Posted by Bill Weihl, Green Energy Czar, and Charles Baron, Google.org, Clean Energy Team (Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog .) renewable energy cheaper than coal initiative and have invested in several clean energy companies and projects around the world. McKinsey’s Low Carbon Economics Tool (LCET), we assessed the long-term economic impacts for the U.S. assuming breakthroughs were made in several different clean energy technologies, like wind, geothermal and electric vehicles. McKinsey’s LCET is a neutral, analytic set of interlinked models that estimates the potential economic and technology implications of various policy and technology assumptions. analysis and associated data available everywhere because we believe it could provide a new perspective on the economic value of public and private investment in energy innovation. Here are just some of the most compelling findings: Energy innovation pays off big: We compared “business as usual” (BAU) to scenarios with breakthroughs in clean energy technologies. On top of those, we layered a series of possible clean energy policies (more details in the report ). We found that by 2030, when compared to BAU, breakthroughs could help the U.S.:Grow GDP by over $155 billion/year ($244 billion in our Clean Policy scenario)
Create over 1.1 million new full-time jobs/year (1.9 million with Clean Policy)
Reduce household energy costs by over $942/year ($995 with Clean Policy)
Reduce U.S. oil consumption by over 1.1 billion barrels/year
Reduce U.S. total carbon emissions by 13% in 2030 (21% with Clean Policy)
Speed matters and delay is costly: Our model found a mere five year delay (2010-2015) in accelerating technology innovation led to $2.3-3.2 trillion in unrealized GDP, an aggregate 1.2-1.4 million net unrealized jobs and 8-28 more gigatons of potential GHG emissions by 2050.Policy and innovation can enhance each other: Combining clean energy policies with technological breakthroughs increased the economic, security and pollution benefits for either innovation or policy alone. Take GHG emissions: the model showed that combining policy and innovation led to 59% GHG reductions by 2050 (vs. 2005 levels), while maintaining economic growth.
This is a really great move by Google and hatts off to them and best of luck for the growth.
ReplyDeleteA perfect cost vs value argument. It is so important to be able to see clearly what we lose by not doing something as part of understanding what we gain. It becomes very hard to argue against a proposal which is presented as clearly as this.
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