Global renewable energies: a dynamic study of implementation time, greenhouse gas emissions and financial needs

The current worldwide energy consumption is largely dominated by non-renewable energies such as coal, oil and gas. For well-known reasons, this concept should be changed to a more sustainable one based on renewables. As learned from history, a transition from one energy system to another has always taken about 100 years. A dynamic material flow model is developed to simulate some key elements for the implementation of renewable energy systems on a large scale. These key elements are the required industrial capacity, the energy and financial requirements and the impact on greenhouse gas mitigation. Results are presented for wind, photovoltaic, hydro, solar thermal, geothermal and biomass electrical energy systems. The comparison of two different implementation strategies, moderate ≈60 years and fast ≈30 years, shows that the implementation time is the only limitation, resulting in large production overcapacities. The energy and financial needs are not as critical. The implementation of renewables on a large scale would considerably reduce CO₂ emissions by 2 tons per person per year for a world population of 7 billion people.