Global warming, air pollution, and energy insecurity are three of the greatest problems facing humanity.
Roadmaps are developed and grid analyses are performed here for 145 countries to address these
problems. The roadmaps call for a 100% transition of all-purpose business-as-usual (BAU) energy to
wind-water-solar (WWS) energy, efficiency, and storage, ideally by 2035, but by no later than 2050, with
at least 80% by 2030. Grid stability analyses find that the countries, grouped into 24 regions, can exactly
match demand with 100% WWS supply and storage, from 2050–2052. Worldwide, WWS reduces end -use energy by 56.4%, private annual energy costs by 62.7% (from $17.8 to $6.6 trillion per year), and
social (private plus health plus climate) annual energy costs by 92.0% (from $83.2 to $6.6 trillion per
year) at a present-value cost of B$61.5 trillion. The mean payback times of the capital cost due to
energy- and social-cost savings are 5.5 and 0.8 years, respectively. WWS is estimated to create
28.4 million more long-term, full-time jobs than lost worldwide and may need only B0.17% and
B0.36% of world land for new footprint and spacing, respectively. Thus, WWS requires less energy,
costs less, and creates more jobs than BAU. Sensitivity test indicate the following. Increasing district
heating and cooling may reduce costs by allowing flexible loads to replace inflexible loads, thereby
replacing electricity storage and overgeneration with low-cost heat storage. A battery cost that is 50%
higher than in the base case increases mean overall energy costs by only 3.2 (0.03–14.5)%. Almost all
regions need fewer hours of load shifting than assumed in the base case, suggesting that actual load
shifting may be easier than assumed. Increasing the use of electricity for hydrogen fuel-cell-electric
vehicles instead of for battery-electric vehicles increases overall cost in most regions tested, due to the
greater efficiency of battery-electric vehicles, but decreases overall cost in some regions by improving
grid stability. Finally, shifting battery vehicle charging from day-night to mostly day charging reduces
cost in the regions tested; shifting to mostly night charging increases cost. Ninety-five percent of the
technologies needed to implement the plans proposed are already commercial