From The Financial Post
June 21, 2019
1:59 PM EDT
To produce the power needed to offset fossil fuels, Canada would have to build two and a half $13-billion hydro dams every year
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.
- Ross McKitrick: Apocalyptic rhetoric about extreme weather keeps ramping up. But experts say there’s no emergency
- The world is not spending enough money to put fossil fuel out of business — and it probably never will
- Terence Corcoran: Activists out to make billions are bringing science conflicts to court, but court is no place for science
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.
Here in New Zealand our City Council politicians are busy taking advice from school kids and declaring “Climate Emergencies”. The capital, Wellington City, was the latest just last week. In the interim, our left leaning “green” coalition government is about to pass a “Zero Carbon Act” committing us to become carbon neutral by 2050. Last year we burnt through 439 Pj of fossil fuels (coal, oil, petrol, diesel aviation fuel, gas, wood). We would need to build 15 new 100MW nameplate windfarms at a cost of NZ$3 billion every year for the next 31 years to replace all fossil fuels with electricity equivalent by 2050. This may not sound like much to those of you in the US, but for a country of 4.6 million people it’s an impossible task to physically build them let alone pay for them!
New Zealand is a pretty small place compared to some other countries. Wow all those wind farms are going to need more land and space than what you got. Every horizon will have wind mills on it. No problem just create some new land. As much as you need. LOL!
“Every horizon will have wind mills on it”
Then you can kiss goodbye to any tourism – assuming that people are still allowed to travel….
When you meet and talk to people who are CAGW believers and zero CO2 emissions folk and examine their intellectual and critical abilities of thinking, you realise that they are not thinking in quantitative terms and genuinely believe zero CO2 emissions is both desirable and possible. They oppose our current industrial society and want to sacrifice the population for some dream of “sustainable” (I love that word) energy. Dangerously they are not doing this out of malice or greed, but just plain old-fashioned stupidity. On the fringes of the movement are certainly those operating out of greed and malice, but the plain heart is just those who cannot add up yet.
Most of Canada should want more CO2 or whatever means to avoid the next inevitable return of normal Ice Age conditions. Most of Canada will be under a mile + of ice.
We have this little break in ice age conditions and think our little blip since the little ice age breaks the trend. Well, it doesn’t. We’ve had 6 increases in temp since the end of Glaciation. Each blip is less high than the last one. The overall trend is still downward to return of normal glaciation conditions. Where I’m typing this right now a mere 10k years ago was under over a mile of ice. Our shores were back to the edges of the continental shelf. We will return to this normal climate at some point. The near starvation levels of C02 will come back. Antartica sitting at the bottom of the planet has shifted this planets climate and dangerously so.
The world population and governments should be afraid of the real climate emergency and that’s when temps start heading back to normal and CO2 levels start to go to extinction levels again.
The lack of any context or knowledge of historical climate from these politicians declaring a ‘climate emergency’ and then all youngin’s they’ve sucked in with this wedge issue makes me very sad for this ‘flat earther’ next generation. As they get older and realize the climate catastrophe did not happen even though their impractical green new deals never changed much of the balance of energy sources, perhaps they’ll wake up out of their Zombie like mindset and realized they’ve either been knowingly used or been led astray by the likes of the people with the rolls of quarters and Nike shoes on.
Poor little mental slaves…..
Let’s neglect the problems of making a reliable grid, and for good measure suspend the laws of physics just so no unanticipated problems crop up.
We then have to overcome the following:
There isn’t the money,
There isn’t the raw materials available,
Nor is there sufficient manufacturing capacity,
There isn’t sufficient transportation available,
There aren’t enough sufficiently windy sites,
not enough labor,
not enough political will,
and not enough talent.
Seems a bit misleading to talk about Canadian goals, then post a graph representing the whole world.
I don’t know the specifics of what the various green groups are aiming for. Completely phasing out FF by mid-century is ridiculous, of course, but that is not the same as net-zero emissions (though achieving that in the next couple decades would be difficult, too).
Replacing current and projected FF with comparable renewable energy is not a good way to look at it. It doesn’t take into account conservation, efficiency or carbon recapture. Similarly, judging our ability based solely on current technology is unjustified. There are all kinds of new technologies being developed.
While the stated goals of some of these groups are clearly not feasible, that doesn’t mean that the status quo is the only option.
“judging our ability based solely on current technology is unjustified. There are all kinds of new technologies being developed.”
Well you don’t embark on a monumental task knowing you only have solar wind and lithium batteries at hand to attempt it- https://www.manhattan-institute.org/green-energy-revolution-near-impossible
but not to worry something will turn up while we trash the grid etc.
On top of that mindboggle the climate changers want to completely replace ICE transport with EVs and at the same time have to renew the batteries every 10-15yrs. That’s fairy dust policy for children and the mentally handicapped. Can’t happen but it will just beget Yellow Vests in the streets so is that what these crackers really want?
ks-
The status quo is not what is was and never will be. You are apparently unaware of the enormous advances in energy transformation, manufacturing, transportation efficiency and so forth we have made since the first “energy crisis” of the late 1960s to late 1970s. These advances go on all the time driven by the market. What is possible and cost effective, the market will accomplish.
I mean no great disrespect, but people of your political bent rarely notice this slow revolution taking place, nor apparently do they understand it. No one is demanding a static world–we want a rational one. However, people enamored of left wing politics want revolutions commanded by “democratic politics” to produce instant change. You may admit that the goals of some of these groups are clearly not feasible, but you will undoubtedly vote in a manner that encourages and enables them just the same. Admitting such does not make you a reasonable moderate.
Conservation that locks away wealth in hopes that future advancement will make better use of resources, or make them redundant, is not economic thinking.
Efficiency makes no sense if it comes at the cost of an erosion of economics, reliability, and so forth. That is if it has an unfavorable benefit to cost ratio.
Carbon capture is a way to simply bury availability (refer to the thermodynamic use of this word) to no good purpose.
@Kevin Kilty:
“enormous advances in energy transformation, manufacturing, transportation efficiency and so forth we have made since the first “energy crisis” of the late 1960s to late 1970s. These advances go on all the time driven by the market.”
Here are a couple of such ongoing improvements: Toyota’s new Corolla, which has its new Dynamic Force 40-MPG ICE, and Mazda’s 2019 Mazda 3, with its 45 MPG SkyActiv-X ICE. Mercedes says it has a prototype 50-MPG engine working.
Travel in time exists :
If applied, AOC’s GND will bring the US back to two centuries ago.
I quite agree, it’s called progressing backwards (hence the adherents calling themselves “progressives”) – those who live in the real world (not “progressives”) term these actions “Regressive”
Not governments every where, China and India are going the other way. India has opened 52 new coal mines since 2014 and China has around 300 on its books. The developed nations have reduced CO2 emissions by 2.3 billion tonnes,the developing world has increased them by 16.5 billion tonnes.
It’s a cult – practicalities don’t matter when you believe the prophets of your cult.
Nuclear power is the only rational way to go. Phasing out fossil fueled power plants by replacing very old fossil fuel plants with Nuclear power plants over a 200 year period is the way to go.
“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.”
No one is going to be building conventional nuclear plants once small modular molten salt nuclear plants go commercial. Three of these 500MW plants equals a 1.5 gigawat reactor and are built in factories , with no need for any bodies of water for cooling nor any extensive site preparation. They can be sited virtually anywhere as they are totally safe. The world could easilly build hundreds or thousands of these reactors per week. My estimate is that the U.S. would require 400 to 450 such reactors to eliminate all fossil fuel power generation and provide for a fleet of electric cars. One reactor installation per week should easilly be possible – roughly 4 1/2 years to eliminate all fossil fuels for power and autos. Cost would be less than $950 billion.
I attempted to calculate the total energy stored (used) in a daily basis in the UK domestic car fleet.
Maki g some assumptions like each vehicle has or used half a tank of petrol (gas) , energy in a litre of petrol is 34.5MJ.
Assuming that we could magically get all the energy from wind turbines into the vehicle fleet , how many wind turbines would we need?
Worked out at 50,000 offshore turbines, producing at average efficiency, every day.
Total installed offshore fleet in the UK is about 2,000.
As was stated – this is phantasy land.
No one has corrected my maths and conversion assumptions so I think I am correct – at least order of magnitude.
The world produces (about) 70 million cars each year. That’s 190,000 per day.
If we wanted 1.5 GW per day of nuclear power, it is only 30 small reactors of 50 MWe.
This is not an implausible number. All that is missing is the guts to change regulations so that companies can make a profit doing it, and to allow reactors and disposal sites to be permissioned quickly and cheaply.
The climate extremists don’t care that it is impossible and they don’t want to discuss costs. They simply want to tax and spend every penny they can rip from developed countries to transfer to the international globalist bureaucracy. It’s the transfer of money that matters. Not the climate or any change in climate. Since the advent of the “Great Society” of the 1960s, the US has spent trillions to “fight poverty”. Yet, to this day, Progressives will tell you that the poor in America are worse off now than ever and that we need to spend more money to help the poor. Trillions of dollars were not enough. We now must transform into a socialist society where they get all the money.
Just call it “World War G”
The green new deal: manifesto for a command economy.
This is the total insanity of the thing. Its not governments everywhere, of course. The governmentd emitting the most have no intention of reducing. They are proposing to increase, they are building coal fired stations in their own countries and financing and project managing their construction all over the world.
The madmen in Canada and the USA and the UK have the crazed idea that if those doing 15% of the world’s emissions reduce that 15% to zero, at the same time as those doing the other 85% raise theirs, this will somehow save the planet.
Think about it in basic arithmetic. Canad, the US and the UK do how much?
US 5 billion
Canada 600 million
UK 400 million.
Total 6 billion
So we take off this 6 billion fro the global 37 billion. Meanwhile the others increase by at least 12 billion, so the net result is about 45 billion.
And this is supposed to save the planet, when what the same people claim is that we are all doomed unless we get to zero emissions?
What sort of battery investment would be required to smooth this lot out when the total Oz wind energy output gets down between 2 and 4 percent of installed capacity- https://anero.id/energy/wind-energy/2019/june
Not to worry folks as it produces an average of 30% of installed capacity over a year. Duh!