We’re also going to transmit more electricity further through high-voltage direct current transmission lines, which enable much more energy to flow with much lower losses. Continent-scale and larger interconnections are being built globally, linking Morocco to the U.K., Israel to Greece, ASEAN to China and Canada to the U.S. Spreading more renewables over a bigger area reduces most of the requirement for storage that geographically bounded, limited-technology studies claimed would be required.
But we’re still going to need a lot. Assuming a 100% renewables world, the Jacobson et al scenario out of Stanford of 143 countries is a good place to start. I’ve spent a lot of time with the Jacobson papers and Jacobson himself over the past few years, and have generally found the scenario to be conservative and plausible, although we disagree about a few things like the percentage of rooftop solar that will be in the mix and biofuels.