AnonymousSource: Quantum Energy Consultants
Quantum Energy Consultants, an energy firm led by sustainability experts dedicated to helping countries select the best energy pathway, released a new report that analyzes the total economic, environmental and health costs of the energy policies proposed by the 2020 U.S. presidential candidates. Utilizing new, propriety energy modeling software – TotalView Energy Model – the report’s findings indicate that while former Vice President Joe Biden’s proposed plan is estimated to cost upwards of $2 trillion, the long-term cost will be at least 30 percent less than President Donald Trump’s current plan.
Starting with data from The UC Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy’s 2035 Report, the TotalView Energy Model ran four simulations that evaluated the hourly electricity grid interaction to match supply (generation) and demand (electricity load), annual electricity cost, and the order-of-magnitude estimates of the full range of life cycle environmental and health impacts. The results of the simulations are then expressed in terms of U.S. 2020 dollars.
The TotalView Energy Model found that:
- The total costs of Biden’s policy are $810 billion for the 2035 year, which are 30.3 percent less than the total costs of $1,161 billion of Trump’s policy.
- The annual environmental costs of Biden’s policy were $77 billion – 45.6 percent less than the annual environmental costs of Trump’s policy, which total $141 billion.
- The annual health costs of Biden’s policy were $516 billion, which are 37.6 percent less than the annual health costs of Trump’s policy, which total $828 billion.
- Biden’s policy will create approximately 750,000 more jobs than Trump’s by 2035.
- While the infrastructure costs are slightly more in Biden’s policy, the environmental and health costs are substantially less, leading to a base estimate savings of $351 billion per year if the Biden policy is implemented as opposed to Trump’s policy. This is an average savings of $1,070 per person per year in the U.S.
- Once the electricity sector is fully decarbonized, the total cost savings in the electricity sector alone would be on the order of $1 trillion per year, and as high as $5 trillion per year, which are the base and high estimates of the annual environmental and health costs without policy changes.
The full report can be downloaded here.
“When a full picture of the economic, environmental and health costs is presented, it’s very apparent that decarbonizing the electricity sector will not only be less expensive than the current policy, but will be drastically less expensive in the years after the transition has been made,” said Daniel Howard, Ph.D., founder and CEO of Quantum Energy Consultants. “More importantly, with Biden’s policy, the U.S. will be leading the world in making progress towards keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius and avoiding the catastrophic effects of climate change that pose a serious existential threat to humanity.”
Trump’s energy plan is fossil fuel centric and expands coal burning electricity production, opens the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, approves massive natural gas pipelines (including the Dakota Access, Keystone XL and New Burgos pipelines), keeps the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement and repeals over 100 air pollution and environmental regulations including the Clean Power Plan.
Biden’s plan calls for a carbon-neutral power sector by 2035, invests significant amounts in innovation to drive dramatic cost reductions in key clean energy technologies (including battery storage, negative emissions tech, next generation building materials, renewable hydrogen and advanced nuclear), and implements novel financing instruments and tax incentives to maximize private sector investment in clean energy. It also aims to drive advances in energy efficiency through investment and creating a new Energy Efficiency and Clean Electricity Standard.
Quantum’s report was primarily funded by Lamara Heartwell, founder of One Body, an environmental philanthropist and the great granddaughter of Exxon’s co-founder.
About Quantum Energy Consultants
Quantum Energy Consultants helps countries select the best sustainable energy pathway to meet their long-term goals and save lives, the planet and billions of dollars. Its TotalView Energy Model uses exponentially more efficient algorithms to assess the real, tangible, long-term economic, environmental and health costs of national and regional energy plans, requiring only 1/10 the amount of time, data and money as using traditional energy models. This TotalView approach enables organizations planning and financing the future of energy to make data-driven energy plans based on a full picture of data that achieve their initiatives, save a tremendous amount of money and improve quality of life and the planet. The concept for TotalView Energy Planning was born during a 5-year project funded by the National Science Foundation, US EPA and USAID.
Thanks for this rational and scientific analysis but the truth is that facts don’t matter in most political encounters. People who believe in Trump’s promises will continue to do so without even looking at the facts.
Agree duke. I think it’s way too early to assess the results of New Zealand’s response to the virus. Their economy is heavily dependent on tourism and has suffered greatly. That, in turn will destroy countless lives and livelihoods. Furthermore, they are unlikely to succeed in keeping the virus out forever. Once they lose the will and economic ability to maintain isolation policies, the virus will return to New Zealand and do what viruses do. It will be interesting to compare how different corona response strategies worked around the world in the fullness of time, but it’s simply too early to do it now.
We should all envy Sweden’s position right now. Of all the countries throughout the world they are the only ones who stayed the course and followed nearly a century of epidemiological best practices. The rest of the world literally freaked out and tried something never before attempted on such a scale with disastrous consequences. The lockdown experiment failed miserably, meanwhile life goes on as normal in Sweden.
What a complete mischaracterization of Sweden’s actions and results! Just compare their stats to those of any of their neighboring countries. Totally contrafactual.
Indeed, New Zealand did it right, and continues to deal properly with the pandemic. Any other opinion is one that favors money over lives, and still gets it wrong, since prolonging the pandemic ends up doing more damage to the economy.
It’s just not a credible/logical country to compare the US to in regards to pandemic response. We made tons of mistakes…and certainly there are countries that appear to have handled it better than we did…but comparing the US with a set of geographically isolated islands with less than 5 million total people is not informative, useful or logical.
Somehow you think they aren’t humans living in a modern society? No urban centers? No medical establishment?
There’s no way you should compare New Zealand to the USA. The people of New Zealand have better healthcare, a better social safety net, better representative democracy, and a government that cares about their populace.
I’m with Chip.
How much in US grant $$ has the company benefited from? Follow the $$ and you understand the motive!
Big surprise Kohn.
@ 1:24, you haven’t checked the stats lately as they’re still doing fine while others are spiking with increasing death rates. From John’s Hopkins: https://twitter.com/jhnhellstrom/status/1320835197127053312/photo/1
and https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/
Sweden did what we were all supposed to do. While their deaths per million were above the US earlier, that was because we locked down, which did nothing but delay the inevitable. Now Sweden is better off, restaurants/bars/theaters all open, SCHOOLS NEVER CLOSED, masks not recommended, why are we all still trying our own shutdown experiment and not copying what is proven to work?!
Time will prove you wrong, cases and deaths in other Nordic countries are trending up while Sweden is going down. Also good reading on this subject regarding their initial higher deaths https://www.aier.org/article/swedens-high-covid-death-rates-among-the-nordics-dry-tinder-and-other-important-factors/
4:05 pm – Yes, one day it will work out “just like magic”.
USA numbers from Johns Hopkins, to compare to Nordics.
328.2 8,695,375 225.634 687 0.026
So, more cases per million, but half the fatalities per cases. And nobody who isn’t in fantasyland thinks we’re doing a good job.
And referencing AIER.org for medical data is a bit dodgy, considering they are a right-wing economic mouthpiece.
AIER.org – Funded by the Kochs, and…
“The institution has also funded research on the comparative benefits that sweatshops supplying multinationals bring to the people working in them. In October 2020, Twitter removed a tweet by White House coronavirus adviser Scott Atlas which claimed that masks do not stop the spread of viruses. Atlas’ tweet linked to an American Institute for Economic Research article which argued against the effectiveness of masks.”
Biden has been giving you numbers that don’t happen for 47 years- In fact a lot of or most politicians give you numbers you want to hear so they get your vote- Trump gets things done without the BS!!!
GIZMO1 It’s clear to me you either don’t have grandkids or you simply don’t care about them. And by the way you are right Trump does get things done like causing the deaths of over 200K people and if reelected will cause many more. sheesh….
Some more eco BS.
@ 8:35 When you and others make crazy statements like “Trump caused over 200k deaths” it discredits any other claim you make. If you think anyone in the white house earlier this year would have somehow prevented a pandemic that has hit every remote corner of the globe you don’t have an accurate understanding of covid or politics.
KOHN!–Gee your rebuttal is so compelling.
VOICE, it is not that he caused the pandemic but that he was ineffective and even intentionally dilatory in responding. Other countries acted quickly and even though they made some mistakes they did hugely better than we did. If we had acted, for example, as did S. Korea we would have over 200,000 less deaths in the US. So it is fair to point the finger at the administration which decided to lie to the people about the disease and promise that it would disappear by Easter rather than act aggressively.
KOHN1 – why do you hate the ecosystem? Did an endangered species hurt you as a child?
Biden’s energy plan is to replace fossil fuels with what? I attempted to follow the link to read the full report but after negotiating two links, I was faced with three reports. I gave up at that point because there wasn’t much point to keep chasing the rabbit down its hole. That said, The article does not mention what alternative fuel/s is/are used to compare to fossil fuels. Since the present alternatives are nowhere near capable of even 50% replacement, it appears to me that their calculations are bogus. Especially since they do not state the source of the alternative energy.
It makes no difference if one is for or against Biden’s energy plan. One must be realistic about what will be developed by 2035. Wind and solar have come a long, long way but they are not the panacea for replacement. The software may be great but without a viable energy source, it’s not something that can be taken to the bank. Fossil fuels won’t be going away anytime soon. Closing them down will make us once again energy dependent on other countries which means to cost of Gasoline, Fuel Oil, Natural Gas as well as other fossil fuel byproducts will skyrocket. Oh wait. AOC has that covered by replacing all our buildings with energy-efficient ones. Yeah, Right! There are no products on the market to do what she says she wants done. I know of what I speak because I built a high energy efficient house, two levels totaling 2,688 sq, ft. It cost a lot of money to build it that way and my energy costs were still high.
FWIW, electricity is not the answer especially to power vehicles, Wind and solar will not produce enough electricity, especially since the coal, gas and nuclear power plants would be phased out. Then there’s Hydrogen fuel but that’s got a long way to go before it’s any kind of an option. It’s good to seek alternative fuels but putting numbers on comparing Biden’s and Trump’s energy plans is irresponsible and misleading.
What we need is the energy which powers the UFO’s,
The party of Trump definitely likes to spend a lot of money as compared to the now defunct Republican party.
The renewable energy industry has become a major U.S. employer. … Nearly 335,000 people work in the solar industry and more than 111,000 work in the wind industry, compared to 211,000 working in coal mining or other fossil fuel extraction.
Trump gets things done? 225,000 dead USians disagree with you. But thanks for the derisive chuckle.
More completely irrational thinking that anyone else in charge could have waived a wand and prevented Covid deaths in the US in any meaningful way.
Voice, we have 4% of the population but 25% of the deaths. If we only had 4% of the deaths then that would be close to 40,000 people. So any number above that (about 185,000) are excess deaths caused by the party of Trump’s incompetent response to the pandemic. Just today his chief of staff admitted they had lost control of the pandemic. Let’s see how that works out for them. Sorry for throwing facts and figures into your opinion.
the facts and figures you wrote still don’t support your opinion that any other person/president could have prevented 200k people from dying in the US.
KOHN, what’s the matter? You don’t like clean air and water and beautiful land like we have here in SB? Hmmmm. Move to some bum%$$#@ place then in a RED state. Ugh.
Voice, there is nothing reasonable about your comment. Of course almost ANYONE would have handled this better than Trump. A failed reality tv star does not make a good president of a first world top country. Have ONE look at New Zealand and you can see how it should have been done.
GIZMO, No thanks. Trump is the biggest failure and embarrassment this country has ever seen. I cannot wrap my mind around people who think he is doing even anything close to a good job.
AGAIN, it is proven that the right wing propaganda machine just loves to call the Left “tax and spend” when really the Left is the side that is spending money on things that really really matter, like our environment and American healthcare. It’s clear by the 225,000 deaths that the Republicans do not care one lick about Americans. I have voted early and I voted Biden.
The key phrase in this article is “ Utilizing new, propriety energy modeling software.” The inputs to this software are not disclosed. The assumptions the software is based on are not disclosed. There is no way to repeat the results of the analysis, because the methodology is not disclosed.
Agree on a few points…but comparing America to New Zealand is just dumb. There are less than 5 million total people on the islands of New Zealand…
Big surprise Kohn.
I’m with SBCATOWMN.