Although I do not expect the country to reach net zero for the reasons stated in previous posts, we will nevertheless spend a great deal of money in trying to get there. In doing so we will miss out on a number of other important measures we could have done instead which would have made a big difference to the lives of many of us. Below is a link to an interesting debate in the House of Lords which looked at the heat pump policy and its cost implications.
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"My Lords, the Minister kindly referred to the social housing decarbonisation fund, but there are something like 2.7 million homes owned by the social housing sector, with a projected cost of £36 billion to decarbonise them. Does he recognise that the fund is far too small to deliver that, and if so, what extra support will be made available to housing associations for them to achieve this for their poorer tenants?"
Even that estimate of £36 billion seems extremely low as it only works out at £13,300 per house, whereas other estimates Are much higher at around £25,000 per house. But look at the huge sum to be spent on heat pumps and other measures to achieve net zero and then think about what this means for the future housing provision for those who need it. This vast sum will not be spent on building new homes. Instead it will all go to save a tiny bit of CO2 emissions with nothing to show for it.
https://insideclimatenews.org/news/18012024/inside-clean-energy-transition-costs-much-less-than-told/
ReplyDeleteGo to the graph in this link and you can see a compound annual growth rate CAGR of 9% from the year 2000 to 2010. Projected out from 2025 to 2030 a CAGR of 2% per year decreases. Its actually a lower growth rate compared to the past. Decreasing use of FFs has a savings in heat pumps that will be passed onto the owners of the buildings. This is not discussed in your blog on here. LOwering the cost of living has to be taken into account with this investement.
The same goes for the world wide investment in clean energy and more efficient appliances. Clean energy benefits come with lower costs of energy, better health, lower costs of health.
Going back to the great stink of the 1850s when GB decided to get sewer systems. The cost was quite high, but there were also greater benefits to the society for a much better way to handle human sewage. This the standard now all over the world.
Same goes for FF burning. The benefits are far greater than the costs it takes to get there.
If fossil fuels are actually more expensive than renewables then how do you explain that the countries which have invested the most in renewables have the most expensive electricity, such as Germany and the UK? The same is true of the states in the USA, such as California with far more expensive and unreliable electricity than those who rely on coal or gas.
ReplyDeleteYour comparison with the building of the sewage system here has missed out one important detail, which is that when we did that project we were the richest country on Earth with a vast empire and we could afford to do it. Today we are massively in debt and cannot afford net zero.
Iowa and Texas both have low electricity rates and very high RE penetration.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I wonder why California has such high rates. Iowa does seem to buck the trend. Maybe it's very windy there.
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