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.