The Healthcare Policy Podcast ® Produced by David Introcaso Stanford's Mark Jacobson's Discusses How the Healthcare Industry Can Eliminate Its Carbon Footprint (February 25th)
Per the essay I posted last week concerning federal policy makers' indifference toward the health harm imposed on Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries via the healthcare industry's carbon emissions, I thought it useful to discuss however limitedly why and how the US healthcare industry can rapidly transition to the use of clean or renewable energy resources, i.e., wind, water and solar (WWS). Possibly, if not likely, the leading US researcher on transitioning to 100% clean energy is Stanford's Professor Mark Jacobson. For example, as early as 2009, in an article published in Scientific American, he and a colleague argued the barriers to a 100% conversion to WWS worldwide are primarily social and political, not technological nor even economic. In a 2017 article published in Joule he and 27 colleagues summarized the development of what they termed “roadmaps” to transform energy infrastructures for 139 countries to 80% WWS by 2030. In 2020 Professor Jacobson published a text titled, “100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage for Everything." In it he explains in detail how the world can rapidly and entirely transition the world’s current combustion-based energy to 100% clean renewables and storage.
During this 34 minute conversation Professor Jacobson begins by briefly explaining clean energy's numerous advantages. Beyond avoided human and environmental harm, substantial economic savings are accrued from costs associated with continuing fossil fuel combustion, land use savings (e.g., clean energy does not require an extraction industry), permanent job growth, substantially cheaper energy costs, reductions in large scale energy disruption, increased access to energy by up to four billion people currently in energy poverty, and a decentralized world power supply. He then discusses generally how the US healthcare industry can convert to 100% clean energy in part by offering lessons learned from building his own 100% energy clean home and Stanford University's substantial transition to clean energy. Professor Jacobson concludes by making comment on carbon tax policies.
Mark Z. Jacobson is Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director of the Atmosphere/Energy Program, Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and the Precourt Institute for Energy and Co-Founder of The Solutions Project, 100.0rg and 100% Clean, Renewable Energy Movement. His work provided the primary scientific justifications behind the Green New Deal and House bills H.R. 3314, 3671, and 330 and Senate bill S.987, all of which called for the U.S. to go to 100% clean, renewable energy. In addition, his 100% roadmaps were the scientific basis behind the platforms of three presidential candidates and a major political party in 2016. To date, he has published three textbooks and over 165 peer-reviewed journal articles. He has testified four times before the Congress. In 2005, he received the American Meteorological Society Henry G. Houghton Award. In 2013, he received an American Geophysical Union Ascent Award and the Global Green Policy Design Award. In 2016, the Cozzarelli Prize from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2018, he received the Judi Friedman Lifetime Achievement Award and in 2019 he was selected as "one of the world’s 100 most influential people in climate policy" by Apolitical. He has also served on the Energy Efficiency and Renewables advisory committee to the U.S. Secretary of Energy. He earned undergrad degrees in civil engineering in economics and a masters in environmental engineering from Stanford and was graduated from UCLA with a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science.
(The sound quality of some portions of this discussion are poor, my apologies.)
Information on Prof Jacobson's 2020 text, "100% Clean, Renewable Energy and Storage" is at: https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/100-clean-renewable-energy-and-storage-for-everything/26E962411A4A4E1402479C5AEE680B08.
His 2009 Scientific American article is at: https://www.evwind.es/2009/11/16/a-plan-to-power-100-percent-of-the-planet-with-renewables-by-mark-z-jacobson-and-mark-a-delucchi/2259.
His 2017 Joule article is at: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2542435117300120.
Prof. Jacobson's 2015 Energy and Commerce testimony is at: https://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/15-11-19-HouseEEC-MZJTestimony.pdf
His Stanford webpage, that contains a significant amount of information, is at: http://web.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/15-11-19-HouseEEC-MZJTestimony.pdf.
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