An overview is presented of the two engineering options which have been offered during the past seven years to accomplish a complete transition to renewable global power generation by 2050. These two approaches are the Wind-Water-Solar program, proposed by Jacobson and Delucchi, and the Energy Ship program, proposed by Platzer and Sarigul-Klijn. A comparative evaluation of the technical, economic and social acceptability aspects of the two options is given. It is argued that the demonstration of techno-economic feasibility needs to be supplemented by an additional ranking criterion, namely the social acceptability factor, in order to select the most promising engineering approach for a successful transition to an emission-free global economy by 2050.
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