From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
From the Independent:
Air New Zealand scrapped its 2030 carbon emissions reduction targets on Tuesday, citing lags in producing new planes, a lack of alternative fuel and “challenging” regulatory and policy settings.
The move by the national carrier — one of New Zealand’s biggest companies by revenue — was the highest-profile reversal yet of an airline’s commitments to a U.N. framework for corporations to stay on track to meet the Paris Agreement on emissions reductions, highlighting the hurdles facing carriers and policymakers in cutting aviation emissions.
“If even Air New Zealand can’t do it, it kind of cements the reality that reducing emissions from aviation is an impossible task under the current technical regime,” said James Higham, a sustainable tourism expert at Griffith University in Australia.
Tuesday’s update was a sharp turnaround from a 2022 announcement by Air New Zealand in which it declared itself the second carrier in the world to have its plans validated by the U.N.’s Science Based Targets Initiative aviation framework. It pledged a 28.9% reduction in carbon emissions 2030, from a 2019 baseline, with a 16.3% drop in absolute emissions.
Bit by bit, Net Zero ambitions are coming up against the wall of reality.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Meeting its 2100 targets sounds more achievable.
Both sides of politics in NZ have embraced the religion of Climatology. So this will be an embarrassment for both sides because the government owns the majority share of New Zealand Airlines. The UN can rightly ask – where is the climate ambition? Climate ambition is synonymous with tithe in regard gifting to the Church of Climatology but the UN is demanding no less than all your economic output because you can do nothing without burning fossil fuels in the present era.
Reality always wins but governments have the ability to shift resources in order to suspend reality for a considerable period.
The slow economic demise of the once Great Britain is a test of how long reality can be suspended.
Rolls Royce are offering a glimmer of hope for the UK with their SMR development. If they can beat the Chinese to the technology they have some small hope of recovering their current account from the black hole it is approaching.
Three cheers for reality!
Reality’s a b1tch, isn’t it?
Been there forever though – hard to understand hwr so-called intelligent people could miss it.
Yes. But its heresy to deny the Climate Trinity and theres is only one fate
Burning witches release too much carbon and where would the electricity come from for the electric fire?
Far better to bring back the dunking chair to see if the witches drown or tie them to the three-pronged cross and let the witches get battered by unfortunate raptors
“three-pronged cross”. Very insightful. I knew they had high priests (Gore), evangelists (Greta), crusaders (Extinction Rebellion), the faithful laity, holy texts (IPCC reports) and tithes (higher taxes, electricity bills, etc. – although they extend well beyond 10%). Now their religion has icons, as well as sacrificial animals (birds, bats, whales, etc.) I expect in time they will begin making the sign of their cross (especially before driving an EV), albeit starting at the base to differentiate from the Catholic version.
Amen, brother!
Intelligence is a very variable concept – intelligent about WHAT? I’m supremely intelligent about life sciences, weather, cooking, etc but rather unintelligent where engineering is concerned. At least I learned young that I wasn’t much good at engineering, so I left it to those who were.
Most politicians are very intelligent about how to get elected, how to spin lies. They’re usually very bad at recognising the truth, simply because they divorced themselves from the truth to get elected.
But K.Harris is bringing science to the Presidency since her mother has some education in a scientific field.
*ouch* I think I just sprained an eyeroll muscle.
They work in academia and the burro-ocracies- isolated from reality.
Mom and dad still lay down the laws that we must follow – Mother Nature and Father Time.
The technology isnt too hard , the very first nuclear reactors were same size or smaller.
Its the regulatory oversight where the rules arent laid out but you have to meet ‘the standard’ in some magic way is the difficult part.
The small nuclear reactors themselves have been in production for naval submarines, its the modularity for series production in a factory thats interesting
This is probably why the regulators are fighting against this so hard… A(n) anysize nuclear reactor produced in a factory only needs an approval the first time you build it. All subsequent, when built to the exact same plans and specifications, need no approval because they have already been approved, when you built the first one! Puts all those useless bureaucrats out of work. 🙁
I realize it’s just a name, but branding done well is powerful for persuasion. When I hear “Rolls Royce” the first thing that comes to mind is the Merlin V-12 aircraft engine in the Hurricanes, Spitfires, Lancasters, and Mustangs of WWII. The second thing is the line of fine automobiles. So if there is any brand name out there that could win against the onslaught of ideology-driven “renewables” that produce inferior intermittent and weather-dependent power, then Rolls Royce works for me. Dependable power, high quality.
Don’t worry, the left will not be deterred by this reality monkey business. /sarc
“/sarc” is not required.
The extreme left really won’t be deterred
Oh no….the world goes as NZ goes…..we’re doomed…..China will make no difference now….they might as well forget about it too….I thought Net Zero was NZ.
Net Zero is unnecessary and a complete waste of money and resources. Get on with things that really matter.
How much money, world-wide, has already been wasted chasing this impossible dream?
Problem is always the same, whether its cars or planes or the power grid: its energy density of electricity storage, which means batteries. They are just not up to the task of supplying the needed portable energy storage. The absurdity of thinking that there will be batteries adequate to replacing jet fuel. Or for that matter that there will be “green” jet fuel derived from plants or something. Not happening.
I can just picture it now, the battery powered commercial airliner, charged to capacity to ensure making alternate landing sites when needed, etc., etc., and then the plane gets to altitude and all those batteries get cold, what happens to that “reserve” calculation?
Reality bites, every time, eventually.
And sometimes very hard.
And politicians almost never suffer any serious consequences.
Unfortunately for the UK, it may take Ed Milliband a very long time before he notices. Or is prepared to acknowledge that he has noticed. Unlike commercial organisations he doesn’t have to worry too much about reality. And as a recent article on WUWT demonstrated he’s got lots of history and politics graduates to advise him on technology and engineering.
“And politicians almost never suffer any serious consequences.”
Indeed. Get sacked as a government minister, get a pay-off. Lose your seat in an election, get a pay-off. And then when the time comes, enjoy a gold-plated, indexed-linked pension. I believe the ancient Greeks had a system whereby politicians who were deemed to have cocked up could be exiled, maybe there needs to be a modern equivalent.
Reducing emissions is impossible under ANY regime other that a return to The Stone Age. Suggesting that “technology” is going to change this reality at some indeterminate point in the future only supports the delusion.
In the stone age, they burned wood to keep warm and to cook and to keep wild animals at bay during the night.
Costly, scarce, ineffective, unnecessary, ……..
It would not make any difference as long as you are injecting 100 billion gallons of water vapor into the Stratosphere every year. Let’s go for 200 billion annually and push temps up 2C since industrial times.
The EU and UK both have Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) mandates starting at 2% SAF in 2025 to 70% in 2050. They also will mandate Renewable Fuels Of Non-Biogenic Origin (RFNBO, a real term!) at 1.2% in 2030 up to 35% in 2050. Combined the EU wants 95% of SAF to come from non-fossil sources in 25 years. They ignore all the hurdles that are in the way, and there are many.
SAF cannot come from food-based feedstocks (corn starch and seed oils) after !2035, and they are the only current source of SAF. Waste to SAF projects are proposed and some are in design phase, but these are expensive processes and still cannot match the volumes needed by airlines just to keep flying the current amount of flights, let alone the 50% increase expected by 2050.
More troubling is the proposal for RFNBO fuels, which are really E-Fuels and “MUST” be produced from renewable power. This process simply isn’t energy efficient EROEI (net energy balance) is about 30%, due to significant losses along the way. 30% for electrolysis of water to H2, 10-20% for CO2 capture and reduction to syngas (CO + H2), and another 20-30% for hydrocarbon synthesis and upgrading to fuel. This is a continuous process needing power 24/7/365 but getting it only intermittently.
The magnitude of this goal is staggering. In rough terms, 1 million bbl/day (5% of US consumption) will take the total electric power of France to make that amount of fuel. So what is left over to run a country? Not much. But maybe that is the ultimate goal of those proposing this folly.
The targets are political and have no bearing on the planet.
Just ask all those climate politicians piling up frequent flyer miles as they travel to meeting after meeting.
It was inevitable just as every false prophet who claims to eat and drink nothing but simply live off the air will end their charade one way or another. The universe may laugh at the foolish but it doesn’t allow them to live beyond the limits of physics, and big corporations will similarly exit the markets in spectacular fashion should they try to ignore the limits of economics.