Germans are learning the truth about chaotically intermittent wind and solar, the hard way. Their erstwhile supplier is making the depth of their dependence on Russian gas keenly felt as he maintains his efforts to subjugate Ukraine and get Ukraine’s Western backers to back off.

Across Europe, rushes recent squeeze on gas supplies has focused attention on the need to keep the lights on, like never before; even Germany’s Greens understand that the proles won’t suffer power rationing for very long without taking to the streets.

The real and growing threat that large tracts of Europe will soon be plunged into freezing darkness has caused a major rethink about the prevailing wisdom that Europe’s energy future involves an inevitable transition to an all-wind and sun-powered future. The Germans, once committed to killing off their reliable nuclear and coal-fired power plants, are reopening coalmines and firing up their mothballed coal-fired power plants. Even Germany’s Greens are talking about maintaining their ability to produce coal-fired and nuclear power for the foreseeable future.

Enter Bjorn Lomborg – an environmental economist – who stands out from the crowd, simply because he doesn’t buy into the notion that the world will be better off if we destroy reliable and affordable energy supplies. Sure, he goes along with the carbon dioxide gas/changing weather for the worse paradigm, but baulks at denying the impoverished Third World access to affordable power, by forcing it to sign up to costly and unreliable wind and solar.

Over time, Lomborg has been a consistent critic of insanely expensive and utterly pointless renewable energy policies across the globe (see our posts here and here and here). However, until very recently he had trouble using the ‘N’ word in public.

Anyone talking about reducing carbon dioxide emissions and not talking about nuclear power, can’t be taken seriously. Particularly where the protagonist argues for power delivered reliably and affordably, as Lomborg does; which is why we’ve been underwhelmed by much of what Lomborg had had to say on energy policy over the last few years.

Much of Lomborg’s message about energy and the environment hasn’t changed, however he has, in a road to Damascus moment, finally become an advocate for the only power generation source that can deliver power whatever the weather without generating carbon oxide gas emissions in the process.

Power poverty the deadly cost of climate zealotry
The Australian
Bjorn Lomborg
25 June 2022

For three decades, climate campaigners have fought to make fossil fuels so expensive that people would be forced to abandon them. Their dream is becoming reality: energy prices are spiralling out of control and will soon get even worse. Yet we are no closer to solving climate change.

Energy costs increased 26 per cent across industrialised economies last year and will rise globally by another 50 per cent this year. While Western governments are blaming Russia’s war on Ukraine, prices were already rising because of climate policies designed to choke fossil fuel investment. Since the 2015 Paris climate agreement was inked, the world’s 1200 biggest energy corporations have slashed capital investment in oil and gas by more than two-thirds. Huge price rises are the inevitable result of forcing more energy out of an increasingly starved system.

The climate policy approach of trying to push consumers and businesses away from fossil fuels with price spikes is causing pain with little climate pay-off, for two reasons.

First, solar and wind are still only capable of meeting a fraction of global electricity needs. Even with huge subsidies and political support, solar and wind delivered just 9 per cent of global electricity in 2020. Heating, transport and vital industrial processes account for much more energy use than electricity. This means solar and wind deliver just 1.8 per cent of global energy supply. And electricity is the easiest of these components to decarbonise: we haven’t yet made meaningful progress greening the remaining four-fifths of global energy.

Second, even in the rich world it is clear that few people are willing to pay the phenomenal price of achieving net-zero carbon emissions. Soaring prices are hiking energy poverty in industrialised economies, and prices are set to climb even further. Germany is on track to spend more than half a trillion dollars on climate policies by 2025, yet has only managed to reduce fossil fuel dependency from 84 per cent in 2000 to 77 per cent today. McKinsey estimates that getting to zero carbon will cost Europe 5.3 per cent of its GDP in low-emission assets every year, or for Germany more than  $US200bn annually. That is more than Germany spends annually on education and police, courts and prisons combined.

Policymakers in Western countries can’t continue to push expensive policies without a backlash. As energy prices soar, risks grow of resentment and strife, like France saw with the “yellow vest” protest movement.

For the poorest billions, rising energy prices are even more serious because they block the pathway out of poverty and make fertiliser unaffordable for farmers, imperilling food production. The well-off in rich countries might be able to withstand the pain of some climate policies, but emerging economies like India or low-income countries in Africa cannot afford to sacrifice poverty eradication and economic development to tackle climate change.

Globally, the inability of green energy to compete means the world is on track to remain dependent on fossil fuels. Analysing all current and promised climate policies, the International Energy Agency finds fossil fuels will still provide two-thirds of global energy use by 2050, only a modest drop from 79 per cent today.

And green energy’s failings are why carbon emissions are still increasing. Last year saw the highest global emissions ever. This year is likely to be higher again. Climate policy is broken. By forcing up the price of fossil fuels, policymakers have put the cart in front of the horse. Instead, we need to make green energy much cheaper and more effective.

Humanity has relied on innovation to fix other big challenges. We didn’t solve air pollution by forcing everyone to stop driving, but by inventing the catalytic converter that drastically lowers pollution. We didn’t slash hunger by telling everyone to eat less, but through the Green Revolution that enabled farmers to produce much more food.

Yet, innovation in green energy has been neglected for three decades. In 1980, the rich world spent more than US8c of every $US100 of GDP on low-carbon technologies. As climate policies focused on making fossil fuels more expensive, green research spending halved to less than US4c on every $100.

Researchers for Copenhagen Consensus, including three Nobel laureate economists, have shown the most effective climate policy possible is to increase green R&D spending fivefold to $US100bn a year. This would still be much less than the $US755bn the world spent just last year on often ineffective, current green technology.

We don’t know where the breakthroughs will happen. They could come in nuclear energy, which can provide reliable power around the clock unlike the intermittency of solar or wind, but remains much more expensive than fossil fuels. With more R&D, “fourth generation” nuclear could end up providing much cheaper, safer power. But we need to look for breakthroughs across all areas of energy technology, from cheaper solar and wind with massive and very cheap storage, to CO2 extraction, fusion, second-generation biofuels and many other potential solutions.

Climate change will not be solved by making fossil energy unaffordable, but by innovating down the price of green technologies so everyone will be able to switch.
The Australian

Nuclear’s future is NOW!