Status: Submitted
Citation: Bistline, J. E. and G. J. Blanford 2016. “More than One Arrow in the Quiver: Why Jacobson et al. Miss the Mark on Renewables.” Submitted to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
A recent article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Jacobson et al., 2015) aims to demonstrate that an all-renewable energy system is technically feasible. Our letter argues that the study’s conclusions are based on strong assumptions and key methodological oversights and that its framing omits the essential notion of trade-offs. A far more relevant question is how renewable energy technologies relate to the broader set of options for meeting long-term societal goals like managing climate change. Even if the goal were to maximize the deployment of renewable energy (and not decarbonization more generally), Jacobson et al. still fail to provide a satisfactory analysis by glossing over fundamental implications of the technical and economic dimensions of intermittency. We briefly highlight two prominent examples in our letter.
Link to Publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.