My latest in the Wall Street Journal (Web | PDF).
‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.
“Net zero” was mentioned in more than 6,000 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 and countless other times by publicly traded corporations and investor groups in statements and on their websites. The SEC says its proposed climate disclosure rule will help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero commitments and assessing any associated risks.”
“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders. But two new reports from the utility industry should put an end to such loose talk.
In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.”
The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.”
In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.
Even to achieve “deep decarbonization”—which isn’t net zero—by 2050, EPRI says, “a broad portfolio of options that includes low-carbon fuels and carbon removal technologies will be required.”
But “low-carbon fuels”—efficient biofuels—don’t exist. “Carbon removal technologies” aren’t possible to scale up, and if they were, it would cost about $1 quadrillion—a million billion dollars—at today’s prices to remove the 1.6 trillion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said needs to be sucked “out of the atmosphere even after we get to net zero.”
There’s more. The EPRI report states: “This study does not include a detailed assessment of factors such as supply chain constraints [and] operational reliability and resiliency” of a net-zero electricity grid.
How a net-zero grid could be built and function would be an issue worth studying if it were possible in the first place. But it simply isn’t.
So, barring some unforeseen miracle technology, “net zero by 2050” won’t happen.
The curious thing about the report is that it has largely remained an EPRI secret. There has been no media coverage of it. I found out about it only after I filed a shareholder proposal about net zero with the electric utility Alliant Energy. The company offered the report as a defense against my proposal that management explain how it planned to reach its goal of net zero by 2050.
The other recent report is “2022 Long-Term Reliability Assessment” from the North American Electric Reliability Corp., a government-certified grid-reliability and standard-setting group. NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather. The U.S. just got another taste of this during the Christmas electric-grid emergency.
So there you have it: We are dangerously dismantling our electric grid while burdening it with more demand in hope of attaining the goal of “net zero by 2050,” which the utility industry has admitted is a fantasy.
Congress should hold hearings on “net zero by 2050” goals before real disaster happens. It should bring in witnesses from utilities, public-service commissions, grid operators, regulators and the ESG cartel and have them explain under oath how they plan to accomplish the impossible.
Mr. Milloy is a senior fellow with the Energy and Environment Legal Institute.
Appeared in the December 29, 2022, print edition as “A Quiet Refutation Of ‘Net Zero’”.
Nowhere is an unincorporated community in Caddo County, Oklahoma, United States. Nowhere is located at the southeast end of Fort Cobb Reservoir, 5.5 miles (8.9 km) south-southwest of Albert and 14 miles (23 km) northwest of Anadarko.
Oklahoma also contains the Center of the Universe.
‘“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders.‘
Where, exactly, in US Federal legislation or regulatory law are these ‘goals’ actually spelled out and mandated?
Not very much is spelled out in Alarmist Climate Science. The alarmists have a goal, Net Zero, but they have no idea how to get there from here, so they are light on the details.
Net Zero is societal suicide.
Can anyone point to even a single negative effect over the last 40 years due to the increase in CO2 in the atmosphere? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?
Yes, politicians have vowed to spend trillions removing it. For some reason, they feel it should always be sequestered in the ground.
Too much additional kudzu in the Southern US 🤣. It’s too green on Earth these days, lol.
“Anyone? Bueller? Anyone?”
The answer is “nobody” CO2 cannot be connected to any negative effect..
Net zero won’t work, ever – there are not enough natural resources to build the amount of unreliable renewables and their storage systems and not enough money to even try – net zero simply refers to political competence and understanding of global energy systems
“Net zero won’t work, ever – there are not enough natural resources to build the amount of unreliable renewables and their storage systems and not enough money to even try”
That’s exactly right.
Net Zero is an impossible dream.
Attempting to implement Net Zero policies would be a nightmare for the public.
The planet needs more atmospheric CO2, not less. CO2 is still at starvation levels, and now that the sun has dropped into a quiescent phase, the rational expectation going forward is for cooling, not warming.
The alarmists don’t care. The pretense of dangerous human-caused global warming is just an excuse for them to try to unplug the human race.
Their eco-religious world view is fundamentally anti-human. They see human population (and more specifically human economic growth) as gobbling up the planet, and will embrace any excuse to drastically reduce human population and unplug our economies.
They are not actually climate scientists at all. They are just really, really bad economists, following the second wrongest economic theory ever devised. It’s hard to be worse than Marxism, but Malthusian anti-populationism sure does try.
It took economists more than 150 years to figure out why Malthus’ theory that population growth must always lead to poverty was wrong. It is because the primary driver of prosperity is technological progress, and technological progress is created by people, and hence by population.
As for gobbling up the planet, technological progress allows us to do more with less. We can have more of everything we want, including the health of our environment.
Thus the absolute best thing that anyone can do for the environment is have children. That is what real economics says.
Unfortunately we have a fake climate science that is actually bogus anti-human economics and true to form, its proponents are destroying mankind as fast as possible, which in turn will destroy nature.
From the article: “NERC concluded that fossil-fuel plants are being removed from the grid too fast to meet continuing electricity demand, and that is putting most of the country at risk of grid failure and blackouts during extreme weather.”
This is the bottom line. Our ignorant politicians are putting us all at risk with their insane, unnecessary drive to eliminate CO2. It’s an impossible task and the only thing they will eliminate by continuing this course is our current way of life.
“The company offered the report as a defense against my proposal that management explain how it planned to reach its goal of net zero by 2050.”
I hope you were nice to them. They probably thought “Oh Jeez, why don’t they leave us alone. WE know it won’t work but govt and investors like Black Rock are telling us we have to say it will.”
Somewhat cowardly, but understandable in the current political climate.
In all the discussions and media articles on Net Zero, including the stupidity of trying to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, there is never any discussion about the essential characteristic of CO2 for all life on this planet.
CO2 is the basic molecule upon which all life on this planet depends, from is absorption by plants through photosynthesis, it’s provision of carbon for the organic make up of all animals that devour those plants and to man itself that eats those plants and animals. Record grain and vegetable crops over the last two decades, thanks to increased CO2 and slightly warmer conditions, are seldom discussed in the media.
The heat absorptive effect of CO2 is now close to saturation and increasing CO2 will make little, if any, difference to temperature.
We need more, not less, Al Gore.