The Jacobson-Delucchi plan revealed

The devil is in the details, and the details are where the renewable energy schemes come apart. This is the case for the Jacobson-Delucchi plan recently published in Scientific-American to set the world on a course to an all renewable energy scheme. But support for Mark Z. Jacobson's thinking about renewable energy has hardly been universal, and Jacobson has not responded to many criticisms of his work. in particular Bill Hannahan has offered significant criticisms of Mark. Z. Jacobson research on wind reliability, in the form of a paper offered to the Editor of the "Journal of Applied Meteorology & Climatology" (JAMC). Mark Z. Jacobson refused to cooperate with the review process for Hannahan's paper, and although the editor of the JAMC could have published Bill's paper even without Jacobson's cooperation, he refused to to so.

It should be noted that Jacobson, like many other renewable energy advocates regularly sidesteps and ignores criticisms. Thus legitimate questions exist about the value of Jacobson's scientific work, and Jacobson has failed to take reasonable steps to answer those criticisms. While Jacobson's work on wind reliability is repeatedly mentioned by renewable advocate, the mention of that work, in the absence of unanswered arguments that Jacobson's work is deeply flawed, suggest that the renewable power enterprise lacks critical standards for its knowledge claims. On Tuesday, I posted numerous informal criticisms of Jacobson's latest Scientific American Paper, that were left as comments on the Scientific American Web Page, in response to its announcement of the Jacobson-Delucchi paper. As of this morning 50 comments have been posted in response to the SA announcement. Many of these comments point to serious problems with the Jacobson-Delucchi plan. For example, "EGPreston" wrote,

By profession I do transmission studies for wind and solar clients. My company name is TAC meaning Transmission Adequacy Consulting at web page http://www.egpreston.com. I currently am doing studies all across the US. "A path to sustainable energy by 2030" omits the transmission system needed by 2030. Because the wind and solar and water and geothermal projects are not in the locations of the existing power plants, new lines will be needed. Looking at the graph on page 63, and carefully measuring scales on the graph, I estimate that there is 40,000 MW of wind and 40,000 MW of centralized solar on that graph. The reason I omitted rooftop solar is because Jacobson has its contribution to be rather small. For example, multiplying out the numbers on page 61 you will get 5.1 TW of rooftop solar and 26.7 TW of large scale solar of 300 MW size in farms, much like wind farms. This seems reasonable since centralized solar is twice as cost effective as rooftop solar. Since the rooftop solar is small I will omit it from these comments. That leaves us needing 80,000 MW of new wind solar and geothermal generation just to serve California. I think an estimate of 500 miles from wind and solar resources to major load centers is reasonable. A 500 kV transmission line is rated at about 2000 MW max power. But you don't want to operate it at that power level because the losses are too high and there is no reserve capacity in the line to handle the first contingency problem. Therefore I will estimate we will load the new 500 kV lines to about 1500 MW on average. So we have 80,000 MW of renewable sources widely scattered around the Western System (WECC) with each carrying 1500 MW so that we need roughly 50 new 500 kV lines of 500 miles each, for a total length of 25,000 miles. The article assumes there is little solar power energy storage and it also assumes the wind be blowing at night. We know for sure that the solar power is not available at night so we are nearly totally dependent on wind for night time energy. You are going to ask about the geothermal energy. One geothermal project I recently worked on for determining the transmission access for looked like a good project until the geothermal energy extraction failed to work. Recently other geothermal projects have created human induced earthquakes. Geothermal energy seem less likely today than just a few years ago. So we are nearly totally dependent on wind energy for the nighttime CA energy as envisioned in the 100% renewables by 2030. If we plan for those few occurrences when there is no wind in the WECC system, we must interconnect WECC with the rest of the US so CA can draw power from other wind generators that do have wind (hopefully) outside the WECC area, such as the Texas coast and east of the rocky mountains where massive wind farms can be constructed. However we will need at least 40,000 MW of lines that I estimate will average 2000 miles in length. If we used 500 kV lines, we would need about 25 of these lines bridging from WECC to the US eastern grid and ERCOT and the total length would be about 50,000 miles. By 2030 we would need 75,000 miles of new 500 kV lines just to serve California with 100% renewables. Considering that we have the period from 2010 to 2030, that means we would have to construct about 4000 miles of new 500 kV lines every year from now until 2030 for the renewables plan as outlined in this article to work. I do not believe this is achievable at all. Therefore the concept envisioned in the SA article is not a workable plan because the transmission problems have not been addressed. The lines aren’t going to get built. The wind is not going to interconnect. The SA article plan is not even a desirable plan. The environmental impact and cost would be horrendous. Lets get realistic.

Criticisms such as Prestons' cannot be ignored, if Jacobson and Delucchi wish for their plan to be taken seriously. So far Jacobson and Delucchi have offered no response to their critics. Unfortunately, as I have noted, this conforms to Jacobson's past pattern.

A Scientific American article is not a real scientific paper. It does not amass reliably produced evidence, to demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt that the weigh of evidence supports a proposition. Traditionally Scientific American stuck to mainstream science, science that was not controversial. Thus it should be noted that of 5 papers referenced by Jacobson and Delucchi in their Scientific American article, two contain Jacobson's name in the authorship line. Both are the subject of unresolved controversy. A third paper is coauthored by Ben Sovacool, who is a political scientist. I have addressed the uneven quality of Sovacool's work in the past. Following as assessment of Sovacool's account of some of his research, I concluded,

Sovacool has produced another typical example of his work. His research is weak, his research methods are suspects, and his conclusions will not withstand critical examination.

To his credit Sovacool vigorously defended his research, but it should be noted that his database was neither based on random sampling, nor was it comprehensive, thus no valid generalizations would have followed from it. At any rate the Sovacool paper Jacobson and Delucchi referenced cannot be accessed on the Internet, nor are critical reviews of it found on the Internet. A further paper referenced paper, The Technical, Geographical, and Economic Feasibility for Solar Energy to Supply the Energy Needs of the U.S. by V. Fthenakis, J. E. Mason, and K. Zweibel has just been made available on line. The Fthenakis, Mason, and. Zweibel paper has not been the subject of open reviews on the internet. Thus it hardly can be maintained that Jacobson and Delucchi have expressed views that represent the consensus of a scholarly and scientific community, or that their own views are represent good science. Statements such as the claim that

Nuclear power results in up to 25 times more carbon emissions than wind energy, when reactor construction and uranium refining and transport are considered.

simply are not based on sound research. Sovacool, upon whose research Jacobson partially depends concludes, found that 81% of the studies of carbon emission from the nuclear power cycle,

had methodological shortcomings that justified excluding them from the assessment conducted here. . . . Of the remaining 19% of studies, , , they varied greatly in their comprehensiveness, . . . studies differed in whether they assessed future emissions for a few individual reactors or past emissions for the global nuclear fleet; assumed existing technologies or those under development; and presumed whether the electricity needed for mining and enrichment came from fossil fuels, other nuclear plants, renewable energy technologies, or a combination thereof,

Clearly then we are looking at an area of research that requires from which no valid conclusions can be drawn. in light of Sovacool's note on the limitations of he research evidence, Jacobson's sweeping dismissal of nuclear power was an unwarranted expression of personal prejudice. We the Scientific American still an intellectually respectable journal, the 25 times statement would undoubtedly have been removed before publication.

In addition Jacobson and Delucchi stated that

we consider only technologies that do not present significant waste disposal or terrorism risks.

Yet they considered Hydroelectric which poses significant risks from terrorist attacks, and photovoltaic which posses significant waste disposal issues. Again we have the author's uninformed personal judgment being substituted for matters of fact. And as the "scots engineer" comments,

the authors have been disingenuous . . .

"demyer"referring to the comments which Jacobson and Delucchi have drawn, states,

The comments by others have pretty much shot a lot of holes in the plan, particularly wind power

I will thus leave to the author's Scientific American critics to spell out many of the numerous shortcomings of the Jacobson and Delucchi plan. I do wish to offer my comments on the claim that a renewables mix, and electrical costs under the plan.

Jacobson and Delucchi claim

Intermittency problems can be mitigated by a smart balance of sources, . . . relying on wind at night when it is often plentiful, using solar by day and turning to a reliable source such as hydroelectric that can be turned on and off quickly to smooth out supply or meet peak demand. For example, interconnecting wind farms that are only 100 to 200 miles apart can compensate for hours of zero power at any one farm should the wind not be blowing there.

Thus without telling us exactly what they are doing, Jacobson and Delucchi introduce a costly solution to the problem of intermittency - redundancy. If the wind does not blow all of the time, we are going to use a little sunshine to get us through wind free days, they tell us. First we should note that redundancy does not always work. Sometimes the wind stops blowing at night. But redundancy has a cost. If we are going to rely on redundant wind and solar generating facilities, the cost of round-the-clock electricity will include the cost of both wind and solar electricity. Thus if a wind facility costs $3 million and a solar facility costs $6 million, and we need both to provide round-the-clock electricity, the cost of our generating system will be $9 million. In addition the facilities may need to be interconnected, and that will cost extra.

Now it turns out that paying for a solar and a wind facility is not going to be enough to insure reliability for a renewable system. Mark Z Jacobson has studied what sort of redundancy is required to make a wind system as reliable as a coal-fired power plant. What Jacobson found is that if you build one windmill in West Texas, it might generate electricity at 40% of its rated generating capacity. Most of the time, the windmill will produce far less than its rated capacity, but on very windy days, it might produce almost all of its capacity, but on may other days, the windmill would produce very little of its rated capacity. A windmill located a few hundred miles away might produce electricity better on some days and worse on other days. a windmill in Kansas would perform differently, and a windmill in Oklahoma still differently. So if you hook up two windmills in Texas, with one in New Mexico, one in Oklahoma, and one in Kansas, you might be able to produce a decent amount of power, say 20% of the windmill's rated power output, most (80%) of the time.

Another way of saying this is that 50% of the time, if you hook up 5 windmills at selected sites in 4 states, you will generate the electrical equivalent of one windmill's full power output 4 out of every 5 days. What you will do for electricity on the 5th day is not clear. What is clear is that reliable electricity from wind will cost you a lot. You will have to pay for 5 windmills in order to be assured of at least 1 windmill's worth of electrical output 4 out of every 5 days, and you will have to pay for something to be assure of electricity on the other day. So Jacobson's wind scheme is quite expensive, in fact more expensive than a nuclear power plant's.

Would a solar-wind mix be cheaper? We have noted that solar generating facilities of a given power output would be more expensive than wind facilities of a similar power output rating. By careful wind site locations, you can increase wind output to 40% and even 45% of rated capacity in some instances. By moving your solar facility into a cloudless desert, you might improve your power output to a little better than 20% of your rated capacity. Solar output starts out the day weak in the morning, builds up till noon, and then starts dropping off. It is hard to think about solar without including storage, and that will add to the cost of an already expensive solar generating system. The actual cost of solar generating systems being built this year (2009), make nuclear generating systems look really cheap. So you cannot count on a solar-wind mix to be cheaper than generating electricity with nuclear power.

Finally we ought to consider the Jacobson and Delucchi claim that electricity can be produced by their renewable system, can be produced

as cheap as coal.

But we need to look closely at their reasoning. They claim

Power from wind turbines, for example, already costs about the same or less than it does from a new coal or natural gas plant, and in the future wind power is expected to be the least costly of all options.

Well here we encounter a paradox. If wind power is so cheap, why is it that wind operators say they need a heavy subsidy in order to operate. Why is wind not able to compete on the open market? The answer is simple. Wind does not produce electricity when consumers want it. We have already seen that Jacobson's own in order to get wind generated electricity to consumers, wind producers have to buy windmill after windmill, and spread them all over the map, at increased transmission costs. So wind generated electricity may be cheap, but wind generated electricity when you want it is not cheap at all.

What of solar then? Jacobson and Delucchi claim

Solar power is relatively expensive now but should be competitive as early as 2020. A careful analysis by Vasilis Fthenakis of Brookhaven National Laboratory indicates that within 10 years, photovoltaic system costs could drop to about 10¢/kWh, including long-distance transmission and the cost of compressed-air storage of power for use at night. The same analysis estimates that concentrated solar power system with enough thermal storage to generate electricity 24 hours a day in spring, summer and fall could deliver electricity at 10¢/kWh or less.

Since I have just found a link to the referenced Fthenakis paper, and have not had a chance to review it, I will simply note that Fthenakis' conclusions are dramatically at odds with those of Australian Engineer Peter Lang, (See a review by Barry Brook with comments by others here.) A revised version of Lang's paper can be found here, and Brook's discussion of those revisions are found here. Lang argues that the capital costs of a reliable Solar power system would be 25 times as high as that of an all-nuclear power generation system. Since the contentions of Lang and Fthenakis are clearly at odds, and the referenced Fthenakis paper has not yet been reviewed, I will withhold final judgment on the issue, but will note that Fthenakis views, if accurately represented by the Scientific American article, probably do not represent mainstream thinking about future solar costs.

Mark Z. Jacobson and Mark Delucchi have thus written a new Scientific American article which claims much that has not been accepted by other researchers on renewable energy. Their article has already drawn significant criticisms, and no doubt will continue to do so. They also reference sources that appear to go well beyond mainstream of views on the future cost and utility of renewables. The Jacobson-Delucchi article also refers to Jacobson's past work which has also received significant criticism. Jacobson has proven in the past to be reticent to respond to criticisms of his work. And Jacobson and Delucchi have, as of yet, failed to respond to the criticisms posted on the Scientific American Web site. Therefore the current Jacobson-Delucchi Scientific American article can not be said the represent a plausible account of our energy future. The article contains an unsubstantiated and borderline irrational attack on nuclear power. Unfortunately this cult-like attack on nuclear power has been a frequent feature of Scientific American during the last couple of years.

Jacobson and Delucchi, Half baked at best

Some of my readers are aware that I have in the past addressed flaws in the work of Mark Z. Jacobson. Jacobson is a Stanford Professor, and normally I would expect that appointment to the Stanford faulty to carry with it the suggestion that the individual involved does good quality work. But my reviews of two of Jacobson's papers raises serious concerns about the quality of Jacobson's research. In "A Review of Mark Z. Jacobson's Review" I noted a number of major flaws in Jacobson's paper, Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security, which seemed to both over hype wind generated electricity and perform an absurd hit job on nuclear power. I was harshly critical of this Jacobson essay, and was hardly the only one to do so. Last December, Renewable Energy World.com published a Stanford press release on Mark Z. Jacobson's paper, Review of solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security. Numerous readers responded on line. "stop killin our wilderness" provided a devastating critique of Jacobson on Wind and Solar Thermal Power

obviously this person [Jacobson] lives in NORTHERN california, not southern california, or they would have a clue about how these technologies are vastly different here.

CSP uses nearly 90,000 gallons of water a year, just for rinsing mirrors (from a diesel truck), per megawatt - and that's for the inefficient air-cooled ones. water cooled use an additional 2,000,000 gallons of water/year per megawatt. 2 million gallons per year per megawatt!!! and the output declines as the temperature rises outside, right when we need the power most. idiotic. how can we justify these levels in SoCal, which is already on water rationing?

the land (10 acres/mw) is also permanently destroyed, and lengthy transmission means another 10% is lost.

to say "leave the rest as open space" around massive, inefficient wind turbines is also misleading. dynamiting, boring, trenching (so the turbines can pull power from the grid), concrete, roads, powerlines - all of these things add up to near-total devastation of the entire region when they are in SoCal deserts (which is usually where they are sited in SoCal). that means 45 - 70 acres per megawatt that is permanently decommissioned for all other uses. oh, and these turbines operate at roughly 16% of rated capacity, lower than rooftop solar, especially after transmission losses.

so, in terms of wasting HUGE amounts of water, killing habitats, destroying our carbon sinks (like the Mojave, which is a fantastic carbon sink, equal to temperate forest), massive roads and powerlines, and eminent domain, i beg to differ that these are reasonable solutions in SoCal. they are insane.

Other writers were nearly as harsh in their criticism of Jacobson. The most unfortunate Scientific American has further disgraced itself by publishing another deeply flawed Jacobson paper, A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables. Jacobson's Scientific American paper, coauthored by University of California-Davis researcher Mark A. Delucchi, is unfortunately behind a subscription wall, Jacobson and Delucchi have provided a parallel paper available by pdf download, Evaluating the Feasibility of a Large-Scale Wind, Water, and Sun Energy Infrastructure. This paper, however comes with the label, "INCOMPLETE DRAFT FOR REVIEW – DO NOT CITE, QUOTE, COPY, OR DISTRIBUTE." That I have access to is apower point presentation that is linked to the Scientific American announcement. That presentation is titled, Powering a Green Planet: Sustainable Energy, Made Interactive. In addition Scientific American has posted a number of comments on the Jacobson-Delucchi essay.

We have then a [aper behind a wall, a paper we are told to not use, a power point and a number of second hand comments. Not really a substitute for the actual paper, but hay this is a blog, and like a good blogger, if I don't have the actual facts, I can always put something together.

The graphic presentation tells us that the maximum amount of energy in use at any one time on earth is 12.5 terrawatts. The US EIA estimates that the energy demandwill rise to 16.9 TWs by 2030. With the US demand rising to 2.8 TWs. The authors tell us that there is an abundance of potential wind and solar resources to provide energy. The authors believe that by harvesting that energy in the form of electricity and electrifying surface transportation, and other aspects of the economy, the greater efficiency of electricity will reduce world wide energy demand to 11.5 TWs by 2030. The authors asdsume that all energy in 2939 will come from Three sources, Solar, Wind and Water.

Secondly the authors call for the use of clean technology only. They call for the use of technologies what work on a large scale today, and produce limited CO2 over their entire life cycle. They tell us that nuclear power results in up too 25 times more CO2 emissions than wind energy when reactor construction, uranium mining and refinement and transportation are considered. The authors then rank energy sources, using Jacobson's highly controversial ranking system, and of course wind and solar are ranked at the top. The authors conclude that 11.5 Terra watts can be provided by 3.8 million large wind turbines, 89,000 large photovoltaic and concentrated solar power plants, each rated at 300 MWs, and 900 hydro stations. The authors believe that this goal is possible to accomplish by 2030.

In addition to their very optimistic assumptions about the potential for overcoming materials parts shortages between now and 2030, the authors suggest that the cost of renewable generated electricity will drop dramatically during the same time span, with wind generated electricity dropping to as little as 4 cents per kWh, by 2020, and solar generated electricity with 24 hour a day storage dropping to about 10 cents per kWh. The authors estimate that the global cost of this system would be about 100 trillion dollars exclusive of the cost of transmission. Not all comments on the Power Point presentation were effusive with praise. Skeptic wrote"

I find your estimates for the costs to be extremely optimistic. I assume the wind estimate is for on-shore wind, as the costs for off-shore are much higher. Additionally, there is the question of the intermittent nature of both wind and solar. Without a reliable storage mechanism, they would need some sort of back-up for reliability. Finally, as very briefly mentioned in your final paragraph on page 8, there is the question of the transmission of these new energy sources to the demand. This would add significantly to the cost of this proposal and yet it is being downplayed here.

"hkulper" wrote

I'm sorry but your plan is merely a dreamy-eyed sketch that has not yet been pulled through a reality filter. I recommend you read Prof. David MacKay's publication "Sustainable Energy without the hot air" at www.withouthotair.com and learn how a realistic plan should be constructed. Also note that he arrives at much more modest results.

Comments on the scientificAmerican story, were equally harsh. "dwbd" wrote>

Pure garbage. Jacobson has written similar trash in the past. Charles Barton rips Jacobson's previous work to shreds:

http://nucleargreen.blogspot.com/search?q=jacobson

"dwbd" continued

Tom Blees has just written a devastating analysis of Danish Wind energy, that just blows away any dreams of Wind becoming an effective substitute for fossil fuels. Denmark is going to have to start PAYING its neighbors to accept its produces-the-most-when-needed-the-least Wind Energy:

http://bravenewclimate.com/2009/10/22/denmark-wind-experiment-awry/

Peter Lang has done a solid analysis of running Australia (certainly one of the best locations on Earth) on Solar Power:

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_solar_realities_v2.pdf

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_solar_realities_addendum.pdf

His conclusion:

"…The capital cost would be 20 times more than nuclear power. The least-cost solar option would require 400 times more land area and emit 20 times more CO2 than nuclear power.
Conclusions: solar power is uneconomic. Government mandates and subsidies hide the true cost of renewable energy but these additional costs must be carried by others…"

Peter Lang shows that just the power transmission trunk lines to support a Wind & Solar strategy in Australia will cost 50% more that the Nuclear option:

http://bravenewclimate.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/lang_transmission_cost.pdf

And Peter is using a pricey $4,000 per kw for Nuclear Power. Whereas ABWR’s built in Japan in the 90’s cost $1400 per kw, Chinese recent estimates for the final cost of their first two AP-1000s at $1760 per kw. Before the Coal Lobby had the NRC (Nuclear Rejection Commission) instated, Nuclear Reactors in the USA were coming in at an average of $1100 per kwe with Quad Cities 1800 MWe coming it at $680 per kwe, that’s in 2007 dollars!!

Depleted Cranium has a couple articles about how the pro-fossil-fuel NRC Scam was used to cause Nuclear Costs to skyrocket in the United States:

http://depletedcranium.com/hey-hey-ho-ho-the-nrc-has-got-to-go/#comments

http://depletedcranium.com/why-i-hate-the-nrc/

Edoates summerized the problem which lies at the heart of what I call the Era of Confusion:

The article is in direct conflict with David JC MacKay's book: "Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air" (which is available free online). He does a detailed analysis of many renewable and not-so-renewable sources of energy, and the basic conclusion is that without nuclear, it doesn't work.

My question for the authors and SciAm editors, is "what are we poor non-scientists to make of all of this?" We don't have the resources or time to compare these conflicting books/articles head to head. You could do us a tremendous service, and help the public debate along by doing so.

Reading the SciAm article, a bunch of folks are going to say, "peachy: we're done. All the world has to do is spend 5 trillion a year for 20 years." Those reading MacKay's book will say, "Peachy: bring on the nuc's and we're all set."

We are inundated with conflicting information that we cannot verify, so each faction picks the data that serves its ends, and blathers away on some TV show, then some politicians simplify it even more, and use it to push an unknown agenda.

Please, so a comprehensive survey of the numbers and claims, at least from these two sources.

"sethdayal" added

This paper is an irresponsible piece of nonsense that would generally be found for order in the back pages of some pulp fiction magazine. The sad part is the editors for some reason chose to not only publish the claptrap but to endorse it.

How about the authors' 7 cents a kwh current cost of wind energy. Horns Rev 2, the world's largest offshore wind farm cost $1 billion for 209 MW = $4800 per kw peak.

Add extra transmission lines, storage, a capacity factor of 25%, finance it at 5% and we get 20 cents a kwh - Germany's and Ontario, Canada's feed in tariff.

So where did that absurd 7 cents a kwh come from?

Jacobson rejects nuclear power because he claims it puts out 25 times as much carbon per unit energy as wind, based on the astonishing claim that nuclear power plants lead to one nuclear bomb attack every thirty years, resulting in enormous amounts of atmospheric soot. While this argument in itself makes one wonder about his sanity, nuclear bomb material is not made in power reactors.

http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/2008/12/review-of-mark-z-jscobsons-review.html

Big Oil has been putting out anti nuclear propaganda since the oil crisis they engineered in the seventies - that almost no nuclear plants have been built since is evidence of their success.

Mass produced nuclear power is expected to cost $1 billion a gigawatt and 2500 gigawatts would displace all $900 billion a year in American fossil fuel purchases wiping out Big Coal/Oil with a three year payback. Call it the Nuclear Picken's plan. They know renewables are a joke and will have no effect on their profits.

James Hoggans new book Climate Cover-Up shows how Big Coal/Oil finances global warming deniers. One of their tactics is planting denier pieces in main stream media. It isn't a stretch to think they are doing the same thing with Nuclear deniers at Scientific American.

Author Mark A. Delucchi from is UC Davis and his work is brought to you courtesy of Chevron.

http://eec1.ucdavis.edu/news/news-archives/chevronendowment

The world is maybe ten years from a civilization destroying climate and peak oil disaster and only nuclear power can save us in that short a time frame. China and India have taken the lead with proposals for 120 and 450 gigawatts of new nuclear.

This sort of renewable nonsense from Nuclear Deniers and this magazines irresponsible editors bring us that much closer to the edge.

Dr. Michael Briggs wrote:

As a physicist focused on energy research, I find this paper so absurdly poorly done that it is borderline irresponsible. The authors cherry-picked highly inaccurate claims from other papers solely because those were the only claims that could support their pre-determined conclusion (that we can meet all of our needs purely with renewable power).

The fact that they think hydrogen fuel cells and tidal power have any value in the energy future is enough to illustrate that they either did not spend much time analyzing the actual technologies they are promoting, or are intentionally duping readers (as many in the energy field do).

What of the dismissal of nuclear power? First Jacobson and Delucchi claim that studies show that the nuclear power life cycle produces 25 times more carbon emissions. What studies we must ask? Not even the notorious "stormsmith" study comes anywhere close to concluding the 25 times figure, and "stormsmith" is an outlier among life cycle nuclear CO2 emission studies. That leaves us with only one study that would support the 25 times range, Jacobson's own study that based its nuclear emission totals on on the assumption that there would be a nuclear exchange between nations every thirty years, and that the spread of nuclear power would be the cause of exchange. This claim is based on very flawed reasoning.

Thus the Jacobson and Delucchi assumptions on nuclear power are not backed by serious research. Other Jacobson and Delucchi arguments appear to be based on questions that should receive further research and debate before a determination of facts is possible. Thus it seems reasonable to characterize the Jacobson and Delucchi, November 2009 Scientific American essay as half baked at best.