ERG Alums Williams, Farbes, and Professor Torn Reveal US Can Achieve Net-Zero Carbon Emissions by 2050

A new article, “Carbon-neutral pathways for the United States,” published in the open-access journal AGU Advances by ERG alums Jim Williams, Jamil Farbes, ERG alum and adjunct professor Margaret Torn, and others found that “reaching zero net emissions of carbon dioxide from energy and industry by 2050 can be accomplished by rebuilding U.S. energy infrastructure to run primarily on renewable energy, at a net cost of about $1 per person per day.” This study was featured in several news sources, including the Berkeley Lab, Daily Californian, Pv Magazine, and Clean Technica. “The decarbonization of the U.S. energy system is fundamentally an infrastructure transformation,” Torn states in the Berkeley Lab article. “It means that by 2050 we need to build many gigawatts of wind and solar power plants, new transmission lines, a fleet of electric cars and light trucks, millions of heat pumps to replace conventional furnaces and water heaters, and more energy-efficient buildings – while continuing to research and innovate new technologies.” Read the American Geophysical Union (AGU) paper here, full feature in the Berkeley Lab here, the Daily Californian here, the Pv Magazine here, and the Clean Technica here.