One of the longest and most contested disputes about renewable energy sources discusses how practical the technology is. Doubts about the potency of the energy source and subsequently its cost effectiveness stand as the tallest lightning rods, especially in political and commercial realms.

Presently, the United States Energy Information Agency (EIA) summates that 11 percent of the world's energy is sourced from renewable initiatives, with an estimated increase to 15 percent by 2040. The EIA also approximates that 21 percent of the world's energy comes from renewable sources, with a projected rise to 25 percent by 2040. Both of these changes have been considered in congress with widely accepted projections of population growth and the subsequent shifts in energy consumption. 

However, a study which recently appeared in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the official journal of the United States National Academy of Sciences (NAS), ascertains that the idea of most of the world operating on electricity produced from clean energy programs by the year 2050 is not only feasible but would be highly beneficial to the planet and all of its inhabitants. 

"This is the first study that has assembled and scaled up the assessment of individual technologies to the whole world and assessed technology implementation to 2050, taking the environmental impacts of production into account," Edgar Hertwich, one of the study's participants  from Norwegian University of Science and Technology, tells Planet Experts. 

One of the factors that makes the discoveries from the study so important is that, up to this point, little has been known about the environmental impact on a global shift toward renewable energy technologies becoming the planet's primary source of power, or if there are enough materials available, especially with a growing population, to sustain such an initiative. Along with health benefits for the world, the test also revealed positive economic outcomes. 

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