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Imagining a fossil fuel free future.

World energy 2050, 19 TWy, All energy from electricity, most energy consumption from electricity, higher efficiency from using electricity.

World Energy 2050 Sankey from Excel

ramblings.mcpher.com

Drag to rearrange nodes.
acknowledgement for d3.js and sankey diagram to Mike Bostok
This shows a 2050 scenario where energy consumption shifts to mostly electricity, and this improves the overall efficiency of energy consumption. This scenario only needs 19 TWy of primary energy compared to the 33 TWy of primary energy projected by the EIA. 

The first thing to clarify is that this scenario is useful for pointing out general trends, but an actual 2050 energy system will depend on how different technologies like electricity energy storage and fuel synthesis scale and reduce in cost over time. Based on the PV learning curve, this cumulative installed capacity projects that daylight electricity from StratoSolar is less than $0.02/kWh in today's prices, nighttime electricity and hydrogen fuel may be about twice as expensive, and synthetic liquid fuels may be about three times as expensive. With a price structure like this we would expect energy consumption to switch to daylight electricity where possible. We would also expect energy use from electricity to be more efficient. Because of overall higher efficiency the need for energy generation is reduced to 19 TWy from the EIA 33 TWy 2050 projection, with a similar reduction in the remaining energy infrastructure. Widespread adoption of electricity driven heat pumps for Residential, Commercial and Industrial heat, and electric vehicles for Transportation would make this scenario possible.

The biggest point that this diagram gets across is that just looking at pieces of the infrastructure like generation or storage does not get across the full picture of what an all non CO2 emitting, fossil fuel free, electricity based energy system looks like. The cost of the increased Transmission and Distribution and adding Synthesis, and Storage would at least equal the cost of new generation. 

This StratoSolar based projection shows the average cost of energy in 2050 at about today's cost or lower. Optimistic projections for current wind, solar or nuclear would have overall electricity generation costing several times as much as StratoSolar and higher than today's costs. Higher electricity cost of generation would mean higher cost again for electricity from storage and synthetic fuels based on this higher cost of generation. These prices would probably be higher than fossil fuel prices, and so given the difficulty of getting a worldwide agreement on carbon taxes, fossil fuels would probably still be consumed in large amounts.
 
The lower electricity generation and storage costs enabled by StratoSolar are essential to enable a fossil fuel free, future world energy system like this projection.
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