme weather events. All modeling has limitations, but the growing body of research of which this study is a part is showing that renewable energy advocates should not accept the dogma that fossil fuels and/or nuclear are necessary into the foreseeable future for a stable grid.

References

Mark Z. Jacobson, Anna-Katharina von Krauland, Stephen J. Coughlin, Frances C. Palmer, Miles M. Smith (2022) “Zero air pollution and zero carbon from all energy at low cost and without blackouts in variable weather throughout the U.S. with 100% wind-water-solar and storage,” Renewable Energy 184:430-442. Download.

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