Shhh! That's the point

Achieving “Net Zero by 2050” is impossible

Two energy reports show the U.S. is burdening and dismantling its grid to achieve an impossible goal.

‘Net zero by 2050” is more than a slogan of climate activism. It has become a chief organizational principle for multinational corporations and the BlackRock-led cartel pushing environmental, social and corporate governance investing.

“Net zero” was mentioned in more than 6,000 filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2022 and countless other times by publicly traded corporations and investor groups in statements and on their websites. The SEC says its proposed climate disclosure rule will help investors “evaluate the progress in meeting net-zero commitments and assessing any associated risks.”

“Net zero” and its corollary, the “energy transition,” are talked about so often and so loosely that many take them for granted as worthy goals that could be accomplished with greater buy-in from political and business leaders. But two new reports from the utility industry should put an end to such loose talk.

In September, the Electric Power Research Institute, the research arm of the U.S. electric utility industry, released a report titled “Net-Zero 2050: U.S. Economy-Wide Deep Decarbonization Scenario Analysis.”

The EPRI report concludes that the utility industry can’t attain net zero. “This study shows that clean electricity plus direct electrification and efficiency . . . are not sufficient by themselves to achieve net-zero economy-wide emissions.”

In other words, no amount of wind turbines, solar panels, hydropower, nuclear power, battery power, electrification of fossil-fuel technologies or energy-efficiency technologies will get us to net zero by 2050.

Even to achieve “deep decarbonization”—which isn’t net zero—by 2050, EPRI says, “a broad portfolio of options that includes low-carbon fuels and carbon removal technologies will be required.”

But “low-carbon fuels”—efficient biofuels—don’t exist. “Carbon removal technologies” aren’t possible to scale up, and if they were, it would cost about $1 quadrillion—a million billion dollars—at today’s prices to remove the 1.6 trillion tons of atmospheric carbon dioxide that U.S. climate envoy John Kerry said needs to be sucked “out of the atmosphere even after we get to net zero.”

There’s more. The EPRI report states: “This study does not include a detailed assessment of factors such as supply chain constraints [and] operational reliability and resiliency” of a net-zero electricity grid.

How a net-zero grid could be built and function would be an issue worth studying if it were possible in the first place. But it simply isn’t.

So, barring some unforeseen miracle technology, “net zero by 2050” won’t happen.

Meanwhile, up in Hartford, our legislators are shocked, shocked to discover that, having dismantled our state’s generating capacity and blocked new supplies of natural gas, electricity prices are soaring, and by gosh, they’re gonna do something about it — they’ll pass a law!

How, exactly, Hartford Democrats intend to drive down the world market price for gas is left unsaid, but a law that enables them to hold meaningless hearings where they can shout at utility executives and pose as champions of the Little People is an end to itself.

And up in Maine, where there are 8,500 electric cars (out of a fleet of 1.1 million), almost all are below the Tofu Line, with almost none in Aroostook County, which has exactly ten public chargers in an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined. Some see a problem in switching to all-electric by 2035:

[A] big part of Aroostook’s problem with electric vehicles is its meager supply of public charging stations and its lack of fast chargers.

While Maine has 389 in total, across The County’s wide expanse, larger than Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, there are only 10 charging stations and 17 individual plug-ins, according to  Efficiency Maine. 

Fort Kent has four, Caribou one, Presque Isle four, Houlton six and Danforth two. None of them are the new fast chargers.

“No one is going to plug their vehicle in for 12 hours and wait around at Riverside [Park] the whole day,” Presque Isle City Manager Martin Puckett said. “The preference has been these quick chargers, so that’s what’s needed in the area to make a real big difference.”

Presque Isle’s charger at Riverside Park was a  gift from a southern Maine donor. It’s a level 2 charger, which can take from 8 to 12 hours to charge on 220 volts. So far, it’s seen little use.

The city foots the electric bill for the unit, which operates on the same circuit that supplies power for park events. One month last year records showed $60 in use from the charger; otherwise, costs have been negligible, Puckett said.

Customers pay $10 a day to charge electric vehicles at the Fort Kent town office. Staff at the Fort Kent Police Department, which oversees the two ports, said they aren’t used much. A couple of visitors over the summer charged vehicles there, they said.

There are three levels of chargers, according to  Efficiency Maine. Level 1 units cost around $200, use a standard home outlet and take 20 hours or more to charge a car. Level 2 will take at least 7 hours to charge and cost from $500 to $10,000 with installation. The newest level 3 chargers will do the job in about 30 minutes, but need a 480-volt connection and can cost up to $100,000 installed.

That’s what Puckett wants to see on Presque Isle’s Main Street, where people could shop or visit restaurants while their cars are plugged in. The price tag is a deterrent.

I imagine is. Both in Maine and across the country, where over half the population lack garages, and millions park their cars on the street. There will be no money, ever, to pay for chargers for these people, nor is that the goal. The Greens have always sought to eliminate private vehicles and move the little people into multi-family housing and dependent on public transportation. China has given “population control” a new meaning, and the liberal elite loves it. Here’s the Left’s deepest thinker, NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for instance, writing in “The World is Flat”

[B]eing China for a day – imposing all the right taxes, regulations, and standards needed to launch a clean power system in one day – would be so much more valuable to Washington than Beijing. Because once the directions are given from above, we would be overcoming the worst part of our democracy (the inability to make big decisions in peacetime), and the next day we would be able to enjoy the best part of our democracy (the power of our civic society to make government rules stick and the power of our markets to take advantage of them.)