Holidays in Mallorca? Forget it! Green energy will require huge sacrifices

Russian scientist Yuri Amosov analyzes in his blog the difficult future of "green energy", which has been talked about so much lately, but whose prospects are still very, very vague, despite the cheerful statements of Western officials:

“Two documents now occupy an important place in the discussions on the future of energy - the document of the World Energy Agency (IEA)“ Net Zero by 2050 ”(Zero Emissions by 2050) issued about a month ago and the set of European Green Deal“ Fit for 55”, - according to which, in particular, the reduction of emissions by 2030 should be 55% compared to the 90s.

The NZ50 roadmap says something like this: in principle, the NZ50 goal is achievable. But…

1. Renewable energy is not enough for everything and close.

For the goal to be achieved, you will need

1. Accelerated and widespread construction of nuclear power plants.
2. Widespread introduction of technologies for capturing carbon dioxide (CCS) from combusted fuels, which will have to be left in the energy balance and emitting carbon dioxide from industrial processes.
3. Large investments will be required to improve the energy efficiency of buildings.
4. Despite this, you will have to save on heating and air conditioning, keeping the temperature no higher than +18 in winter and not lower than +25 in summer.
5. The number of trips, especially aviation, should be reduced - it is necessary to completely abandon short-distance flights, replacing them with train trips, and long-distance flights should be kept at the level of 2019.
6. Energy capex should triple.
7. Without payment by developed countries for decarbonization programs in developing countries, net zero is not achievable until 2070 or even 2090.

In principle, the report says that all this will be beneficial for the economy - new jobs will be created, household energy costs will decrease. Here, however, several questions arise.

Not all activities and not all jobs are beneficial to the economy. For example, the covid epidemic has created many jobs in the production of masks, PCR tests and more. Has humanity become richer from this? The arms race also creates jobs. Did the citizens of the USSR become more prosperous from the fact that the USSR produced many thousands of tanks and put them in warehouses?

The energy transition does not create new consumer benefits (apart from, of course, preventing the climatic Armageddon), so, according to the figures, there may be additional economic growth, but according to consumers' feelings, it will not.

And it would be okay for the consumer of the first world to endure significantly increased taxes for the sake of improvement and prettierness, visible to the eye in his native Odense, Clermont-Ferrand and Nagoya. But this money will go to pay for solar panels produced in Shenzhen and installed in Wagudugu, and this is in addition to spending on replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump and on roof insulation, which the government will also force him to do.

Second, if the energy balance is ensured only if consumption is limited, and without this it will be so in short supply that it will not be enough to provide a comfortable temperature in houses, despite an expensive heat pump and an insulated roof, then this rare resource will need to be as- then to distribute, and nothing else, how to raise prices for such a product, mankind has not invented. That is, energy will be expensive. You can check how much energy price increases consumers are willing to tolerate in order to maintain energy comfort. This was demonstrated several times in 1973 and 1980. This is how much energy will have to rise in price in comparison with the current level for people to begin to limit themselves in comfort.

Third. The report actually states that many of the trappings of today's prosperous life will simply become unavailable. Flights in Europe for 30 euros? Forget it. Holidays in Mallorca or the Canary Islands? Forget it. By the way, for billions in developing countries who hope that their lives will soon be similar to what they now see in the movies about the first world, this future means that much seen in the cinema will remain in the cinema. In such a future, a resident of Jakarta, Lagos and San Paolo will never see Paris or the geysers..."