by Mish Shedlock, Mish Talk:
It’s increasingly obvious that a net-zero future will not happen by 2050 and may not happen ever. I suggest we officially abandon the fantasy.
There are at least three articles discussing the end of net zero, March, August, and October of 2023.
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The Week Net Zero Died
On August 3, 2023, UnHerd asked Is this the Week that Net Zero Died?
It has been a tough week for climate activists. First, the new head of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Jim Skea, said we should not overstate the 1.5 degrees celsius warning, and that humanity will not end if we miss it. At the same time, wind projects are hitting new obstacles, with Vattenfall cancelling a new offshore project in the North Sea due to high costs, while also having a project in Sweden rejected because Stockholm sees potential “negative effects on the environment” from offshore wind installations.
Elsewhere in the world of renewables, a new report has shown that the production of solar panels is causing more emissions than previously thought, and the once much celebrated solar-powered mini-grids in India are falling apart. But it does not end there: the British Government has decided to cut costs of polluting and approve hundreds of new North Sea oil and gas licenses. This announcement may have upset Just Stop Oil activists, but the reality is that the world is using more oil than ever and Britain needs to be prepared.
Then there is the issue of electric vehicles. Ford is set to lose $4.5 billion on them this year, while Volkswagen has decided to scale back its EV production amid a slowdown in the Chinese market. This begs the question of how promising the EV market really is without coercion (banning the internal combustion engine) or incentives (tax credits and subsidies) by government.
What’s more, insurers around the world are paying attention to the higher risks surrounding the transportation of EVs, something that will push prices up even further (at the time of writing, a cargo ship carrying cars is still burning off the Dutch coast, most likely due to a fire caused by an EV battery, with one sailor killed). It also doesn’t help that Tesla actively suppressed thousands of driving range complaints from becoming public, and this lack of reliability likely also explains why the absolute number of gasoline-powered cars is still growing.
As the energy analyst Anas Alhajji has pointed out, one of the reasons why EV sales are often presented in percentages is because the total number is still incredibly small. For many people a battery-only vehicle is not an option, especially at times of growing electricity prices.
Well, that was a question, not a proclamation. Let’s turn our attention to a specific announcement.
The Month the Net-Zero Dream Died
Real Clear Markets says October 2023: The Month the Net-Zero Dream Died
Industry has begun to recognize that investments in a “net-zero” future are not the path to “doing well by doing good.” The electric-vehicle market has collapsed, and car companies are retrenching. Mercedes-Benz’ CFO predicted a constrained and shrinking market as that company found it impossible to unload stock even at steep discounts. At home, GM had junked a joint venture with Honda to try to make “affordable” EVs, delayed opening of an EV truck plant, abandoned its EV manufacturing targets, and has offered no forecast of when those targets might be met. Ford has stopped sending out EV trucks to dealerships after some refused to accept new shipments, given how many unsellable versions they already had in stock, and will renumber the unsold remainders as 2024 models.
Denmark’s Orsted abandoned two offshore windfarm projects after losing $5.6 billion on them. Profits at China’s chief wind-turbine manufacturer have dropped by 98 percent. Siemens Energy stock has fallen to its lowest-ever level as it turns out that its products, pushed by political schedules rather than technological and economic reality, don’t work properly. Solar-energy companies are facing similar revenue and profit plunges.
A recent study by the Texas Public Policy Foundation reveals that the full costs of powering an EV over 10 years is the equivalent of $17.33/gallon. The figure cited by EV boosters of a gas equivalent of $1.21/gallon fails to take into account all of the various subsidies provided by governments, other electric-grid ratepayers and other auto purchasers – a total of the equivalent of $16.12/gallon over the whole of those 10 years of operation, for a total of nearly $47,000 per car. And the Biden Administration has recently admitted that “renewable” energy receives massively greater subsidies than its reliable-energy counterparts.
The verdict is undeniable to objective observers: the net-zero dream is nothing more than a mirage. An immensely costly and increasingly indefensible mirage.
This doesn’t mean, of course, that there will never be any partial, and profitable, shift away from current technologies and power provision. Of course there will be. The market for hybrid autos is still vibrant (though query where those sales figures would be without their own subsidies). The simple, undeniable truth, though, is that the great public-private push to force adoption of new and unreliable technologies before they have been proven by the free market to be technologically and economically feasible has failed.
The Implausibility of a Net Zero Carbon Energy Future is Now Obvious
On March 28, 2023 I wrote The Implausibility of a Net Zero Carbon Energy Future is Now Obvious
I am confident I was not first.
Funding Mirage
Ask people if they support global peace or ending work hunger. Then ask them if they will contribute $100,000 to help make it happen.
It’s the same with net zero. There are lots of grandiose ideas like guaranteed living wage, ending homelessness, and the always popular world peace. Reality sets in when the question arises “How are we going to pay for this?”
