Not only can we afford the costs of net zero but we will have to. The alternative is a disastrous and very costly future. Excellent piece by @jameskirkup@SMFthinktank@spectator.
1) The climate deniers lost the battle around the evidence base and failed with their attempts to discredit the science more than 10 years ago.
2) Unable to challenge climate science the deniers have now turned to the costs of net zero as the new battleground. On a weekly basis they attack policies driving decarbonisation as being unaffordable.
3) But they never present a credible alternative. This is because they don’t believe there’s a problem in the first place and drawing attention to the costs of climate policy ignoring the benefits is a well-established strategy as @MichaelEMann points out in his latest book.
4) Unfortunately dither and delay in terms of policy announcements allowed the deniers and delayers to set the terms of the debate rather those working on the solutions.
5) “All the forecasts of the costs of moving to green heating and electric cars will be wrong. As demand is established, companies will do what companies always do and find ways to meet that demand more cheaply.”
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1) It is widely accepted that heat pumps will play a major role for decarbonising heating. But their running costs are usually higher than gas boilers. This is because we put most of the climate policy costs on electricity and almost none on fossil fuels.
1) Let’s take a step back to understand what’s going on here. The Energy Company Obligation (ECO) is a long-standing energy efficiency programme. The first variation of its kind started in 1994. 10 years ago I wrote my PhD thesis on it @ecioxford. sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2) ECO (or the Supplier Obligation as it is also known) has always supported installing new fossil fuel boilers. Especially during EEC 1+2 and CERT millions of condensing boilers were installed. This led to very large energy savings. centrica.com/media/1635/bg_…
The UK hydrogen strategy is finally out. My take on it in this thread. gov.uk/government/new…
1) The hydrogen strategy rightly identifies hydrogen as a key ingredient for the energy transition especially in areas such as power, industry and parts of the transport sector.
2) As my quote on @BBCNews says “But, as the strategy admits, there won’t be significant quantities of low carbon hydrogen for some time. We need to use it where there are few alternatives and not as a like-for-like replacement of gas.” bbc.com/news/science-e…
In recent weeks claims have been made that electrification of end uses doesn’t deliver carbon savings because it runs on dirty fossil fuel generation. I argue here that these arguments do not stack up and prolong the combustion of fossil fuels. Thread 1/n energymonitor.ai/tech/electrifi…
2) Estimating carbon savings associated with electrification is complex. A number of analysts have made admirable attempts to appraise emissions savings from a shift to EVs and heat pumps. These studies show electrification leads to significant reductions in carbon emissions.
3) The German media reported widely on research claiming electric cars that run on power generated by coal are no cleaner than petrol and diesel cars. @AukeHoekstra quickly debunked this.
The Fit for 55 package presented last week includes carbon pricing in the buildings sector through an ETS. This raises equity concerns that will need to be addressed or the project will fail. euractiv.com/section/climat…
2) Carbon revenues can also be used to lower policy legacy costs put on energy bills. This is what Germany is implementing. Revenues will be used to lower RES surcharges, relief measures for citizens and climate action support programmes. @cleanenergywirecleanenergywire.org/factsheets/ger…
Opponents of heat electrification often state heat pumps 'don't work in old buildings'. Not true says @JohnCantor2 dispelling this myth in his excellent article. And John knows - he has been designing & installing heat pumps since the 1980s. Thread 1/7 heatpumps.co.uk/2020/11/03/hea…
@JohnCantor2 2/7 First conclusion: “The right heat pump could be made to heat any building to any temperature we like. But the crux of the issue is the installation cost and the running cost.”
3/7 The question John says that we should ask is – “can we heat old buildings and achieve acceptable energy-efficiency?” His response: “Well… we probably can, and as time passes, it gets better.“