No way can we fuel that many cars!
Posted on 10/25/2022 9:18:54 AM PDT by Red Badger
Influential elites are either in denial about the horrifying costs and consequences of Net Zero – witness last Wednesday’s substantial vote against fracking British gas in the House of Commons – or busy scooping up the almost unlimited amounts of money currently on offer for promoting pseudoscience climate scares and investing in impracticable green technologies. Until the lights start to go out and heating fails, they are unlikely to pay much attention to a recent 1,000 page alternative energy investigation undertaken for a Finnish Government agency by Associate Professor Simon Michaux. Referring to the U.K.’s 2050 Net Zero target, Michaux states there is “simply not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target”.
https://tupa.gtk.fi/raportti/arkisto/42_2021.pdf
To cite just one example of how un-costed Net Zero is, Michaux notes that “in theory” there are enough global reserves of nickel and lithium if they are exclusively used to produce batteries for electric vehicles. But there is not enough cobalt, and more will need to be discovered. It gets much worse. All the new batteries have a useful working life of only 8-10 years, so replacements will need to be regularly produced. “This is unlikely to be practical, which suggests the whole EV battery solution may need to be re-thought and a new solution is developed that is not so mineral intensive,” he says.
All of these problems occur in finding a mass of lithium for ion batteries weighting 286.6 million tonnes. But a “power buffer” of another 2.5 billion tonnes of batteries is also required to provide a four-week back-up for intermittent wind and solar electricity power. Of course, this is simply not available from global mineral reserves, but, states Michaux, it is not clear how the buffer could be delivered with an alternative system.
Michaux sounds a clear warning message. Current expectations are that global industrial businesses will replace a complex industrial energy ecosystem that took more than a century to build. It was built with the support of the highest calorifically dense source of energy the world has ever known (oil), in cheap abundant quantities, with easily available credit and seemingly unlimited mineral resources. The replacement, he notes, needs to be done when there is comparatively very expensive energy, a fragile finance system saturated in debt and not enough minerals. Most challenging of all, it has to be done within a few decades. Based on his copious calculations, the author is of the opinion that it will not go fully “as planned”.
Last Sunday, Sir David Attenborough concluded six episodes of pseudoscientific green agitprop Frozen Planet II by demanding that the world embrace Net Zero, “no matter how challenging it may be”. Net Zero is a political command-and-control project, the full horror of which is yet to be inflicted on the general population. Michaux is quite clear what it entails: “What may be required, therefore, is a significant reduction of societal demand for all resources, of all kinds. This implies a very different social contract and a radically different system of governance to what is in place today.”
Of course, a radically different system of government is available in the People’s Republic of China, but here the position on Net Zero is a tad more nuanced. Having lifted about a billion people out of starving poverty in the last 40 years and become the workshop for an increasingly complacent western world – all powered by fossil fuel – the cause does not seem so pressing. Speaking to the Communist Party Congress earlier this week, President Xi Jinping sounded a note of caution and said “prudence” would govern China’s efforts to peak and eventually zero-out carbon emissions. All of this would be in line with the principle of “getting the new before discarding the old”.
Meanwhile, China’s coal production is reported to have reached record levels, while the Congress was told that oil and gas exploration will be expanded as part of measures to ensure “energy security”.
Michaux points out that nearly 85% of world energy comes from fossil fuel. By his calculations, the annual global capacity of non-fossil electrical power will need to quadruple to 37,670.6 TWh. In a recent report for the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Professor Michael Kelly estimates that the U.K. electricity grid would have to expand by 2.7 times. This will involve adding capacity at eight times the rate it has been added over the last 30 years. If calculations are made for the need to rewire homes, streets, local substations and powerlines to carry the new capacity, the extra cost will be nearly £1 trillion.
In another recent GWPF paper, the energy writer John Constable warned that the European Green Deal seems all but certain to break Europe’s economic and socio-political power, “rendering it a trivial and incapable backwater, reliant on – and subservient to – superior powers”.
History provides us with many examples of weak, or weakened, tribes being overrun by stronger tribes. In the animal kingdom it is known as natural evolution. A 96-year old ‘national treasure’ preaches we have to pay any price to satisfy the new cult of the green god. Better costed and more rational views are available.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
I haven't (intentionally) eaten bugs yet.
Where will they get Tires when they Ban Oil ,LOL
Ding, ding, ding - we have a thread winnah!
No way can we fuel that many cars!
Upgrade your electric in your home…..until the EV burns it down!!
You didn’t follow the conversation and you missed the point.
Also, we NEED lithium and other rare elements for phone batteries and other high tech uses. It’s insane putting 26 pounds of rare earth elements into a battery that lasts about 8 years.
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https://mycarmakesnoise.com/battery/how-much-does-a-car-battery-weigh/
How Much Does a Lithium-Ion Car Battery Weigh?
As stated before, lithium-ion batteries weigh approximately 26 pounds each. Some lithium-ion batteries that have more amp hours weigh more, but the average weight of lithium-ion batteries is 26 pounds.
In the 15th century the masses believed in witchcraft as a cause of many evils and went to great lenghts to eradicate it. The hysterical masses now believe in “climate change” with the same fervor (and same lack of truth) as witch finder believed in witchcraft and witches. Climate change is an imaginary bugbear being used to force more control over the masses. EVs will never replace the function of fossil fuel powered vehicles and should be relegated to forklifts.
Take it up with Associate Professor Simon Michaux.
I worked in the power generation industry for 16 years and what you say is 100% accurate. I remember reading the IEEE reports on trying to get economical solar - never could get it to work at anywhere near cost effective.
BAN electric cars!!!!
Shut down the climate jockey conspiracy!!!!
Leftists will just make kids in Africa and China dig deeper.
Well fortunately COLD FUSION is only 20 years away.
It's about time that someone ax the question.
Lithium is the LIGHTEST of all metals.
I can’t see any energy density improvements with heavier metals, and no weight savings at all...............
And always will be. for that matter fusion power is only 10 years away and will remain in that state for the foreseeable future
oh no’s... PEAK Lithium and Cobalt!!!
The kool-aid drinkers believe they all will be driving EV’s once they kill the oil industry. Sorry kool-aid drinkers..... not enough materials to build everyone an EV, so EVs for the rich and important, while the useful idiots will be riding public transportation.... 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The useful idiots will be riding rikshaws.................
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