A plan for 100% renewable energy throughout the U.S. by 2050

A team of scientists from the Atmosphere/Energy Program, Dept. of Civil and Env. Engineering, Stanford University, and the Institute of Transportation Studies, U.C. Berkeley, have published a study presenting roadmaps for each of the 50 United States to convert their all-purpose energy systems (for electricity, transportation, heating/cooling, and industry) to ones powered entirely by wind, water, and sunlight by 2050.

Existing energy plans in many states address the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution, keep energy prices low, and foster job creation. However, in most if not all states these goals are limited to partial emission reductions by 2050, and no set of consistently-developed roadmaps exist for every U.S. state. By contrast, the roadmaps here provide a consistent set of pathways to eliminate 100% of present-day greenhouse gas and air pollutant emissions from energy by 2050 in all 50 sates while growing the number of jobs and stabilizing energy prices. A separate study provides a grid integration analysis to examine the ability of the intermittent energy produced from the state plans here, in combination, to match time-varying electric and thermal loads when combined with storage and demand response.

The methods used here to create each state roadmap are broadly similar to those recently developed for New York, California, and the world as a whole.

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