Sustainable Reader's Book Club: No Miracles Needed by Mark Z. Jacobson
- Simon Laporte
- May 22
- 8 min read
The escalating pace of climate change and the severe public health impacts of air pollution, largely driven by fossil fuel combustion responsible for millions of premature deaths annually, demand immediate, scalable solutions for decarbonization without stopping development and causing global injustice.
Will this take a miracle? A silver bullet? A sci-fi gizmo?
The answer is "No!". Thankfully, no miracle is needed, as the solution is already here. It is called: ”Existing technologies available on the market today at a low cost.”
In his 2023 book, "No Miracles Needed," Mark Z. Jacobson demonstrates how to achieve a world free of air pollution using existing technology in a cost-effective manner.
As a prominent researcher in renewable energy planning, Mark Z. Jacobson has consistently advocated for renewables, supported by technical analysis and market data.
Jacobson suggests two core strategies of 1) electrifying and minimize our energy demands and 2) changing our energy sources to 100% wind, water and solar (WWS). This article is focused on addressing the energy sources as we have written many articles on energy efficiency and electrification in our other blog posts already.
Greenhouse gas emissions from a Wind, Water, Solar (WWS) electricity mix
Wind
Modern wind turbines, particularly large-scale offshore installations, offer cheap electricity with high-capacity factors (often exceeding 50-60% offshore). Offshore wind is typically un-correlated from onshore wind and solar, contributing to grid stability when integrated into a combined system. Onshore wind turbines can offer even cheaper electricity but lower capacity factors.
Solar
Cheapest and simplest way of any electricity source solar has massive benefit all over the world. Particularly utility scale can provide the cheapest electricity available on the market. While often criticised as being unreliable, it is important to remember that electricity is produced even during cloudy weather.
Water
For geographies with hydropower potential, hydropower turbines can provide a great base load for the grid with consistent power. However, the cost, efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions of hydropower vary greatly. Some of the most successful WWS countries such as Norway has been able to do this successfully.
What doesn’t work
Fossil fuels (Coal, Oil & Natural Gas)
These are the main emitters of CO2 pollution while releasing air pollution annually killing millions of people. The cost of electricity is recently becoming increasingly uncompetitive with WWS. The cost of electricity is also dependent on fuel availability and global trade stability which is becoming increasingly unreliable. Jacobson also argues that Carbon capture and storage combined with conventional technologies is a distraction. The technology still comes with significant CO2 pollution due to the high electricity demand for carbon capture itself.
Nuclear
Nuclear fission is a low-carbon, high-capacity factor approach for base load power. Nuclear has been deployed to great effect in France, where gCO2eqv/MWh is well below EU average and seems at first glance as a likely contender for the energy mix. However, Jacobson’s analysis highlights critical drawbacks:
While the electricity produced from an already built nuclear plant is cost-effective compared to fossil fuel, the long duration of building nuclear facility comes with an immense opportunity cost of the time which could have been been spent producing WWS energy.
Each nuclear plant is an immensely complex task with a strict regulatory regardless of country, taking 10-19 year on average to complete. This is 10-19 years that could have been spent putting the money to better use on building utility scale solar or offshore wind farms, where the planning-to-operation time is significantly shorter. During the planning and construction pollution with fossil fuel technologies will continue resulting in a significant higher gCO2eqv/MWh.
Nuclear also comes with an additional set of challenges such as load-following capabilities, handling of nuclear waste, nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear meltdown which in themselves can become a deciding factor in some contexts.
Biomass
Some look to biomass as a zero-carbon emission solution, typically done through combustion of wood pellets. The logic is that trees absorb the same quantity of CO2 when growing in sustainably managed forest as is released during combustion of the pellets resulting in net-zero. While this gives relatively low CO2 emissions (even after adjusting for production and transport) burning biomass releases massive quantities of other air pollutants. Non-green house gas air pollution is annually responsible for over 5 million deaths worldwide. Additionally, many wood pellets are sourced from opaque value chains where sustainable forestry cannot be fully verified.
Grid stability with 100% WWS electricity mix
The fears of blackouts and spikes in electricity tariffs are common arguments against WWS. Recently, a blackout in Spain, while no cause has been published at time of writing, puts public focus on stability of variable source electricity grids which needs to be addressed in order for a transition to 100% WWS to be successful. This is less of an issue in countries with access to large scale hydropower, but a real challenge to address in countries without. Jacobson prescribes a mix of approaches, a few of which are presented here:
Energy Storage
Most important of these is planning for energy storage to even out peaks and valleys from wind and solar supply. The recent reduction in lithium-ion batteries is a great start and proves a good option for both building scale systems and grid scale systems, but batteries have drawbacks when it comes to regional-scale energy storage as a lower lifetime increases the life-cycle cost.
The cheapest option is to work with the potential energy of pumped energy storage. This system creates on-demand hydropower with low energy loss over time. Some geographies do not have access to the elevation differentials needed to take advantage of pumped storage. In such cases cross-regional grids become more important. Likewise, it might also be worth exploring the feasibility of alternative storage technologies such as underground thermal energy storage, green hydrogen electrolysis, ice storage and phase-change materials.
Regional Electricity Grid
Different geographies have access to different renewable energy with different energy production profiles. Establishing a cross-regional energy grid therefore becomes beneficial. This approach has been used to great effect in wind-power dominated Denmark where about 10% of annual energy is imported during local low-wind periods.
Demand-response schemes
Demand driven tariffs give a great incentive to building and factory owners to design around peak & valleys in the supply and demand. For example, scheduled charging of electric vehicles, ice storage during surplus energy supply, and slight changes in thermostat setpoints in buildings.
What does it cost to switch to wind, water solar electricity generation?
Renewables are becoming increasingly cost competitive with conventional power even without subsidies.
The most common metric is levelized cost of energy (LCOE) which takes, initial capital expenditure, interest rate, maintenance cost, fuel prices, construction time, plant lifetime and plant efficiency into account for each energy source. This is monitored by many institutions: Lazard, NREL, Fraunhofer, IRENA, IPCC, etc. The exact conclusions vary from study to study, as they are generally based on publicly available data from different regions. There are however common trends for all studies.
Onshore wind generates the cheapest electricity off all energy sources followed by utility scale PV.
Fossil fuels are pricier than renewables.
Nuclear is typically pricier than conventional energy.
The estimates for cost of storage very wildly as many projects are yet to capture the recent developments in storage cost as estimates are built from completed projects.
LCOE of renewables and energy storage have dropped drastically over recent years. The pricing logic from just 5 years ago would misunderstand the world today. Price projections forecast this trend to continue, further shortening the pay-back time compared to conventional energy sources.
Jacobson takes this argument further. By looking holistically at conventional power generation methods, he also factors in the additional societal cost from business-as-usual (BAU). These additional costs come from the severe health impact from air pollution from combustion which is one of the leading causes of death world-wide. As well as the societal costs from climate change caused environmental damages on building and infrastructure. Together these two factors dwarf the pure cost of electricity.
As most current fossil fuel energy prices do not include the true cost of externalities such as the adverse effects from climate change and air pollution, the LCOE price of electricity charts, such as the one above, are give a skewed picture favouring fossil fuels. The true price of fossil fuels is significantly higher than that of the energy itself. Energy planners are naturally biased towards simply considering the cost of energy, while ignoring the wider societal impacts, an analysis which is difficult and fuzzy, but nonetheless extremely important when choosing the energy sources of the future.
Conclusion
No Miracles Needed by Mark Z. Jacobson proves a useful guide for a simple and cheap way for to complete the transition to a zero-emission society. The book urges society to focus on what works in form of wind, water and solar. And leave natural gas, carbon capture, biomass and nuclear none of which give a clear way to a zero-emission world. Jacobson reframes the costing conversation, not just as the price for electricity, where renewables already is cost competitive, but also in terms of holistic societal damage making the arguments for renewables overwhelming.
The book is highly recommended for sustainably minded readers and serves as a good starting point for sustainable energy planning. The book also dives into the specifics of each energy technology and the specific mix of strategies which needs to be adapted for various geographical regions.
Writer’s note on nuclear
Recently, several European countries have lifted the “ban” on nuclear energy as part of the energy planning. This is in itself good. No energy source should per definition be off the table during the energy transition. Every stone should be turned. However, following the arguments in this article such as complexity, time-to-power and cost, a large-scale bet on nuclear power in Europe would be ill-advised.
Sources & Contributors:
No Miracles Needed: How Today's Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air. Jacobson, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009249553
Impacts of Green New Deal Energy Plans on Grid Stability, Costs, Jobs, Health, and Climate in 143 Countries. Jacobson et al., 2019, One Earth 1, 449–463. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2019.12.003
The Solutions Project. https://thesolutionsproject.org/
Lazard's Levelized Cost of Energy Analysis - Version 17.0. Lazard, 2024, lazard.com/media/xemfey0k/lazards-lcoeplus-june-2024-_vf.pdf
Levelized Cost of New Generation Ressourecs in the Annual Energy Outlook 2022. U.S. Energy Information Administraion (EIA), 2022, eia.gov/outlooks/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
Renewable Power Generation Costs in 2023. International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), 2024
Graphics from RethinkX. rethinkx.com
Article contributions by Gregers Reimann, IEN Consultants
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