Can the whole planet really get 100 percent of its energy from renewables in just two decades?

clipped from www.worldofrenewables.com Yes, according to new research, and for cheaper than coal. The paper, "A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables," was published in the November issue of Scientific American. The magazine is no foreigner to printing clean energy moon shots. In December 2007, it grabbed global headlines for its solar grand plan, a roadmap for getting 69 percent of America's electricity from sunlight by 2050. This latest piece is the work of Stanford civil and environmental engineering Professor Mark Z. Jacobson and University of California-Davis researcher Mark Delucchi. Its main conclusion should sound familiar to the clean energy faithful: A fossil-powered future is no longer necessary and may not even make economic sense. But how exactly? The answer lies in scaling up three categories of existing clean energy technologies – wind, solar and water – and global political will.