80% Renewable – The Revolution in Energy

The Big Lie – or tired old axiom if you want to be polite – is that renewables can’t get the job done.  If you need to believe that, then you might as well believe that ignorance is strength.  As I noted here, and many times at this blog, renewables are blowing the doors down – now.  Renewables Could Be 80 Percent Of Energy By 2050: U.N. is the headline from Reuters today.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the organization that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 along with Vice President Gore, has issued a Special Report on Renewable Energy Sources and Climate Change Mitigation (SRREN).  The Summary for Policy Makers says that if we have enabling policies in place, efficiency and conservation initiatives lower the projected demand from the business-as-usual trajectory it’s on now, and sufficient resources – spelled m.o.n.e.y. – are  brought to bear, then we could see 77% of the world’s primary energy demand met by renewables within 40 years.  (Note that that’s how long it’s been since the first energy shock of the Arab oil embargo in 1973.)

The SRREN looks at true renewables:

• Bioenergy, including energy crops; forest, agricultural and livestock residues and so called second generation biofuels
• Direct solar energy including photovoltaics and concentrating solar power
• Geothermal energy, based on heat extraction from the Earth‘s interior
• Hydropower, including run-of-river, in-stream or dam projects with reservoirs
• Ocean energy, ranging from barrages to ocean currents and ones which harness temperature differences in the marine realm
• Wind energy, including on- and offshore systems

The press release from the IPCC quotes one of the principals involved in the report, Dr. Ottmar Edenhofer.  He says “With consistent climate and energy policy support, renewable energy sources can contribute substantially to human well-being by sustainably supplying energy and stabilizing the climate.”  How much?  Renewables could prevent as much as 560 billion tons of CO₂eq from further stressing the climate system in the next 40 years.

The full report will be issued on May 31^st.