Prof Mark Jacobson of the University of Stanford believes that (for the USA) the best solution to the various problems of energy security, peak oil, and global warming lies in wind and solar thermal power:
The raw energy sources that Jacobson found to be the most promising are, in order, wind, concentrated solar (the use of mirrors to heat a fluid), geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics (rooftop solar panels), wave and hydroelectric.
In Prof Jacobson’s research paper he looks at how you could power every road vehicle in the USA using different methods and finds the best combination is wind power and electric battery vehicles.
[at Physorg][image from kevindooley on flickr]
An analysis of how the Jacobson paper is dishonest and biased.
They skew the results with delay penalties for nuclear power when they are assuming that a 20-40 year 100% deployment of electric cars has magically happened. They also do not penalize wind or solar for a revamped energy grid which would also take decades to deploy. They assume mass deployment of wind and solar and the grid to address intermittency.
He penalizes new nuclear power build with the CO2 and deaths from a nuclear bomb. Tens of thousands of nuclear bombs exist now. Adding new nuclear power does not change that risk. Iran is cited as an example of a potential new nuclear power. But Iran has no nuclear energy and is making all of their weapon material from centrifuges. Go down the list of countries with nuclear bombs and nuclear power. They get nuclear bombs first and then they deploy nuclear power. We should just as well lump the deaths from chemical bombs in with chemical fuel cells.
US would $2+ trillion over decades to upgrade the energy grid.
http://www.nerc.com/files/2008-Climate-Initiatives-Report.pdf
http://nextbigfuture.com/2008/12/commenting-on-mark-jacobsons-energy.html