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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published in the United States of America by Penguin books, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 2017
First published in Great Britain by Penguin Books 2018
Copyright © Project Drawdown, 2017
“Reciprocity” by Janine Benyus. © 2017 Janine Benyus. Published by arrangement with the author.
Excerpt adapted from Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth by Mark Hertsgaard. Copyright © 2011 by Mark Hertsgaard. Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from The Hidden Half of Nature: The Microbial Roots of Life and Health by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Copyright © 2016 by David R. Montgomery and Anne Biklé. Used by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
Excerpt from “Why Bother?” by Michael Pollan. Published in The New York Times Magazine, April 20, 2008. Copyright © 2008 by Michael Pollan. Used by permission of International Creative Management. All rights reserved.
Introduction by Dr. Jonathan Foley. Published by arrangement with the author.
Excerpts from The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate, Discoveries from a Secret World by Peter Wohlleben, 2016 (Greystone Books). Used by permission of the publisher.
Excerpt from The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World by Andrea Wulf. Copyright © 2015 by Andrea Wulf. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-0-141-98844-3
In January 2017, Penguin U.K. published my “Ladybird Expert Book on Climate Change”, written in partnership with Dr. Tony Juniper and Dr. Emily Shuckburgh. The Ladybird book is a brief exposition of the latest peer-reviewed climate change science, written for the lay reader. It also points, very briefly, to some of the most important solutions to the climate change challenge: renewable energy, forest protection, better management of soil and marine conservation, to name but a few.
It was therefore a great pleasure to read “Drawdown”; a magisterial and detailed exposition, in detail, of one hundred of the best and most promising solutions to climate change. Some eighty of those solutions are ‘tried and tested’, already being put in place around the world; a further twenty are described, intriguingly, as ‘coming attractions’ – in other words, technologies and approaches currently under review, which pose great promise.
The results of this comprehensive effort are surprising, fascinating and inspiring in equal measure. I was pleased, although not surprised, to see to what extent forest protection, restoration and improved soil management would contribute to creating a better climate for our and future generations. Ensuring and safeguarding the rights of indigenous peoples is another solution in the same vein. Furthermore, I was equally struck by the weight given to the need to support better access to modem, voluntary family planning, women’s and girls’ education and reproductive health care throughout the world, which is not only intrinsically the right thing to do, but a potentially significant contribution to reducing our collective climate footprint. Often, the solutions put forward in the book reaffirm compelling truths that for some inexplicable reason have not yet been taken forward effectively. Equally often, however, “Drawdown’s” methodology and approach shed new insights and prompt innovative thinking.
“Drawdown’s” focus on reversing, rather than simply reducing, climate change is a compelling and urgent narrative that surely needs to be widely adopted? I also much appreciate its focus on regenerative and restorative development, as well as its references to the circular economy. These approaches are particularly close to my heart.
“Drawdown” has already been read widely around the world and used as a tool to stimulate thinking and new approaches to development and planning within many countries. In these uncertain times, in which it so often feels that the climate is already running out of control, through both our actions and inaction, this book is resolutely focused on a positive response to our current predicament and therefore deserves the widest possible readership.
As a climate scientist, it’s disheartening to witness world events unfold as they have over the past few decades. The clear and precise warnings we scientists have made about our planet’s changing climate are materializing as predicted. Greenhouse gases are trapping heat in the earth’s atmosphere, producing warmer seasons and an amped-up water cycle.
Warmer air holds more moisture, allowing for higher rates of evaporation and precipitation. Record heat waves, coupled with intense droughts, spark the perfect conditions for massive wildfires. Warming oceans trigger supercharged storms, with greater rainfall and higher storm surges. We can expect a steady rise in extreme weather events in the coming decades, potentially causing countless lost lives and significant financial losses.
Whether we like it or not—whether we choose to “believe” the science or not—the reality of climate change is upon us. It’s affecting everything: not just weather patterns, ecosystems, ice sheets, islands, coastlines, and cities across the planet, but the health, safety, and security of every person alive and the generations to come. Worldwide, we’re seeing related symptoms like the acidification of our oceans, which could devastate coral reefs and marine life, and the changing biochemistry of plants, including staple crops.
We know exactly why this is happening. We’ve known for more than a hundred years.
When we burn fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas), manufacture cement, plow rich soils, and destroy forests, we release heat-trapping carbon dioxide into the air. Our cattle, rice fields, landfills, and natural gas operations release methane, warming the planet even more. Other greenhouse gases, including nitrous oxide and fluorinated gases, are seeping out of our agricultural lands, industrial sites, refrigeration systems, and urban areas, compounding the greenhouse effect. It’s important to remember that climate change stems from many sources such as energy production, agriculture, forestry, cement, and chemical manufacturing; thus, the solutions must arise from those same many sources.
Beyond the damage to our planet, climate change threatens to undermine our social fabric and the foundations of democracy. We see the impacts of this in the United States in particular, where key parts of the federal government are denying the science, and are closely aligned with fossil fuel industries. While most people continue to move through their day as if nothing is wrong, others who are aware of the science are fearful, if not in despair. The climate change narrative has become a doom and gloom story, causing people to experience denial, anger, or resignation.
At times, I have been one of those people.
Thanks to Drawdown, I have a different perspective. Paul Hawken and his colleagues have researched and modeled the one hundred most substantive ways we can reverse global warming. These solutions reside in energy, agriculture, forests, industries, buildings, transportation, and more. They also highlight critical social and cultural solutions, such as empowering girls, reducing population growth, and changing our diets and consumption patterns. Together, these solutions not only slow climate change, they can reverse it.
Drawdown goes beyond solar panels and energy-efficient light bulbs to show that the needed solutions are far more diverse than just those associated with clean energy, and that there are many effective means to address global warming. Drawdown illustrates how we can make dramatic strides by reducing the emissions of more exotic greenhouse gases, like refrigerants and black carbon, lowering nitrous oxide emissions from agriculture, cutting methane emissions from cattle production, and reducing carbon dioxide emissions from deforestation. Moreover, Drawdown demonstrates the potential for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through innovative land use practices, regenerative agriculture, and agroforestry.
But, more importantly to me, Drawdown illuminates ways we can overcome the fear, confusion, and apathy surrounding climate change, and take action as individuals, neighborhoods, towns and cities, states, provinces, businesses, investment firms, and non-profits. This book should become the blueprint for building a climate-safe world. By modeling solutions that are hands-on, well understood, and already scaling, Drawdown points to a future where we can reverse global warming and leave a better world for new generations.
We think that our climate future is harsh because news and reports have focused on what will happen if we do not act. Drawdown shows us what we can do. Because of that, I think this is the single most important book ever written about climate change.
Drawdown has helped restore my faith in the future, and in the capacity of human beings to solve incredible challenges. We have all the tools we need to combat climate change, and thanks to Paul and his colleagues, we now have a plan showing us how to use them.
Now let’s get to work and do it.
Dr. Jonathan Foley
Executive Director, California Academy of Sciences
San Francisco
The genesis of Project Drawdown was curiosity, not fear. In 2001 I began asking experts in climate and environmental fields a question: Do we know what we need to do in order to arrest and reverse global warming? I thought they could provide a shopping list. I wanted to know the most effective solutions that were already in place, and the impact they could have if scaled. I also wanted to know the price tag. My contacts replied that such an inventory did not exist, but all agreed it would be a great checklist to have, though creating one was not within their individual expertise. After several years, I stopped asking because it was not within my expertise either.
Then came 2013. Several articles were published that were so alarming that one began to hear whispers of the unthinkable: It was game over. But was that true, or might it possibly be game on? Where did we actually stand? It was then that I decided to create Project Drawdown. In atmospheric terms drawdown is that point in time at which greenhouse gases peak and begin to decline on a year-to-year basis. I decided that the goal of the project would be to identify, measure, and model one hundred substantive solutions to determine how much we could accomplish within three decades towards that end.
The subtitle of this book—the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming—may sound a bit brash. We have chosen that description because no detailed plan to reverse warming has been proposed. There have been agreements and proposals on how to slow, cap, and arrest emissions, and there are international commitments to prevent global temperature increases from exceeding two degrees centigrade over preindustrial levels. One hundred and ninety-five nations have made extraordinary progress in coming together to acknowledge that we have a momentous civilizational crisis on our earthly doorstep and have created national plans of action. The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has completed the most significant scientific study in the history of humankind, and continues to refine the science, expand the research, and extend our grasp of one of the most complex systems imaginable. However, there is, as yet, no road map that goes beyond slowing or stopping emissions.
To be clear, our organization did not create or devise a plan. We do not have that capability or self-appointed mandate. In conducting our research, we found a plan, a blueprint that already exists in the world in the form of humanity’s collective wisdom, made manifest in applied, hands-on practices and technologies that are commonly available, economically viable, and scientifically valid. Individual farmers, communities, cities, companies, and governments have shown that they care about this planet, its people, and its places. Engaged citizens the world over are doing something extraordinary. This is their story.
In order for Project Drawdown to be credible, a coalition of researchers and scientists needed to be at its foundation. We had a tiny budget and oversized ambitions, so we sent out appeals inviting students and scholars from around the world to become research fellows. We were inundated with responses from some of the finest women and men in science and public policy. Today, the Drawdown Fellows comprise seventy individuals from twenty-two countries. Forty percent are women, nearly half have PhDs, and others have at least one advanced degree. They have extensive academic and professional experience at some of the world’s most respected institutions.
Together we gathered comprehensive lists of climate solutions and winnowed them down to those that had the greatest potential to reduce emissions or sequester carbon from the atmosphere. We then compiled literature reviews and devised detailed climate and financial models for each of the solutions. The analyses informing this book were then put through a three-stage process including review by outside experts who evaluated the inputs, sources, and calculations. We brought together a 120-person Advisory Board, a prominent and diverse community of geologists, engineers, agronomists, politicians, writers, climatologists, biologists, botanists, economists, financial analysts, architects, and activists who reviewed and validated the text.
Almost all of the solutions compiled and analyzed here lead to regenerative economic outcomes that create security, produce jobs, improve health, save money, facilitate mobility, eliminate hunger, prevent pollution, restore soil, clean rivers, and more. That these are substantive solutions does not mean that they are all the best ones. There are a small handful of entries in this book whose spillover effects are clearly detrimental to human and planetary health, and we try to make that clear in our descriptions. The overwhelming majority, however, are no-regrets solutions, initiatives we would want to achieve regardless of their ultimate impact on emissions and climate, as they are practices that benefit society and the environment in multiple ways.
The final section of the main part of Drawdown is called “Coming Attractions” and features twenty solutions that are nascent or on the horizon. Some may succeed, while others may fail. Notwithstanding, they provide a demonstration of the ingenuity and gumption that committed individuals have brought to address climate change. Additionally, you will find essays from prominent journalists, writers, and scientists—narratives, histories, and vignettes—that offer a rich and varied context to the specifics of the book.
We remain a learning organization. Our role is to collect information, organize it in ways that are helpful, distribute it to any and all, and provide the means for anyone to add, amend, correct, and extend the information you find here and on the drawdown.org website. Technical reports and expanded model results are available there. Any model that projects out thirty years is going to be highly speculative. However, we believe the numbers are approximately right and welcome your comments and input.
Unquestionably, distress signals are flashing throughout nature and society, from drought, sea level rise, and unrelenting increases in temperatures to expanded refugee crises, conflict, and dislocation. This is not the whole story. We have endeavored in Drawdown to show that many people are staunchly and unwaveringly on the case. Although carbon emissions from fossil fuel combustion and land use have a two-century head start on these solutions, we will take those odds. The buildup of greenhouse gases we experience today occurred in the absence of human understanding; our ancestors were innocent of the damage they were doing. That can tempt us to believe that global warming is something that is happening to us—that we are victims of a fate that was determined by actions that precede us. If we change the preposition, and consider that global warming is happening for us—an atmospheric transformation that inspires us to change and reimagine everything we make and do—we begin to live in a different world. We take 100 percent responsibility and stop blaming others. We see global warming not as an inevitability but as an invitation to build, innovate, and effect change, a pathway that awakens creativity, compassion, and genius. This is not a liberal agenda, nor is it a conservative one. This is the human agenda. —Paul Hawken
Confucius wrote that calling things by their proper name is the beginning of wisdom. In the world of climate change, names can sometimes be the beginning of confusion. Climate science contains its own specialized vocabulary, acronyms, lingo, and jargon. It is a language derived by scientists and policy makers that is succinct, specific, and useful. However, as a means of communication to the broader public, it can create separation and distance.
I remember my economics professor asking for a definition of Gresham’s law and how I rattled off the answer mechanically. He looked at me—none too pleased, though the answer was correct—and said, now explain it to your grandmother. That was much more difficult. The answer I gave the professor would have made no sense to her. It was lingo. So it is with climate and global warming. Very few people actually understand climate science, yet the basic mechanism of global warming is pretty straightforward.
We have sought to make Drawdown understandable to people from all backgrounds and points of view. We endeavored to bridge the climate communication gap by the words we choose, the analogies we avoid, the jargon we stay away from, and the metaphors we employ. As much as possible, we refrain from acronyms and lesser-known climate terminology. We generally spell out carbon dioxide instead of abbreviating it. We write methane, not CH4.
Let’s consider an example. In November 2016, the White House released its strategy for achieving deep decarbonization by mid-century. From our perspective, decarbonization is a word that describes the problem, not the goal: we decarbonized the earth by removing carbon in the form of combusted coal, gas, and oil, as well as through deforestation and poor farming practices, and releasing it into the atmosphere. When the word decarbonization is used, as it was by the White House, it refers to replacing fossil fuel energy with clean, renewable sources. However, the term is often employed as the overarching goal of climate action—one that is unlikely to inspire and more likely to confuse.
Another term used by scientists is “negative emissions.” This term has no meaning in any language. Imagine a negative house, or a negative tree. The absence of something is nothing. The phrase refers to sequestering or drawing down carbon from the atmosphere. We call that sequestration. It is carbon positive, not negative. This is another example where climate-speak removes itself from common parlance and common sense. Our goal is to present climate science and solutions in language that is accessible and compelling to the broadest audience, from ninth graders to pipe fitters, from graduate students to farmers.
We also avoid using military language. Much of the rhetoric and writing about climate change is violent: the war on carbon, the fight against global warming, and frontline battles against fossil fuels. Articles refer to slashing emissions as if we had machetes. We understand the use of these terms because they convey the gravity of what we face and the tightening window of time to address global warming. Yet, terms such as “combat,” “battle,” and “crusade” imply that climate change is the enemy and it needs to be slain. Climate is a function of biological activity on earth, and physics and chemistry in the sky. It is the prevalent weather conditions over time. Climate changes because it always has and will, and variations of climate produce everything from seasons to evolution. The goal is to come into alignment with the impact we are having on climate by addressing the human causes of global warming and bringing carbon back home.
The term “drawdown” needs explanation as well. The word is conventionally used to describe the reduction of military forces, capital accounts, or water from wells. We use it to refer to reducing the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. However, there is an even more important reason for the use of the word: drawdown names a goal that has been hitherto absent in most conversations about climate. Addressing, slowing, or arresting emissions is necessary, but insufficient. If you are traveling down the wrong road, you are still on the wrong road if you slow down. The only goal that makes sense for humanity is to reverse global warming, and if parents, scientists, young people, leaders, and we citizens do not name the goal, there is little chance it will be achieved.
Last, there is the term “global warming.” The history of the concept goes back to the nineteenth century when Eunice Foote (1856) and John Tyndall (1859) independently described how gases trap heat in the atmosphere and how changes in the concentration of gases would alter the climate. The term global warming was first used by geochemist Wallace Broecker in a 1975 Science article entitled “Climatic Change: Are We on the Brink of a Pronounced Global Warming?” Before that article, the term used was inadvertent climate modification. Global warming refers to the surface temperature of the earth. Climate change refers to the many changes that will occur with increases in temperature and greenhouse gases. That is why the U.N. climate agency is called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the IPCC, and not the IPGW. It studies the comprehensive impacts of climate change on all living systems. What we measure and model in Drawdown is how to begin the reduction of greenhouse gases in order to reverse global warming. —Paul Hawken
Behind every one of the solutions in Drawdown are hundreds of pages of research and rigorous mathematical models developed by some very bright minds. Each solution includes an introduction that draws on history, science, key examples, and the most current information available. Every description is supported by a detailed technical assessment available on our website for further exploration. Each entry also features a summary of output from the models, including a ranking of the solution by its emissions-reduction potential. We enumerate how many gigatons of greenhouse gases are avoided or removed from the atmosphere, as well as the total incremental cost to implement the solution, and the net cost or—in most cases—savings. In the models, we rely on peer-reviewed science for inputs. In some areas, such as land use and farming, there is a plethora of anecdotal facts and figures, some of which we refer to but we do not use in our calculations.
At the end of the book, you will find a summary table presenting the combined impact of solutions, grouped by sector.
There are several ways one can rank solutions: how cost-effective they are; how quickly they can be implemented; or how beneficial they are to society. All are interesting and useful methods with which to interpret the results. For our purposes, we rank solutions based on the total amount of greenhouse gases they can potentially avoid or remove from the atmosphere. The rankings are global. The relative importance of one solution may differ depending on geography, economic conditions, or sector.
Carbon dioxide may get the most press, but it is not the only greenhouse gas. Other heat-trapping gases include methane, nitrous oxide, fluorinated gases, and water vapor. Each has long-term impacts on global temperatures, depending on how much of it is in the atmosphere, how long it remains there, and how much heat it absorbs or radiates back out during its lifetime. Based on these factors, scientists can calculate their global warming potential, which makes it possible to have a “common currency” for greenhouse gases, translating any given gas into its equivalent in carbon dioxide.
Each solution in Drawdown reduces greenhouse gases by avoiding emissions and/or by sequestering carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. The degree to which a given solution has a bearing on greenhouse gases is translated into gigatons of carbon dioxide removed between 2020 and 2050. Taken together, they represent the total reduction of greenhouse gases that could be achieved by 2050, compared to a fixed reference case, a world where very little changes.
But what is a gigaton? To appreciate its magnitude, imagine 400,000 Olympic-sized pools. That is about a billion metric tons of water, or 1 gigaton. Now multiply that by 36, yielding 14,400,000 pools. Thirty-six gigatons is the amount of carbon dioxide emitted in 2016.
The total cost of each solution in this book is the amount needed to purchase, install, and operate it over thirty years. By comparing this to what we typically would spend on food, fuel for cars, heating and cooling for our homes, etc., we determined the net costs or savings from investing in a given solution.
We err on the side of being conservative. That means assuming costs associated with the solution that are on the high end, and then keeping them relatively constant from 2020 to 2050. Because technologies are changing rapidly and will vary in different parts of the world, we expect the actual cost to be less and the amount of savings higher. Even taking a conservative approach, however, the solutions tend to offer an overwhelming net savings. For some solutions though, the costs and savings are incalculable, as in the cost to save a specific rainforest or support girls’ education.
How much are we willing to spend to achieve results that benefit all of humanity? In the back of the book, we summarize the net cost and savings solution-by-solution for comparison. Net savings are based on the operating costs of solutions after implementation from 2020 to 2050. This calculation reveals the cost-effectiveness of the solutions presented. When considering the scale of benefits, the potential profits and savings, and the investments needed if conditions remain the same, the costs become negligible. The payback period for most solutions is relatively short in time.
The solutions presented in Drawdown are only a summary of the full research conducted to support our findings. A more detailed outline of our approach and assumptions can be found in the section “Methodology.” We also provide a full description of our research at drawdown.org—how all the data were generated, sources used, and assumptions made.
As you read the book, what will become apparent is how sensible and empowering these solutions are. Rather than a lengthy technical manual, impenetrable to all save experts who have spent their lives immersed in the science behind these technologies, Drawdown aims to be accessible to anyone who wants to know what we, collectively, can do and the role each one of us might play. —Chad Frischmann
This section highlights the technologies and strategies supplanting energy production from fossil fuels. What were once fools’ errands in the energy business, particularly wind and solar, have relentlessly defied predictions and are now competitive with coal, gas, and oil. Renewable costs are continuing to fall on a year-to-year basis, while oil, gas, and coal from new sources are significantly more difficult to extract, which will cause carbon-based fuels to rise in cost. Canada, Finland, and four other countries have banned coal, and more are preparing to. Political leadership is a wonderful thing, but its absence does not slow the renewable transition. The United States pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, and that act had virtually no impact on the growth of the renewable energy industry. If you spend a year immersed in the economic data about energy, as we did, there is only one plausible conclusion: We are, in writer Jeremy Leggett’s words, squarely in the middle of the greatest energy transition in history. The era of fossil fuels is over, and the only question now is when the new era will be fully upon us. Economics make its arrival inevitable: Clean energy is less expensive.
| RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 (ONSHORE) | #2 | |
| 84.6 GIGATONS | $1.23 TRILLION | $7.4 TRILLION |
| REDUCED CO2 | NET COST | NET SAVINGS |
| RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 (OFFSHORE) | #22 | |
| 15.2 GIGATONS | $545.3 BILLION | $762.5 BILLION |
| REDUCED CO2 | NET COST | NET SAVINGS |
Wind never blows. Because of uneven heating of the earth’s surface and the planet’s rotation, it is drawn from areas of higher pressure to lower, undulating over and above the landscape like an incoming tide of air. Change is riding on that tide: Wind energy is at the crest of initiatives to address global warming in the coming three decades, second only to refrigeration in total impact.
Take the thirty-two offshore wind turbines—each double the height of the Statue of Liberty—that have been installed off the coast of Liverpool, England, at the Burbo Bank Extension. Owned by a surprising entry into the energy business—Lego, the toy maker—Burbo is an international effort: The blades are made on the Isle of Wight in the United Kingdom by a Japanese company for its Danish client, Vestas. Each turbine generates 8 megawatts of electricity. Their 269-foot blades have a sweep diameter nearly twice the length of a football field, and weigh 33 tons. A single rotation of the blades generates the electricity for one household’s daily use. Altogether, the project will supply power for all 466,000 inhabitants of Liverpool.
Today, 314,000 wind turbines supply 3.7 percent of global electricity. And it will soon be much more. Ten million homes in Spain alone are powered by wind. Investment in offshore wind was $29.9 billion in 2016, 40 percent greater than the prior year.
Human beings have harnessed the power of wind for millennia, capturing breezes, gusts, and gales to send mariners and their cargo down rivers and across seas or to pump water and grind grain. The earliest recorded windmills were created around 500 to 900 AD in Persia. The technology spread to Europe during the Middle Ages, and for centuries the Dutch fostered most windmill innovation. By the late 1800s, inventors around the world were successfully converting the kinetic energy of wind into electricity. Prototypical turbines popped up in Glasgow, Scotland, Ohio, and Denmark, and the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago featured a variety of manufacturers and their designs. In the 1920s and ’30s, farms across the midwestern United States were dotted with wind turbines as a dominant energy source. In 1931, Russia launched utility-scale wind production, and the world’s first megawatt turbine went online in Vermont in 1941.
Fossil fuels sidelined wind energy during the mid-twentieth century. The oil crisis of the 1970s reignited interest, investment, and invention. This modern resurgence paved the way for where the wind industry is today with its proliferation of turbines, dropping costs, and heightened performance. In 2015, a record 63 gigawatts of wind power were installed around the world, despite a dramatic drop in fossil fuel prices. China alone brought nearly 31 gigawatts of new capacity online. Denmark now supplies more than 40 percent of its electricity needs with wind power, and in Uruguay, wind satisfies more than 15 percent of demand. In many locales, wind is either competitive with or less expensive than coal-generated electricity.
In the United States, the wind energy potential of just three states—Kansas, North Dakota, and Texas—would be sufficient to meet electricity demand from coast to coast. Wind farms have small footprints, typically using no more than 1 percent of the land they sit on, so grazing, farming, recreation, or conservation can happen simultaneously with power generation. Turbines can harvest electricity while farmers harvest alfalfa and corn. What’s more, it takes one year or less to build a wind farm, quickly producing energy and a return on investment.
Wind energy has its challenges. The weather is not the same everywhere. The variable nature of wind means there are times when turbines are not turning. Where the intermittent production of wind (and solar) power can span a broader geography, however, it is easier to overcome fluctuations in supply and demand. Interconnected grids can shuttle power to where it is needed. Critics argue that turbines are noisy, aesthetically unpleasant, and at times deadly to bats and migrating birds. Newer designs address these concerns with slower turning blades and siting practices that avoid migration paths. Yet, not-in-my-backyard sentiment—from the British countryside to the shores of Massachusetts—remains an obstacle.
Another impediment to wind power is inequitable government subsidies. The International Monetary Fund estimates that the fossil fuel industry received more than $5.3 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies in 2015; that is $10 million a minute, or about 6.5 percent of global GDP. Indirect fossil fuel subsidies include health costs due to air pollution, environmental damage, congestion, and global warming—none of which are factors with wind turbines. In comparison, the U.S. wind-energy industry has received $12.3 billion in direct subsidies since 2000. Outsize subsidies make fossil fuels look less expensive, obscuring wind power’s cost competitiveness, and they give fossil fuels an incumbent advantage, making investment more attractive.
Ongoing cost reduction will soon make wind energy the least expensive source of installed electricity capacity, perhaps within a decade. Current costs are 2.9 cents per kilowatt-hour for wind, 3.8 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas combined-cycle plants, and 5.7 cents per kllowatt-hour for utility-scale solar. A Goldman Sachs research paper published in June 2016 stated simply, “wind provides the lowest cost source of new capacity.” The cost of both wind and solar includes production tax credits; however, Goldman Sachs believes that the continuing decline in wind turbine costs will make up for the phasing out of tax credits in 2023. Wind projects built in 2016 are coming in at 2.3 cents per kilowatt-hour. A Morgan Stanley analysis shows that new wind energy production in the Midwest is one-third of the cost of natural gas combined-cycle plants. And finally, Bloomberg New Energy Finance has calculated that “the lifetime cost of wind and solar is less than the cost of building new fossil fuel plants.” Bloomberg predicts that wind energy will be the lowest-cost energy globally by 2030. (This accounting does not include the cost of fossil fuels with respect to air quality, health, pollution, damage to the environment, and global warming.)
Costs are going down because turbines are being built at higher elevations—meaning longer blades in locations that have more wind, a combination that has more than doubled the capacity of a given turbine to generate electricity. Onshore turbines can be made larger because assembly is far easier than on water. Turbines that generate 20 megawatts of power with tip heights taller than the Empire State Building are on the drawing boards.
Could the United States power itself with wind? The National Renewable Energy Laboratory calculates that nearly 775,000 square miles of land area is suited to 40 to 50 percent capacity factors, more than twice the average capacity factor a decade ago. (A wind turbine is rated to be able to produce a stated amount of power at a constant given wind speed, however the capacity factor takes into consideration the variability of wind speed in the actual location.) The ways and means for the United States to be fossil fuel and energy independent are here. What is often missing is political will and leadership.
Critics in Congress disparage wind power because it is subsidized, implying that the federal government is pouring money down a hole. Coal is a freeloader when it comes to the costs borne by society for environmental impacts. Putting aside the difference in emissions costs—none for wind, high for fossil fuels—the subsidy arguments do not include the difference in water usage between wind and fossil fuels. Wind power uses 98 to 99 percent less water than fossil fuel–generated electricity. Coal, gas, and nuclear power require massive amounts of water for cooling, withdrawing more water than agriculture—22 trillion to 62 trillion gallons per year. Water for many fossil fuel and nuclear plants is “free,” bestowed by the federal government or the states, but it is hardly free and instead represents another unacknowledged subsidy. Who else besides the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries can take trillions of gallons of water in the United States and not pay for it?
China’s rise as the world’s wind leader demonstrates that consistent government commitment to scaling wind energy can accelerate a declining cost curve, especially if government support remains constant regardless of shifting political winds. A predictable environment is key to the industry’s development. On the policy side, portfolio standards can mandate a share of renewable generation. Grants, loans, and tax incentives can encourage construction of more wind capacity and ongoing innovation, on such technologies as vertical-axis turbines and offshore systems. Where governments do support wind energy, such as in the European Union, political action is failing to keep up with the growth of renewable wind energy. In Germany in 2015, bottlenecks in the grid caused 4,100 gigawatt-hours of wind electricity to be wasted—enough energy to power 1.2 million homes for a year. Concerns that wind would be unable to supply enough energy for Europe are being replaced by worries that grid integration and utility and distributed energy storage systems will not keep up with demand.
Wind energy, like other sources of energy, is part of a system. Investment in energy storage, transmission infrastructure, and distributed generation is essential to its growth. Technologies and infrastructure to store excess power are developing quickly now. Power lines to connect remote wind farms to areas of high demand are being built. For the world, the decision is simple: Invest in the future or in the past. ●
IMPACT: An increase in onshore wind from 3 to 4 percent of world electricity use to 21.6 percent by 2050 could reduce emissions by 84.6 gigatons of carbon dioxide. For offshore wind, growing from .1 percent to 4 percent could avoid 15.2 gigatons of emissions. At a combined cost of $1.8 trillion, wind turbines can deliver net savings of $8.2 trillion over three decades of operation. These are conservative estimates, however. Costs are falling annually and new technological improvements are already being installed, increasing capacity to generate more electricity at the same or lower cost.
| RANKING AND RESULTS BY 2050 | #78 |
| AN ENABLING TECHNOLOGY—COST AND SAVINGS ARE EMBEDDED IN RENEWABLE ENERGY |
The “macro” grid is a massive electrical network of energy sources that connects utilities, energy generators, storage, and 24-7 control centers monitoring supply and demand. Anything that is plugged in taps into the grid’s centralized power—electricity that is available from large fossil-fuel plants, day or night and rain or shine. This setup made sense when power generation was concentrated. Today, it hinders society’s transition from dirty energy produced in a few places to clean energy produced everywhere.
Enter microgrids. A microgrid is a localized grouping of distributed energy sources, such as solar, wind, in-stream hydro, and biomass, together with energy storage or backup generation and load management tools. This system can operate as a stand-alone entity or its users can plug into the larger grid as needed. Microgrids are nimble, efficient microcosms of the big grid, designed for smaller, diverse energy sources. By bringing together renewables and storage, microgrids provide reliable power that can augment the centralized model or operate independently in an emergency situation.
Microgrids will play a critical role in the advancement of a flexible and efficient electric grid. The use of local supply to serve local demand reduces energy lost in transmission and distribution, increasing efficiency of delivery compared to a centralized grid. When coal is burned to boil water to turn a turbine to generate electricity, two-thirds of the energy is dispersed as waste heat and in-line losses.
Microgrid installations in grid-connected regions offer several key advantages. Civilization is dependent on electricity; losing access due to outages or blackouts is a critical risk. In developed countries, economic losses from such events can be many billions of dollars per year. Associated social costs include increased crime, transportation failures, and food wastage, in addition to the environmental cost of diesel-fueled backup power. Studies indicate that as overall demand for electricity increases, owing in part to use of air conditioning and electric vehicles, existing power systems become more frail and blackouts more frequent. By virtue of being localized systems, microgrids are more resilient and can be more responsive to local demand. In the event of disruption, a microgrid can focus on critical loads that require uninterrupted service, such as hospitals, and shed noncritical loads until adequate supply is restored.
In low-income countries, the advantages are greater. Globally, 1.1 billion people do not have access to a grid or electricity. More than 95 percent of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, a majority in rural areas where highly polluting kerosene lamps are still the main source of lighting and meals are cooked on rudimentary stoves. While the connection between electrification and human development has been clear, progress has remained slow due to the high cost of extending the grid to remote regions. In rural parts of Asia and Africa, populations are best supplied with electricity from microgrids (and in remote locations by stand-alone solar).
Establishing microgrids in low-income rural areas is easier than operating them in energy-rich high-income locales. In many places, the business models of large utilities are not compatible with distributed energy and storage. They have sunk costs in a system of generation and delivery that is becoming outmoded. Where utilities are resistant, monopoly, not technology, is the biggest challenge for microgrids. Lessons could cross-pollinate: large grids need to be less rigid and adapt to a changing world; microgrids need to adopt robust technical standards for long-term success. In the age of technological disruption, working out a partnership of technologies makes good sense. ●
IMPACT: We model the growth of microgrids in areas that currently do not have access to electricity, using renewable energy alternatives such as in-stream hydro, micro wind, rooftop solar, and biomass energy, paired with distributed energy storage. It is assumed that these systems replace what would otherwise be the extension of a dirty grid or the continued use of off-grid oil or diesel generators. Emissions impacts are accounted for in the individual solutions themselves, preventing double counting. For higher-income countries the benefits of microgrid systems fall under “Grid Flexibility.”