A reality check on ending fossil fuels by 2050
To produce the power needed to offset fossil fuels, Canada would have to
build two and a half $13-billion hydro dams every year
Canada’s Green Party, said to be gaining ground, has a new platform plan,
headlined “Mission: Possible," to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050. Getty Images
Terence Corcoran
Financial Post
Judging from the headlines, Canada and the world are on track to ratchet up renewable energy and begin the rapid scale-down and ultimate phase-out of fossil fuels. Most energy analysts consider the fossil-fuel phase-out to be a scientific, economic and political fantasy, akin to levitation and time travel, but the movement keeps making news.
Governments everywhere — from Canada to the United Kingdom to states in Australia — are declaring climate emergencies and committing to variations on zero emissions. The international organization promoting emergency declarations claims “a fast transition to zero emissions is possible.”
Canada’s Green Party, said to be gaining ground, has a new platform plan, headlined “Mission: Possible,” to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050. A proposed Green New Deal in America aims to eliminate fossil fuels from the U.S. power grid by 2030 and phase gasoline out of the transportation sector.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh says Canada’s oil industry is on its way out: “It’s the direction the world is headed.” The newly announced Liberal and Conservative programs are leaning in the zero-carbon direction, although less explicitly.
The magnitude of the implied decarbonization effort takes us beyond the possible
and into the world of junk science fiction
So what are the carbon zeroists talking about? Aside from massive amounts of government intervention — almost a total takeover of the economy — the practicality of it all looks a bit impossible, to put it mildly. As the graph below suggests, the required technological and economic change could be a little overwhelming.
The general scale of the operation is hinted at by Climate Mobilization, an organization promoting climate emergency declarations: “Only WWII-scale Climate Mobilization can protect humanity and the natural world.”
In keeping with the analogy, here are some indicators of the magnitude of the coming Green World War III.
In Canada, for example, Vancouver energy consultant Aldyen Donnelly calculated that to achieve the “deep decarbonization” Canada is aiming for will require massive expansions of non-fossil fuel sources of energy.
To produce the electric power needed to offset the lost fossil fuel energy, Canada would have to build 2.5 hydro power dams the size of British Columbia’s $13-billion Site C project somewhere in the country “every year for the foreseeable future” leading up to the proposed 2050 carbon reduction targets. The geographic and cost obstacles send that prospect into the realm of the impossible.
On a global basis, the magnitude of the implied decarbonization effort illustrated in the graph takes us beyond the possible and into the world of junk science fiction. In 2018, world consumption of fossil fuels rose to 11,865 million tonnes of oil equivalent (mtoe). To get that down to near zero by 2050 as proposed by the zeroists would require a lot of alternative energy sources.
University of Colorado scientist Roger Pielke Jr. did some of the rough numbers. “There are 11,161 days until 2050. Getting to net zero by 2050 requires replacing one mtoe of fossil fuel consumption every day starting now.” On a global basis, such a transition would require building the equivalent of one new 1.5-gigawatt nuclear plant every day for the next 30 years.
If not nuclear, then maybe solar? According to a U.S. government site, it takes about three million solar panels to produce one gigawatt of energy, which means that by 2050 the world will need 3,000,000 X 11,865 (should be 11,161) solar panels to offset fossil fuels. The wind alternative would require about 430 new wind turbines each of the 11,865 days leading to 2050.
So far, other tested technologies do not exist to offset the fossil fuel energy that would be lost under the green zero targets. Maybe this is a world war that should be stopped before it gets out of control.
Of course, no one approach would be used but a multiplicity of approaches, which, so far are limited to 4 - hydro power, nuclear, wind, and solar. To calculate a very rough estimate we will assume that all four power sources will grow equally. Therefore, we can divide Dr Pielke's estimates by 4. That leaves:
- Building 0.625 site C scale dams each year; that's 18.75 new dams. That should go down well with indigenous peoples, if there are 19 possible sites in Canada. Getting approval for the first one would take until 2050.
- Building a 1.5 gw nuclear plant every 4 days for 30 years; or 2790 nuclear plants; ie one for every city with 1 million people or more.
- Building 750,000 Solar panels per day for a total of 8 trillion, 370 billion, 750 million solar panels. Of course, that would mean that we would all be living underneath a solar panel.
- Building 107.5 wind turbines every day, or 1 million, 200 thousand turbines total. There wouldn't be a bird left alive on the planet.
Of course, the carbon foot-print required to build these structures would mean they would be woefully inadequate by the time they are all built. So we would have to do it again in the next 50 years. That's presuming there are no big volcanoes to make a mockery of all our doings.
But perhaps technology will provide many new ways to reduce the necessity of all this building. Let's pretend it will cut the total need in half. Try cutting my numbers in half and see if they are any less absurd.
It looks like insanity to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment