Feasibility for Achieving a Net Zero Economy for the U.S. by 2050
Excellent scholarship with an old-fashioned Cost/Benefit analysis. SH
Feasibility for Achieving a Net Zero Economy for the U.S. by 2050
I imagine that I have been appointed the first CEO of a new agency set up by the Federal Government of the United States of America with the explicit goal of actually delivering a Net Zero CO2 Emissions Economy by 2050. My first task is to scope the project and to estimate the assets required to succeed. This is the result of that exercise, and includes a discussion of some consequences that flow from the scale and timescale for meeting the target.
Executive summary
The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed $12T (trillion) for electrification projects and $35T for improving the energy efficiency of buildings, a work-force comparable in size to the health sector will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers, and the bill of specialist materials is of a size that for the USA alone is several times the global annual production of many key minerals. On the manpower front one will have to rely on the domestic workforce, as everywhere else in the world is working towards the same target. If they were not so working, the value of the USA-specific target is moot. The scale of this project suggests that a war footing and a command economy will be essential, as major cuts to other favoured forms of expenditure, such as health, education and defence, will be needed. Without a detailed roadmap, as exemplified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors that drove the electronics revolution after 1980, the target is simply unattainable.
INTRODUCTION
Imagine we have a net-zero emissions economy in the USA by 2050. Three very large, interrelated, and multidisciplinary engineering projects will have been completed:
Transport will have been electrified.
Industrial and domestic heat will have been electrified.
The electricity sector – generation, transmission and distribution – will have been greatly expanded in order to cope with the first two projects.
A fourth project is to secure the buy-in of the public for what will be 30 years of social disruption, diminished living standards, and living under a command economy. The successful completion of these projects is necessary to meet the high-level target, but they are not sufficient, as I have not dealt explicitly with agriculture and other matters as described below
Current USA energy consumption
The data in Figure 1 give an indication of the energy used over the months from January 2019 to October 2021 for transport, all heat and electricity (in total and the fossil fuel contribution in the USA. I have derived this diagram from the US Energy Information Agency data[i].
Throughout the year, the use of transport fuel is approximately constant, whereas heating energy is 75% higher in winter than summer, and much of the base load heat is of industrial origin. Electricity use peaks in summer caused by the use of air-conditioners for cooling and has a subsidiary peak in winter from heating.
In converting transport energy and heat – currently mostly derived from fossil fuels – to electricity, we will use today’s data, assuming that the growth in demand from population growth will be offset by energy efficiency savings, both at about 10% over the next 30 years. This approximation would have to be revisited in a more detailed analysis than is given here. Note that about 60% of electricity is provided by fossil fuels and that has to be sourced from renewables and nuclear energy.
I have made no allowances for radical technological breakthroughs in the energy sector, which might relieve the situation on the timescale of decades. Equally, however, incremental developments, such as those seen in battery technology, might be slower than anticipated, as the intrinsic limits of materials properties are approached. Any such delays would worsen the situation.Public acceptanceThe fourth project listed at the outset may be the hardest. It is clear from the public debate that the citizenry has no idea of the scale of the task of a transition to a net-zero emissions economy in 30 years. This is not only a matter of the costs, human resources and materials, but also the disturbance to everyday lifestyles as the target is approached. Opinion polls indicate that few are willing, let alone able, to pay more than very modest sums, and certainly nothing like that implied by the figure of well over $300,000 per household set out above (for electrical and retrofit actions). Worse, there will be no measurable difference in the future climate as a result of all the spending and hardship in the UK. To make a difference we would need the rest of the world, and in particular the developing world, to come on board. Poorer nations, such as India and the countries of South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, would need financial help to do so. If we assume that Europe and North America are to underwrite the rest of the world’s net-zero activities, then the costs to the UK could rise by a factor of 4.5, assuming the same per capita spend globally. The resulting cost of getting to the global target then rises to nearly $1.5M per household, and $200T for the whole of the USA, which is a fantasy in practical terms.By all commonly understood value-for-money measures, climate mitigation exercises simply do not add up. For homes, the $300,000 per household would be recouped almost 100 years (at today’s cost of energy), far longer than any sensible investor would tolerate. Indeed, we would require a command economy during the period to 2050 to secure the finance, skilled workforce, and the materials needed to reach the target. Further, from where we are today, it is not clear how this public acceptance can be achieved on the timescale required.Funding for adaptation to an actual changing climate is an easier ask. Using the Thames Barrier in London as an example, extensive flooding in the 1953 storms in the East of England triggered the commissioning of various actuarial calculations. When should a Thames Barrier be constructed such that over its lifetime the value of flood insurance claims avoided was equal to the cost of the barrier itself? The answer was ‘in the 1980s‘. In developed countries with seismic activity, it is easy to set aside and invest multiple billions of pounds to cover future earthquakes, but that is because most people know they could be claimants during their lifetimes. For the slow-burning issue of climate change, however, this is not possible. Instead, the use of appropriate actuarial calculations could allow investment in adaptation to be attracted as and when necessary.Spend profile and secured financeMost of the preceding analysis assumes a constant 30-year project. In practice, however, the spend will start from near zero and ramp up. If a 40-year retrofit roll out had started in 2010, one would by now have spent of order 15–20% of the total improving housing and other buildings. In practice the spent was of order 1%. Each year of delay adds more to what must be achieved in the coming decades, requiring even greater flows of finance, human resources and materials. The training of a skilled workforce and building up the supply chain must precede mass roll-out in all sectors. The expansion of the grid must precede the mass uptake of electric heating and transport: having the cars and heat-pumps without the green electricity is the height of folly.A project on this scale will need bespoke financing at the national level, as it is beyond the scope even of the richest companies in the world today. Even international money markets would struggle if all the world pursued net zero. Completely new economic thinking would be needed, and the Stern Report of 2006 is way out of its depth on this practical point.A partial list of factors not yet consideredI have given no attention to agriculture, and especially methane emissions, nor forestry, which permits negative emissions while trees are growing. I have not considered aviation or shipping and specific costs there. Aviation fuel will be with us through and beyond 2050, and evolution of electric shipping is very slow beyond commuter ferries in large city harbours. The global economy depends very much on both these forms of transport, and any severe curtailment will be accompanied by falling standards of living of the middle class. I have not considered industrial heat currently provided by fossil fuels for which electrical heating does not achieve high enough temperatures in some refining processes.I have not included the extra costs of simultaneously running the two new infrastructure systems required to support fuelling internal combustion engines and recharging electric motor batteries. I have not considered the practical choices associated with where and how the extra electricity generation should occur, nor have I factored in the costs of any forms of electricity storage (which are very high, as seen earlier). These issues will need an early resolution, because many of the desired outcomes depend on the new infrastructure being in place. I have not examined the ever-growing costs of balancing the grid, costs which grow dramatically as more intermittent sources of electricity are used.A major change in peoples’ lifestyles, with reductions in travel, consumption, and food variety could make a dent in the numbers above, but not reduce much the scale of the engineering projects.A roadmap for Net ZeroThe success of the IT revolution over the last 40 years is in no small part due to the existence of the International Technology Road Map for Semiconductors (ITRS). Representative engineers from every part of the sector, and all parts of the world, have gathered every two years to thrash out in great detail what needs to come out of the laboratory into development, and out of development into production, to keep Moore’s law of transistor miniaturisation on track, and with it the increase in computing power. Every player in the field knows that the other players are investing and working day-by-day to the same agreed objective.Note the contrast between ITRS and international climate meetings. Meeting the 2050 net-zero emissions target is much more complex than semiconductor development and can therefore go wrong in many more ways. Despite this, it is being attempted without any kind of roadmap. The project is therefore more likely than not to veer in the direction of the historical Tower of Babel. No engineer would invest time or money in such a project. Investors should expect better given the scale of the enterprise.SUMMARYWith extra costs comfortably in excess of $35T billion, a dedicated and skilled workforce comparable to of that of the education sector, and key strategic materials demanded at many times the supply rates that prevail today, and all for no measurable attributable change in the global climate, the mitigation of climate change via a net-zero emissions USA economy in 2050 is an extremely difficult ask. Without a command economy, the target will certainly not be met.The practical alternativeMany in the world are convinced that we face a climate catastrophe in the coming decades if this target economy is not delivered. I suggest we are certain to have an economic and societal catastrophe if we persist on the projects to deliver the net-zero economy by 2050. There is a get-out-of-gaol card, and that is the demographic transition, which started 70 years ago. The average family size in the world has halved, from 5 children in 1960 to 2.5 children now, and is continuing to fall. In developed countries, with universal primary education and more people living in cities than the countryside, the figure is below 2, and indigenous populations are in absolute decline, as it takes 2.1 children per family to maintain a population. Stable developing countries, such as Bangladesh and Lesotho, are already down to 2.5. The Chinese population will peak in the 2030s and the world population in the 2060s. A century from now, when we need copper, we will not mine it, but strip it from abandoned cities.My analysis requires the climate change community to go back, in all humility, and ask themselves really how bad will (as opposed to might) the world’s climate become? The proposed solution seems far worse for society than the problem. Half of their analyses of the future climate are based on a CO2 emissions scenario (RCP8.5) now debunked as excessively high rather then the more likely RCP2.5 scenario. Their candour at this point would assist those making the case for funding climate adaptation, which will only be carried out when it becomes necessary. In the parlance of the Second World War, ‘Is this journey really necessary?’Personal viewI hope this report gives the bare facts about what is implied by committing to a net-zero emissions economy for 2050. Short of a command economy, it is simply an unattainable pipe dream, and we will struggle to get 10–20% of the way to the target, even with a democratic mandate to proceed. I think that the hard facts should put a stop to urgent mitigation and lead to a focus on adaptation. Mankind has adapted to the climate over recent millennia, and is better equipped than ever to adapt in the coming decades. With respect to sea-level-rise, the Dutch have been showing us the way for centuries. Climate adaptation in the here and now is a much easier sell to the USA citizenry than mitigation. There is a very strong case to repeal the net-zero emissions legislation and replace it with a rather longer time horizon. The continued pressure towards a net-zero economy will become a crime of sedition if the public rise up violently to reject it. The silence of the National Academies and the professional science and engineering bodies about these big picture engineering realities is a matter of complicity.Footnotes[i] Data from the Energy Information Agency of the USA, with thanks to several members who checked my interpretation of their data to derive Figure 1: all the implications from are by me and they bear no responsibility. Total Energy Monthly Data – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)[ii] • Number of homes in U.S. 1975-2020 | Statista 140M unitswww.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=46118 commercial building 5.9M with 97B sq ft floorspaceIndustrial space in the U.S.: total space by type | Statista 10264 msqft warehouse and distribution 3472 msqft manufacturingSize of new single-family homes in the U.S. | Statista average in 1970 1660 average since 2500.United States Industrial Properties | Reonomy 1.3M industrial buildings: 3.472M sqft manufacturing and 10264M sqft warehouse and distribution.Total U.S. home square footage 2015-2023 | Statista 246Bsqft[iii] In 2009, as Chief Scientific Advisor to the then Department for Communities and Local Government, I briefed Lord Drayson, the then Science Minister, about the challenge of retrofitting all existing buildings to reduce the energy consumption and hence emissions of carbon dioxide. I suggested a detailed pilot programme be put in train. This became a £17 million expenditure programme called 3 ‘Retrofit for the Future’, a series of projects in which over 100 social houses (i.e. smaller than the average) were subject to various measures. One group of 45 houses received complete makeovers – double and treble glazing, external cladding, extra loft and underfloor insulation, and new energy-efficient appliances. Detailed studies of emissions before and after for this group showed that for an average expenditure of £85,000, the average emissions reduction achieved was 60%, with only three dwellings achieving the 80% emissions reduction target, and another three not even reaching 30%. Linearly scaling the result to the whole housing stock and a 100% emissions reduction, produces a cost estimate of £4 trillion. See the results at: Rajat Gupta, Matt Gregg, Stephen Passmore and Geoffrey Stevens. ‘Intent and outcomes from the Retrofit for the Future programme: key lessons’, Building Research & Information, 43(4); 435–451, 2015. See https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/09613218.2015.1024042[iv] Report: Deep Retrofits Can Halve Homes’ Energy Use and Emissions | ACEEE[v] MISO USA: £1.6 million/km for 132kV, £2.0 million/km for 275kV and £3.3 million/km for 400kV line https://nocapx2020.info/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Transmission-Cost-Estimation-Guide-for-MTEP-2019337433.pdf[vi] The Hidden Cost of Net Zero: Rewiring the UK (thegwpf.org)[vii] Cost of electricity by source (per Wikipedia):gas/oil combined cycle power plant: $1000/kW (2019)combustion turbine: $710/kW (2020)onshore wind: $1600/kW (2019)offshore wind: $6500/kW (2019)solar PV (fixed): $1060/kW (utility), $1800/kW (2019)solar PV (tracking): $1130/kW (utility), $2000/kW (2019)battery storage power: $1380/kW (2020)conventional hydropower: $2752/kW (2020)geothermal: $2800/kW (2019)coal (with SO2 and NOx controls): $3500–3800/kWadvanced nuclear: $6000/kW (2019)fuel cells: $7200/kW (2019)[viii] Development of 5-MW Offshore Wind Turbine and 2-MW Floating Offshore Wind Turbine Technology (hitachi.com).[ix] https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2019/june/we-need-more-metals-and-elements-reachuks-greenhouse-goals.html[x] https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2019/11/Kelly-1.pdf.