Could 79 People Solarize the U.S. Electric Grid?

Abstract

Although wealth inequality has many established negatives, this study investigates a potential positive, unprecedented wealth concentration makes it possible for solutions to large and seemingly intractable problems to be deployed by convincing a relatively small number of individuals to invest. In order to probe this potential outcome of inequality, this study quantifies the number of people necessary to radically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for global climate destabilization from the U.S. electric grid, which is one of the largest sources of emissions. Specifically, this study determined that 1544 GW of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology must be deployed to eliminate the use of fossil fuels on the U.S. electric grid, if PV is conservatively deployed as a function of population density. The results showed that only 79 American multi-billionaires would need to invest in PV. This investment would still leave each investor with a billion dollars of liquid assets as well as substantial long-term profits from PV. The analysis also concluded that 79 people is a conservative upper estimate of those that would need to be convinced of the usefulness of moving to a solar U.S. grid and that this estimate is likely to decrease further in the future.

1. Introduction

By the 1990s in most publicly held companies, the compensation of the highest-paid employees (e.g., top executives) was virtually independent of their job performance [1,2]. Simultaneously, income inequality has risen as the value provided to society by these top earners has become divorced from their earnings.1 Despite the relatively extreme income inequality observed in the U.S., the distribution of wealth is far more concentrated [5,6,7]. In 2017, the distribution of wealth has become clearly unequal, with the lower-income half of the American population owning about 1.1% of the total wealth, while the wealthiest 1% possessing about 35.5% of the wealth [8]. It is well known that much of this wealth is inherited and that the transmission of capital down the generations is an extremely important determinant of an individual’s or a household’s wealth [9,10,11,12,13]. For all of these extremely wealthy people, income is dominated not by their efforts (work), but by their investments (e.g., rental income, capital gains, dividends, interest, etc.). As, for example, the higher one’s income the greater the share of that income is dominated by capital gains [14]. In addition, U.S. tax law for capital gains has an effective tax rate of less than half of those whose income is based on labor [15] and decreases in taxes are evident as the rich become super rich [16]. This tax policy was one of the factors that has further concentrated wealth over time.

The majority of the literature negatively views wealth inequality as studies show that wealth inequality leads to high social costs [17]. Here, this literature will be summarized to put the potential benefit of inequality discussed in this paper into context. Inequality does not generate optimal outcomes for society if the incentives rest on rents [18]. Inequality can cause individuals to divert effort to securing favor from the wealthy because they possess the preponderance of capital, resulting in resource misallocation, corruption, nepotism, and the expected sub-optimal economic, social, and environmental consequences [17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29]. It has already been well-established that income inequality negatively affects economic growth in the future [19,20,21], in part because lower income households cannot stay healthy and accumulate physical and human capital [22,23] (e.g., poor, smart, young people cannot go on to college because of access to funding or perceived unacceptable debt burden, which reduces overall labor productivity [18]). This inequality also contributes to lower intergenerational mobility (e.g., less earnings mobility across the generations) [24] and increases the probability of political conflict [25]. Simultaneously, income inequality generally creates sub-optimal policy [26], which reduces the public good to help economic growth and creates an inequality of opportunities for the poor (e.g., access to education, credit, infrastructure, public decision making, etc.) [27]. In extreme situations, a preponderance of inequality can drive a global financial crisis [28] and policies that further inequality are formalized into law because of lobbying [29].

Although inequality has these established negatives, there is a positive to inequality that concentrates wealth for a few individuals, as follows: For solving large and capital-intensive problems, the number of individuals necessary to invest has grown smaller over time and may be approaching a point where the individuals could conceivably all know each other as they already preferentially associate with one another [30]. This association is important as it would make it possible for solutions to large and seemingly intractable problems to be deployed by convincing a relatively small number of individuals to invest within their social circle. In order to probe this potential benefit for inequality and wealth concentration, this study quantifies the number of billionaires necessary to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate destabilization in areas across the globe [31]. Specifically, it investigates elimination of carbon emissions from one of the largest sources—combustion of fossil fuels for the U.S. electric grid (e.g., the three grids made up of the Western interconnection, Eastern interconnection, and ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas), which are loosely connected, that service the continental U.S.) [32]. This study will determine the amount of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology that must be deployed to convert the U.S. electric grid, which is currently 1.2% solar [33], to eliminate all existing fossil fuels. Then, it will estimate the costs for that conversion and the number of billionaires that would be able to maintain billionaire status while still completing the conversion. The results will be presented and discussed in the context of leveraging wealth concentration by focusing excess capital from the wealthiest individuals to partially solve global climate destabilization from greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that threaten everyone throughout all global societies.

2. Materials and Methods

Data on U.S. population and solar flux was collected and geolocated. Three databases were obtained to analyze the ratio of population-adjusted solar flux for each state, as follows: (1) A shapefile of the United States was obtained from the ArcGIS database [34], (2) a shapefile of normal direct solar irradiance was obtained from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory database [35], and (3) the population density throughout the U.S. was obtained from the U.S. Census [36]. The ratio of population-adjusted solar flux in each state was transcribed to a map utilizing ArcMap version 10.6.1. Population-adjusted solar flux is needed to determine a practical PV deployment density over the U.S. and prevent unnecessarily costly adaptations of the electric grid for the placement of large PV systems in high solar flux areas. Thus, the calculations here are based on providing solar power where the people are located, which has the benefits of distributed generation.

In order to obtain the average population-adjusted solar flux for the U.S., F_USA in kWh/m²/day, the following equation was developed here and used the fraction of solar flux multiplied by the population of each state for the whole country:

$$F_{USA}={\displaystyle \sum }_{s=1}^{50}\left(\frac{F_s{p}_s}{{{\displaystyle \sum }}_{s=1}^{50}\left(F_s{p}_s\right)}\right)F_s \left[\mathrm{kWh}/{\mathrm{m}}^2/\mathrm{day}\right]$$

(1)

where F_s is the average kWh/m²/day of solar irradiation in each state, s; and p_s is the population of state, s. Thus, a ratio is determined of the population adjusted solar flux for each state in the large bracket. By summing this ratio, times the solar flux for the state, the average solar flux for the whole U.S. is determined.

The list of 2123 individuals that have more than a billion U.S. dollars in assets, maintained by Forbes [37], was first screened for Americans, which reduced the number to 568 individuals listed in Appendix A. In order to ensure that each individual maintained US$1 billion in wealth if they decided to invest in solarizing the U.S., the aggregate potential capital was calculated by:

$$C={\displaystyle \sum }_{n=1}^{n=T_c}{w}_n-\$1b \left[\mathrm{US}\$\right]$$

(2)

where w_n is the individual wealth for each person and T_c is the total number of individuals needed to meet a capital investment goal. So, for example, for all 568 Americans, C is equal to US$2511.7 billion.

U.S. Energy Information Administration data for 2017 [38] was used to calculate the energy needing to be resourced. The U.S. used 4.034 trillion kWh/year in 2017 in total, but fossil fuels, which all contribute to climate change, were only responsible for 2.536 trillion kWh/year [38]. So, this latter value was used. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimates [39] that the total installed system cost, which is one of the primary inputs used to compute the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE) [40], has declined to US$2.80 per direct current watts (Wdc) for residential systems, US$1.85 Wdc for commercial, US$1.03 Wdc for fixed-tilt utility-scale systems, and US$1.11 Wdc for one-axis tracking utility-scale systems. The value of US$1.03 Wdc for fixed-tilt utility-scale systems is used in the final analysis because previous learning rates [41,42,43,44,45] for the global PV industry has resulted in continuous and aggressive reduction in the costs of solar modules [46,47]. As of January 2019, the spot price of the lowest cost PV modules has dropped below US$0.20/W [48]. Technical improvements, like moving to black silicon, are expected to drop those costs further [49] and the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) predicts that the prices will fall by 60% in the next decade [50]. Thus, it is within reason that the PV prices that have already been obtained in the U.S. on the large scale could be met on the small, distributed scale in the near future, with a massive scale up of the industry as analyzed here.

3. Results

The ratio of population-adjusted solar flux in each state is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. Ratio of population-adjusted solar flux in each U.S. State.

Using Equation (2) and the data shown in Figure 1, the F_USA was found to be 4.499 kWh/m²/day. Using the conservative assumption that solar PV is deployed as a function of population and not optimal solar flux, this 4.499 kWh/m²/day demands that 1544 GW of installed PV. This amount of PV would produce the 2.536x10¹² kWh needed to replace all fossil fuels for electricity production within the U.S. At $1.03/Wp (per peak Watt), this would entail an investment of US$1.59 trillion. Historically, US$1.59 trillion would be considered a substantial sum of capital, however, as discussed in the above, a relatively small number of people (568) in America now control more than this quantity of capital. After assuming that each multi-billionaire in the U.S. would dedicate their wealth in excess of $1 billion to solarization, the cumulative sum of Equation (2) was calculated and is shown in Table 1.

Table 1. Cumulative American multi-billionaires necessary to reach investment goals of complete replacement of all of the fossil fuel-based electricity generation in the U.S. with solar.

Cumulative Number of Investors	American Multi-Billionaires	Wealth Total -$1B [B US$]	Cumulative Excess Wealth [B US$]
1	Jeff Bezos	111	111
2	Bill Gates	89	200
3	Warren Buffett	83	283
4	Mark Zuckerberg	70	353
5	Charles Koch	59	412
6	David Koch	59	471
7	Larry Ellison	57.5	528.5
8	Michael Bloomberg	49	577.5
9	Larry Page	47.8	625.3
10	Sergey Brin	46.5	671.8
11	Jim Walton	45.4	717.2
12	S. Robson Walton	45.2	762.4
13	Alice Walton	45	807.4
14	Sheldon Adelson	37.5	844.9
15	Steve Ballmer	37.4	882.3
16	Phil Knight	28.6	910.9
17	Jacqueline Mars	22.6	933.5
18	John Mars	22.6	956.1
19	Michael Dell	21.7	977.8
20	Paul Allen	20.7	998.5
21	Thomas Peterffy	19.3	1017.8
22	Len Blavatnik	19.2	1037
23	James Simons	19	1056
24	Elon Musk	18.9	1074.9
25	Laurene Powell Jobs	17.8	1092.7
26	Ray Dalio	16.7	1109.4
27	Carl Icahn	15.8	1125.2
28	Donald Bren	15.3	1140.5
29	Abigail Johnson	14.9	1155.4
30	Lukas Walton	14.9	1170.3
31	Rupert Murdoch	14	1184.3
32	Harold Hamm	13.1	1197.4
33	Steve Cohen	13	1210.4
34	Dustin Moskovitz	13	1223.4
35	Charles Ergen	12.4	1235.8
36	Eric Schmidt	12.4	1248.2
37	Philip Anschutz	12	1260.2
38	Jim Kennedy	12	1272.2
39	Blair Parry-Okeden	12	1284.2
40	Leonard Lauder	11.9	1296.1
41	Stephen Schwarzman	11.6	1307.7
42	Donald Newhouse	11.3	1319
43	Andrew Beal	10.6	1329.6
44	John Menard, Jr.	10.5	1340.1
45	David Tepper	10	1350.1
46	Pierre Omidyar	9.5	1359.6
47	Ronald Perelman	8.8	1368.4
48	Micky Arison	8.7	1377.1
49	Thomas Frist, Jr.	8.6	1385.7
50	Charles Schwab	8.4	1394.1
51	Herbert Kohler, Jr.	8.3	1402.4
52	Jan Koum	8.1	1410.5
53	James Goodnight	8	1418.5
54	Ken Griffin	8	1426.5
55	James Chambers	7.7	1434.2
56	Katharine Rayner	7.7	1441.9
57	Margaretta Taylor	7.7	1449.6
58	Gordon Moore	7.5	1457.1
59	Stanley Kroenke	7.3	1464.4
60	John Malone	7.1	1471.5
61	Carl Cook	7	1478.5
62	David Geffen	7	1485.5
63	George Soros	7	1492.5
64	Edward Johnson, III.	6.9	1499.4
65	David Duffield	6.8	1506.2
66	George Kaiser	6.8	1513
67	Patrick Soon-Shiong	6.8	1519.8
68	Stephen Ross	6.6	1526.4
69	Pauline MacMillan Keinath	6.4	1532.8
70	Eli Broad	6.3	1539.1
71	Sun Hongbin	6.3	1545.4
72	Christy Walton	6.3	1551.7
73	Shahid Khan	6.2	1557.9
74	John Doerr	6.1	1564
75	David Green	5.8	1569.8
76	Hank & Doug Meijer	5.8	1575.6
77	Brian Acton	5.6	1581.2
78	Ann Walton Kroenke	5.6	1586.8
79	Leon Black	5.5	1592.3

As can be seen in Table 1, only 79 American multi-billionaires would need to invest to convert all of the U.S. to solar from fossil fuels. This investment would still leave each investor with a billion dollars to use in any way they please.

4. Discussion

The results of this study indicate that a relatively small number of America’s wealthiest individuals could completely convert the U.S. electric grid away from fossil fuels by replacing the remaining fossil fuel generation with solar. Seventy-nine Americans would need to give up some of their wealth to make this conversion possible and although they would each remain a billionaire, there are three areas that need to be discussed in the next three subsections, as follows:

• Why might multi-billionaires want to voluntarily give up their wealth to solarize the U.S.?
• What is the probability that multi-billionaires would be willing to make the required investment in solar even if they found the reasoning compelling?
• What are the primarily limitations of the methodology and assumptions made here that resulted in such a low number of individuals needing to give up their wealth to radically remake the U.S. electric grid?

4.1. Why Would a Multi-Billionaire Want to Invest in Solarizing the U.S.?

Both global GHG emissions [31] and global atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO₂) concentrations are increasing rapidly [51], which creates an enormous urgency to cut emissions [52]. The resultant climate change is well-established with a high confidence as are the negative impacts on natural and socio-economic systems [53,54] including the following:

(i)

Higher temperatures and heat waves that result in thousands of deaths from hyperthermia and are expected to increase [55,56,57],

(ii)

other adverse effects on human society and health [58],

(iii)

crop failures [59,60] that aggravate global hunger and food insecurity [61,62,63],

(iv)

electric power outages [64,65],

(v)

rising sea levels that cause low-lying coastal areas throughout the world to submerge gradually, as well as erosion of shorelines [66,67],

(vi)

increased risk of flooding [68] and saltwater intrusion [69], as well as severe storms that cause more damage to coastal environments [70],

(vii)

risks to forests [71,72,73,74],

(viii)

droughts [75] and

(ix)

fire [71,76,77].

These negative externalities have been shown to be due to human activities, with a confidence level of 95% (primarily combustion of fossil fuels, which is the dominant cause of global warming from 1951 to 2010) [78,79]. Climate change is widely viewed as one of the greatest challenges of our age [80] and GHG emissions from electricity generation is one of the largest contributors to the problem in the U.S. (in 2016 transportation surpassed electric generation for the first time) [32]. Some of the billionaires shown in Table 1 have already discussed what a large problem climate change is and have begun to contribute to energy solutions by investing in Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which is a billion-dollar fund backed by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and investors, including the following: Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Bloomberg [81]. Bill Gates, for example, has thought hard about not only the solution to climate change, but others as well [82]. Other multi-billionaires on the list, like Elon Musk, the Tesla founder, said sustainable energy solutions are technologically viable and have been working aggressively for their success [83]. In addition, many of the companies that American multibillionaires control have made substantial investments in solar; so, they are familiar with the technical and economic potential of the technology. For example, Larry Page and Sergey Brin’s Google officially hit its 100% renewable energy target in 2018 [84] and the Walton’s Walmart has made a public commitment to solar [85], with the second most onsite PV of any company in the world [86]. Despite this promise, there are a minority on the list in Table 1 who are heavily invested in fossil fuels and would find the transition more challenging. For these individuals, as the potential liability for climate change becomes more serious [87], they might also be convinced to convert for the good of the companies they helped develop. As of this writing, no lawsuits have been won to make a corporation that is a GHG emitter liable for emissions. There are, however, multiple such lawsuits pending and, as the potential liability is so large that it could easily bankrupt most companies, converting to renewable energy could be used as a hedge against this risk [87].

Alternatively, these individuals may be interested in solarizing the electrical grid using a distributed generation model, proposed here, by following the largely successful securitization of PV assets [88,89,90,91] due to the purely economic advantages of PV. PV is made even more profitable by the plethora of tax incentives available, which result in large economic returns on investment. First, the renewable energy tax credit allows the system owner to effectively reduce system costs by 30% [92] and the systems are eligible for MACRS (Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System) 5-year accelerated depreciation. It should be noted here that these tax credit and depreciation factors were conservatively not used in the financial estimates made in the results to eliminate any risk due to policy changes at the U.S. federal level, which would make the estimates inaccurate. Using these mechanisms could make the PV investments discussed in the results substantially profitable for the investors. It is noted that this profitability would need to be weighed against other potential sources of profits for the multi-billionaires, as well as their personal stake in the moving society towards sustainability.

As of this writing, the federal investment tax credit is available at 30% through 2019 and steps down to 26% in 2020, 22% in 2021, and 10% for commercial and industrial systems thereafter [93]. Business owned systems are also eligible for MACRS 5-year accelerated depreciation. The 2017 tax law allows for 5 years of 100% bonus depreciation for systems installed after September 27, 2017 [94]. The term 100% bonus depreciation means that the whole project’s applicable tax depreciation is accelerated to the first year of the system’s commissioning [95]. This is especially significant for investors in higher income tax brackets, as they see comparatively more value because electricity expenses are paid with after-tax dollars—they are not tax deductible. Different states offer solar energy property tax incentives, providing various amounts of tax exemptions on residential, commercial, and industrial solar PV systems [96]. A final tax incentive opportunity is the creation of Opportunity Zones [97]. This is an investment vehicle that attempts to match economic need with private investment. Qualified opportunity zone property includes any qualified opportunity zone stock, any qualified opportunity zone partnership interest, and any qualified opportunity zone business property [97]. Solar PV systems are well within the defined qualified business property. First, it allows for the temporary deferral of including gross income for gains that are reinvested in a qualified opportunity fund [97]. Second, it allows for exclusion of up to 15% of the gain on the original investment, that is deferred by the investment in the qualified opportunity fund if held for seven years [97]. Third, the taxpayer may elect to exclude the post-acquisition gains on investments from gross income in qualified opportunity funds that are held for at least ten years [97]. As an added bonus, opportunity zone tax benefits can be layered on top of the Renewable Energy Investment Tax Credit and accelerated depreciation to make an even better investment.

4.2. Probability of Solar Investment

Many of those on the list in Table 1 are already familiar with solar and are investing in it. With the potential to be in a group of the elite that would be potentially credited with “saving the world”, there is a non-zero probability that convincing all of these 79 individuals to make the investment is possible. This hypothesis is further supported by the number of multi-billionaires pledging to give away much of their fortunes before they die. This is formally being done in the Giving Pledge, which is a commitment by the world’s wealthiest individuals and families to dedicate the majority of their wealth to giving back to the rest of society through philanthropy [94]. At the end of 2018, the pledge had 187 pledgers including several on the list in Table 1, including Warren Buffett, Larry Ellison, James Simons, George Kaiser, and George Lucas [98]. None of these pledges were factored into the analysis here. In academia, there has been an enormous debate raging about inequality [19,99,100,101,102,103,104,105,106,107,108] but there appears to be a potential consensus forming among the world’s economic elite that their wealth should be used for the betterment of society. Future work is needed to quantify these consensuses and the probability that a relatively small group would collaborate on such a major project. It should also be noted that some of those on the list (e.g., Charles (5) and David (6) Koch) are heavily invested in fossil fuel industries, as well as climate denial activities [109]). However, as noted above, if even a single GHG emissions liability case is won, all investors in fossil fuel industries would financially benefit from immediate renewable energy investment to mitigate climate change-related liability. In addition, all of the analysis presented here assumed conventional economics (e.g., no value was assigned to environmental externalities). However, as the costs of climate change continue to mount [54,110,111], the discipline of green economics [112,113,114] may gain prominence over conventional economics, which would have the effect of making solar PV even more economically profitable.

4.3. Limitations

This study has several limitations. First, this study assumed that there was more than enough non-shaded optimal surface area to allow for distributed generation with PV, but it did not explicitly calculate siting for the 1544 GW of PV necessary to replace all of fossil fuel electricity production in the U.S. The nuances of territory and siting at both the large scale for PV output [115], as well as DG benefits [116,117] and roof top [118,119,120,121,122] as well as façade [123] locations have been covered extensively. Here, the conservative assumption about locating the PV systems was based on a distributed generation model where the PV would be located following population density in each state across the U.S. There are far more than enough optimal locations (surface area) to install PV in each region to cover more than 100% of the entire U.S. electricity use (let alone the 63% needed here) [124]. A more granular analysis is left for future work. Second, this study did not look at past investments nor to future investments that would reduce the need for the full 1544 GW of PV. The calculations for the PV necessary to completely eliminate fossil fuels from U.S. electric generation are only for the new solar investments necessary. All previous investments and investments in other renewable energy technologies, like wind power, are not considered. It also did not attempt to quantify profitable investments in energy efficiency and conserving technologies (e.g., lighting [125], moving from resistive electricity-based heating to heat pumps [126], buildings [127], and electric motors and drives [128]). It is highly likely that there will continue to be investments in energy efficiency and other renewable energy technologies. Thus, it is highly likely that the value of PV needed, calculated here, is an overestimate. Determining the degree of that overestimate is left for future work. Third, this study assumed modern PV technology. Again, the learning rate in PV production and the efficiency of the technologies can be expected to continue to climb, thus reducing PV costs further [48,49]. This again was taken as a conservative assumption, the correction of which is left for future work.

This study only looked at the generation component of electricity and did not take into account load balancing, efficiency, storage, power quality factor, or transmission. With the solar slated to be put in place, the investment in storage and transmission and other technologies to maintain operation of the grid would be expected to be provided using the conventional utility models. There is recent evidence that this assumption is valid in Germany, where renewables have been able to cover 100% of power for the first time as of January 2018 [129]. Critics may demand that the 79 billionaires must also pay for storage to regulate the grid. This study does not consider this additional investment for the following complexities related to the structure of the U.S. electric utilities, that would both increase as well as decrease costs that will be briefly summarized here. First, only roughly 63% of the power sources on the U.S. grid would need to be converted to solar to replace the existing fossil fuels. The solar specifically investigated here is for use in distributed generation (DG—the assumption based on population density-based deployment). It is well established that DG can postpone investments in generation, transmission, and distribution as electrical power demand grows and, at a large enough scale, eliminate them [130]. DG also reduces transmission losses [131]. Elimination of these losses would result in cost savings of about 10–15% [132]. Other DG benefits include decreased pollution and greenhouse gas emissions [133] and their concomitant potential reductions in mortality by converting to solar [134]. For coal replacement in particular, these premature deaths prevented can be substantial to the point that they number more per year than the current total coal mining employment [135]. In addition, DG provides transmission congestion relief, increased reliability, and ancillary services [131,136]. The economic impacts of these details are highly dependent on the potential for changes in laws revolving around electric utilities and green economics and are left for future work to ensure a smooth transition from fossil fuel generation to solar.

Another limitation is addressing the variations in the PV power that exist in a high PV penetration scenario, like the one discussed in this study is due to (i) the night/day cycle, (ii) the yearly cycle, and (iii) fluctuating cloud conditions. Variations (i) and (ii) will be addressed by changes in the grid and investments by conventional utilities as more PV is deployed and storage becomes necessary. However, reason (iii) (of fluctuating cloud conditions and thus rapidly changing PV power) is the largest problem that needs to be addressed at high penetration rates immediately. However, cloud variations can be largely mitigated using the deployment recommended in this study (e.g., DG). Specifically, by deploying solar PV systems over a larger geographic area, any specific clouds have only a small effect on the overall grid. For example, if a network of PV installations is dispersed throughout a 100 km² area, the tolerable acute penetration for PV will increase to 18.1% and if the area expands to 1000 km², the limit for PV penetration is 35.8% [137]. It should be noted that, in the solar PV, penetration level is the real time percentage (not the overall percentage of PV electricity generation), which would of course be considerably less as peak sun hours are only available for a few hours each day. Effectively, this means that a PV penetration many times the current value could be tolerated from the grid before any changes are necessary. As an increasing penetration of PV is made, if it is deployed with DG strategies, the penetration level can get to about a third before significant changes have to be made. Some existing policies and pricing methods will help make these changes less challenging. In many cases, this will mean using existing techniques for load shedding, load temporal displacement, and the usage of more storage. For example, time of use metering (TOU), which currently favors using electricity at night, will be reversed so that using electricity in the middle of the day will be the least costly when PV is at full output. As the goal of elimination of fossil fuel production for the grid is approached, utilities would need to invest in storage and other technologies to ensure normal operation and they would do it following the same basis that they currently do to make capital investments for generation that would no longer be necessary. The details of this arrangement and the timeline are left for future work.

Overall, this study is overly conservative in the number of billionaires needed to solarize the U.S. because it made the assumption that solar would be distributed based on population density and that current PV prices would be used. There is an expectation of cost decreases based on deployment of known technologies, as well as the scale, as society approaches a sustainable future [138]. The following effects would be expected after 79 of the wealthiest Americans began to invest all but US$1 billion in conversion of the U.S. electric grid away from fossil fuels. First, the price of solar, after the first shock to supply by the rapidly increased demand, would be decreased. Similar drops would be expected in the balance of systems components (i.e., racking, electronics) as well as, eventually, storage. In addition, less PV would be necessary if it were strategically located in high solar flux areas in certain utility regions. Similarly, the growth of other renewable energy sources, like wind, which currently costs less than fossil fuel generation, is expected to continue and would also reduce the demand for solar. Likewise, with the surge in demand from the proposed solar replacement of all fossil-fuel generation in the U.S., the price per unit solar would be expected to drop considerably. At the same time, the concentration of wealth continues to increase in the U.S. [139,140,141], and globally (the richest 26 globally own more wealth than the bottom 50% of humanity [142]). All of these factors combine to mean less and less individuals will need to be convinced as time goes forward. For these reasons, it can be comfortably concluded that 79 is a conservative estimate on the number of American multi-billionaires that would need to be convinced of the usefulness of moving to a solar U.S. grid in order to make it a reality. Finally, this analysis can be expanded beyond the U.S. to globally reduce greenhouse gas emissions, while accounting for the life cycle of greenhouse gas emissions of various types [143], as well as the impact on emissions as a function of growth of PV [144].

5. Conclusions

Although wealth inequality has many established negatives, this study has shown the potential positive that, when solving large capital-intensive problems, the number of individuals that need to be convinced to act has become small and manageable. Here, we have investigated the potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, responsible for climate destabilization in areas across the globe, in the U.S. electric grid by first determining the amount of solar PV technology that must be deployed to eliminate all fossil fuels from the U.S. electric grid, the costs for that conversion, and the number of multi-billionaires that would be able to maintain billionaire status while still completing the conversion. The results show that only 79 American multi-billionaires are needed. The analysis also concludes that this is a conservative estimate on the number that would need to be convinced of the usefulness of moving to a solar U.S. grid and that upper estimate is likely to decrease even further in the future.