Drawing on earlier analyses, the researchers estimate how much energy storage capacity each nation would need to meet fluctuating supply and demand. To move to 100 percent renewable by 2050 (and 80 percent by 2030, the study’s other benchmark), no energy mix is quite the same: Sudan might rely heavily on rooftop solar panels, while Switzerland would depend on hydroelectric. The U.S. would lean on wind power. If these plans were fully deployed, 58 percent of the world’s energy would come from solar, 37 percent from wind, and the rest from hydroelectric, geothermal, tidal, and wave energy. Worldwide, all households, businesses, and governments would switch to electric appliances and heating systems—plus cars, trains, boats, planes, and heavy-duty vehicles.
That level of transformation sounds daunting, and incredibly costly: Jacobson and co-authors peg the upfront cost of installing nearly 50 terawatts’ worth of wind, water, and solar technologies around the world at an astounding $125 trillion.
But that’s cheap, considering the alternatives, they write. A massive transition among the 139 nations that ratified the Paris agreement may be the only way of meeting the ambitious goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C. By 2050, decarbonized grids could also prevent nearly 5 million deaths to air pollution every year, estimate Jacobson et al., and save an annual $28 trillion from a changing climate’s catastrophic impacts to coastlines, fisheries, and agriculture, and deaths caused by heat, famine, drought, wildfires, and severe weather.
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