Solar power could deliver $400 billion in environmental and public health benefits throughout the US by 2050

These would be the greenhouse-gas and air pollution gains of the solar high-penetration scenario

These would be the greenhouse-gas and air pollution gains of the solar high-penetration scenario

The results were published last month in the study titled ‘The environmental and public health benefits of achieving high penetrations of solar energy in the United States’by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). It was found that a future U.S. electricity system in which solar power plays a major role—14% of demand in 2030, and 27% in 2050 (the so-called SunShot Initiative—would result in enduring environmental and health benefits. It was also claimed that the existing fleet of solar power plants is already offering a down-payment towards those benefits and that there are sizable regional differences in these. What is more, achieving the high-penetration scenario would also reduce power-sector water withdrawals by 8% in 2030 and 5% in 2050, relative to the baseline scenario, while water consumption could be reduced by 10% in 2030 and 16% in 2050. The total monetary value of the greenhouse-gas and air pollution benefits of the high-penetration solar scenario exceeds $400 billion in present-value terms under central assumptions. Focusing on the existing end-of-2014 fleet of solar power projects, recent annual benefits equal more than $1.5 billion under central assumptions.

Environmental and health benefits of achieving the SunShot Vision Scenario (14% of U.S. electricity demand by 2030 and 27% by 2050) (Source: LBL)

Source: The Energy Collective