3FOOD

Third Industrial Revolution Consulting Group
The assessment is not a prediction, since there are countervailing forces overtly attempting to
block displacement of fossil fuels and nuclear resource development, and there are unwitting
barriers that should be superseded, notably updating public utility planning and approval
regulations, removing subversive tax subsidies, and accounting for the fully monetized costs of
non-regulated externalities so as to effectively phase out the competitive advantage of fossil
fuels over solar and wind. According to the 2015 assessment by the International Monetary
Fund (IMF), worldwide subsidies to the fossil fuel industry exceed €5 trillion per year.
On the upside, as transparently detailed in the Stanford/UC Berkeley assessment, the economic
and social benefits are immense, summarized in the following box. The energy transformation
will save the average person worldwide $30/year in fuel costs, ~$370/year in health costs, and
$1,820/year in climate costs (2013 dollars).
TIR GLOBAL ENERGY MARKET OPPORTUNITIES
Renewable powered electrical conversion of 139 nations projected by 2050 to:
• Create 23 million 35-year construction jobs and 17.5 million 35-year operation jobs for the energy
facilities alone, the total outweighing by ~3 million the 37 million fossil & nuclear jobs lost.
•Avert ~4.6 million premature air pollution mortalities per year in the 139 countries and avoid ~€2.9
trillion/year in health costs (2015 dollars).
•Prevent ~€14.3 trillion per year in 2050 global warming costs (2015 dollars) otherwise due to 139-
country emissions.
Wind and solar are intermittent diurnally and seasonally, although geographically distributing
the systems can substantially dampen the intermittency. However, the advances in materials
chemistry and engineering of nano-materials are leading to significant gains in a variety of
energy storage technologies. Recent figures on the levelized cost of storage (LCOS) compiled by
Lazard indicate the current state of play in the chart below. These estimates are continuously
changing targets, with some of the technology costs already further declining over past months.
227