2020–The Climate Turning Point
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By Paul Homewood
h/t Robin Guenier
Christiana Figueres has not been twiddling her fingers since stepping down from the UNFCCC. Instead, she is at the forefront of the campaign group, Mission 2020.
They have recently issued this press release:
The report on which these recommendations are based was called “2020: The Climate Turning Point”.
So how realistic are its findings?
It starts by underlining just how meaningless the whole Paris shebang was in terms of reducing emissions.
As we are all aware, the declared aim of Paris, to keep warming below 2C, was not met by actions. Even if we assume that CO2 emissions have any significant effect on temperatures, emissions would have to fall off the edge of a cliff after 2030 to meet that target.
Mission 2020 want drastic action to start before 2020, in order to make this plummet not quite as steep!
These are their main recommendations:
They don’t seem to have grasped yet the utter inability of wind and solar power to supply the world’s demand for reliable energy.
They claim that a target of 30% is achievable, saying that in 2015 renewables were already up to 23.7%.
However, this is dangerously misleading. BP data shows that, out of this 23.7%, hydro power accounts for more than two thirds. There is very little prospect of substantially increasing hydro capacity, given competing needs for land.
Bio energy also accounts for about a tenth of the renewable figure. But burning more forests rather seems to conflict with item 4 on their list, restoration of forestry.
In reality, wind and solar still only account for 4% of the world’s electricity.
Given the rapidly increasing demand for electricity, not least to power all of those electric cars and heating systems currently using fossil fuels, it is difficult to see how renewable energy can be more than a sideshow for many years to come.
As for the demand that no new coal plants are built, and that existing ones are rapidly shut down, one can only wonder what planet they are on.
Do they really think that China, India and the rest of the developing world are going to throw away billions of pounds, by closing perfectly efficient and modern power stations that they have just built, just to suit Christiana?
We are often told that economics trumps everything else. What is absolutely clear is that countries like China and India, who have plentiful reserves of coal, are not going to suddenly switch to other sources of energy, whether natural gas or renewables.
Such a move would be disastrous both for their economies and for their energy security.
According to the Electric Vehicle World Sales Database, electric cars still only supplied 0.86% of global sales last year. This accounted for 774,000 sales.
Meanwhile, global car sales increased by 4.7 million, to 77.31 million. No matter how many new electric cars enter the market, they are dwarfed by the numbers of conventional vehicles being added to the world’s fleet.
This fact won’t change until electric car technology improves out of all recognition, and becomes competitive with petrol.
Demands for better fuel efficiency simply reflect what has been happening for many years, without the need for intervention from the UN. This helps to keep the lid on petrol consumption, but the likely continued growth in global car sales will ensure that demand for oil remains robust.
All very worthy, I’m sure. But how do they plan to feed the world?
(And I dare not even mention biofuels!)
Again, they are knocking on an already open door.
Heavy industries have been improving their energy and other efficiencies since the year dot. Yet, as they point out, such energy savings are offset by higher production.
Developing countries now want their share of the wealth, and this will push industrial output up much more.
Mission 2020’s targets can only be met by drastically reducing standards of living.
And so we come down to the nitty gritty, what this is really all about – the MONEY.
$1 trillion a year.
And we all know just who will end up paying for this.
They talk about green bonds and corporate disclosure. What is pretty clear is that our banker and big corporate friends will make big money out of this themselves.
It is worth noting that one of the Mission 2020 panel members is Helena Morrissey, until last year CEO of Newton Investment Management, and now Head of Personal Investing at Legal & General.
Morrissey has long campaigned for more women on company boards.
It is a pity she does not spend more time concentrating on her day job of looking after investors’ money.
Have Global Emissions Peaked?
It has been claimed, for instance by Fatih Birol, that global emissions have flattened off in the last three years, and should soon start coming down fast. But that is to totally misrepresent what the data is telling us.
For a start, it is important to note that the rapid growth in primary energy consumption, which was seen in the first decade of the 21stC, has now tailed off.
This is primarily due to the slowdown in China’s economic growth in the last three years.
But just because energy consumption has flattened off does not mean it will suddenly plummet.
And if we look at the changing energy mix, we can see that the main factor in the standstill in emissions has been the replacement of coal by gas.
We may well see a continued shift away from coal to natural gas in coming years, as long as the economics stack up. In turn, that would help to stop CO2 emissions from rising as fast as they otherwise would have done.
But there is world of difference between that scenario, and the rapid decline in emissions that we are told is required.
Conclusions
The overall theme of the Mission 2020 report is that the world can take big steps to drastically reduce emissions, both quickly and painlessly.
However, none of their solutions stack up.
If their policies are followed through, they will be extremely costly and end up having very little effect.
One wonders if there is really a hidden agenda?
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May 4, 2017 at 06:39AM
Iowa Climate Science Education 