' NO MIRACLES NEEDED ' : BOOK REVIEW PRECIS

MARK JACOBSON - an influential engineering professor at Stanford University - whose research was the basis of the policy approach known as '' the Green New Deal '' - is furthering the debate.

In ''No Miracles Needed'' he says the world must urgently tackle the related scourges of global warming, energy insecurity and local air pollution. This, he insists will require '' no miracle technologies ''.

On the contrary, '' we have 95% of the technologies that we need already commercially available. We also know how to build the rest.''

The heart of his plan is a dramatic expansion of wind and solar power [ alongside some hydrogen and geothermal energy ], and, relatedly, of energy storage and transmission.

At first blush, that sounds plausible. Wind and solar are not only commercially viable and operating at scale around the world ; they are the cheapest forms of new power generation in most countries.

Renewable capacity is set to grow by 2,400 GW from 2022 to 2027, equal to the entire power capacity in China today.

Meanwhile, the technologies involved in power transmission are so well established that America's National Academy Engineering hailed grid electrification as the greatest engineering feat of the 20th century.

And though energy storage is not yet ubiquitous and affordable, large battery-based systems are operating successfully on grids from California to Australia.

Professor Jacobson's scholarly and analytical book is persuasive in other ways too. In common with Mr. Gates, he believes everything that can reasonably be electrified should be. 

He rightly denounces the inefficiency of internal-combustion engines and other fossil-burning generators in comparison with electric alternatives.  

He acknowledges that long-distance transport and certain industrial applications will require fuels such as hydrogen, rather than electricity, if they are to be decarbonised.

And he cleverly rebuts concerns about the variability of wind and solar generation : big power plants, he notes, are themselves often unavailable owing to scheduled maintenance and outages.

Much of France's nuclear fleet has recently been offline, wreaking havoc on its grid.

The World Students Society thanks The Economist.