About

Mark Z. Jacobson is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford University. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment and at the Precourt Institute for Energy. His professional affiliations indicate a focus on environmental and energy-related research within the civil and environmental engineering discipline.

Research topics

• Engineering
• Computer Science
• Geology
• Pathology
• Medicine
• Electrical engineering
• Internal medicine
• Oncology
• Immunology
• Waste management
• Environmental science
• Biology
• Chemistry
• Environmental engineering

Selected publications

• The impact of enhanced geothermal systems on transitioning all energy sectors in 150 countries to 100% clean, renewable energy

  Cell Reports Sustainability · 2026-01-19

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Perspectives on nuclear power

  Energy Policy · 2026-04-25

  articleOpen access

  This study reassesses the role of nuclear power in low-carbon electricity transitions under prevailing cost, finance, and system conditions. Using harmonised international data and observed 2024 operational metrics, we conduct a modelling-based stress test that evaluates how nuclear power performs when realistic construction, financial, and flexibility assumptions are applied. The results show that large nuclear power shares in prior modelling studies emerge primarily under optimistic conditions: Low overnight capital cost, reduced financing risk, or constrained renewable energy portfolios. When empirically validated inputs and full flexibility options are included, least-cost system pathways are consistently dominated by renewable energy-based portfolios complemented by storage, demand response, and existing dispatchable assets, while new nuclear power contributes only marginally. Empirical project evidence from recent builds corroborates the modelling results: prolonged construction duration and extended financing exposure significantly elevate effective project cost, irrespective of nominal levelised cost estimates. The Nordic region provides a natural comparative lens, revealing divergent governance models and public acceptance trajectories across Denmark, Sweden, Finland, and Norway, yet a shared economic constraint shaped by financing structure, risk allocation, and system alternatives. Overall, the findings indicate that under current techno-economic parameters and financing environments, renewable-centred energy portfolios form the cost-optimal foundation for power sector decarbonisation. Nuclear power remains a system- and policy-specific option that can contribute where governments assume substantial construction and financing risk and offer long-term capital recovery mechanisms. Transparent modelling assumptions and explicit financing terms are therefore essential for credible assessments of future nuclear deployment. • Nuclear competitiveness hinges on optimistic cost and financing assumptions. • Renewables plus flexibility dominate least-cost decarbonisation pathways. • New nuclear plays only marginal role under realistic system conditions. • Empirical data contradicts optimistic nuclear deployment scenarios. • Nordic case shows nuclear role shaped by policy and financing limits.

  PublisherDOI

• Green hydrogen production pathways: Comparative insights from Denmark, the United States, and China

  Energy Conversion and Management · 2025-06-26 · 7 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  In the pursuit of reducing carbon emissions in hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as heavy industry and shipping, power-to-hydrogen technology offers a promising pathway. The technology uses water electrolysis to convert renewable energy into hydrogen, which can then be used directly as hydrogen fuel with a fuel cell to produce electricity for transportation or grid balancing or used for steel, ammonia, and methanol production. This study evaluates and compares power-to-hydrogen systems by examining system scale, geographical conditions, design choices, configuration, operational strategies, and other key factors critical in shaping system performance. Efficiency and cost are assessed as separate but related aspects influencing the overall viability of green electrolyzer systems (electrolyzers powered by clean, renewable electricity). The analysis of power-to-hydrogen systems in Denmark, the United States, and China reveals variations in costs, technological approaches, and strategic implementations across these regions. The comparative evaluation shows that the economic viability of these systems is largely driven by design choices and operational strategies. The findings highlight that customizing power-to-hydrogen systems to local conditions is essential for achieving optimal cost-effectiveness. • Power-to-hydrogen can help decarbonize heavy industry and shipping sectors. • Study compares power-to-hydrogen systems in Denmark, the United States, and China. • Regional factors impact cost, efficiency, and performance of hydrogen systems. • Customized designs are key to improving hydrogen system cost-effectiveness. • Focus on system scale, design choices, configuration, and operational strategies.

  PublisherDOI

• Locating the missing absorption enhancement due to multi‒core black carbon aerosols

  Nature Communications · 2025-11-19 · 9 citations

  articleOpen access

  Black carbon (BC) aerosols, with their strong light-absorbing ability, are major drivers of the global climate. In existing models, BC aerosols are simplified as a single core when determining radiative effects. Here, we found that 21% of BC aerosols contain multiple cores during a wildfire smoke observation. By considering dynamic effective medium approximation (DEMA) with Mie theory and assuming randomly distributed multi‒core BC, the light absorption was 1.81 times greater than that under the single‒core assumption for particles with overall diameters >400 nm and core diameters >200 nm. A machine learning emulator was developed for DEMA-based absorption enhancements and incorporated into a global atmospheric model. For global aerosol absorption, multi‒core BC particles lead to a 19% increase, especially in wildfire-affected regions. This study emphasizes the critical role of multi‒core BC particles in amplifying radiative forcing and the necessity to revise models for the simulation of BC climate impact. Wildfire observations reveal that 21% of black carbon aerosols contain multiple cores, and accounting for this morphology increases global absorption by 19%, highlighting a missing source of radiative forcing in current models.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The transition to 100% clean, renewable energy

  Energy and Climate Change · 2025-01-01 · 5 citations

  book-chapterOpen accessSenior author

  This chapter takes a critical look at the United States' journey toward a clean renewable energy (RE) future, highlighting the feasibility and challenges in establishing a sustainable energy landscape. The focus is on the currently major RE technologies, namely, hydro, wind, and solar, and on some emerging technologies (e.g., hydrogen, smart grid, enhanced transmission) that can complement the major ones in the aspirational goal of 100% RE. The path toward a full RE future goes through expanding current solar and wind penetration in the United States to about 70%, which is a goal that can be accomplished with current technology and transmission enhancements. Then, the development of hydrogen infrastructure can take the United States to the ultimate goal of 100% RE. Green hydrogen (hydrogen produced from clean, renewable electricity) can be a game-changing energy medium and storage solution, addressing the variability of solar and wind resources. The chapter underscores hydrogen's role in greening the transportation sector, and it discusses supporting technologies—grid-forming inverters, smart grid solutions, and advanced transmission infrastructure—which are vital components for seamlessly knitting renewable sources into the energy grid. It calls for substantial investments in parallel deployment and advancements in these areas.

  PublisherDOI

• Minimizing the multi-decadal cost of islanded renewable-electricity microgrids for different climate zones

  Smart Energy · 2025-10-09 · 2 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract The aim of this study is to minimize the cost of developing a renewable energy islanded microgrid that provides reliable electricity and thermal comfort for a small building over multiple decades. The study is carried out with a model that minimizes the total cost of energy system components. Four different system configurations considering solar photovoltaics, electric heat pumps for heating and cooling, and a subset of battery-electricity storage, hydrogen-fuel-cell-electricity storage, and thermal-energy storage with phase-change materials are modeled. The objective is to minimize total lifecycle costs (capacity and operational costs) while ensuring reliable electricity as well as heat and cold supply. Over five climate zones, four system configurations, and 25 weather years, the annual costs of 100% renewable microgrids for residential-type loads and structures are at least 67% lower than the same microgrid powered with diesel generators for 75% of the cases. On average, using renewable energy instead of diesel reduces the annual cost of islanded microgrids by 72%. Systems with higher technology diversity, such as batteries combined with hydrogen-fuel-cell-electricity storage, result in even lower average-cost solutions (75% lower than diesel); however, they may increase the risk of loss of load events over the project lifetime if the systems are optimized for only one weather year. Despite the higher risk, the incremental cost to reduce one kWh loss of load over multiple weather years is estimated to be 89% lower with both batteries and hydrogen than with batteries alone, highlighting the value of diverse technology portfolios in microgrid planning. • Renewable microgrids cut annualized costs by ≥67% in 75% of tested base cases • Thermal storage cuts costs by 78% in cold climates compared to battery-only systems • In California, PV-battery-hydrogen systems reduce costs by 23% over battery-only • Battery-hydrogen setups lower loss of load more cheaply than battery-only systems • Robust sizing across weather years avoids overfitting and enhances reliability

  PublisherDOI

• Using multi-satellite observations to constrain ammonia emissions and unlock their potential over open water

  Scientific Reports · 2025-07-23 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access

  Reducing uncertainty in ammonia ( $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ ) emissions, particularly those over open water, which have largely been unexplored, remains a key challenge. This study refines 2019 $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ emissions over the south-central United States (SCUS) using inverse modeling technique with Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS) data and assesses its impact on inorganic $$\:\text{P}{\text{M}}_{2.5}$$ . We also present a novel assessment of $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ emissions constrained by Infrared Atmospheric Sounding Interferometer (IASI) and CrIS datasets both individually and combined. For the first time, we demonstrate the potential of refining $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ emissions over open water using satellite data, specifically over the northwestern Gulf of Mexico (NWGOM). Annual posterior NH₃ emissions exceeded prior estimates over SCUS by 1.43 GgNa−1 (2.5-fold), raising average concentrations by 2.9 ppb (3.4-fold), particularly in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma, and increasing levels of particulate ammonium (1.26-fold), sulfate (1.01-fold), and nitrate (2-fold). Combined IASI/CrIS outperformed individual datasets when compared with surface measurements. Over NWGOM, average $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ concentrations increased significantly by 1.4 ppb, predominantly driven by biological nitrogen fixation. This study highlights the potential of satellite data to refine $$\:\text{N}{\text{H}}_{3}$$ emissions over open water and emphasizes the role of multi-satellite datasets and high-resolution regional inverse modeling in improving air quality forecasts and global emission estimates.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• High-precision passive heat-transfer modeling for novel microgrid research station: Integrating first principles, data analysis, and optimization

  Journal of Building Engineering · 2025-09-10 · 2 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Transitioning China to Renewable Energy: Economic, Health, and Environmental Benefits

  Highlights in Science Engineering and Technology · 2025-05-23

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Air pollution and global warming are urgent global problems, largely driven by the use of fossil fuels. It is important to consider methods of transitioning away from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy. This study investigates the costs, land use, and health and climate benefits of moving China’s energy system from fossil fuels to a completely wind-water-solar (WWS) system. The findings indicate that such a transition would reduce China's energy needs by 34%, require only 0.21% of the country's land area, and decrease private energy costs by approximately 34%. The total social cost of energy, encompassing private energy costs, climate costs, and health costs, would drop by 97%. The transition could prevent about 1.1 million premature deaths annually due to air pollution. To achieve this, China must install around 202,000 new 5-MW onshore wind turbines, 48,000 5-MW offshore wind turbines, 18 million 100-kW rooftop solar PV systems, and 16,000 100-MW utility-scale solar PV systems. The required land area for these installations would be minimal, with utility-scale solar and onshore wind turbines occupying 2,780 km² and 16,800 km², respectively. Transitioning to WWS would reduce private energy costs from $696 billion to $462 billion annually and yield health and climate cost savings of $9.7 trillion and $3.8 trillion annually, respectively. In conclusion, transitioning China to 100% clean, renewable energy not only offers substantial health and environmental benefits but also delivers significant economic savings while using minimal land.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Global Solar Energy Transition and End-of-Life PV Forecasts Through 2050

  Research Square · 2025-07-10

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R01AI049538

  NIH · $900k · 2005

• Modeling Satellite Correlations of Aerosol Optical Depth Versus Cloud Optical Depth Over Megacities

  NSF · $460k · 2015–2019

• NIH Grant R01EY015651

  NIH · $638k · 2007

• NIH Grant U01AI027663

  NIH · $38.5M · 2006

• Satellite Detection of Effects of Absorbing Aerosols on Clouds over Urban Areas

  NSF · $219k · 2012–2014

Frequent coauthors

• Richard B. Pollard

  325 shared

• Judith Feinberg

  318 shared

• Gary N. Holland

  272 shared

• Susan Owens

  University of Cincinnati Medical Center

  262 shared

• Paul Griffiths

  University College London

  261 shared

• William G. Powderly

  Washington University in St. Louis

  259 shared

• Fred R. Sattler

  University of Southern California

  258 shared

• Maureen Power

  Program for Appropriate Technology in Health

  258 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Environmental Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1991

• M.S., Environmental Engineering

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

  1988

• B.S., Environmental Engineering

  Stanford University

  1985