Among scientists, however, there is agreement. Two Harvard economists, after trawling through voluminous, authoritative research, said last year that the odds of an utterly catastrophic finale to humanity’s atmospheric experiment is about 10 percent. That’s a conclusion that can focus minds pretty quickly—and perhaps turn the expenditure of trillions of dollars over three decades into only a tough, but manageable, problem.
Doing the math
Heal’s main goal is to figure out, in a policy-agnostic, nonpolitical way, the economics of replacing 66 percent of U.S. energy output—the coal and gas used for electricity generation—with renewable energy or a combination of renewables and nuclear power. “I wanted a way of doing it that was transparent,” Heal said, “in which anybody who was interested in it can understand, and—if they disagreed—they can go back and do it their own way.”
His thinking goes like this:
- Split the 66 percent into half-solar and half-wind generation, and then price out the panels and turbines.
- Assume that the U.S. will need to boost its transmission grid by 25 percent, which won't come cheap since high-voltage lines run as much as $3 million a mile, plus substations and interconnections.
- Subtract the cost savings from never having to buy fuel because sunshine and wind come gratis.
- Also deduct what we're expected to invest to upgrade the old energy infrastructure.
Read more at The $8 Trillion Fight over How to Rid America of Fossil Fuel
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