NET ZERO - will this policy damage our economy?

[Sky Full]

I have to admit to being increasingly confused about the need for the UK and Europe as a whole to reach a state of zero carbon-dioxide emissions.  Clearly, in terms of reducing the overall effect of carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere, the ultimate aim of this policy is beneficial for the climate but will the efforts of the UK population alone be enough to make any discernible difference?  

I continue to doubt that electric vehicles are really much better than ICE vehicles in respect of their overall contribution to atmospheric pollution.  Even if air quality is improved in city centres by the reduction in ICE emissions, the atmospheric pollution caused by the extraction of rare metals required to manufacture batteries together with the increased electricity generation necessary to recharge many millions of vehicles overnight must count against the replacement of ICE with battery powered transport.

Our efforts to reduce our own CO2 emissions are dwarfed by the emissions from other countries including, of course, China and India, and I can’t see the sense in placing restrictions on our own manufacturing industries just to make us import the same goods we used to make from countries who continue to generate their power from coal.

I would be interested to hear the views of other members on here who by definition share the same interests as me in the weather, the climate and related sciences.  But I’m also interested to try and understand what the Net Zero policy will look like in the real world after 2030.  What will be the future for the vast network of petrol filling stations around the UK, for example?  How will the hundreds of thousands of people living in flats and terraced houses manage to recharge their electric vehicles overnight at an affordable rate?  Are we going to see huge rises in fuel taxes to discourage people keeping old ICE cars on the road?  

If the Net Zero policy is adhered to there will be huge changes in our economy over the next 50 years and I’m not sure it will all be for the best.

[WYorksWeather]

 Sky Full Taking these points one at a time (and trying here to set aside my own view, which is well known):

Point 1

In terms of whether the efforts of the UK alone would be enough - the answer to that is a firm no. This is, of course, the problem. It is a classic example of the tragedy of the commons. A common scenario used to illustrate this, is suppose that there are ten farmers in a village. Each of them own two cows. The grazing area available can sustainably support 20 cows. However, one of the farmers then gets an inheritance and buys an extra five cows, and starts grazing them on the available land. There are now 25 cows grazing land which can only support 20, the quality of the grazing land degrades, and eventually none of the land is useful, and everybody loses.

On a much larger scale, that is the problem. The UK essentially has a choice of whether to try to lead the way or not. The benefits of leading the way are setting a good example in the hopes that other countries will follow, and more selfishly that the UK could potentially become a hub for new green technologies and benefit from them. The drawback is of course that the upfront costs of decarbonisation are high.

Point 2

In terms of the overall contribution of EVs - the net lifecycle contribution to CO2 emissions (including production of the car and batteries) is significantly reduced compared to an ICE car, but is not zero. As with most things, the truth is neither that EVs are no better than ICEs from this perspective, nor that they are a silver bullet. The figures below I found from the IEA.

Quote

 

Internal combustion

A typical medium car with a petrol (gasoline) engine and driven 42 km per day will be responsible for life-cycle emissions of 54.1 t of CO2-eq over a 15-year lifetime in the Stated Policies scenario.

Plug-in hybrid (PHEV)

An equivalent plug-in hybrid EV would produce 36.9 t, or 32% less over its lifetime.

Battery EV

An equivalent battery EV with a 300 km range would produce 25.0 t, 54% less over its lifetime than a conventional internal-combustion vehicle and 32% less than an equivalent plug-in hybrid EV. Despite higher manufacturing emissions associated with producing the battery, the battery EV's cumulative emissions are lower than those of its internal-combustion equivalent after 2 years.

 

Point 3

I think the main answer on this one is infrastructure investment. These problems are serious technical challenges and would come at great cost to fix, but not impossible. On charging of EVs - if this were done overnight, the effect on peak demand would be quite small. It is possible to have a smart electricity grid that could handle this - many EV owners for instance already have a lower overnight charging rate, so you would simply price accordingly - if you want to charge your car during peak times, you would have to pay a premium, whereas overnight charging would be cheaper.

In terms of the overall supply of electricity, you could attack this from two places - one is increasing generation, and the other is reducing demand, as an example by improving insulation of homes and focusing on energy efficiency initiatives.

Overall

I think I've covered most things here. One further point - this is in effect a cost-benefit analysis. The upfront costs of decarbonisation are high. I don't think there's any point in shying away from that. The UK's likely impact on the global problem is low, perhaps moderate if you include our soft power / geopolitical influence. Then the flip side of course is the cost of not decarbonising. There are some on this forum who would take the view that the cost of that is zero (i.e. humans have no impact on climate change) or that the cost is low (the impacts of climate change are not likely to be that high).

I of course do not take that view, and therefore from my perspective the tens to hundreds of billions we would need to spend over the next 30 years or so (which is not that much in government spending terms actually - HS2 for example exceeded £100bn) are a relatively small price to pay, especially since much of that money is not 'lost' as such as a lot of it is in infrastructure which should provide at least a partial return on investment.

Edited October 16 by WYorksWeather

[Sky Full]

You make many valid and interesting points in support of the Net Zero policy, and I don’t deny that reducing global CO2 emissions should be a priority for every responsible government.   I’m not against this policy providing it is not likely to damage the prosperity of our population while other countries with far greater impact on atmospheric CO2 levels appear to do little or nothing about it.   However, the evidence for climate change and what impact human activity has had, or will have, on global weather patterns does not need to be discussed here, as I’m simply trying to understand what the impact of Net Zero will be on this country and whether we are damaging ourselves unnecessarily given the tiny contribution to atmospheric CO2 we already make.  If we are seeking to set a good example then I would suggest we have already gone further and faster than almost anyone else by cutting out all coal fired power generation and installing thousands of wind turbines making the UK the sixth largest generator of wind power in the world.

Wind Energy in the UK: An In-depth Industry Analysis, Trends and Forecasts

WWW.GREENMATCH.CO.UK

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Explore the UK's wind energy revolution! Discover how it powers 32.4% of the nation's electricity, contributes £6bn to the economy

I’m all for improving domestic home insulation including installing triple glazing etc but forcing people to install heat pumps and the banning of gas boilers seems draconian given the cost to the individual and the questionable efficiency of heat pumps in many situations.  However, improving domestic insulation and home heating seems a much more sensible strategy for controlling CO2 emissions than forcing ICEs off the road altogether.

It’s quite easy to favourably compare the emissions of EVs with ICEs over a specific period - perhaps the first five years of life - but do we know how long EVs will last on average?  Perhaps EVs will be found to have a shorter economic lifespan than ICEs in which case there might be significant differences between the lifetime impact of EVs when scrapping costs are taken into account.  To what extent are battery components recyclable?  Does the world contain enough rare metals to manufacture the number of EVs and their supports systems worldwide (2 billion cars are forecast to be on the road by 2040 - how many of these will be EVs?).

We already import 20% of our electricity from other countries, albeit most comes from nuclear and hydro (so ‘green’ in that respect) but I also question this policy of depending more and more on others for our power supply given that we cannot expect to be given priority if the supplying countries suddenly have a shortage themselves.  Recharging EVs overnight might be cheaper right now because demand is lower overnight but we only have a tiny number of cars charging at night.  Only 3.75% of the total number of cars in the UK are EVs (1,250,000 approx) and even to reach 50% of the total fleet this number would have to increase to 17,000,000 EVs, all presumably charging overnight.  Surely this will have an impact on energy demand trends and perhaps electricity might become more expensive overnight than during the day?  At night we cannot generate electricity by solar, and winds tend to be lighter so energy imports will be greater at night than during daylight hours and our suppliers will not be slow to charge more if they can get away with it.

Generally I think it’s obvious that cutting CO2 makes sense in the long term but I question the ways we are going about it and the impact on our economy and future prosperity.  Could we push back the date for our own Net Zero target without making much, if any, impact on global emissions?  Are we effectively shooting ourselves in the foot to set this ‘good example’ to other countries who seem to be completely unconvinced so far….

[TonyH]

Not as much perhaps as the damage to be inflicted by the economy regardless of Net zero.

[WYorksWeather]

 Sky Full I think whether it's draconian or not depends on the amount of government support (i.e. taxpayer funding) is provided to individuals to help with it. In terms of efficiency, some of the countries that are further ahead on heat pump installation are the Nordic countries, so clearly with good insulation it's possible to use heat pumps in the British climate, otherwise half the population of Finland would have frozen by now.

The point about EVs - the total calculated lifecycle emissions are the calculated values. In terms of how long EVs are likely to last, in most cases it's the opposite - they last longer than ICEs since the mechanics are less complex than an ICE so there is just less that can go wrong, so if anything that would boost the case rather than harming it.

In terms of lithium, my understanding having done a fair amount of reading is that current production is not yet high enough, but the available global reserves are sufficient for several billion EVs, so we're not likely to run out any time soon, and that's before factoring in battery chemistries other than lithium (of which there are many) or the possibility of recycling the batteries. On recycling, reuse is probably more likely in the short term. An EV battery in a 200 mile range EV that has degraded say to the point of only delivering 120 miles could be taken out of the car and used for static storage instead, rather than breaking it down and recycling it.

Having read about the energy generation issue my understanding is that overnight power is unlikely to be a problem - the surplus at that time is massive, to the point that even several million EVs don't require that much. Simple estimated calculation - the average car does about 30 miles a day, that's roughly 10kWh. To charge each car overnight would take an average of 1kW. 20 million EVs would therefore take 20GW of power to charge - about a quarter of current generated electricity, but not an insurmountable obstacle given this would phase in over the next 20 years or so.

In terms of whether we could push back the target - obviously the literal answer is yes, there's nothing that can stop a party running for election on that platform, and then repealing or amending various climate change related legislation, providing they were prepared to deal with a likely backlash from some of the voting public, various international organisations and some countries, and probably have to withdraw the UK from any relevant treaties if we no longer meet the requirements. I've already mentioned the impact on global emissions is small, or possibly moderate if you take into account the second-order effects on other countries through industry development and international diplomacy, but yes we're not a massive emitter like the US, China or India, though still substantial.

If you meant whether it is desirable to scale back Net Zero, then I would say no, but again it's all cost-benefit stuff. If you think climate change is a low or moderate risk then obviously views on the desirability of expensive emissions reduction would be different to if you hold my position which is that it's a high risk or possibly a very high risk.

 

[CryoraptorA303]

Who actually cares if it hurts our economy? This simply should not be part of the debate. All of our feeble human concepts are completely irrelevant in the face of an existential threat like this.

If there was an alien invasion coming, and we had to commit to building a space fleet that could repel them, would there be any debate at all about whether building a space fleet would hurt the economy, considering the opposite was to become enslaved by aliens, or genocided out of existence altogether?

Our economy will cease to exist all the same if we choose not to do it and commit to a K-Pg level extinction. This will be the end result of choosing not to take climate change as seriously as an alien invasion or impending Chicxulub-level bolide impact, or some other existential threat that cannot be negotiated with.

[Methuselah]

 CryoraptorA303

Part of the answer might be not too far away:

 

[Methuselah]

But I doubt nuclear fusion will ever provide the answer: 

 

[Catbrainz]

Fundamentally I don’t think solving global warming and carrying on with neoliberalism are compatible goals. It’s like trying to lose weight but you keep having 4 meals a day at McDonalds and munch on chocolate between said meals. 
 

Neoliberalism demand’s unlimited growth which hurts efforts to combat global warming as oil is just too profitable to ditch. We could have non fossil fuel energy as the dominant energy but alas as long as there’s oil under ground it will be deemed too profitable to “waste”.

[Sky Full]

 

 CryoraptorA303

If there was an alien invasion of which we were given, say, twenty years advance notice but no other capable countries in the world did anything to prepare for it, then our efforts to make ready would be equally futile on their own.  

My question is whether we would be better off being in a position of economic strength to prepare for climate change, rather than impoverish the country chasing a net-zero target when other major countries with much, much greater impact on the atmosphere than we could ever offset, do little or nothing.   Would it not be sensible to develop and protect our ability to produce our own energy, insulate our buildings, grow our own food and protect our infrastructure from (perhaps) increasingly violent and extreme weather which will happen anyway, whether or not we, as one isolated country in the world, reach net zero?  In terms of the future effects of climate change on the planet and it’s inhabitants, we are at the mercy of the rest of the world’s population, no matter what we we do here.

Edited November 1 by Sky Full

[Methuselah]

 Sky Full

Surely our being self-reliant in terms of energy would be worth it anyway? And, we'll be in the envious position of being a world leader in the field, rather than dependent on hardly friendly foreign powers? 

[Sky Full]

 Catbrainz    My own feeling is that the human race has become far too successful and is now vastly overpopulating its one and only precious living space - the Earth.  There is no way that humanity will ever actively do anything about this and so the population continues to grow at the expense of the planet’s finite resources and all the other inhabitants.   Eventually I believe there will be a rebalancing brought about by Nature - either a complete reset of the kind which has wiped out most life several times, or a drastic reduction in human population, perhaps brought about by a much more deadly and virulent virus than Covid ever was.   It’s possible that climate change will be the driver of this reset, or something else, but it’s bound to happen sometime.

[Sky Full]

 Methuselah    I completely agree, Ed.  Perhaps we could aim to do both (be self-sufficient in energy and also achieve net-zero) but which would come first?   I can’t help feeling that if we expended more effort on finding a less harmful way to produce energy (hydrogen perhaps? there’s enough of it…) and less on trying to patch up the atmosphere while the majority of the worlds population continue to pollute it, we might discover a solution which all the world could benefit from.   Is there no way we could tap into the Earth’s internal heat to produce electricity in the way they do in Iceland?  

[Scuba steve]

There’s never been any rich low energy countries ,this governments trajectory will end in tears

[Methuselah]

 Scuba steve

Which would, were we still living in the 19th Century, make much more sense! 

[John88B]

 Sky Full spot on I've long believed that nature has a way of balancing things out and that some day soon a virus will come along that drastically reduces the human population. Sad to say for the planets sake and all the creaures we share it with that virus can't come along soon enough.

[Snowspout]

 Sky Full The fertility rate in most Western countries is very low, well below the replacement rate, and well below whats required to guarantee us the social welfare systems we ascribe to ourselves in our dotage. The countries with extremely high fertility rates are developing nations with already huge populations; they aren't going to stop using fossil fuels anytime soon (and from their perspective, why should they?). If you think China or Russia are going to listen to the UN et al. who've already handed out arrest warrants for their dictators, you're a fool.

What we're going to end up with by say, 2050, is a Western world that's almost net zero, but a developing world that will be tripling their emissions. On the whole, net global emissions are going to be staying basically the same for the next 100 years at least. Is net zero going to hurt our economy? Probably. But we've already done a good job at hurting it through other means, and we have no other choice if we want to avoid total climatic catastrophe.

[jonboy]

 hailcore You can't class either russia or china as developing countries, both have negative birth rates and why they wish to expand to gain labour. interestingly India will soon (20/30 years) will also reach equilibrium. The biggest threat to the world is population decline as developed countries take/attract ever increasing numbers from developing countries thus reducing those countries available labour but also reducing there fertility pool.  

The other consequence of falling birth rates and population decline is that many will have to work into their 70's and beyond and as such it is likely that long retirements will become a thing of the past thus resolving a financial crisis looming in regard to pensions!!!  

Edited November 1 by jonboy
missed bits

[WYorksWeather]

I don't think adaptation vs. mitigation is an either or. Everything we build now that we expect to still be around in 50 years time should be built to withstand projections for 3C of warming, which is a realistic possibility. That's the adaptation side.

The mitigation side is that we hope not to be in that position in the first place, by cutting emissions.

[Sky Full]

 hailcore   I have absolutely no wish to see our country thrive at the expense of others in the ‘developing’ world who have just as much right to live a healthy and comfortable existence as we do, but if we restrict the growth of our economy by handcuffing our industry to the most expensive forms of energy then our ability to adapt and prepare for climate change might be seriously hampered.  Is it possible that the ‘developing’ countries with their increasingly youthful and productive workforces, and those countries which are already ‘developed’ (own space programs, nuclear energy producers, advanced IT infrastructure etc) but which are making little or no effort to curb their emissions will quite soon overtake the ‘west’ in terms of economic success so that in effect the current advanced ‘western’ countries will become the poorest countries because of their ever aging and less productive workforces?  In truth there shouldn’t be any need for competition between countries for economic dominance - we should all be working together to formulate a common world-wide policy to ensure that climate change is minimised but also that the human race as a whole reaches a common level of prosperity acceptable to all.  Of course, this is never going to happen because the people who gain power for one reason another are generally only interested in protecting their power for their own lifetime and do not have the slightest interest in planning for a future they will never see.

[richie3846]

Yes I believe chasing net zero will damage our economy. For starters, the concept itself is warped. Trying to achieve a numerical value makes a joke of the broader concept of what we may wish to achieve. Even the concept of net zero is a little bit strange, suggesting we can maybe burn a load of nasty stuff (like all the rubbish being sent to power stations for burning), as long as we drive round in electric cars. So with a strange and elusive concept as the main slogan, I think it's doomed from the outset. 

Secondly, we have major stumbling blocks with four important areas. 

Cars ---- I won't go into details, as others have covered the subject already. The bottom line is, there is no silver bullet, and we may struggle to get away from the combustion engine unless we're prepared to spend a lot of money, damaging our economy. 

Heating ---- air source pumps are not an option for many houses currently. Again, huge investments may be needed to make alternatives to gas robustly viable. Many properties would need a lot of money spent on them for heat pumps to work. 

Food, and general imports ---- unless we're going to consume less, and reduce importing by growing in the UK and eating seasonally, then we're going to continue to use a lot of resources shipping stuff in and out of the UK. Consuming less may damage the economy anyway.

Air travel ---- a big contribution to emissions, yet our economy would be impacted if we cut back on air travel. What economy realistically is going to ban or limit flying, when it provides income through tourism and business? It's like shooting your own arm off, you just aren't going to do it. Restrictions in this department will inevitably damage the economy. 

These are just four areas, I'm sure there are more for consideration. I feel three four areas are indicative of the overall problem we face economically. The world is geared towards capitalism, trade, wealth, growth. Unless we moved to a new model of existence, then inevitably the chase for net zero is going to come at a heavy price for our economic well being. There are just too many factors at play imo, too many areas of life that would need major change. I think it's asking too much in too short a time, and global pressures (hysteria in many ways), may drive decision making processes down blind alleys, leading to huge sums of money being wasted. 

[Sky Full]

The election pledge of the new POTUS:  “We’re going to drill, baby drill. And we’re going to frack like nobody’s ever fracked before”.   

So much for trying to protect the planet from climate change.  Doesn’t make our efforts to achieve “Net Zero” seem worth the effort or the damage to our country’s (short term) prosperity make any sense at all. 

I re-read an old National Geographic article the other day which went into considerable detail regarding the impact of rising sea levels on the world’s coastal cities.   Although much is written about the changing weather which a warmer world will experience, we must not overlook the dangers of sea level rise which will devastate many low lying lands.  Even the thermal expansion of the water in all the oceans caused by a warmer climate could raise global sea levels by several centimetres.

Seas May Rise 2.3 Meters per Degree C of Global Warming: Report

WWW.SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.COM

---

Sea levels could rise by 2.3 meters for each degree Celsius that global temperatures increase and they will remain high for centuries to come, according to a new study by the leading climate research institute...

 

I am not arguing against the need to take action to combat climate change, but I am arguing that by putting all our efforts into chasing lower CO2 emissions we are failing to make provision for the now absolutely inevitable changes in our climate which will need many decades of preparation and investment in measures to preserve our infrastructure.   I say inevitable because countries like the USA, China, India and Russia, all with far greater populations than us, are the only ones who can make a measurable reduction to CO2 in the atmosphere but they simply are not doing so.  As a result we have to prepare for the effects of climate change now because in 50 years it will be too late to take defensive measures.  Is there anyone in a position of power who is prepared to look 50 years into the future and make the right decisions now?

[jonboy]

 Sky Full i agree with your post. Many civilisations have declined and ended because of changing climate and their inability to recognise and react.

We have the ability to do both but at present are unwilling to do anything. 

Edited November 8 by jonboy
Spelling error

[WYorksWeather]

 Sky Full For what it's worth, as someone who is in favour of mitigation, I'm in favour of adaptation as well. You're right that there simply is no alternative. What we need to do is start to make some pretty uncomfortable choices, that a lot of people don't want to confront.

As an example, you could look at the sea level projections and make a decision as to which areas would be subject to an unacceptable risk of storm surge flooding in say, 50 years time. You would then need to make a decision as to whether that area is 'worth enough' to be defended from the flooding, which might cost a lot, or whether the area should be abandoned (often referred to as 'managed retreat'). Naturally, this is hugely controversial. Of course, the insurance industry would partly solve this - some areas would eventually becoming virtually uninsurable, as we're already seeing in parts of Florida (hurricanes / flooding) and California (wildfires).

Then, you have all the forward-looking pieces of infrastructure. As an example, should we be mandating passive cooling to a high standard in all new buildings? It would add costs to building now, but would be cheaper than renovating later.

Same for heatwaves - should we be planting more street trees now, so that we'll have a useful tree canopy in some of our major cities in 50 years time? They cost more to maintain now, but people in the future would be thankful for them. Short term vs. long term.

Rail infrastructure is another one. On Network Rail's site, it even says that the UK rail infrastructure is not designed for temperatures over 35C. The roads are broadly similar. We would need concrete roads rather than tarmac, and to replace most of the rail track in the country.

A lot of these things we don't do, simply because at the moment temperatures over 35C are not that common, and when they do occur it's typically only a few days at a time, so the disruption is manageable. At some stage we are going to get a modern 1976-type heatwave, with prolonged moderate heat. Instead of 16 consecutive days over 30C, you could conceivably get the same sort of streak over 33C, and likely over 35C or higher later this century. That sort of longevity would cause really major problems with our current infrastructure.

All very tricky stuff. I think that planning should be done based on something near reasonable worst-case climate change predictions (3-4C of warming in 2100). And then we just hope we don't end up needing it.

[Midlands Ice Age]

WYW..

Your post echoes totally the views I was  putting out on various social media channels 10 years  ago including on here), with the exception that I suggested 2 to 3 degrees as the criteria.

At that  time I was called a denier. Maybe because I told people that net zero was dead. We can do little in this country to prevent any ongoing climate changes.

It is rather ironic that we have elected a government determined to implement it as quickly as is not possible......

Typical UK. Thats politicians for you.

MIA

Edited November 8 by Midlands Ice Age