A world powered entirely by clean, renewable energy is often dismissed by the mainstream bourgeois media as a utopian vision. Even those who voice support for the use of renewable energy over polluting and limited fossil fuels are timid in their suggestions, calling for slightly better gas mileage here or a new wind or solar farm there.
But Mark Z. Jacobsen and Mark A. Zeluchi, researchers from Stanford and UC Davis, recently released a study showing that such a world is not only possible, but could be realized within our lifetimes.
Their study, published in the journal Energy Policy, shows that 100 percent of the world’s energy supply could be provided using renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, tidal, geothermal and hydroelectric. No great advances in efficiency or energy science were included in the study’s assumptions—all the results could be accomplished using existing technology, refuting charges that clean energy is a utopian fantasy. The time needed to transition totally from the existing energy infrastructure is estimated at 20-40 years.
In this system, wind and solar energy would provide 90 percent of the world’s energy needs, while other sources would provide the rest. Vehicles, including cars, ships and airplanes, would no longer be powered by fossil fuels, instead using either hydrogen fuel cells or electricity.
According to Jacobsen and Zeluchi, there are obstacles to the implementation of an infrastructure relying only on renewable energy. These include the supply of materials needed to create such an infrastructure, including substances like platinum and other rare earth metals, and the variability of energy sources like wind and solar, both of which can fluctuate greatly. However, Jacobson and Zeluchi have found that the obvious bottlenecks could be avoided. Materials necessary for constructing solar cells, for example, are present in sufficient quantities, even without recycling needed materials. Other power sources, like wind energy, require mainly steel and concrete, both abundantly available.
Not only would such a plan eliminate many global tensions over the control of limited supplies of fossil fuels, but the reduction in fossil fuel use and pollution would save millions of lives currently ended by problems directly related to airborne contaminants, from asthma to lung cancer to heart failure. In addition to the medical benefits, the plan would also create a reduction in total energy demand of 30 percent as it shifts many processes currently relying on combustion to electrical sources of energy
Unfortunately, the fact is that a plan like the one that Jacobson and Zeluchi propose is absolutely possible—yet it will not be implemented by a capitalist state. Powerful interests like the petroleum and automobile industries will fiercely oppose any move towards different energy sources. Even mild proposals like “cap and trade,” itself a capitalist solution to the problem of global warming that relies on commodifying pollution and creating a market for it to be traded in, are unacceptable to those interests.
As long as such a change is harmful to the profit margins of the most powerful corporations, they will oppose it, no matter how feasible it is. The experience of socialist Cuba shows that it is eminently possible, even for poor countries, to provide health care for all their citizens—yet the U.S. continues to resist any moves towards universal medical care for its citizens because of the influence of insurance and pharmaceutical companies fearful of their profit margins.
It is impossible to vote these companies out of power—and any attempt to change their practices through legislative means will result in no action at all, or, as in the case of President Obama’s health care law, result in fanfare and celebration by reformist politicians, but little real change for the people most in need.
Only a revolutionary, militant and democratic struggle, from the streets to the workplaces to the universities, can result in real change!
