Total Pageviews

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

Net-Zero Emissions Plans -- Did Anyone Ask Engineers If They Were Feasible ?

Green New Deal-style plans 
to decarbonize economies 
by 2050 are “madness” 
and their effects 
on an economy would be
 “like the coronavirus 
all over again,” a British 
engineering expert says.

Michael Kelly, professor 
emeritus of technology 
in the Department of 
Engineering at the 
University of Cambridge, 
made the statement
about legislation passed 
in 2019 that requires the UK
 to bring all greenhouse gas 
(carbon) emissions 
to net-zero by 2050. 

He said 
“the costs of decarbonizing 
will be ruinous of our current 
standards of living.”

Constraints posed by 
critical materials, cost, 
and massive infrastructure 
requirements mean 
that such plans are 
virtually impossible
to implement, he says.

U.S. presidential candidate
Joe Biden’s “Plan for a 
Clean Energy Revolution 
and Environmental Justice” 
claims that reaching 
net-zero carbon emissions 
will be a boon for the 
U.S. economy.

Biden notes the 
“existential threat” 
of climate change 
can be turned into 
“an opportunity 
to revitalize 
the U.S. energy sector 
and boost growth 
economy-wide.” 


According to Mr. Kelly, 
plans to decarbonize 
the UK economy 
aim to electrify 
the transportation 
of both persons 
and freight, 
as well as to shift 
the provision of 
industrial and 
domestic heat 
to electricity.

The electricity would come 
primarily from wind and solar 
facilities, with wind and other 
renewable energy produced 
at night stored in batteries 
for peak demand situations 
during the day.

The U.S. Green New Deal 
ignores nuclear power 
as a source of zero-emission 
electrical energy, but the 
Biden plan brings up the use 
of smaller, modular nuclear 
reactors and proposes 
a research agenda to 
“identify the future 
of nuclear energy.” 

The U.S. currently has 
95 nuclear reactors 
that produce 20% 
of the nation’s electricity
( which is 55% of all the CO2 
emissions-free electricity ).

Decarbonizing the economy:

49% of U.S. households 
would have to transition
ating their homes 
with electricity or 
geothermal heat pumps 
from using natural gas. 

Charging millions 
of electric cars 
outside their homes 
and in their garages 
would also overwhelm 
current grid infrastructure.

“It is already the case 
that supermarkets installing 
multiple charging points 
in their car parks can find 
themselves having to pay 
as much as £0.25M 
     ( $306,000 ) 
towards upgrading 
the local substation,” 
he said.

Cars charged by people 
who park on the street 
would also require 
a nationwide network 
of charging points 
built into sidewalks 
to avoid pedestrians 
tripping over them.



Achieving net-zero 
carbon emissions 
would require boosting 
the role of electricity 
five-fold across
global economies—
to 100,000 
terawatt-hours (twh) 
from 20,000 twh,
by 2050.



There's a £45 million 
        ($55 million) 
battery installed 
by Elon Musk 
outside Adelaide, 
South Australia. 

A battery of this size, 
Kelly says, could power 
the emergency wards 
of a large hospital 
for 24 hours on a single 
80% to 20% discharge. 

At a local hospital 
in Cambridge, 
back-up is currently 
provided by two 
large diesel generators 
which cost £250,000 
         ($304,000) 
and run as long as 
fuel is available.

A one week power outage 
after a major storm 
would cost around 
1,300 times as much 
using batteries as it would 
with diesel generators.

Batteries also require 
mining large quantities 
of critical metals 
and minerals. 

Just for the United Kingdom
—an economy slightly smaller 
than that of California—
the widespread use 
of electric vehicles 
would render current mining, 
processing, and recycling 
systems for such materials 
completely inadequate.

Replacing the entire 
fleet of cars and trucks 
with electric vehicles,
even if they incorporated 
frugal, next-generation 
batteries, would require 
almost twice the annual 
global production of cobalt, 
three-quarters of the global 
annual production of 
lithium carbonate, 
almost all of the world’s 
annual production of the 
rare earth metal neodymium, 
and almost half of global 
copper production
—for the UK alone.

Michael Kelly says:
“It’s clear that there has been little or no systems engineering input into the plans.  How can we possibly proceed further along the renewables path when we lack any technology to store electricity at scale? How can we hope to electrify transport when we would need to consume the whole global annual supply of several important minerals to do so, just for the UK?”

“The cost of the wind farms and the batteries and rewiring the grid to cope with all the extra demand would be folly for an economy at the best of times. In the current crisis, it’s madness. It’s like coronavirus all over again. A small group of advisers tell the politicians about the disaster that will befall the country if they don’t do as they are told."

The huge costs 
of the race to 
net-zero carbon 
emissions would 
significantly reduce 
our current living 
standards.