← Quora archive  ·  2011 Feb 02, 2011 03:18 PM PST

Question

Can the entire world's energy demands be met with 100% renewable energy and 0% coal, petroleum, nuclear?

Answer

No, not in any interesting medium-term scenario (50-100 years). Beyond that the future is so unpredictable (we may meet aliens, discover time travel or blow ourselves up....) that it is not interesting to speculate.

James Fallows of the Atlantic has an in-depth piece on coal in which he concludes that it is necessary at least in the medium term.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magaz...

The proposition that coal could constitute any kind of “hope” or
solution, or that a major environmentalist action plan could be called
“Coal Without Carbon,” as one I will describe is indeed named—this goes
beyond seeming interestingly contrarian to seeming simply wrong. For the
coal industry, the term “clean coal” is an advertising slogan; for many
in the environmental movement, it is an insulting oxymoron. But two
ideas that underlie the term are taken with complete seriousness by
businesses, scientists, and government officials in China and America,
and are the basis of the most extensive cooperation now under way
between the countries on climate issues. One is that coal can be used in less damaging, more sustainable ways than it is now. The other is that it must
be used in those ways, because there is no plausible other way to meet
what will be, absent an economic or social cataclysm, the world’s unavoidable energy demands.


The other important idea to pay attention to is the Pickens plan, which involves using wind to displace natural gas from power generation, allowing the latter to shift automobiles off oil.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pic...


  1. Private industry would fund and install thousands of wind turbines in the Great Plains,
    which Pickens refers to as the potential "wind corridor" of the United
    States due to favorable wind resources and geographic location. Pickens
    estimates that these turbines could generate enough power to provide 20
    percent or more of the country's electricity supply.
  2. Government would pay for electric power transmission lines to
    connect the turbine farms to the power grid. They would provide energy
    to the Midwest, South and Western regions of the country.
  3. With wind energy providing a large portion of the nation's
    electricity, the natural gas that is currently used to fuel power plants
    would be used instead as a fuel for thousands of vehicles. To increase
    efficiency, the Plan puts an emphasis on natural gas-burning fleets of
    trucks and buses.[3] Thus, the demand for petroleum products made from imported oil would be reduced.