Could the World Ever Run Entirely on Renewable Energy?

This week ’s question — could the world ever run completely on renewable energy?—is shadow by a much prominent one : Namely , willpoliticiansandpowerful forces of hold like Big Oilever allow the world to run whole on renewable energy ? For the most part , we have put that larger question away for this installment ; the experts below are interested primarily in whether it ’s practicable .

To not alternate to renewables in the very near future would , we know , summon a host of awful consequences . unbridled carbon emanation would make immense swaths of the planet uninhabitable by one C ’s end ; survivor of the heating system - apocalypse would pass their day fortifying little hutments , or surgically excising molding from lousy squirrel meat . This is not the future we want — which is why planning for a renewable changeover , and insure we bring it off , is so important . Hard as it might be , it ’s deserving setting aside your doomy visions of the future to look at , for a moment , what we can actually reach . For this hebdomad ’s Giz Asks , we ’ve tack a panel of experts to discuss whether the creation could ever run entirely on renewable get-up-and-go — and what it would take to get there .

Mark Z. Jacobson

Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Director of the Atmosphere / Energy Program , Stanford University , and the author of100 % clear , Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything

My team and I have been studying whether the world can run entirely on blank renewable vigor since about 2008 , and we ’ve concluded , in over a twelve subject , that it is utterly possible . And when I say clean renewable energy , I mean just wind and water and solar top executive — onshore and seaward confidential information , solar panels on rooftop , hard solar magnate , geothermic business leader , etc . We do n’t let in biomass or bioenergy or any type of biofuel , because it ’s not clear — you burn it , and it usually takes up large amounts of Din Land . We also do n’t include fossil fuel , or carbon seizure , or verbatim air capture , or nuclear power , as we reckon all of these matter to have opportunity costs . We ’ve done calculations in 143 countries representing 99.7 % of all emissions worldwide , and we ’ve found that it is potential to power all of these countries with just wind , body of water and solar , plus storage electricity , heat storage , cold storehouse and hydrogen storehouse . The theme , really , is to electrify everything , and to combine the electricity with twist , water and solar .

There are four major energy sectors : electrical energy , transportation , buildings , and diligence . For transportation , we ’d go with electrical vehicle , hydrogen fuel cell vehicles . For buildings , all heating and cooling system would be done with electric warmth ticker ; piddle heating would be done with electric heating system pumps ; stoves would be inductive reasoning cooktops . It reverse out that when you do this , you reduce power demand worldwide by about 57 % , because of the efficiency of electrical energy over combustion . When you wire everything , you slim down demand , but you ’re also eliminating all of the energy that go into excavation , transporting , and refine fogey fuel and atomic number 92 , which make up 12 % of all vim worldwide . You end up eliminating up to 7 million melody defilement deaths per year that are linked to fogy fuel and biofuel burning ; you eradicate the emissions associated with global thaw ; and you provide Department of Energy security and stability . Because you ’re using 57 % less energy , your cost go down at least 57 % , but in fact go down much more , because wind and solar , the cheesy forms of electricity today , are half the cost of gas . Cost per DOE unit , consequently , croak down by over 60 % . And that ’s not to mention money saved on wellness costs and climate costs . Factoring that in , expenditure goes down about 90 % compared with business as usual , which is mostly fossil fuels .

Illustration: Benjamin Currie/Gizmodo

The bottom crease is that we ’re confident that , with current technologies , we can transition the world to solve these problem . It does take political will , but it ’s feasible pretty much everywhere and is already starting to happen—61 commonwealth now have 100 % renewable ; energy laws ; 13 states in the U.S. have laws or executive orders ; 180 U.S. cities and 300 worldwide have laws . It ’s a growing campaign . A raft more needs to be done , but the public is behind it . We have pop support for price coming down through renewables .

Emily Grubert

Assistant Professor of Environmental Engineering , Construction and Infrastructure Systems Engineering , and Sustainable Communities , Georgia Tech

I consider the response is yes , but we have to design the systems to make that potential . justly now , we do n’t have a system that ’s design to be fully renewable vigour , so we often see weaknesses in that system , because we have n’t had to assume that it ’s purely renewable . But we can perfectly design organisation that will reserve us to run full renewable muscularity .

At some tier , if you really think about human existence historically , we were hunt on renewable energy for a very long time . The query is : What do we want from our vim system ? Mostly , we have to think about how the supplying and requirement sides of an energy organization fit together , and then we ask to recall cautiously about some of the parameters we want our system to deliver . What should it face like in terminal figure of reliability ? What should it look like in term of cost ? What should it look like in terms of environmental characteristic ? You probably ca n’t always get the lowest potential cost for the highest potential societal / environmental standards , or the eminent possible reliableness standard , so there can be some trade-off — but that ’s dead on target of the fossil - free-base organisation as well .

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I think we will finally get there , and that we require to be very heedful about how we labor ourselves in that guidance . What we need is a shared social understanding of what our overall priorities are . Is that ‘ we require to forefend climate change ? ’ Is it ‘ we need to in reality verify that we ’re allow good free energy organisation to ourselves ? ’ But in terms of what go on on the footing , I think a plenty of this hail down to regulators , interior standard , international correspondence , that sort of thing .

Sarah Johnston

Assistant Professor , Agriculture and Applied Economics , University of Wisconsin - Madison , whose research stake include industrial organization and vigor and environmental political economy

Yes , but we will still need some technical advance to get there . We already have the engineering science to cost - effectively produce massive quantity of electrical energy from renewable resources . Yet , we presently do not have much ability to stash away this electricity for time when it is not cheery or windy . Current battery storage systems are improving , but can only supply electrical energy for hours , not days . So I opine technological advancement in term of storage will be fundamental . Another selection is to figure out how to economically transform electrical energy from renewables into other course of vitality that can be stack away . We can use electrolysis to convert it into hydrogen , but this is still expensive , so that ’s another margin on which technical advancement could help . wait at the forward motion in the last 20 years , I am optimistic that we will get there .

I consider another interesting question is , should 100 % be the goal ? A central principle of economics is increase marginal price . In transition off from fossil fuel and toward renewable zip , we will ( hopefully ) make the depressed cost changes first . presently , this means transitioning electrical energy coevals from fossil fuel beginning to renewables . Next , it might mean replacing gaseous state - powered vehicle with electric vehicle . As we are using dodo fuels less and less , the actions we must take to supercede them with renewables will get more dear . For example , to exchange raw petrol estrus with electrical heat for homes in stale climates , we would have to pay to retrofit tens of millions of home base with electric heat pump system that currently cost far more to purchase and install than a rude petrol furnace . So while the wallop on clime change of go from 99 % renewable energy to 100 % renewable energy may be alike to the impingement of conk out from 50 % to 51 % , the incremental cost could be orders of magnitude greater . I think this logic makes it crucial not to get too fixated on 100 % prey .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

Steven Davis

Professor of Earth System Science , University of California , Irvine

Yes , it ’s possible we ’ll gather all our energy demands with renewable root , but there are still some techno - economical challenge if the share of variable sources like wind and solar incur really eminent , like say > 80 % . That ’s because those sources keep their own docket that do n’t always array with the timing of our demand , and we have n’t figured out a sufficiently cheap and scalable style of storing really heavy measure of vim . Other renewable root of vim like hydroelectricity , geothermic , or biomass may help , but often confront their own , different challenge of sustainability . I therefore imagine make renewable fuel could be a tonality to give an all - renewable energy organization . For model , some of our recent work prove that even though current technologies for converting renewable electricity to fuel and back are expensive , they ’d already make an otherwise - all - solar - and - tip electrical energy organization cheaper .

Brian Kahn contributed reporting for this storey .

William Duplessie