Full transition to green energy within four decades?

What the Washington Post and others call a “bitter ” debate has erupted over two contrasting scientific papers in PNAS, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. At issue is the contention of Stanford University engineering professor Mark Jacobson and three colleagues that a full transition to green energy is possible right now, with insufficient political will the only impediment. Their 2015 paper, which has been gaining public influence, has now been challenged by the second paper, authored by 21 others, mainly scientists and engineers . The challengers themselves support green energy. They just disapprove of an analysis that they see as grossly unrealistic and therefore dangerously misleading.

The dispute, sometimes with personal rancor, has spread to the media. At National Review on the political right, energy journalist Robert Bryce has condemned Jacobson’s contention as an “appalling delusion” and a “fool’s errand.” Under a headline characterizing the debate as “fisticuffs,” New York Times Economic Scene columnist Eduardo Porter also sided with Jacobson’s critics. At Reason, science correspondent Ronald Bailey dismissed the contention as “total fantasy.” At the business site Forbes.com, technopolitical observer James Conca called it “another ideology masquerading as science.” E&E News sees the argument as a “clash.” Grist sees a “battle royale.” Greentech linked to six “top tweet storms” involving prominent observers.

Jacobson defies all critics, proclaiming “There is not a single error in our paper.”

The two PNAS abstracts outline the debate’s basis. Here’s the abstract by Jacobson and colleagues for “Low-cost solution to the grid reliability problem with 100% penetration of intermittent wind, water, and solar for all purposes":

Last month, PNAS published the 21 critics’ “Evaluation of a proposal for reliable low-cost grid power with 100% wind, water, and solar,” led by this abstract :

But in fact some policymakers are enthusiastically pursuing the Jacobson vision, as seen in pending state and federal legislation and in a Guardian op-ed by Jacobson and a coauthor who ran last year for US president: Senator Bernie Sanders. In April, the two asserted unambiguously that “we can achieve a 100% clean, renewable energy future for all 50 states and 139 countries by 2050.” Their subhead declared, “We must aggressively transition our energy system away from fossil fuels and toward clean, renewable energy solutions. And we need to do so now.”

MIT Technology Review reports that energy researchers generally believe that “the transition, particularly getting the last 20 percent or so of the way there, would be prohibitively expensive using existing technologies.” That publication also emphasizes the intermittency problem with wind and solar, which in turn presents the problem of “affordable grid-scale storage that can efficiently power vast areas for extended periods.” The article quotes Jane Long, one of the 21 PNAS critics and a former associate director at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “Energy issues are complex and hard to understand,” she said, “and Mark’s simple solution attracts many who really have no way to understand the complexity. It’s consequently important to call him out.”

The PNAS critics aren’t alone in calling him out. Conca’s critique , which his Forbes.com headline calls a “debunking,” begins with personal accusations: Jacobson “refused to acknowledge sound scientific principles in his research and address major errors pointed out by the scientific community. And then he played politics.” Conca summarizes the ire and consternation: “The route to that goal actually matters as much as the goal. Bad assumptions and poor science will have serious repercussions that we will not have the luxury to fix later.” Conca charges that Jacobson’s paper has become “the bible of alternative energy and is the most referenced paper on the subject used by policymakers and activist groups. And that is scary.” Conca expressed special dissatisfaction with what he sees as Jacobson’s cavalier and destructive disrespect for peer review, both in principle and in this case’s specifics. “When a scientist doesn’t follow the peer-review process,” Conca wrote, “it hurts science. I can understand Jacobson going with this, since he’s gotten huge accolades by celebrities, politicians, activists and non-scientists.”

Bryce’s National Review critique —the one charging “appalling delusion"—declared the 21 critics’ PNAS paper a “scathing takedown” that “decimates” Jacobson’s work and its “wildly exaggerated claims.” Bryce ridiculed Jacobson’s celebrity and lamented that he “became the darling of the green Left even though his work was based on Enron accounting, alternative facts, and technology hopium.” Porter at the Times lamented “how little regard [the work] shows for the political, social and technical plausibility of what would undoubtedly be wrenching transformations across the economy.”

In PNAS, Jacobson posted a paywalled rebuttal of his 21 critics under the headline “The United States can keep the grid stable at low cost with 100% clean, renewable energy in all sectors despite inaccurate claims.” At EcoWatch, he posted “4 reasons nuclear and fossil fuel supporters criticizing 100% renewable energy plan are wrong.” It opens by calling his critics’ paper “replete with false information” and by charging that most of the 21 “have a history of advocacy, employment, research or consulting in nuclear power, fossil fuels or carbon capture.” Their “paper is dangerous,” he wrote, “because virtually every sentence in it is inaccurate.” The posting conveys his “main responses,” addressing decarbonization cost reduction, technology scalability, and the question of modeling errors. In an annotation format, Jacobson also posted line-by-line rebuttals of the critical PNAS paper.

The Washington Post‘s Chris Mooney reported that Jacobson “suggests that he is being unfairly treated” and charges that his PNAS critics’ analysis “is riddled with intentional misinformation.” MIT Technology Review quoted one of the 21:

Steven T. Corneliussen is Physics Today‘s media analyst. He has published op-eds in the Washington Post and other newspapers, has written for NASA’s history program, and was a science writer at a particle-accelerator laboratory.