The Cost of Net Zero Emissions
In seeing an ad for portable generators the other day got me to thinking about how those generators would not be powered after 2050.
Which got me thinking even more about what it will cost the average household to transition out of the use of all fossil fuels by that date.
We know the goal of net zero emissions by 2050 has been set by the current administration.
The Congress, at the behest of the President, last year appropriated over $1T for further research and development of alternative forms of energy, primarily solar and wind, including the transmission of said generated electricity.
We understand also the 2050 zero emissions goal is not on the agenda of China and India – the largest contributors to emissions in the world.
We also need to buy the conclusion that global warming – aka, climate change – is primarily caused by fossil fuels emissions and that our effort to eliminate those emissions will save the world.
So, assuming we’re on a track to eliminate fossil fuels by 2050, what needs to happen, and what will be the cost?
To attain the goal, there are several estimates of the total cost. McKinsey says the world is currently spending $5.7T/year to lower the impact of burning fossil fuels. Annual estimates of the future cost of zero emissions for the US is $4.5T/year. BTW, the 2023 US budget total is $5.8T with a deficit of $1.4T.
The changes required of some of the major industries are:
Iron and steel production – Accounting for 7% of emissions, at present the only commercially available way of doing it is using coking coal for making steel from scratch. So, at the moment, there will be little or no production of steel after 2050.
Cement – Accounting for 3% of emissions, there is currently no alternative on how that can be decarbonized.
Both of those industries are required for a growing economy. Without them, we stagnate.
The impact of zero emissions will also be significant for agriculture, rail, aviation, shipping, other industrial processes and many other things.
For example, new fossil fuel-powered boilers are to be phased out entirely by 2033, followed by their compulsory replacement over the following 17 years, either with hydrogen boilers or electric heat pumps.
But then there is the issue of hydrogen itself. Installing a hydrogen boiler might cut final emissions, but it will not get us nearer the net zero target unless the production of the hydrogen itself is decarbonized. It is made from hydrocarbons and releases large quantities of greenhouse gases in its production.
Our government wants everyone here to drive only an electric car by 2050. In addition to the cost to increasing the electrical generating capacity to replace coal and natural gas, the current average state and local taxes is 34.24 cents a gallon on gasoline and diesel. The federal tax is 18.4 cents. You can bet those taxes will be replaced by some other tax, i.e., value added or tax per mile driven. In addition, it will require the production of 280 million car batteries which in themselves have an added cost of mining and toxic disposal sites for those batteries that can’t be recycled.
It will require that any energy source other than electricity to be removed from your household. Moves to eliminate gas stoves, dryers, furnaces and other household appliances are already under way.
What’s it going to take to remove all fossil fuels from our current electrical generating plants? Current renewable energy sources including wind, hydroelectric, solar, biomass, and geothermal energy account for 22% of our electricity – at a high cost. Nobody knows the total cost replacing the other 78%.
The Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS) numbers indicate a worldwide expenditure of $275T will be required to make the transition of the needed physical assets to achieve the 2050 goal of zero emissions.
Ours and other western countries are spending gobs of money on the project. Those “gobs” come from the citizens. So, our government is already spending a lot of our money to achieve a goal that has not been voted on by taxpayers in our supposedly democratic republic.
When you think about all the jobs that will be eliminated it also means a major economic transition in our workforce. Will alternative fuels create enough jobs to replace those jobs? Will our economy be able to grow?
Current estimates are that it will take 7.5% of our GDP to accomplish the zero emissions goal. Currently the federal government is spending 23% of our GDP, already too much. Add another 7% to that and the federal government grows to an even bigger monstrosity.
The generations alive in 2050 will require a lot more money to just maintain our current inflationary standard of living.
I wonder if there will be any publicly acclaimed climate change ‘churchgoers’ in 2050 when rationed electricity could easily be considered a luxury, taxes are through the roof, debt is keeping most among the poor in poverty, and we’re hoping for some foreign aid from India and China.
But we’ll have zero fossil fuel emissions.
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Have a great and prosperous week.
Hug somebody.
References:
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-true-cost-of-net-zero/
https://www.ngfs.net/en/publications/ngfs-climate-finance-research-portal
SPIDER Bites
This week’s trivia question: What is the highest grossing movie of all time? Answer to last week’s name of the first State: Delaware.
Joining the mass business exodus, the owners of the Westfield Mall in the heart of the San Francisco Union Square district are closing up shop. No profit – only losses – can be made anymore in that location as shoppers and tourists are few and the copious street people/shop lifters blatantly steal. San Francisco is rapidly headed to being a ghost town. Sad, and the result of lousy policies and inaction.
The NCAA expanded its support to transgender women joining women’s college sports teams last week. It deferred its policy making to the International Olympic Committee, which allows it in most all sports.
May inflation rose .1% leaving the CPI at twice the 2% target of the Federal Reserve, which passed on raising the interest rate last week because of the threat recession.
Transportation Secretary Buttigieg took the occasion of a bridge on a Philadelphia section of I-95 being destroyed last week to tout his routine rhetoric – fixing our racist and sexist roads. Huh? What about fixing the bridge?
Former president Trump was arraigned in a Miami federal court on Tuesday, primarily on espionage charges under a 1917 law. The DOJ will have a tough time getting a conviction based on that statute when considering the later 1978 Presidential Records Act. It’s obviously political, not legal.
A Manhattan grand jury last week indicted Daniel Penny, the Marine veteran who held Jordan Neely in a fatal chokehold on the New York City subway, on a 2nd degree manslaughter charge. Will anyone want to step in and neutralize a threat in this environment where the perpetrator is the victim? There seem no lessons can be learned for some in powerful positions.
Forget common decency. A celebration of pride month on the White house lawn last week was marked by a transgender woman exposing his fake breasts. The kids there were exposed to a great example of what it takes to be an adult. Not! The Pentagon held its own ‘pride’ event on behalf of all military branches, praising all its LBGTQ+ personnel. BTW, recruitment in all branches is down some 29% – 31% for women.
Bud Light is longer America’s most popular beer. Modelo topped it in sales last week. I thought it would be Miller Lite or Coors. The heavy price of being ‘woke.’ A neighbor related a huge stack of untouched Bud Light cases at a nearby military commissary.
Under its Clean Power Plan 2.0 (CPP), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has proposed the closure of mainly coal- and natural gas-fired power plants in their plan to curb nationwide power sector emissions. The new regulation would require power plants to either adopt carbon capture, a nascent and costly technology, or shut down. In looking at the CPP, I found nothing about how the lost electrical generation would/could be made up. Sorry folks, that’s just going to be part of your part in saving the world.
