Low-Cost, Low-Risk All-Renewable Energy Plans for 145 Countries - Prof. Mark Jacobson

Mark Z. Jacobson is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Some describe him as the architect of the U.S. Green New Deal. He has authored books, textbooks and articles on transitioning to renewable energy. Recently co-authored the study, “Low-Cost Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Insecurity for 145 Countries.

Professor Jacobson came to our attention via his opinion piece in The Hill, “No miracle tech needed: How to switch to renewables now and lower costs doing it.”, which draws heavily on this report. His credentials are impressive:

Director and co-founder, Atmosphere/Energy Program (link), Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Stanford University, 2004-present.
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment (link), January 2008-present
Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy (link), January 1, 2010-present
Co-founder, The Solutions Project (link), July 10, 2011-present.

B. S., with distinction, Stanford University, Civil Engineering, 1988
 B. A., with distinction, Stanford University, Economics, 1988
 M. S., Stanford University, Environmental Engineering, 1988
 M. S., UCLA, Atmospheric Sciences, 1991
 Ph. D., UCLA, Atmospheric Sciences, 1994

Transcript

Greg Williams: 0:10

Welcome to our listeners for another episode of climate money watchdog where we do our best to explore how well the federal government is spending money to remediate climate change and help protect our environment. Climate money watchdog is myself Greg Williams and and Dean of razor Dina razor founded the project on government oversight back in the 1980s. And that organization was, was charged with exploring how the Defense Department was was spending its money and is perhaps most famous for discovering that the Defense Department was paying hundreds of dollars for simple hand tools like like hammers and wrenches, and that major weapon systems were struggling to demonstrate basic effectiveness. I worked for Dina both as a college student and and immediately after my graduation, and we recently reunited to forum climate money watchdog because we saw that the federal government would be spending money on quantities heretofore only seen through the Defense Department. And we wanted to make sure that that money was spent as effectively as possible. We're joined tonight by Professor Mark Jacobson, Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. Some have described him as the scientific architect of the US Green New Deal. And as recently published, with several co authors, a study called low cost solutions to global warming, air pollution and energy insecurity for 145 countries. And so we're eager to hear Professor Jacobson's thoughts on how and why we should be moving quickly to to deploy clean, renewable technologies. Mark, is there anything else that you'd like to say about yourself before we get started?

Mark Jacobson: 2:08

Well, no, just thank you for having me on your show. Appreciate it.

Dina Rasor: 2:14

Okay, well, we also I would also just like very quickly to say that you've got a BS in from Stanford and engineering, you've got to be a in Stanford and economics. You've got an MS and Stanford in Environmental Engineering. Yeah, but Ms. from UCLA and atmospheric sciences and PhD, and UCLA and atmospheric scientists. So, sciences. So I just wanted to give Rachel's that you have greatly an end to this. Yeah, I wanted to what, what we're going to talk about today is a new study that Marx group put out. And it it was from all the reading I've been doing, it's very, very unique in the sense that he and I'll let him explain it. But basically, having looked at 145 countries, he did a modeling situation where he said, No, you don't need to have nuclear, you don't need to have carbon capture, if we put all the resources into just a narrow lit area of new renewable energy, nothing that burns described, that is nothing that burns like carbon capture and, and biofuel and all this other stuff at all, you know, renewable energy, and will, I've got the list we can go over. We don't have to do all this normal stuff on carbon capture, which has become the new darling right now. And that we can do it just by doing the doing the renewable energy, I'm sorry, I'm looking at three screens at once. So I wanted to talk about the his study and how he found that out. But I'm also at the end near the end, you want to talk to him about the ones that you pushed aside. Are everyone says we absolutely have to have and I would like to go through that. And especially with the with the carbon capture, besides the fact that you're going to suck the carbon out of the air, you have to pipeline it and then put it in underground caves. And the pipeline part really bothers me because they're planning to buy to 2050. They want to build a pipeline network for carbon capture that's larger than the pipeline for oils right now. And so that's a lot of money, a lot of thing and carbon dioxide in pipelines that can be really dangerous. So that said, that's what we want to do. And so explain me about the work you've been doing. It looks like calling in and talk about your study that has 145 countries. In it, I'm really impressed that you've taken on all these and found out that all of these works. So I'll turn it over to you and let you explain your work.

Mark Jacobson: 5:14

Sure, thank you. So well, we've been developing energy plans for countries and states and cities and towns since 2009. And this last study that just came out a few months ago, builds upon those previous studies, but it looks at is it possible to transition the energy infrastructure of 145 countries to entirely clean renewable energy, and that's for all purposes. So electricity, transportation, buildings, industry, agriculture, forestry, fishing military. And the idea here is to electrify all energy that's not already electric. So for example, with transportation, we'd go to battery electric vehicles. For pretty much everything except for heavy long distance transport would be hydrogen fuel cell, like long distance ships and planes, primarily, but also some long distance trains and trucks. And for buildings. Heating, for example, would be instead of using gas heaters, or even electric resistance heaters, we use electric heat pump, electric heat pumps for air heating, and they run in reverse for air conditioning as well. And for water heating, also electric heat pumps for stoves, electric induction cooktop stoves, we'd use energy efficiency in buildings, LED lights, energy efficient appliances, weatherizing people's homes. For industry, we'd electrify that as well. Using electric instead of high temperature burning coal or gas for high temperatures would use electric arc furnaces, induction furnaces, resistance furnaces, etc. And the electricity in all cases would come entirely from what we call a wind, water and solar. So onshore and offshore wind, solar photovoltaics on rooftops and in power plants, concentrated solar power, geothermal electricity, we'd also have geothermal heat, hydroelectricity and small amounts of tidal and wave power, we'd also need storage, so we'd have battery storage, well, there's electricity storage, there's heat storage, there's cold storage and hydrogen storage. And so for electricity use batteries. concentrated solar power is associated with storage, also Pumped Hydroelectric power, flywheels, and some other other emerging types of storage technologies for electricity. And for heat storage. I mean, there's common water tanks for heat, while there's also underground storage and in soil through what are called borehole storage, underground, water pits, storage and aquifer storage. And then there's cold storage in water tanks and ice primarily. And then hydrogen is another form of storage. So it's really, in concept is very simple. We electrify everything, we provide the electricity with clean, renewable energy, we provide electricity, he called hydrogen storage. And we also need transmission more transmission, because we'll have more electricity generators. It turns out that when you do electrify everything worldwide, and provide the electricity with wind and water, and solar, which we call for short WW s, that are entered and use power demand or power requirements go down about 56%. So we need 56%, less energy. Now all of that energy is going to be now electricity, or almost all of it, there's some direct heat. But we essentially double the electricity use from today, but we reduce overall energy use by 56%. So it's a different paradigm, more electricity, but less overall energy. But we do because we need more electricity, we also need more transmission. So we will have to expand some transmission lines. However, if we can't expand them that much, that just means more storage, usually. So it's a trade off usually between electricity storage and transmission. And then one other element of this is to keep the grid stable because people worry if we just have renewable energy on the grid. Can we keep the grid stable? And we found that we can we looked at all 145 countries broken up into 24 world regions, and found that we can keep the grid stable just by using combining Wind, Water solar storage, but also using what's called demand response where utilities can give people incentives not to use electricity at certain times of the day. And so it's shifting electricity use to when there's more of it. So for example, your electric car, you don't need to charge it when when you have the highest demand for electric See during the day, you can charge it, let's say, at night, when electricity prices are low and some renewable energy, like offshore wind or, or onshore wind is very is abundant and available. Or you can shift it to when there's a lot of sunlight during the day. The peeked, you'll find that with a lot of solar on the grid, that you know, the when's the peak time when you have the most Sun usually at noon, so that's a noon is going to be a time where you can shift some electricity use to because you'll have a lot of solar on the grid to provide electricity. So we analyze each of 145 countries, we looked at grid stability, we then looked at the costs. And by the way, I should mention, well, you might ask well, why do we reduce our power demand requirements by 56%? worldwide. And it's for five reasons. One is electric vehicles are much more efficient than gasoline or diesel vehicles, they use 1/4 to 1/5, the energy. Electric key pumps are similarly 1/4 use 1/4 The energy as natural gas heaters for air and water heating. That's quite a bit of it. If we electrify industry, we get a few percent reduction of unused power demand. And also by not having to mined transport and refined fossil fuels in uranium, we eliminate 11% of all energy use worldwide, because that's how much energy is used for mining, transporting, refining, uranium and fossil fuels. And finally, end use energy efficiency improvements beyond business as usual, we can squeeze out another few percent energy reductions there. So this is really reducing power demand by 56%, without people changing their habits. So these are real reductions in US energy. And as a result, the costs come down. Even if the cost per unit energy is the same in the system, the annual cost that people pay is going to be at least 56% lower, because you're using much less energy. And but in fact, cost per unit energy are also coming down. And so it's expected that your annual costs of energy with this new system in the years 2035 to 2050 will be on the order of 63% lower than today. So much lower cost of energy. And that's just the direct cost of energy. But the system eliminates combustion, so eliminates air pollution related to combustion. And air pollution related to combustion is responsible for up to about 7 million deaths per year worldwide. Now, some of this combustion is natural, but about 90% is human caused. And so we're eliminating huge numbers of deaths worldwide per year. And we're eliminating emissions associated with global warming from energy. So combining those two plus the energy cost savings, it's really the energy plus the health plus the climate cost is what we refer to as the social cost of energy. And so we reduce the social cost of energy by about 90%. We go to a wind water solar system, and the direct cost of energy by over 60% annually. So there's really little downside to such a transition, we also find we create many more jobs about 28 million more long term full time jobs than last worldwide with a transition. We use less land than the fossil fuel industry uses today with wind and solar primarily, because we have a lot of the energies offshore first of all offshore wind, tidal wave power or offshore. We're not building new hydro electric dams, we're using existing ones more efficiently. And geothermal is very small amount of land area. And rooftop solar doesn't take up any new land. So the only new land is utility scale solar, concentrated solar power and onshore wind. And together they take up less than 1% of the world's land. To put it in perspective, in the United States, right now, the fossil fuel industry occupies about 1.3% of us land area. So we expect land use to be even less than fossil fuel industry. And I should point out that in the in North America, there are 50,000 new oil and gas wells drilled every year. And this has to go on forever. If we want to continue with oil and gas, but it's just not sustainable. And that's why the amount of land that's being occupied by the fossil fuel industry keeps growing every year. There are 1.3 million active oil and gas wells and 3.2 million inactive ones in in the US alone. And worldwide. There are about 20 million inactive oil and gas wells. And most of these leak leave nothing So this, this plan will change everything. I mean, it'll reduce climate damage, reduce air pollution, substantially reduce energy costs, create jobs, reduce land devastation. And there's very little downside to. So

Dina Rasor: 15:21

on the on the with I'm sure the carbon capture coalition, and those people are really pushing back on this because they've kind of sold it as we've waited too long. We've waited too long, we can't transition without carbon capture. So we have to keep burning fuel. But one of the things that they things they always bring up when people say, and you don't is they say you have to do it to make cement, you cannot make cement without carbon capture of the co2. Do you know anything about that's one of the one of the things they'll bring up, but you don't know anything about why they insist that has to be?

Mark Jacobson: 16:01

Yeah, that's not true. First of all, because geopolymer cement doesn't require a co2 emissions. And farehawker is another type of cement doesn't require co2 emissions are referred to Portland cement, which is, is one type of cement is the dominant type. But even there, you can eliminate the energy, the co2, from the energy from half half of the emissions of co2 from making Portland cement, is from energy that's used to produce the cement the other half is what's called process emissions or chemical reaction emissions. So you can eliminate half the emissions from Portland cement, just by cleaning up the energy, the high temperature heat that you need, and also electricity, and just making up from renewable sources. And then the remaining co2? Well, some of it, again, you have these alternative methods like geopolymer cement. So that's one way is just to use different types of cement. But there's, the question is like, I mean, you could read, there's research on recycling, that also eliminates a lot of co2 associated with cement. But the question is, why would you want to capture co2 to from cement when, because it always takes energy? The problem with any kind of carbon capture no matter what is it always takes equipment, and energy doesn't, can just pick it out of the air for free. And then you need pipelines. So if you need equipment, you need energy to run that equipment, then you need pipes, you need energy to push the co2 through the pipes. And then you have to ensure that wherever the co2 goes, it stays there. And now, the other question is, if you if you're trying to use energy to run carbon capture equipment, and if that's renewable energy, let's say why would you not just use that renewable energy to replace coal plant, because that only that not only reduces the co2 from the coal plant, but it also reduces the air pollution from the coal plant, the coal mining the coal infrastructure. So that's carbon capture, all it does is reduce co2, or at least temporarily reduce co2, it doesn't reduce any air pollution doesn't reduce any mining of fossil fuels. It doesn't reduce any infrastructure. In fact, if the energy for that carbon capture is a fossil fuel itself, it increases all those other things, whereas, so it's always an opportunity cost to use energy for carbon capture relative to using that energy to replace a fossil fuel plant.

Greg Williams: 18:34

So there are many people who claim that even if we had no more co2 emissions, or we agree, we reduce them drastically, we would still need to capture carbon from the atmosphere in order to avoid catastrophic global warming. What What's your perspective on that?

Mark Jacobson: 18:57

Yeah, that's it's kind of a silly argument. Because first of all, we're not even close to eliminating all co2 emissions. We're just so far away from that, that people saying we need to capture carbon now, because when we eliminate all co2 emissions, well, that's not going to happen for, you know, decades to get rid of all the co2 emissions. But second, co2 does come out of the of the air on its own, too. It's not like it will actually if we eliminate all emissions today, for example, from all sources, including non energy sources, we would get down due to natural removal of co2 to about 350 parts per million by 2100. Now, so there is this natural reduction, but again, you're never going to escape the problem that it always takes energy to run carbon capture equipment. It always takes equipment, and you also always need pipes. So you're going to it's always a question of is it better to spend that money on building renewable energy are you Using the renewable energy you would use for carbon capture to replace a fossil fuel source. And also even, let's say, take the limit of where we've eliminated all sources of energy and related emissions, well, then they're still all sorts of lower hanging fruit than trying to take co2 out of the air. There's methane emissions from agriculture and waste. There's our chlorofluorocarbon emissions or, or other types of hydrochloric carbon emissions. There's nitrous oxide emissions, there's biomass burning. So those are much lower hanging fruit that have much fat better and faster impact not only on co2, but let's say biomass burning, and you're reducing not only co2, you're reducing black carbon, which affects people's health as well as climate is the second leading cause of global warming, reducing all sorts of other air pollutants, reducing health problems. So it's always an opportunity costs to spend on carbon capture or direct air capture. There's never a case, in fact, where it's a good thing to do, because there's always something better you can do with that money and that energy. And we haven't even talked about, well, what happens to the co2 when you capture it? Well, most of it right now is used for what's called Enhanced Oil Recovery, where the the co2 bonds or the oil makes it less dense. And so it can rise to the surface faster, and you can get more of it more out of the ground faster when you add co2 to it. But that process, 40% of the co2 goes right back to the air, not only because there's losses along the pipe, but pipes, but also just the co2 is bound to the oil. And there's actually no proof that any of the other co2 stays in the ground. I mean, it's just we're taking their word for it. And over time, that may leak as well. So it's really a big Gambit. And that's the most honest, all co2 Capture is used for right now.

Dina Rasor: 21:49

Well, I know and then okay, so I want to get into that further. Because I, the other one caveat I want to say is also, co2 pipelines are highly pressurized, and they don't like oil pipelines just leak a little leak, they explode. And if anybody just goes in and says, puts in Google co2 pipeline explosion, there's one there's an eight inch pipeline, and we're a drone was watching it and you see it explode. And I'm Wow. And the pipes that are going to have to do the carbon around the country are much bigger than that. I want to talk about money, because that's this, I found this part really interesting. It says Your, your study said the price tag to do all of what you're talking about for 145 countries is 62 trillion. But that's that that would be there would be 11 trillion in annual energy cost savings. And the payback time is then six years, if you know, according, yeah, and it could create 28 million long term jobs and use only point five 3% of the world's land use. So this really sounds almost too good, too good to be true. And I want to compare it to what the infrastructure bill where a majority of the infrastructure money is going to things like carbon capture and everything and not renewables. And now the new thing that they just worked on yesterday with mansion, it also has got another big giant wall up because of course, the fossil fuel industry wants carbon capture, so they can keep spending burning fuel towards carbon capture in some of these other things. And I want to compare that, you know, which, which I think would be when I look at carbon capture in the pipeline system you have to make in the, in the extraction and the putting it in case and everything, I just see a massive amount of dollar signs. So I want to kind of try to go over your numbers and compare them to the all these other things like like carbon capture and blue hydrogen and nuclear power that you left out and talk about costs.

Mark Jacobson: 24:06

Sure. Well, in the US, the I think the annual cost was for United States planned. The annual costs of a clean renewable energy system, I think was on the order of seven or $800 billion per year. That's the annual cost that people would pay for all energy that's for electricity, transportation, energy, building, energy industry, etc. For comparison, the military budgets around $700 billion per year. So the to change the entire US energy infrastructure, we're talking maybe you know, 10% or so 15% higher than the military budget. But we get so much more benefit because we eliminate they're on the order of 80,000 air pollution deaths in the US each year that we eliminate most of the eliminate most of those eliminate the greenhouse gas emissions, provide energy security, because when water solar, these are renewable resources that will be around, essentially, forever, for the most part. And compared with fossil fuels, which are depleting and or we need to increasingly rely on more expensive energy and also importing more energy over time. So we eliminate those problems. And we create jobs, as well as reduce land requirements. So I don't recall how much this current energy infrastructure bill or spending maybe can remind me of that

Dina Rasor: 25:36

they're doing. Are they doing? They're doing some carbon capture hydrogen plant for hydrogen plants? And what was that? Greg, we talked about that last week? Was it 12 billion just for the demonstration? Yeah. For demonstration plants.

Greg Williams: 25:53

Yeah. So to be clear that the figures, most of the figures that we'll share tonight come from $847 billion, that are associated with the the build back better plan, or the the initial infrastructure is actually larger than $850 billion. But that those of the the amounts that have been where the administration has provided very detailed information about how it's getting spent, and so of that 850,000,000,012, fully$12 billion is going to carbon capture transportation and storage. Where is wind, solar, and hydro is only getting about 10 billion or $11 billion?

Mark Jacobson: 26:38

Yeah, well, let me speak a little bit about Blue hydrogen, carbon capture nuclear power. So yeah, we don't include either nuclear power, we don't create any carbon capture, we don't include biofuels or bio energy, or biomass. And we don't include blue hydrogen loop, just blue hydrogen for short is basically hydrogen produced from natural gas with carbon capture associated with it, because right now 96% of hydrogen produced worldwide is from natural gas. And that process results in lots of emissions, not only associated with methane leaks from the wells to the through the pipes to the end of use, which is using the methane to produce hydrogen. But then there's the methane, the natural gas is also used for energy. So the well methane is used for two purposes in producing hydrogen, one is the feedstock. Methane produces hydrogen molecules. And then energy is needed also to do that process and seven, natural gas is used for the energy source as well. So both of those processes release co2 to the air carbon dioxide. And then they also released because you need to mind natural gas methane leaks. And the idea behind blue hydrogen is to add carbon capture equipment to capture the co2, it doesn't do anything to the methane, so you still get the methane leaks. And because you need more energy for the carbon capture equipment, you actually have more methane leaking, because you need more natural gas. And the carbon capture equipment is not that efficient. As people claim they claim it's 90 92% efficient or 90% efficient, but that's only when it's perfectly operational and when it's up. But reality shows that it's down parcel parts of the year needs maintenance, there's not always a demand for the co2, so that gets shut off. And so, in reality, plus you need two types of carbon capture. One is for the feedstock co2 and the other for the energy co2. So you need two sets of carbon capture equipment, the steam reforming and you know, one of them has an efficiency based on other types of carbon capture have anywhere between 20 and 70%. The other ones closer to 80%. So they're not nearly 90% And plus as claimed. And again, where do you what do you do with the co2? Well, you need to build pipes. So it's what you really got is you've got pipelines have methane going to the facility, you have a facility producing hydrogen, you have carbon capture equipment added you need energy, worms, more methane for that, the pipes for co2 Going back so you have all this infrastructure when you could produce hydrogen, just with electricity from wind water solar, with one piece of equipment called an electrolyzer that runs on electricity. So you're comparing a very simple process electricity from wind water solar producing hydrogen through an electrolyzer where there's no co2, no methane, nothing to worry about. You don't need pipelines. You need to store the hydrogen like you wouldn't do the other one, but you can have the storage tanks. But then you could use it locally.

Dina Rasor: 29:56

Okay, well, what? Well, so really, we been talking about this though, we're throwing all these technology, but it's really easy. It's like you there's two, there's two buckets, there's the burn stuff and make electricity, but capture the carbon or do you know, nibble around the edges of the problem or your plan, which is don't burn anything. Okay, so that's I think the best way to kind of do it because almost, except for nuclear, they burn things, you know, all these other all these other alternatives. So I wanted to ask you this, between the infrastructure bill and the bill that is set to pass this week or next. Carbon Capture and, and nuclear and some of the other things that you left out of your studies is going to get probably more funding than renewable energy. What do people say about your plan? I mean, you can see when you're, you know, when you're putting it out there, and you're talking to the other scientists, you go to meetings and everything else, they've got to really not like this because it you're showing that they what they're that there's favorite project is doesn't necessary, what kind of pushback Have you gotten back there? Because I know that I know, fossil fuels behind a lot of this. And because they want to keep burning it. So what's the what what are the scientists saying that carbon capture when you come up with this kind of plan?

Mark Jacobson: 31:26

Well, there's a lot of pushback from our plans than there was 10 years ago, or five years ago. So but on the other hand, there's not they're not they're being implemented on state levels. There are 62 countries that have 100% renewable laws. And there are 18 states and territories in the US that have 100% renewable laws, and then executive orders. And there are 180 cities in the US that have such laws and orders, and there are over 380 companies that have adopted it. So at different scales of these 100% renewable plans are being adopted and are mainstream. In fact, there's a new paper that just came out that identified over 700 papers by multiple groups on 100% renewable energy. And so this is a worldwide scientific endeavor to go to 100% renewables. And it's really a mainstream now. But but the fault Yeah, the lobbyists will kind of ignore these, because they just, you know, they have one goal is to keep them keep the fossil fuel industry alive. And so I'll just point out that anything related to carbon capture is completely useless for solving climate problems. So it's not you can spend all the money they want on it, but it will not help solve the climate problem one bit. Because it's very inefficient. It requires a lot, all requires equipment that requires energy. And it's not very efficient. You have to do something with that co2, you always need pipes. And what you do the co2 most of it's used for enhanced oil recovery. And if you actually look at all like we did a study of a carbon capture plant, which was supposed to be the newest and best carbon capture plant in the world at the time. It went into operation in 2017. In Texas, it was carbon capture attached to a coal plant. But it was shuttered Three years later, while 2019. And it was shuttered, because it was so inefficient and expensive, and hardly reduced any co2. And when you actually, in fact, we calculated before you even counted for what happened to the co2 Afterwards, which was enhanced oil recovery, there was only 11% capture rate. Well, in the first year that we looked at, we had data for but even after that, it was still on the order of like a 15% When you look at it over a 20 year timeframe, so 11% capture rate. And then of that 40% was lost because it was used for enhanced oil recovery. So we're down to like 6% of the co2 capture that cannot help one bit in solving the climate problem. That was $1 billion, that plan. And who paid for that? Well, there's mostly poor people paid for it because they have the highest fraction of their income towards electricity bills. And so ratepayers were charged for that extra carbon capture equipment. Carbon Capture equipment is just a tax on poor people. That's all it is. And so there's no because, you know, I've had

Dina Rasor: 34:19

a look at it.

Mark Jacobson: 34:23

And I was just gonna say it because you're just all you're doing is you're you're taking that energy, let's say from a coal plant or gas plant, then you're adding equipment to that costs money and it takes energy that costs money to run that equipment to who pays for that wealth ratepayers. So you're just paying more ratepayers are just paying more. And the people who pay the highest fraction of their incomes through electricity are people who have lower income.

Greg Williams: 34:45

So feel free to poke holes in the premise but I wonder what you would have to say about first of all free carbon capture as opposed to point carbon capture. And two, there's a significant constituency around the idea of are using nuclear energy to power these free carbon capture facilities. So they, they, they aspire to operating them at huge scale and theoretically generating the energy necessary to run them without the traditional co2 production that you would see with a fossil fuel plant.

Mark Jacobson: 35:20

Well, first of all, I'm not familiar with the term Free carbon capture sounds like a

Greg Williams: 35:27

maybe misspeaking, direct carbon capture that

Mark Jacobson: 35:29

directly air capture. And even better capture taking co2 out of the air. Yeah. Yeah. So that's, I mean, that's, again, all you're doing is allegedly reducing co2, but you're not reducing any air pollution, you're not reducing any fuel mining. And so you're allowing fossil fuels, plants to continue allowing them to, to have air pollution to allow them to mine to allow them to build pipes and infrastructure. And the amount of co2 You're taking out the air is pretty minimal, you do need energy for that we we analyze the direct air capture plant by carbon engineering a few years ago. And again, even over a 20 year timeframe, the amount of the net co2 captured was about 11% of that attendance, there was hardly anything. And if you took that same money, and even if it was powered by wind, if you took that same wind power and replaced a coal plant, you had a much you had a factor of like five to 10 higher social cost benefit, because you've reduced air pollution, climate damage, and equipment, far more than with the direct air capture.

Dina Rasor: 36:38

To give a visual to this, you know, you're talking about the minor, you know, this, these things are sitting there called, they've got the two kinds of direct capture, and then the one like a nice limb that just sits there and sucks air and hope to catch some carbon. When I look at that, and then I look how much carbon there's going to be and how much has to be removed it, the first image comes to my mind is like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, kind of.

Mark Jacobson: 37:06

Yeah, I mean, the carbon in the air is pretty small. It's only like 420 parts per million. So it's very dilute. But I mean, they do, you do get some co2, but there's just the amount of energy you need to do that is very large. And so if we, you asked about nuclear power, well, first of all, just to build a plan and build a nuclear power plant, it's on the order of 15 to 20 years now. So that's useless for trying to help solve our climate problems at all, because we need to solve 80% of the problem in eight years. And if we have some technology, they won't even be available for 15 to 20 years, then it's can't help at all. Plus, it costs five to eight times more per unit energy than when so we're basically spent if we spend on nuclear to do this, we're basically taking that money out of the pot, so you can't use it for renewable energies to replace fossil fuels. Carbon Capture is like Bitcoin mining, they're completely useless endeavors that suck up energy to suck up energy, and where does that energy come from? Well, if it's fossil energy, then you're just polluting more if it's renewable energy, then you're preventing that renewable energy from replacing fossil energy. So it's also polluting more. So Senator carbon capture all it does is take up more energy. And

Dina Rasor: 38:23

have you talked to members of Congress or, you know, sent your plan around to members of Congress who are looking at this? Because, you know, obviously not going to send it Joe Joe mentioned, but I think I think that everyone's kind of hurrying that anything is going to get done. But I see so much going to carbon capture. And we say this every time on this program. You're in the Pentagon, they wasted a lot of money, but we you know, sometimes it was sometimes it affected our work ability, ability, Billy, but sometimes it was just a lot of abuse and corruption and waste. But there's no do overs here. The money, we don't have time to, to to advance some technology that some lobbyists thinks that needs to be done. And then say, oops, well, that failed, because that's the first bunch of carbon capture for coal plant demonstration models for the Obama administration. They were supposed to build eight of them for I think it was 111 point 1 billion and only one was built. They only had one built and it only lasted a couple of years. The rest of them all fell by the wayside. So there's a lot of money back then, because they couldn't make the concept work. Now they're going to try to make it work in a big now they're gonna spend 3.2 billion to try to make these demos, things work. So I'm just wondering if the weather there is no do over here and so we can't afford to build and fail.

Mark Jacobson: 39:54

That's completely useless spending of money. I mean, it's spending money on bioenergy spending money Do nuclear power on carbon capture blue hydrogen is just completely useless in terms of climate protection, air pollution protection, they are sure benefits to the economy, you're pumping money into the economy, but you might as well just just give it to random people float it just let it fly from an airplane and let people catch the money.

Dina Rasor: 40:21

You also, have you talked to members of Congress and everything that is your study circulating around Congress to say, hey, we don't have to do this, because right now we're doing it. That's its program is pushing money, like crazy food stuff.

Mark Jacobson: 40:38

Over the years, our studies have gotten to members of Congress to members of both the House and Senate and policymakers that have spoken recently about this study to specific members of Congress, but other people have brought it to their attention. But thing is, you know, things that go on in Washington DC are really of more function right now of lobbying. And, you know, and they're trying to compromise things. And so the only way to compromise is to allow some of these things in there. You don't need a for sure, but the And that's in fact, when there have been eight bills and resolutions and Congress to for the US to get to 100% renewable energy based on our plans in the last two were the green New Deal resolutions, but none of those were ever voted on. And so right now you have things that are being voted on, they're really in the middle, where they're offering all sorts of useless expenditures, allegedly for climate action. Now, there are a lot of good things in there, I mean, spending on onshore and offshore wind, solar batteries, electric vehicles, charging stations, energy efficiency, and buildings, heat pumps, green hydrogen, you know, those are all useful divers. And so there's, I don't know how much is being spent on that you mentioned, it wasn't as much as this carbon capture.

Dina Rasor: 41:57

It's not as much that's that's the currency that we were watching the money. And we watched the technology and stuff too, but we watched the money. And as of right now, you know, we're only halfway spending the way that you suggest and the less than half. So we're going to be we're going to be watching this we're going to be watching this and looking at this and things that we think to see and then your your there have been there been advocacy groups, but I was really excited to see your study, which by the way, we will put on your blog site, your article that was in the the hill paper and also the things so anybody wants to come and take a look at it. And I'm we're gonna keep looking at this. And I actually think that the Achilles heel for carbon capture is going to be pipelines, because nobody wants to build a bunch of possibly exploding pipelines. It to the extent you look at the picture they want by 20 2050, it looks like a giant, giant spiderweb going up Main through the Midwest, and all these different pipelines, and everything else. And these are big ones, big pipelines, and they've never successfully pressurized in these via this biggest stuff. There's it's all still so experimental, including the carbon capture ability and stuff, they'd have to have like a breakthrough, to be able to,

Mark Jacobson: 43:19

well, no, the thing is no breakthrough with carbon capture is going to help because again, you never reduce air pollution. You'd never reduce mining. You never reduce your infrastructure, you have more infrastructure, you have more equipment, you need more energy. And so and the co2 benefit, co2 is only part of the global warming problem. First of all, it's only 45% of the global warming problem. And they're in the middle. It's just a minimal amount of co2 that's being reduced. And plus what it's used for, again, right now is mostly enhanced oil recovery. And that just the whole process, they meet people who are doing it feel better, because they, you know, they they've convinced themselves that they're actually doing something beneficial. But they're not they're, they're taking money away from more efficient ways. We have to reduce so much co2 And so much air pollution, we cannot, we cannot afford to you to spend money on inefficient technologies and carbon capture is very inefficient. It makes air pollution health problems worse. So it increases social costs, the cost of air pollution is much greater than the cost of climate damage in the increment. And so when we when you increase air pollution, even if you decrease co2 A little bit, you're increasing the social cost right there, plus you have all this additional equipment cost.

Greg Williams: 44:40

So as we get close to the top of the hour, I want to be respectful of your time. And so if there are any final points that you'd like to make or issues that you've not spoken to yet, this would be the time to do it. And likewise the and if there are any questions that you haven't had a chance to ask, let's let's get them out there. Yeah,

Dina Rasor: 44:59

no, I He's answered my questions. Basically, I, you know, you just make it. So clean cut and everything else I've read is sort of like, well, we're going to have some kind of miracle technology, because America can always out tech themselves on something, if something doesn't work, we just keep doing technical stuff, and it'll work. And that's what they're saying with carbon capture. And what you're saying is, you'll never be able to deal with the infrastructure will always be more expensive than renewable energy. So, you know, you're saying basically, what I, when I first read your study, and I've been reading you and going, you know, this is there's no starter here. So go ahead and tell us what else you anything else you would like to do? And how would you how would you change the world? If you could I mean, on this?

Mark Jacobson: 45:44

Well, I just like to close by just saying that, you know, I'm optimistic actually, we can solve the problem. But we really have to keep our eye on the ball, we have to focus on what works, what we can implement quickly. And inexpensively, we only have eight years to solve 80% of the problem, and then another five to 15 years after that, to eliminate 100% of the problem. And so we need to focus on technologies that work. But fortunately, we have those technologies, we have 95% of all the technologies we need right now to solve the climate problem to solve the air pollution problem and solve the energy security problem simultaneously. And these technologies are there costs have come down substantially. Some of them are the cheapest forms of energy, wind and onshore wind and utility solar are the cheapest forms of electricity by far right now in the world. And other renewable energies are coming down to storage is coming down in cost electric vehicle costs are coming down, heat pump costs are dropping as well. So there's a lot to be optimistic about the main problem still are social and political. And so we need to educate the public and policymakers about what's good and what's bad. And unfortunately, there's still a lot that are, don't get the information. So they're don't they don't have the information that they should have to make better decisions. But you know, that's we keep pushing away. And eventually, I think people will find out what's the best solution.

Greg Williams: 47:07

So I want to maybe close by emphasizing that, the the, not just the hill article, but your full report is available freely to the public. It's 100 pages, that's about half the length of a summer novel, it has lots of pictures. So you know, this is this is something that safely anyone can read. And it's very dense with information and detailed descriptions of how one would implement these kinds of programs. So thank you and and all of your co authors for having researched and it made this report available. And thank you very much for for joining us this evening.

Dina Rasor: 47:48

Yeah, thank you and and feel free to call us up when there's new things, you know, with other countries and everything else and come back and talk about that because maybe if we show what other countries are doing, then some people will begin to uh, we're gonna we're planning to send this kind of information to Congress where you're just, you know, it's too it's too frustrating not to. So thank you very much. I'm so impressed with what your report and it was like a breath of fresh air.

Mark Jacobson: 48:15

Thank you. Thank you both. I appreciate it.