American scientists refute the idea of 100-per-cent renewable energy

Concept misjudges affordability, feasibility of a green-only grid, says National Academy of Sciences paper

That dream of 100-percent renewable energy?

A scientific paper published by the National Academy of Sciences has just offered a wakeup call.

A large group of American scientists has evaluated the work of Stanford University green energy advocate Mark Jacobson—who, in 2015, claimed that the United States could adopt a low-cost green energy supply grid, based entirely on wind, solar and hydroelectric power—and found it “unreliable,” with “numerous shortcomings and errors.”

The paper, which appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on June 19, says that Jacobsen’s claims “do not provide a reliable guide to whether, and at what cost, such a transition might be achieved.”

The paper was authored by former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and University of Colorado-Boulder researcher Chris Clack and 20 other scientists.

According to Clack and Co., more analysis is required to:

• Understand the land mass required for a 100% green energy model, which is somewhere around 500,000 square kilometers, or 6% of the continental U.S., for wind farms;
• Adequately judge the affordability and dependability of electric storage systems; and
• Accurately quantify America’s capacity for increasing its hydropower output.

“In contrast, the weight of the evidence suggests that a broad portfolio of energy options will help facilitate an affordable transition to a near-zero emission energy system,” reads the paper.

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