We find that renewable electricity trade across large world regions via the underlying UHVDC interconnection can boost renewable electricity production and reduce 2020–2100 cumulative CO2 emissions from the power sector up to 9.8%.

The world’s transition away from fossil fuels is not only inevitable, but in fact is well underway. This sentiment, until recently acknowledged primarily by environmentalists and clean energy advocates, is now being embraced and even championed by the likes of Shell Energy and bp (formerly British Petroleum, rebranded as Beyond Petroleum). We have emerged from what Buckminster Fuller referred to as humanity’s womb of permitted ignorance.

The untapped potential of the sun is well known – all the energy humanity uses in a year is equal to the energy that reaches the earth from the sun in a single hour. The sun never sets – every hour, half the planet is bathed in sunshine. By trading energy from sun, wind and water across borders, we can deliver more than enough clean energy to meet the needs of everyone on earth.

An interconnected globe-spanning grid would connect everyone to the same energy-accounting system. The universal grid could be connected modularly to regional, local and micro-grids.

If you’ve lost power anytime recently, you’ve come face to face with one of the fundamental truths about energy today: There are a lot of things we once could do without electricity that now require it.

In fall 2015, Chinese president Xi Jinping debuted at the UN a grand scheme called Global Energy Interconnection (GEI) to transform the world’s power grids.