Why the Global Fossil-Fuel Phase-Out is a Fantasy Akin to Time Travel

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. 

The Insanity of Canadian Politics - Honestly, It's Not Just Americans, eh

I am quite certain there has been outside interference in Canadian elections in the past few years, not from Russia, but from far-left liberal organizations, some of which are most likely financed by George Soros and other left-wing lunatics. The consequence is a series of wins by far left leaning parties in both provincial legislatures and the federal parliament. 

It's not that Canadians aren't capable of making remarkably stupid decisions at the polls, we've proven that we are, we re-elected Pierre Trudeau several times. Pierre was Justin's dad and threw the country into spectacular debt from which we have not recovered in the 40 years since. Now, son Justin is following in his father's footsteps, dismissing a balanced budget and driving another generation of Canadians into massive debt.

Ontario madness

One Liberal government, Ontario's, is so far left that they installed a school curriculum that was, in part, written by a convicted pedophile. The consequence, elementary children are being taught gender dysphoria, a mental illness, is a good thing, and are being read to by drag queens in full gear. 

An election is underway in Ontario this week and the Liberals with their gay leader are being tossed out like yesterday's trash. The somewhat right-wing Progressive Conservatives have lead the polls by a wide margin over the Liberals and a largely unknown NDP (New Democratic Party). The NDP were only ever in power once in Ontario's history and left the province with crippling debt and a bad taste in their mouths.

Nevertheless, this same NDP party is rapidly closing on the PCs. Traditionally in Canada, the NDPs are farther to the left than the Liberals. That may not be the case any longer as it is almost impossible to be further to the left than the Ontario Liberals or the Federal Liberals for that matter.

So, why are Ontarians even considering voting-in the NDP? I suspect it has somewhat to do with outside interference. I can't believe Ontario voters would willingly risk voting-in someone who might be even farther from equilibrium than Kathleen Wynne.

Alberta & British Columbia - the Wild West Show

It has never happened before but both BC and Alberta have elected NDP governments. Well, not exactly. BC has 3 parties in the legislature, left, far left, and out of this world. That would be the Liberals, the NDP and the Green Party respectively, but not respectfully. More Liberals were elected in last year's election than NDP but not enough for a majority government. The NDP, with the Green Party's 3 seats had just enough to form a coalition government. 

The NDP and the Greens hooked up because they are both far left loonies and because neither of them like the Liberals. The BC economy was the best in the country last year, but that matters not when there is money coming into election coffers from mysterious sources south of the border. The agreement to hook-up was dependent of the NDP Premier, John Horgan, being determined to block the twinning of an existing pipeline by Trans Mountain Pipelines. 

Horgan has gone to court to get a ruling that he has the authority to refuse the movement of diluted bitumen through such a pipeline. That ruling has yet to occur. Meanwhile, the proposed pipeline has already passed environmental review by the federal government and consultation with first nations bands along the route from near Edmonton to near Vancouver. Many of those bands are in favour of the project, and many are against and complaining that the consultation was inadequate.

Enter Justin Trudeau, climate hero. He who thinks Canadians are not paying nearly enough for gasoline, so he added a carbon tax to improve things for us. He doesn't seem to realize that this is Canada and there are hundreds, and even thousands of miles (excuse me, kilometers) between major cities. The first major city east of Vancouver is Calgary, over a thousand kms away. We drive long distances because we have to and most of us didn't inherit millions of dollars from our dad to pay for the gas.

Justin, with his shallow cabinet based solely on looks, very quickly after being elected closed two pipeline projects aimed at getting Alberta oil to markets. Suddenly, Alberta is suffering from a lack of investment as oil companies see no way of getting their oil to tidewater or to refineries on the US gulf coast. So, Alberta's NDP Premier, Rachel Notley, makes a deal with Justin to install his carbon tax in exchange for a promise to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built. 

Now we have two far left governments fighting to build a pipeline through BC that the BC government doesn't want. Never mind that the majority of Canadians and the majority of British Columbians do want it. Horgan can't throw in the towel because Green leader, Andrew Weaver, will throw it right back in his face and collapse the government.

Rachel Notley, in the meantime, has passed a bill allowing her to stop the flow of oil on the existing pipeline to the Burnaby refinery near Vancouver. If she does that, the price of gas will skyrocket in southwest BC. It is already the highest in North America. Horgan is challenging that bill in court.

So here we have Horgan, on the one hand, fighting in the courts for the right to prevent diluted bitumen from flowing into BC, and, on the other hand, fighting in the courts to prevent Alberta from having the right to stop oil from flowing into BC. 

It's all very silly. Horgan will almost certainly lose his court battles, at least the one that counts. But the struggle along with the usual left-wing activists demonstrating and trying to block any construction has caused Trans Mountain to give up on the project. Canada, Alberta and BC are not investment-friendly environments under left-wing lunie governments. Are you getting this Ontario?

Justin is smart enough to realize this is a disaster that will shut down a lot of investments coming to Canada, and so he decided today to buy Trans Mountain's entire stake in the pipeline. $4.5 billion - the good news is, they are Canadian dollars which, in Trudeau's Canada, aren't worth an awful lot. But it does increase our budget deficit by about 25%. Not to worry, sunny ways, my friends, the budget will balance itself, eventually, if we live long enough, which seems unlikely.

So now, we Canadians own a pipeline that may or may not get built. But our tax money is going to buy the company and, hopefully, build the pipeline. Meanwhile, as British Columbians, we have to pay for Premier Horgan to fight against our pipeline in court, the pipeline that British Columbians own and will pay for for at least a generation. And, we may possibly have to endure extreme gas prices should Premier Notley turn off the tap.

Is there any possible way all three governments could screw this up any more? If there is, I'm sure these fools will find it.