Air Pollution and Global Warming: Energy Solutions to Air Pollution and Global Warming

This book addresses local to global atmospheric problems, including outdoor and indoor air pollution, acid deposition, stratospheric ozone loss, and global warming. It also discusses historic regulatory actions aimed at incrementally reducing emissions of gases and particles. In this chapter, the focus shifts to a different type of solution to these problems, namely, the complete and large-scale conversion of the current combustion-based energy infrastructure to one based on electricity and an energy carrier derived from electricity, hydrogen, with the simultaneous implementation of energy efficiency measures. The electricity, in all cases, is produced by clean technologies that take advantage of the natural and renewable resources of wind, water, and sunlight (WWS) . An analysis is provided for replacing current worldwide energy for all purposes (electric power, transportation, heating/cooling) with energy from WWS. The analysis includes a presentation of WWS energy characteristics, current and future energy demand, and availability of WWS resources. It also discusses the number of WWS devices needed to power the world, the physical land or ocean footprint and spacing needed for such devices, and materials required to build the devices. It then introduces methods of addressing the variability of WWS energy to ensure that power supply reliably matches demand, the direct and social costs of WWS generation and transmission versus the costs of fossil fuels, and policy measures needed to enhance the viability of a WWS system. The discussion draws primarily from Jacobson and Delucchi (2011), Delucchi and Jacobson (2011), and references therein. Clean, Low-Risk, Sustainable Energy Systems Because it is not possible to eliminate all gas and particle emissions from combustion of carbon-based fuels, a solution to the problems of global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity requires a large-scale conversion to clean, perpetual, and reliable energy, together with improvements in energy efficiency. Here, a proposed solution to these problems is discussed. It involves the conversion, by 2030 to 2050, of all sectors of the world's energy infrastructure, including the electric power, transportation, industrial, and heating/cooling sectors , to energy derived solely from WWS.