Essay by Eric Worrall

“Much cheaper than you imagine”

The energy transition will be much cheaper than you think

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Yet, this one point of agreement between climate activists and carbon addicts is, in fact, wrong. Greening the world economy will be much cheaper than the two groups imagine. … the sort of estimates that routinely form the basis for policymaking. They range from around $US3 trillion ($4.6 trillion) a year to almost $US12 trillion a year, which is indeed a lot. But these figures are overblown in four important ways.

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The incremental bill to cut emissions is likely to be less than $US1 trillion a year, which is to say less than 1 per cent of global GDP – not peanuts, but not an unaffordable pipe dream, either. …
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The IEA’s modelling finds that reaching net zero by 2050 will require $US5 trillion a year of investment in clean energy by 2030. That is more than twice the $US2 trillion a year it reckons is currently going into clean energy and two-thirds more than its estimate of total current investment in energy. …

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Read more: https://www.afr.com/companies/energy/the-energy-transition-will-be-much-cheaper-than-you-think-20241119-p5krqa

AFR is Australia’s premier financial newspaper.

I’m not sure which model they used to come up with these numbers, but one place such models often fall down is the fallacy of thinking renewables are a one for one swap for conventional energy. A gigawatt of installed capacity from a nuclear reactor is not equivalent to a gigawatt of installed solar or wind capacity. Nuclear power is reliable, and continues working at night.

As for the “affordable” amounts being discussed, my chosen unit of measurement for proposed climate investments these days is the cost of constructing a starship.

Back in the 1950s, Manhattan scientists embarked on a series of projects to investigate peaceful uses for nuclear explosives. Carving instant maritime harbours, greening the Sahara, and novel means of generating energy were among the ideas considered. But the most interesting idea for me is they found a viable path using 1950s technology to building a manned starship – Project Orion (search “momentum limited” in the link to see the starship).

We’re not talking Star Trek here, it would be a very slow trip – around 120 years to reach the nearest star. But that is a lot better than 10s of thousands of years, which is the best other currently available technologies can deliver.

At the time the cost was estimated at 0.1 (10%) of US GNP – $367 billion back in the day. If we stick to that percentage, in today’s dollars that would be around 0.1% x US GDP $27 trillion = $2.7 trillion to build a single manned starship. GNP is a slightly different measure of income to GDP, but I think $2.7 trillion per starship is a reasonable ballpark figure, especially if you plan to set up a production line.

For $3-12 trillion / year, you could build up to four starships per year. Within a few centuries with that kind of outlay, we could have established colonies in the Asteroid Belt and in some of the nearest star systems, and have sent human explorers (or their descendants) on grand tours of our corner of the Milky Way.

$3 – $12 trillion per year could buy us a United Federation of Planets, a foothold on becoming a Kadashev Type 3 civilisation.

The proposed energy transition climate investment, which at best would deliver energy infrastructure equivalent to what we already have, just doesn’t seem “much cheaper than you imagine” when measured in units of starships.