There's a major study out of Princeton from a year or two ago that fully covers what is needed for full electrification with only renewables, and with mostly renewables. It covers all this much better than I could, especially here on HN:
My take on that report is "yep, this would/will be a major effort, as large as anything we've ever done, but not much more than an order of magnitude beyond anything we've ever done".
Yeah, from my perspective, the fact that it is large isn't the problem. The issues is that we can't seem to get anything done. Politicians --of all denominations-- stopped working for us and towards solid long term objectives for the benefit of society a long time ago, decades. Their focus is firmly aimed at winning elections and opposing the other side. We, the people, well, we don't really matter, all they want is our votes. Stupid us.
A prime example of this is the "high speed" train here in California. They said the bill was ten billion. We are in for over a hundred billion. What had been built isn't finished and it isn't even high speed (I think it tops out at around 50 mph). The whole thing is a disgusting example of just how dysfunctional we have become as a nation.
And so, I look at the idea of having to, say, double, our power generation and distribution infrastructure and the only equation that balances out in my head says: Good luck. It will never happen.
I hope I am wrong. A sign of this would be for these people (politicians) to finally get their heads out of their behinds, work together and put forth a solid 25 year plan to materially expand our power generation and distribution. A plan that is executable, not some hand-wavy thing that will never happen.
Anyhow, I don't want to be a pessimist, yet, I can't see any evidence of anything that might lead me to believe this nation is capable of the great things we accomplished in the past. The Hoover Damn could not be built today. We could say that about almost every large scale project going back a century or more. Can you imagine proposing to build the Panama Canal today? Right.
In this context, we are waving our hands and talking about 300 million electric cars and 100 million all-electric homes. Part of me things "C'mon. Get serious".
I would recommend listening to the Ezra Klein show interview with one of the main authors of the NetZero Princeton report. It is not recklessly optimistic, but I was surprised to finish it and have a sense "hell, maybe we might actually pull this off".
I'll read the report and watch this interview over the next few days. This looks really interesting. I hope it serves to realign some of my thinking. Thanks for posting this.
Note also that Ezra is currently really into his "why can't we do stuff any more phase" and has had a couple of good shows and a couple of NYT op-eds about it, plus a whole book on the topic. He's particularly oriented now, as a multi-year CA resident, on how this cannot be blamed on partisan stuff, since even (or especially) in "blue" states where Democrats hold all the power, stuff still does not happen.
I don't like his conclusions, but it is hard to argue with them (at least for me).
You reminded me of a funny segment in a famous George Carlin joke about religion. My apologies if you are a believer, please just take this as what it is: comedy.
"Something is wrong here. War, disease, death, destruction, hunger, filth, poverty, torture, crime, corruption, and the Ice Capades. Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best God can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of a Supreme Being. This is the kind of shit you’d expect from an office temp with a bad attitude. And just between you and me, in any decently-run universe, this guy would’ve been out on his all-powerful ass a long time ago."
This is the kind of thing I think about when I watch reality happen and compare it to the fantasies people construct about what we can actually accomplish these days. You are right, this has nothing to do with political party; each having its own maddening twists and turns.
We just can't get things done. Not just when it comes to a large scale. I have two personal examples.
First, our street, which is 25 years old (I've been here since the neighborhood was built) was repaved twice and, I am told, will be repaved again next year.
Why? Was it in bad shape?
Not even close. You could almost play pool on this street. It is, for most intents and purposes, perfect. There was no need to touch it.
The same is true of our sidewalks. Again, 25 years old. They were fine. They came through, jack-hammered about 50% of it (non-contiguos, of course) and re-poured it all. It looks horrible now, because, of course, they used a different color concrete and the work itself looks like shit (not the same quality and care, they patterned it a bit different, etc).
Why? To keep the union guys busy. That's the only reason I can find. I don't understand why they didn't send them to neighborhoods where this was actually needed. We have plenty of those in Southern California.
I was just in Singapore on business for a couple of weeks. The streets and highways on this tiny nation (~ 12 x 30 miles) make the crap we drive on in SoCal every day truly look like third-world worthy roads. And the taxes we pay for road maintenance are some of the highest in the nation. The roads in Florida are luxurious compared to our pot-hole ridden streets and highways.
The other story has to do with our schools. Years ago, when my kids were in middle school, they had a science teacher that was anything but that. He is a Chiropractor who works as a science teacher. This guy is clueless and verbally abusive. For example, he told the kids that the moon does not spin about its axis. If anyone questioned him, he would get angry. And that's just one example of many. Yes, he is still there. We could not get him fired or reassigned to basket-weaving class. There are kids coming out of that school who do not have parents with scientific training who come out believing all sorts of nonsense.
Why does this happen? Is it incompetence? Is it that our culture has devolved into something we should be ashamed of? I really don't know. What I do know is that countries like China are placing one foot in front of the other while, in the US, we can't do anything at scale, we waste time and money rebuilding streets and sidewalks that are just fine and we are causing our kids serious mental damage by teaching them absolute bullshit at every level.
Don't get me started about 20-somethings. I was just at the SxSW conference in Austin. I had a few very interesting conversations with 20-somethings who, in this case, actually had it together. A couple of the US. Most of the rest from other countries. The kids from the US gave me a perspective on what their peers are being taught and how they think that I honestly wish I did not have. To parrot George Carlin...
Something is definitely wrong. This is not good work. If this is the best the US can do, I am not impressed. Results like these do not belong on the résumé of an advanced nation. This is the kind of shit you’d expect from a dictator with a bad attitude running a banana republic.
I am trying very hard not to be a pessimist when it comes to our future. I have to admit the results in front of me make it difficult to switch to a half-full view of the US. Frankly, in this environment, one can almost understand and justify the need for someone like Donald Trump. You actually need someone with enough power and an I-don't-give-a-fuck attitude to come in, rip this putrid system apart to the studs and rebuild it into something that actually works.
So, here we are, talking about installing billions of solar panels (made in China) and billions of batteries (made in China) and billions of inverters, cables, electrical components, etc. (all made in China) when we can't maintain our roads and stop teaching our kids bullshit.
This will represent the largest-ever transfer of wealth from one nation to another in the history of humanity. We will forever be dependent on China for almost everything if we continue down this path. These massive installations will require parts and materials, all coming from China. If the Chinese were smart --and they are, very much so-- they would carefully come up with a way to implement what I am going to call "sensible" failure rate on the products they sell us. This will guarantee millions of units per year in sales for replacement components in support of our wonderful power generation and distribution system...forever. It's like selling drugs to a drug addict.
This is one of the reasons for which I think of nuclear and wind as potential alternatives to solar (and I do like solar). I think the supply chains for these forms of energy can be constrained to the US, Europe and countries outside of China. I could be wrong, of course. I just think it is beyond stupid to send everything to China and not think strategically at all.
Listening to the long interview now. They are hitting on points that I have been talking about for years. Points that earned me countless, and sometimes vicious, attacks here on HN and relentless down-voting. This is an audience that is supposed to be analytical. Sadly, I have discovered the hard way that the loud-mouths, the bullies, are nothing of the sort. As is always the case, the moderate thinking majorities tend to not get involved, and the bullies win.
The part you did not know is that I wrote a simulation model some five years ago to try and help me understand all of this. It would be fair to call it a Monte Carlo Simulation. It created millions of behavioral avatars with randomized patterns of electrical vehicle usage (driving, charging, etc.). It also distributed these across all six time zones in the US. It then calculated peak charging requirements per region and cranked out a range in the aggregate. The result was an estimate between 900 GW and 1400 GW.
I was not able to confirm this until last year, when someone asked Elon Musk about this and he said we need to more than double our power generation capacity. That's why I became so confident in my estimate.
I am also going through the entire research report. This will likely take a few weeks (I only have weekends available for something like this).
I did discover I am wrong about something I've been claiming.
I've been saying we need approximately 1200 GW of new power.
That's not correct.
We need 2400 GW.
Why?
Silly mistake on my part. I forgot that part of the objective is to replace our "dirty" power generators with clean energy. If the objective was to support electric vehicles, the answer is somewhere around 1200 GW. However, this report made me realize I had skipped over the obvious part: We want our entire power system to be clean.
This means we need 1200 GW of brand-new clean energy to replace the dirty power we have right now. And then, we need another 1200 GW to power electric cars. My guess is likely much more than that once we account for electric heat pumps and stoves in every home.
So, yeah, I was wrong. My estimate made the problem far simpler than what it actually is.
We have to rip-up our entire power generation infrastructure, replace it with a new one and then more than double it. All by 2050. Good luck.
I can't even imagine the degree of verbal violence I will be subjected to on HN when I say we need 2400 GW and the "true believers" blow a fuse.
Fantastic study. Thanks for posting it. Much to learn and think about. I am glad that I hear them talk about things a hundred years away as options rather than being all-in on getting there in 20 years or some of other seriously flawed claim.
https://netzeroamerica.princeton.edu/the-report
My take on that report is "yep, this would/will be a major effort, as large as anything we've ever done, but not much more than an order of magnitude beyond anything we've ever done".