Stanford Study: Renewables Good, Biofuels, CCS, and Nuclear Bad, for the Environment

In a recent study, Stanford professor Mark Jacobson ranks available alternatives for future energy supply. Comparing their energy potentials with overall impacts on climate change, the paper finds that renewables show much greater promise than biofuels, "clean coal" and nuclear efforts.

World Energy Outlook 2008"Review of Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Security"

"What is needed is nothing short of an energy revolution," Noubo Tanaka, Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), said at last month's press conference announcing the release of the World Energy Outlook 2008. The report states that the world must scale up investment in low-carbon energy deployment to an annual 1 to 9 trillion (US) to avoid catastrophic temperature increases.

But, accounting for the environment, where is the best place to put the money? Stanford University professor of civil and environmental engineering Mark Z. Jacobson has come up with an answer.

In his new study, "Review of Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution and Energy Security," Jacobson ranks the available alternatives for future energy supply, based on a comparison of the energy potentials, climatic impacts, and energy security, among other things. (The paper will be published in the next issue of Energy and Environmental Science, but is available onlinehere).

In the paper, Jacobson finds that renewable sources show the greatest potential of delivering the needed energy while mitigating climate change and other environmental hazards. According to Jacobsen, wind is "by far the most promising," as it delivers a "better-than 99 percent reduction" in carbon emissions. Other promising energy alternatives are solar, geothermal, and tidal power (see fact box below)...