How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air: Mark Z. Jacobson

We’re excited to welcome back Mark Z. Jacobson, who joined us last year to talk about a study he co-authored called “Low-Cost Solutions to Global Warming, Air Pollution, and Energy Insecurity for 145 Countries”. He is a professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere/Energy program at Stanford University, as well as a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and Precourt Institute for energy, and also the Co-Founder of The Solutions Project, 100.org and the 100% Clean, Renewable Energy movement.

We've asked Mark back to see what progress the country has made with his prediction that the US and the world can change to clean energy and meet CO2 goals by only using WWS (wind, water and solar) i.e. clean non burning energy without using coal, gas, nuclear, and carbon capture. Mark released a book in February of this year, entitled No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air. His book brings up more questions about the government and the some climate experts are promoting, such as carbon capture, instead of considering the potential of just using WWS. 

Topics covered include:

• How does the time taken to construct different types of power plants effect their impact  in light of the short timetable on lowering CO2 and other greenhouse gases pollution?
• How does the amount of waste heat  released by fossil fuel compare to that released by renewables? For example,  about 65 to 67 percent of energy in oil and coal is released as waste heat, 40 to 60 percent of natural gas energy is also waste heat, 74 percent of biomass is waste heat and 65 percent of the energy in uranium is waste heat.
• According to Jacobson, “By 2021, the cost of a system consisting of wind, solar, and batteries was already less than that consisting of natural gas. For example, even in 2019, a Florida utility replaced two natural gas plants with a combined solar-battery system because of the lower cost of the later.” How do economics affect transition to renewable energy sources? 
• What are the best and quickest energy source for commercial and military planes and cargo ships?
• Is the U.S. grid ready for 100 percent clean electricity?
• What has been the reaction to Jacobson's proposed  WWS solution?

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Episode Transcript

Gregory A. Williams (00:10):
Thanks for joining us for another episode
of climate money watchdog wherewe investigate and report on how
federal dollars are being spenton mitigating climate change and
protecting the environment. Weare a private, nonpartisan
nonprofit organization that doesnot accept advertisers or
sponsors. So we can only do thiswork with your support. Please

(00:30):
visit us at climate moneywatchdog.org To learn more about
us and consider making adonation. My name is Greg
Williams and I learned toinvestigate and report on waste,
fraud and abuse in federalspending while working at the
project on government oversight,or Pogo. 30 years ago, I learned
to do independent research aswell as to work with
confidential informants orwhat's whistleblowers to uncover

(00:54):
things like overpriced spareparts, like the infamous $435
hammers, and expensive militaryweapons systems that didn't work
as advertised. I was taught bymy co host Dino resore, who
founded Pogo in 1981, andfounded climate money watchdog
with me last year, Dina hasspent 40 years investigating and

(01:14):
sometimes recovering millions ofdollars wasted by the Defense
Department and other branches ofgovernment at Pogo, as an
independent journalist, as anauthor, and as a professional
investigator. Tonight, we'reexcited to welcome back Mark Z.
Jacobson, who joined us lastyear to talk about a study he co
authored called low costsolutions to global warming, air

(01:36):
pollution and energy insecurityfor 145 countries. He is a
Professor of Civil andEnvironmental Engineering, and
director at the atmosphere andenergy program at Stanford
University, as well as a seniorfellow at the Woods Institute
for the Environment, andPrecourt Institute for Energy,

(01:57):
and also co founder of thesolutions project. One
hundred.org. And the Wonderpercent clean, renewable energy
movement. Data would you'd liketo say a few words?

Dina Rasor (02:08):
Yes, I would. Thanks for coming back. Mark. It was
July of last year, and we wereand I listened to the podcast it
yesterday and we hadn't evenpassed the IRA. We're still
talking about build back better.
And the money hadn't flown and alot has changed. So anyway, we
wanted we're glad that he cancome back if you if you listers

(02:29):
remain remember, if you want toread listen to his first one he
was talking about, you know, theability to come to the numbers
that we need to have to slowdown or stabilize the climate
problem he in cold and but hesays he can do it. And you'll

(02:56):
hear this a lot in this program.
So I'll say it right now, WW swhen water and for in that sort
of shorthand for everything.
Everything that doesn't burn isreally the best way to put it
back because people getconfused. But fossil fuel,
nuclear, biofuel, and get gasand oil fun thing from fossil

(03:24):
fuel is he says we don't knowOh, and carbon capture, which is
very important to capture thecarbon out of the smokestacks,
and whatever. None of that isneeded. And the the
infrastructure behind that ishorrendous, that solar and wind
are advancing so quickly, and socheaply that it's making it

(03:48):
definitely have an economicadvantage. Mark released a book
in February this year called nomiracles needed, how today's
technology can save our climateand clean our air. So this book
brings up more questions aboutthe government and some of the
climate effects. Experts arepromoting such as carbon

(04:09):
capture, instead of using thepotential of WW es winds, wind,

Gregory A. Williams (04:20):
wind, water and solar, wind, water

Dina Rasor (04:22):
and solar. I don't know why I put WSS on my thing
without wind, water and solar.
So anyway, that's the word we'regoing to be talking a lot about.
And anybody who's been lookingat our podcasts know, there's a
lot of money and a lot of effortgoing into carbon capture. Or we
can burn you know, we can burnnatural gas instead of coal. We

(04:43):
have to have these transitionthings which take a lot longer
to build the actual cleanenergy. So that's what we're
gonna be talking about today. Sowelcome, Mark. Is there anything
else you'd like to add to theintroduction?

Mark Jacobson (04:59):
Yeah, let's Thank you very much, Dana. And, Greg,
I really appreciate you havingme back on, you're so happy to
talk about these issues.

Dina Rasor (05:06):
Okay. All right.
Well, let's just jump right intoit. I want to have your book
open right now. But I, I assumeI don't have to give you the
page numbers. In Chapter Eightof your book, what what doesn't
work was called what doesn'twork. You compare a building
fossil fuel and nuclear powerplants, the time it takes to
build wind and solar facilities.

(05:30):
How does that affect the successof each type of energy in light
of the short timetable onlowering co2 and other
greenhouse gases pollution?

Mark Jacobson (05:40):
Well, I just start by saying that our
technologies as you mentioned,and cleared for energy
generation only onshore andoffshore wind, solar
photovoltaics on rooftops andpower plants, concentrated solar
power, geothermal electricityand heat, and also hydropower,
and tidal wave power. But wealso need storage or electricity
storage, heat storage, coldstorage and hydrogen hydrogen

(06:02):
storage. So that's part of wind,water and solar, as our electric
appliances and machines likeelectric vehicles, electric heat
pumps, electric industrialappliances. So if we want to
transition all energy to cleanrenewable energy, for the
purposes of eliminating globalwarming, eliminating air
pollution from energy, andproviding energy security for

(06:23):
the future, we need, first ofall, to avoid 1.5 degrees global
warming, we're already at 1.1 totwo degrees, since the late
1800s. And to avoid that, weneed to implement 80% of these
technologies by 2030. That'sseven years away. And so to do
that, we cannot havetechnologies that take years to
decades to implement. Forexample, just in the next few

(06:48):
weeks, the Vogel nuclear plantin Georgia may or may not
actually turn on there. Theseare two new reactors, the only
two reactors being built in theUnited States today, the only
two conventional reactors. Andthey've been in the planning
operation phase for on the orderof 18 years. So there, it took
many years to plan and do sitepermits and everything else that

(07:11):
it took a while to getconstruction permits, and then
to do the actual construction.
So we're talking on the order of18 years, versus one to three
years for new wind and solar. Sothat's on the order of 15 years
or more time to put that up. Andin addition, it costs now $34
billion for these two reactors.

(07:32):
And that works out that's abouttwo point a little over 2.2
gigawatts of peak power total,that's almost that's 15 and a
half dollars per watt, incomparison with $1 per watt for
new wind or solar. Or if welooked at if we looked at the
average energy price at six,seven to eight times the energy

(07:52):
costs for new nuclear versuswind and solar. So these are
both opportunity costs. The factthat it's taken 15 years before
a single kilowatt hour has beengypped, sorry, 18 years for a
single kilowatt hour has beengenerated. That means the
background fossil grid has beenrunning for 18 years emitting
huge amounts of pollution andco2 into the atmosphere. And by

(08:15):
spending $34 billion on nuclearinstead of wind and solar, we
prevented that wind and solarfrom being put up a lot earlier.
And then therefore, this thesenew nuclear plants will never
pay back their carbon debt tothe atmosphere, there will
always have caused more carbonto be admitted, than if we had
invested instead in wind andsolar.

Gregory A. Williams (08:34):
So one of the things that I often struggle
with is comparing the cost ofenergy generation to the cost of
storage. And you've writtenabout a lot of different storage
options, whether it's hydrogen,gravity storage, storing things,
and boreholes or batteries.
What's a good way to think aboutthe cost of storage? And how

(08:54):
much that how much is that? Howmuch should we think of that as
adding to a W ws solution whencomparing it to something like
nuclear or gas, which at leasttheoretically isn't, you know,
instant or always on solutionthat doesn't require the same
kind of storage?

Mark Jacobson (09:15):
But yeah, I should first point out that
nuclear does require storageevery minute of every day,
because it nuclear is a flatsupply of energy, whatever when
it's on, it's only supplying aflat supply. The demand for
energy is variable. It variesevery second of every minute. So
you need backup or storage toget to provide the difference

(09:37):
between the supply which is flatand the bet and the demand,
which is completely variable. Sothat's why we use right now
natural gas peaker plants tobackup nuclear we use hydropower
plants to backup nuclear. On topof that, in the US nuclear
plants are down 10% of the year.
And so there's a whole 10% ofthe year where you need backup
for them in France last year.

(10:00):
All 56 nuclear reactors onaverage were down 48% of the
Year. In fact, there was a windfarm offshore wind farm that's
been up offshore of in Ireland.
That's been five years, it has amore it was more reliable over a
five year period than thenuclear all the nuclear reactors
in France last year, because ithad a capacity factor of 56%
versus only 52% for all theFrench nuclear reactors. So the

(10:23):
first thing is, it's a myth thatnuclear doesn't need backup, or
coal doesn't need backup, theyall need backup. Now granted,
wind and solar probably needmore backup. But so we've
actually analyzed in every worldregion, looking at 145 countries
broken into 24 world regions,we've looked at the grid

(10:43):
stability and the cost ofkeeping the grid stable with
just wind, water solar plusstorage, and compare that with
the cost of fossil fuels. Andthe extra storage you need is
does not make it more expensivethan using fossil fuels, it's
still much much cheaper,primarily because if we
electrified all energy, andprovide the energy with wind,
water solar, we reduce our powerrequirements by about 56%.

(11:07):
That's because for five reasons.
One, as we eliminate all theenergy, you need to mind
transport and refined fossilfuels in Earth uranium, so
that's about 11 to 12% of allenergy worldwide is used for
that purpose. So we eliminatethe need for that energy. And
therefore we reduce the costthat the annual cost of
obtaining that energy. Inaddition, electric vehicles are

(11:29):
much more efficient and gasolineor diesel vehicles. electric
heat pumps are much moreefficient than gas, natural gas
heaters for air heating andwater heating. And electrified
industry is more efficient thancombustion industry. And end use
energy efficiency improvementscan also squeeze additional
reduction. So we can get 56%less energy requirements with

(11:51):
wind, water solar, on top ofthat the cost per unit energy of
wind and solar, for example, isthe lowest it's half the cost of
natural gas. So the nuclear isright, as I mentioned, is like
right now, anywhere fromanywhere from five to eight
times the levelized cost ofenergy. So even though adding

(12:13):
let's say you do add storage towind and solar, yeah, that's
going to increase the cost ofkeeping the grid stable when you
storage. But you don't need afive to eight factor five to
eight times higher costs tomatch the cost of nuclear just
for baseload not even accountedfor the storage you need for for
nuclear. Anyway, we did thestudies looking at can we keep
the grid stable with just wind,water, solar and storage and

(12:34):
compare that with the fossilfuel system. And primarily
because we reduce energy demand56%. And on top of that, we
reduced the cost per unitenergy. It's a 63% Lower annual
cost to keep the grid stableevery 30 seconds for several
years, everywhere in the world,compared with business as usual
system. So that is a an argumentthat people have made that does

(12:57):
cost more storage for wind andsolar in particular. But I
should point out there areactually there are actually nine
countries of the world that are100% renewables and primarily
because of the water componentof wind, water, solar, like
water. Hydropower is a form ofstorage. It's a big battery,
hydropower. Reservoirs are bigbatteries. And there are

(13:19):
actually nine countries that are100% renewable wind water solar
already, and they keep the gridstable without any problem at
low cost.

Gregory A. Williams (13:30):
Do you want to mention some of those country
names?

Mark Jacobson (13:33):
Yeah, off the top? Well, there's Bhutan,
Nepal. Namibia is pretty high.
Tajikistan is one of thecountries but Norway, Costa
Rica, Iceland, and Albania, andParaguay and Uruguay or other
other countries that are and theDemocratic Republic of the
Congo. For example, Ethiopia hasanother one. These are all again

(13:54):
dominated by hydro I should sayKenya, Kenya is another one.
Kenya actually has their closerlike 92% Wind, Water solar, but
they're dominated by geothermal.
Scotland is also around 91%.
Wind, Water solar is dominatedby wind. I should point out in
the United States. There's onestate south dakota that provides
120% of its consumed energy withjust wind and hydropower with

(14:20):
77% Wind and the resthydropower. And it exports the
difference along it alsoproduces some fossil fuels that
it exports and in terms of itsgeneration, South Dakota
produces close to 80% of itsgenerated power from wind,
water, solar, but all wind andsolar sorry all wind and hydro.
And there are other states likeVermont and Washington State are

(14:42):
also around 70% Wind water solarin terms of their generation.
Iowa is pretty close up therewith almost all wind

Dina Rasor (14:52):
you know this thing on chapter eight your book, you
compare the amount of heat wastereleased by fossil fuel which If
I was standing, I shouldn't knowanything about drugs and I
actually grew up in a scienceback background. For example,
you write about that about 65 to67% of energy and oil and coal

(15:15):
is released is wasting 40 to 60%of natural gas energy is also
risky 74% of biomass is wasteheat, and 65% of the of the
energy in uranium is wasted. Sowhat can you explain this
concept of waste heat, which isanother area where we're heating
up the environment and gettingnothing from it, and explain why

(15:40):
waste is a part of the climateproblem. The other the other
part, sorry, the other part isalso talk about how clean it is.
This was also surprising cleanenergy, such as wind, water,
solar, actually decreases heat,which I thought was very
interesting,

Mark Jacobson (16:00):
right. So there's this concept called
anthropogenic heat flux, whichthere's also another concept
anthropogenic water vapor flux.
So when you burn coal or oil orgas, just burn it, and you not
only produce carbon dioxide, youalso produce water vapor,
because you have you know,hydrocarbons, which contain

(16:20):
hydrogen and carbon, the carbonreacts with oxygen to give you a
carbon dioxide, the hydrogenreacts with oxygen to give you
water. And so you have boththose are the way even with
complete combustion, allhydrocarbons will turn into what
carbon dioxide and water so youhave water. And because it's
high temperature, because you'reburning it, the water is in a

(16:41):
vapor form. So you release watervapor. Now you also release
heat, I mean, when you burnsomething that's your burning
gas, you're trying to produceheat for, for some purposes,
well, you're trying to produceheat, sometimes just for the
heat, and other times you want ahigh enough temperature heat to
produce electricity, because youcan then use it for natural gas.
For example, when you burn it,or call you burn it, you produce

(17:01):
heat that is used to boil waterliquid water, in order to create
steam to run a straight steamturbine to generate electricity.
Okay, but when you're burningcoal or natural gas for
electricity, the heat is rarelyever captured. And it's about
two thirds of all the energy andthe bonds of the coal or the gas

(17:22):
are released as heat as wasteheat that goes to the air. Same
thing with nuclear, the nuclearnuclear reaction results in heat
release, as well as you get to.
I mean, you get radiation that'sthen that where you have kinetic

(17:42):
energy, that kinetic energyslams into water molecules
liquid water to boil the waterto convert that kinetic energy
to heat to boil the water to runa steam turbine to generate
electricity. But the point is,is that with nuclear or coal or
natural gas, you're creatingheat, and you have water vapor
emissions in both cases. Andthat heater water vapor.

(18:02):
Actually not they don't cause alot of real warming compared to
carbon dioxide in the air. Butthey do cause an incremental
amount that's equivalent to someof the to like from a nuclear
reactor is around five grams ofco2 equivalent per kilowatt hour
of electricity generated withabout half from the heat and
half from the water vapor. Now,that's not necessarily a lot, I
mean, a coal plant, when it'sjust unabated co2 emissions is

(18:27):
about 900 grams of co2 perkilowatt hour, a natural gas
plant, an efficient natural gasplant might be 440. But you
know, that's not even for thefive grams of heat and water
vapor emissions that have causedwarming from nuclear. That's not
the main contributor to warmingfrom nuclear that the main
contributor is, is actually thefact that it takes so long to

(18:50):
build a nuclear reactor thatyou're you're emitting while
you're waiting around, you'reemitting carbon dioxide from the
regular background electricgrid, and that's around 60 to
110 grams of co2 per kilowatthour. And we're just to
summarize, there is some smallamount of heat from fossil fuels
and nuclear and water vapor. Butwhen you have wind turbines,

(19:12):
wind turbines actually reducewater vapor and they actually
then cause cooling on their ownsolar panels. And by the way,
and wind turbines, becausebecause they reduce water vapor
they also the end up reducingglobal warming just with this,
in addition to the fact thatthey eliminate co2 emissions.
And solar panels also reduce theamount of sunlight hitting the

(19:34):
ground and also cool the climateas well. So solar panels and
water and wind turbines, coolerclimate, and whereas combustion
fuels in uranium, warm theclimate, just due to their
impacts on the atmosphere.

Gregory A. Williams (19:49):
You want to say a few a few words about the
production of concrete and howthat's involved in nuclear power
plant construction.

Mark Jacobson (19:58):
Oh, yeah, so So it takes a lot of concrete to
build a nuclear plant. And justto give an example, the two
reactors that are being built inGeorgia, the only two in the
United States are being builtand conventional reactors.
They've there's enough cementbeen poured for a sidewalk from

(20:21):
Miami to Seattle. And all this,the co2 from the cement
production, and the actualconstruction of the plant. This
has all been emitted already,and not a single kilowatt hour
of nuclear electricity has beengenerated. So for the last 18
years, basically, there havebeen emissions, they most of

(20:41):
them in the last nine yearsduring the construction, but
some before that, there's been ahuge amount of emissions. And
this will never be recoveredthis these emissions will never
be recovered. Because of thehigh cost of the nuclear, you
might think, Okay, well, goingover even if like nuclear ran
100% of the time for the next 18years, the emissions will still

(21:03):
average over the 36 years ofplanning operation plus 18 years
of operation, you would havestill had basically half the
emissions of a coal plant forthat high that whole time. But
in fact, you'll never recoverall of those co2, because the
high cost of the nuclearprevented a lot more wind and
solar from being implemented,starting, you know, 15 years

(21:28):
ago. And that is resulting thatmeans that we could have had a
lot more co2 reduced already.
And in the future, since wewould have had a lot more wind
and solar built than nuclear interms of its its average energy
output. We'll never catch upwith this new nuclear plant. And
so the point is, we should neverbuild a new nuclear plant,

(21:48):
because it just takes too long.
And it costs way too much incomparison with clean renewable
energy.

Dina Rasor (21:57):
Also, in your book, beyond the climate
effectiveness, you write, by2021, the cost of when the
system consisting of wind, solarand batteries was already less
than that consisting of naturalgas, for example, even in 2019,
the Florida utility replaced twonatural gas plants with a

(22:19):
combined solar battery systembecause of the lower cost of the
ladder. In other words, the linkhas the economics of lower WW
has been a major factor, yourresearch shows that you don't
need oil gas and for atransition phase.

Mark Jacobson (22:36):
Well, yes, I mean, while we started these
plans, we first developed energyplans to transition to wind
water, solar, or double AWS backin 2009. And at the time, the
cost of wind and solar were,were more expensive, much more
expensive than they are today.
And we felt well, we need thesetechnologies to solve the
problem. So hopefully the costswill come down. And especially

(22:56):
due to economies of scale, whenwe start implementing wind and
solar in particular, on a largescale, hopefully their costs
will come down. It has turnedout that costs have come down
dramatically. And storage costshave also come down electric
vehicle costs have come downheat pump costs have come down.
And so it is becoming easier andeasier to implement 100% Wind

(23:16):
water solar system. And this isreally actually helped it to
cause a big growth of wind,water solar, I mean, right now
worldwide over the last coupleof years about 70% of all new
energy has been Wind, Watersolar, and electric vehicles are
taking off heat pumps are takingoff. So these they are the low
costs. And you can see this likein that example you gave

(23:42):
actually, utilities and grid,people working on the grid are
investing in combined wind andstorage or solar and storage or
wind and solar and storageplants where the storage is
usually batteries these days.
And these are saving hugeamounts of money. I mean, a big
battery solar battery system inAustralia saved like $30 million

(24:06):
over a year or two comparedbecause you know a battery can
feed electricity into the gridwithin within milliseconds, then
like 30 milliseconds, whereas ittakes a combined cycle natural
gas plant which is used for thesame purpose, it can take five
minutes to ramp it up to 100%electricity production. So

(24:30):
batteries are just much moreefficient and faster than that
can save utilities a lot ofmoney and actually has and you
don't sometimes you don't need alot of batteries to complement a
wind water solar system. Becausefirst of all, wind and solar are
complementary in nature. So whenthe wind isn't blowing during
the day, the sun is oftenshining and vice versa. And

(24:53):
water can already fill in thegaps in a lot of cases. So you
already have by combining windand solar Learn also combining
wind over large geographicregions or solar over large
geographic regions, wheresometimes the wind isn't blowing
in one place, but it issomewhere else. You can smoothen
out the overall supply ofelectricity just by combining
wind and solar over largegeographic regions, and then use

(25:16):
some batteries, some hydro tofill in the gaps. And then
you've got a more reliableresilient system then with the
fossil system.

Dina Rasor (25:24):
What do you suggest is the best and quickest energy
source for commercial andmilitary planes with cargo
ships, those solutions fit intoyour W, W, W s area

Mark Jacobson (25:37):
of well, for short distance flights less than
1500 kilometers, via electricplanes will probably dominate
for transport longer foraircraft longer than 1500
Kilometer flight distance,hydrogen fuel cell will likely
dominate. And so a combinationof the two and it could be some

(26:01):
you said have some planes thathave both batteries and fuel
cells. But it's we want tobatteries are usually better for
most purposes, except for thelonger distance you go, the more
that fuel cells becomeadvantageous, just because
otherwise you're you'reespecially with an aeroplane,
you're just carrying aroundbatteries using a lot of energy
carrying around batteries. Andas a result you're dropping.

(26:23):
Yeah, the efficiency drops offwhen you get to longer longer
distances with electric planes.
That's why hydrogen fuel cellare good for long distances.

Dina Rasor (26:31):
So you're what you're saying is that is that
you know, like a cargo shipthat's gonna go, you know, from
Japan to the Middle East, orsomething would probably need
some kind of hydrogen fuelcells, rather than just
batteries.

Mark Jacobson (26:46):
Yes, although, I know, Elon Musk was talking
about having just electric shipswhere he would have hubs in
different parts of the ocean torecharge them. So that's one
possibility. It can't bediscounted. But I mean, having
hydrogen for long distanceshipping, in particular,
hydrogen fuel cell shipping is alittle, maybe more tractable. I

(27:06):
mean, maybe it's too early tosay it's gonna be a combination
of both. And but I would betthat hydrogen fuel cell shipping
will be pretty efficient forlong distances.

Gregory A. Williams (27:19):
Hydrogen, direct hydrogen fuel or
something like ammonia.

Mark Jacobson (27:24):
Now, it'd be direct hydrogen fuel running in
a fuel cell. So ammonia, theissue is you need hydrogen to
produce the ammonia. So that'sanother step. So you're taking a
lot of energy just to producethe ammonia from hydrogen. So we
do want ammonia for fertilizers.
So we're producing a lot ofammonia today, for fertilizers
mostly. And the hydrogen thatit's produced from comes from

(27:45):
natural gas. So we want toswitch ammonia production from
natural gas to what we callelectrolytic. Hydrogen, which
comes from electricity poweredby wind, water, solar. But using
that ammonia, then as a fuel, weread that usually they want to
burn it. So then you havecombustion and you have
pollution, you have leaks ofammonia, ammonia is a really

(28:06):
toxic pollutant. It's so in LosAngeles, for example, most of
the visibility reduction in LosAngeles, which is the most
polluted city in the US,historically, and even today, is
due to what's called ammoniumnitrate, which is a combination
of ammonia and nitric acid. Andso any, so not only cause
visibility, degradation, but ithas huge health effects as well.

(28:28):
So we don't want to burnammonia, which is the plan of
using ammonia and chips. And soI would just stick to using it
for fertilizers, just usinghydrogen and fuel cells for
ships.

Dina Rasor (28:42):
When I talked to various people who are still
kind of hanging on to thetransition thing, the idea that
we have to transition we wecan't do we have to keep gas
around and and all these variousother fossil fuels, and we need
carbon capture, so we can keepusing gas. One of the things

(29:02):
they point to is the problem wasgoing 100%. Electric, electric,
electric and clean production ofthat electricity is that the US
electric grid isn't up to thetask. And I've heard that from a
lot of people. And it seems tome that I look at it a lot. It's
either federal, or the federalgovernment in the utilities up
to meeting those goals. And isthere enough money to make it

(29:25):
work? The electric grid if notupgraded, could be an Achilles
heel. For 100%? Who Yes, likefor example, what happened in
Texas in the very cold in thevery hot seasons? And how can
that be avoided? Well,

Mark Jacobson (29:43):
so with 100% Wind water solar system, certainly
the more transmission you have,the better. However, the
alternative if it's hard to putup more transmission then more
storage helps to so you caneither have local storage of
electricity or transmit theelectricity over long distances,
so we do have a choice. So ifyou're in a coastal area like
the east coast or west coast, Imean, there's a huge untapped

(30:06):
resource that's going to beimplemented the next few years,
which is offshore wind, and thatthere's enough offshore wind
along the coast to power thewhole United States. And the
transmission distances there apretty small. So that's
fortunately, and most peoplelive along the coast. So for
most of us, actually,transmission is not such an
issue in the Great Plains. It isit isn't, is not I mean, there's

(30:31):
not as many so many peopleliving in the Great Plains. And
there's a lot of source ofrenewable energy, the idea, we
need more transmission if youwant to take some of that
renewable energy and wield it tothe coast. So for example,
California sometimes needs extraelectricity that it imports. So
having like Wyoming wind beimported is a good idea. And so
transmission, there areslowdowns in growth and

(30:53):
transmission, however, we'reseeing that a lot of renewables
are still going up, there's alot of low hanging fruit where
we don't need long transmitdistance transmission. Texas is
a special problem, because it'sits own grid, and it just
refuses to be interconnected toother other grids that are right
nearby. And so that's its ownissue. However, we found that

(31:13):
during studies of Texas that wecan make Texas 100%, Wind, Water
solar, on its own, Texasactually promotes transmission
lines for wind, or at least ithas in the past. Right now it's
maybe doing some less, but ithas promoted a lot of
transmission for wind. Becauseit's benefited a lot from the
growth of wind in particular,and now the growth of solar. So

(31:34):
the problem when there was agrid out outage in Texas a
couple of years ago, that wasdue to primarily freezing of
coal plants, freezing of naturalgas pipes and plants. And even
nuclear outages, in addition tofreezing have a certain
percentage of the wind turbines.
But the wind turbines that werefrozen, there are wind turbines
in Iceland and their windturbines in Norway and Sweden

(31:56):
that don't get frozen becausethey have an anti freezing
technology. So that's just asimple technological fix. And so
that should not be an issue withthe growth of wind and solar in
Texas. And either sort of thegrid because Texas has a big has
had a big push of renewal of oftransmission growth the other
states actually haven't had.

Dina Rasor (32:17):
There's enough federal money and enough and my
understanding that thepermitting process slows things
down and the utilities is thereenough there in the current
Biden budget to really bring thegrid up to what needs to be done
to and also, quite frankly, himenough, have enough fuel

(32:37):
stations for all these electriccars. They're coming down the
pike?

Mark Jacobson (32:41):
Well, I think the issue is not so much the
funding, the cost of theelectric transmission, it's more
of the zoning and gettingpermits. And that's really been
the slowdown. It's just becauseevery depends on how it's done.
I mean, each state has certainrequirements and the federal
government, there's just a lotit takes a lot of years to get

(33:01):
permits to go have atransmission line cross state
boundaries, for example, or, youknow, some some community can
hold it up in some cases. Sothat's been more of the issue
rather than the cost. So I'd sayyeah, there's enough money in
the budget for encouragingreduced transmission lines will
pay for themselves over time. Soit's not like you need to
subsidize them to grow. But youneed the subsidies are needed,

(33:23):
because of the delays inactually implementing
transmission.

Dina Rasor (33:28):
Okay. So your books been out about three months and
what's been the reaction to theAWS solution? Are there climate
people who are hostile to theidea of living living
alternatives that burn fuel?
Where are the criticisms comingfrom? Is it political funding
and industry funding responsiblefor the emphasis on the so

(33:50):
called Bridge technologies suchas carbon capture and
intermediate solutions thatstill bring fuel the way?

Mark Jacobson (34:00):
Yes, I think the biggest the pushback is due to
the fact that we only reallyfocus on clean renewable
technologies. So we do notinclude fossil fuels with carbon
capture biofuels for anypurposes biofuels with carbon
capture, direct air capture,where you try to suck out co2,

(34:20):
carbon dioxide from the airitself, we do not include blue
hydrogen, which is hydrogen fromnatural gas with carbon capture,
we do not include electro fuels,which are fuels from carbon
capture carbon dioxide fromcarbon capture, plus some other
chemicals and energy. That toreplace gasoline. We don't
include small modular nuclearreactors. We don't include

(34:42):
geoengineering, which isspraying pollution particles
into the stratosphere to blockthe sun. So we don't include a
lot of these things. And but alot of these technologies are
included in the in the inflationReduction Act, I'd say 40% of
the whole inflation ReductionAct is used to to fund or
subsidize these uselesstechnologies. And when I say

(35:04):
useless, I mean really useless.
They increase carbon dioxide,carbon capture, blue hydrogen,
direct air capture electrofuels, they all increase carbon
dioxide compared with spendingthat same money on replacing
fossil fuel plants withrenewables. For example,
everything, carbon capturedirect air capture require

(35:25):
energy, and equipment. And soeven if you use renewable energy
to run direct air capture, whichis to suck carbon dioxide out of
the air, you can take that exactsame amount of renewable energy
and replace, let's say, a coalplant, and with the exact exact
same amount of electricity, andyou will get more carbon dioxide
reduction from the coal plantthan from sucking the co2 out of

(35:47):
the air. In addition, you'lleliminate the air pollution from
the coal eliminate the mining ofthe coal, you'll eliminate the
coal infrastructure, you don'tdo any of that with direct air
capture, or carbon carboncapture. Those coal plants are
still there, all you've done istaken some co2 out of the air,
then the question is, what doyou do with the co2? Well, 75%

(36:07):
of all co2 in the world is usedfor enhanced oil recovery to
help dig more carbon, meaningdig more oil out of the ground,
that process results in 40% ofthe carbon dioxide you just
captured, going straight back tothe air. And so you have no
proof that the rest of the restof that 60% is even captured, it
may stay under the ground andmay not. But you have more oil

(36:29):
now which you burn and have morepollution. This is these
constructs are just constructsof the fossil fuel industry,
carbon capture direct aircapture, blue hydrogen and
electric fields. They're alldesigned to keep the fossil fuel
industry in business have nobenefit whatsoever for climate
definitely worse than airpollution and energy security.

Gregory A. Williams (36:50):
Do you want to comment briefly on so you're
talking about some of thesecondary effects including how
much stuff we dig out of theground. People often raise
concerns about rare earthelements and things that are
involved in battery productionis being environmentally
disruptive. But you've commentedin other venues about the

(37:13):
comparison between that and justthe sheer volume of stuff we're
digging out of the ground in oilexploration.

Mark Jacobson (37:21):
Right, so right now we mined for oil, natural
gas and coal continuously everyday throughout the world. And
the mass of material that'smined is mind bogglingly
enormous. We eliminate entirelyall that mining with 100% Wind
water solar system. What's leftis the mining for the

(37:42):
infrastructure to build theinfrastructure, which we also
need in the fossil fuel world,we need to we need to mined
material for materials andchemicals to build fossil fuel
power plants and natural gaspower plants, oil, wells, oil
rigs, etc. Just like we need tomined for batteries and for wind

(38:03):
turbines and solar panels. Butwe eliminate the mining the
continuous everyday mining forthe fuels. And that's 99.9% of
all the mining in the world isfor the continuous daily mining.
So in 100%, wind water SolarWorld the mass of material that
we mined is less than point 1%of the total amount mined every

(38:23):
year right now. Now inFurthermore, you can there are
rare earths or there's otherslithium that will need. There's
you know the rare earth elementslike neodymium for permanent
magnets and wind turbinegenerators. But you know, a lot
of this can be recycled. And solithium for example, Sonnen is a
battery company they producereally efficient batteries, they

(38:45):
recycle 100% of the componentsof batteries, no. So you might
at once and then you recycle thelithium and you use it again
after 20 years of years. Or howlong however long the battery
lasts, and by the way sign inwarranties their batteries for
15 years and 15,000 cycles. Andbut I know they last longer, I
mean I have a electric car thatI bought in 2009 and it still

(39:07):
has 75% of its charge after 14years. So it's not as a 2009
batteries batteries today aremuch more efficient, they're
lasts longer. So there'srecycling. And there's also for
other materials and we we haveplenty materials and the amount
of mining will be orders ofmagnitude less than they are
today. And that will result inmuch less air pollution, much

(39:30):
less climate damage and muchmore energy security.

Dina Rasor (39:34):
When we talk about the how much money in the
Biden's budget, the IRA andstuff going towards fossil fuel,
things learned and, and carboncapture and all this stuff.
There's still this enormousenthusiasm because of course the
fossil fuels. The fossil fuellobby, putting it in is that

(39:58):
kind of just considered BloodMoney of what you have to do to
get to where we want to go onrenewable energy is to kind of
appease the the, the fossil fuelbased while they watch their
profit, you know, realize thatthey're going to be, they're
going to be eventually out ofexistence and work.

Mark Jacobson (40:21):
Well, I mean, the fossil fuel industry has a lot
to lose upon this transition,because we're basically, we went
to eliminate the use of coalwill eliminate the use of
natural gas. You know, in ourenergy plans, about 90% of oil
is used for fuel for energy,whereas 10% is used for
materials like plastics andother things. And we're trying

(40:44):
to, we're looking foralternatives for those as well.
So we're, they're going to fighttooth and nail to stay alive.
And in fact, like in Texas,you're trying to draft
legislator to outlaw renewableenergy basically, or to prevent
it from growing any further inother places, as well. But I
think it's too late. I mean,people see the benefits of

(41:07):
renewables, and it's just somuch so low cost. I mean, even
in states, where you think thereother states where there are no
policies for renewables, there'sa huge amount of renewables, I
mean, nine of the 10 states inthe United States with the most,
the highest fraction of theirelectricity generation from
wind, are all what we call redstates, which are states that

(41:29):
tend to vote Republican and notsupport renewable energy
policies. In fact, there aren'tany policies. And the reason is
because it's so cheap, wind isso cheap in the States, and
solar is also becoming cheap.
There is also very cheap theretoo, now. And so. So there is
this writing on the wall, I feelbecause of economics alone,
clean, renewable energy isstarting to take over however,

(41:53):
there's a long legacy, there's alot of existing infrastructure
that it's not just going to shutdown. And it's going to take
some aggressive policies to getthat industry to get those
plants to shut down. Because alot of them have paid off all
their debts and are just runninga profit, for the most part. And
to get those to go out ofbusiness, you really need either

(42:14):
strong policies or even strongereconomics in favor of
renewables.

Dina Rasor (42:22):
I assume you're not their favorite person. Because
of what because you're basicallysaying that we don't need it.
Thanks a lot.

Mark Jacobson (42:34):
I'll just want to make one more point is that we
calculate that there are morejobs, if we transition in the US
will be three to 4 million morelong term full time jobs and
loss. So a lot of these peopleworking in the oil and gas and
coal industry will have theability to transition to a job.
In addition, a lot of people whoare unemployed will have new

(42:54):
jobs with this with this newsystem. So although there will
be short term pain for manypeople, there will be long term
gain and more benefits to morepeople than with the current
industry.

Dina Rasor (43:07):
So you're saying basically, I just wish that we
did it from a scientific pointof view that we would look at it
from a scientific point of viewinstead of this sort of hysteria
that is going on? Becauseimagine if you could take 40% of
that money for fossil fuel, pipedreams and put it into wind,

(43:28):
water and solar. Yeah, make adifference, right?

Mark Jacobson (43:33):
Yeah, by by subsidizing fossils, like they
do, like the inflation reductionact through carbon capture
direct air capture bluehydrogen, electric fields, those
subsidies are hurting ourtransition, without causing more
deaths and illnesses, causingmore climate damage, and war,
Energy and Security. So wereally need to focus on things

(43:56):
we know work, and that can beimplemented in the fastest
amount of time, and then havethe greatest health, climate and
security benefitssimultaneously.

Dina Rasor (44:04):
Well, as a final question, I was really intrigued
with this at the end of thebook, you write about your
personal journey, where you guysin the field, this idea what
drives you to push the WS wssolution from personal
observations and years of yearsof work? What What triggered you
to you know, you're verypassionate about this. And I

(44:24):
think people like to know, howdid you get into this? You
really want to do this.

Mark Jacobson (44:29):
It started over 40 years ago, where when I was a
kid, actually, when I was 13years old. I was down in San
Diego, and also it was travelingto San Diego and also went to
Los Angeles, around the sametime to play tennis and I would
observe these, the air pollutionat that time in both cities was
horrible, and you could hardlysee you could hardly breathe.

(44:51):
Eyes are scratchy. Some peoplewere some people were even
trying to play tennis andvomiting on the court. And I
just thought Why should peoplelive like this? This is Like
every day for most people, itwas a shock to me because I was
from Northern California. And itwas polluted at the time, but
not nearly so polluted. And socoming down to a totally
different environment like thatwas really shocking. And I just

(45:12):
thought, this is something I,you know, I want to study when I
get older, and hopefully try tosolve this problem. and a half
years later, I also learnedabout the climate problem or
issues related to climate, andalso acid deposition. And I just
became interested in these largescale problems. And I set myself
a goal, this is what I want todo is to try to solve these

(45:32):
understand these problems, andthen solve them, because I
figured you can't really come upwith good solutions unless you
understand the problem. So Iactually spent, when I became a
professor, I spent first 20years building computer models
to study air pollution andclimate and also part of my
graduate, we're gonna do that aswell. And then from that, I was

(45:54):
able to discern the differences,like the impacts of different
fuel types, like people wereproposing in the early 2000s,
using biofuels like ethanol. ButI was able to compare ethanol
with gasoline and hydrogen fuelcell vehicles at the time, and I
can see the chemical difference,that the ethanol was just as bad
as gasoline for air pollutionfrom an air pollution point of

(46:15):
view. And I thought, Well, whyare we proposing this where we
want to eliminate air pollutionand electric vehicles or
hydrogen fuel cell vehicles,they eliminate air pollution
virtually entirely. And so thisis not shouldn't be a comparison
of ethanol versus gasolineshould be comparison of, of
gasoline versus electric orethanol versus electric
vehicles. But it requiredactually modeling that and

(46:38):
writing a paper about it to, toreally discern these
differences, whereas otherwise,people are just hand waving. And
that's what they're doing.
They're pushing ethanol as afuel at the federal getting the
federal government a lot ofsubsidies were going to it and
they're arguing this is going toimprove air quality, where it
doesn't actually make airquality worse than three
quarters of the United States.
And so this was the strength ofmy conviction that you really

(47:02):
need to understand theseproblems to come up with
solutions. But the same appliesto carbon capture. I mean,
people who look at carboncapture, they ignore entirely
the air pollution impacts thefact that you need 30% more
energy to run their carboncapture equipment. Where does
that come from? Well, mostly itcomes from fossil fuels and
increasing air pollution, evenit comes from renewables, you're
preventing the renewables fromreplacing a fossil fuel plant,

(47:23):
increasing air pollution. Sounless you're looking at air
pollution, climate, and securitysimultaneously, you're gonna
come up with different answersthan if you're actually focused
on all three.

Dina Rasor (47:34):
I want to quote the great Bill McKibben, who you had
on and he, he actually wrote anarticle that when when the
company in your conversationgetting saying this for the
audience, and your conversationstarts getting complicated, and
they people are starting tothrow all this transitional
technology and what we have todo we need bridges and all this

(47:55):
kind of stuff. Here's an articleof the title of his article,
which I suggested he made abumper it told him, you should
make a bumper sticker out of it,it says, The earth is on fire
stop burning thing. And you knowthat that's WWE, as anybody that
just cuts through all of theroundabouts you do on carbon

(48:17):
capture? I mean, I'm sure you'vebeen in these discussions, too,
you know, the bridge and allthis. And I always try to look
for those simple. A lot of timeswe don't do that bumper sticker
stuff, you know? And the simplething is, is that when you get
confused about all thistechnology, is it burning
anything, just like you weretalking about the ammonia, it
has to be burned? Oh, okay, outof anything that has to be

(48:41):
burned. And that simplifies itmuch better. So we're coming
into enter a time and I reallyappreciate you coming in. And is
there anything else that you'dlike to add?

Mark Jacobson (48:54):
Oh, well, I agree that we need to stop burning
things, that's really the bottomline and stop combustion. We
have enough wind, water solarresources to power the world for
all purposes many times over. SoI would try to focus on that
keep our eye on the ball. Andjust don't don't sweat don't
veer from our goal of getting to100% renewables.

Dina Rasor (49:17):
And as you said, from your earliest inspirations,
we also want to stop burningthings because the air pollution
kills million people a year.
Right.

Gregory A. Williams (49:29):
I want to thank you for being on our show
again, and we look forward toyour next publication. And we
open your back here and lessthan another year and keep up
the good work. All right,anybody.

Dina Rasor (49:43):
Anybody else comes up with anything that you think
that might the listeners mightbe interested in, send them our
way, because we're trying to airas much as this as we can. Thank
you so much on to doing this andhave a good rest of the day.

Mark Jacobson (49:56):
Thank you very much. Appreciate it.