A closer look at Net Zero and its consequences
Wolfgang Knorr is a climate scientist, consultant for the European Space Agency and guest researcher at the Department of Geography and Ecosystem Science, Lund University
Yesterday I was contacted by a producer of Times Radio’s Carole Walker show. They wanted to talk to me about my opinion on net zero, assuming I believe net zero is a complete waste of money. Times Radio is a Rupert Murdoch owned digital radio station. They later realised their mistake, but let’s seriously ask this question:
Is Net Zero a waste of Money?
I like this question, because among activists, it is usually 100% certain that we cannot possibly do too much to reach net zero as fast as possible, unless we do it by destroying our civilization and plunging it back into the stone age. But maybe there is a little bit more to unpack here, and as so often, such kinds of provocative statements may have a little bit of a grain of truth in them. So what we can do is strip off a number of follow-up questions, to clarify. For example:
Are net zero policies as we have them a waste of money?
That of course depends on how much you value a slightly faster move to renewables, but it has to be kept in mind that the current approach to reaching net zero is entirely based on the simple economic calculus that inevitably, renewable energy is going to beat fossil fuels sooner or later. Otherwise, there is no explanation for current American fracking and drilling sprees, the EU’s recent scramble for liquified natural gas deals, Germany’s bulldozing of villages to make way for coal mines, or the continuing Chinese and other countries’ investment in coal-fired power plants. It is true that recently, EU emissions of greenhouse gases have been falling remarkably. But in the end, it is down to simple economics: when one region’s demand drops, prices fall slightly, creating more demand elsewhere.
The current approach to reign in demand for fossil fuels will only make them cheaper. Interestingly, the International Energy Agency’s 1.5 degree scenario foresees a massive drop in fossil fuel prices, which miraculously does not translate into increased demand and increased emissions – due to a firewall of carbon taxes and similar measures. Such assumptions are dangerously naive for anyone following the news, from past Yellow Vests fossil-fuel price protests to the recent re-election of Donald Trump.
Each time prices for fossil fuels are high – as it is currently the case due to the war in Ukraine and Western sanctions against Russia – there is a strong business case for expanding production. Due to long lead times, this locks in more production. But once the fossil fuels are there on the market, they have to be burned. Natural gas, in particular, is an even more potent greenhouse gas when not burned, and oil is toxic – so much that during COVID spot prices briefly fell to negative values. We are therefore in for many more decades of fossil fuels, unless there is a radical change in our approach to net zero. Falling prices may decrease production, but certainly not enough to phase them out.
I also seriously doubt whether existing net zero policies have had any impact on global emissions at all. This leads us to our second question:
Is striving for net zero in itself a waste of money?
The answer is very likely no, because there are clearly other ways to reach net zero. One way not to do it, however, is to take the CO2 out of the atmosphere and store it securely underground in geological formations. While technically possible, this is a perfect example for a waste of money. Not creating the emissions in the first place is always hugely more economical than removing them after the fact.
What does make economic sense, however, is an international agreement to phase out and ultimately ban the use of fossil fuels due to their unacceptable environmental costs. This will lead to higher prices, which, given enough lead time, will send efficient market signals to ensure a transition towards zero emissions. It will also compensate fossil-fuel producers through higher prices, cushioning the blow of their demise. Efforts towards such an agreement have been shaping up for a few years, but what is needed is a high-level endorsement by key geopolitical players. Unfortunately, the current trend towards further confrontation and militarization makes this look increasingly unlikely.
So much for economics, but may we also ask:
Are there dangerous down-sides to net zero?
Unfortunately, there are, and they are the reasons why the ‘net’ in net zero can indeed lead to serious consequences, potentially turning the proposition of net zero into a dangerous trap. In the scenarios published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that are in line with the UN’s landmark Paris Agreement, approximately one third of current CO2 emissions would have to be taken out of the atmosphere through using bioenergy and then storing the CO2 underground. The land area required amounts to between 25 and 80% of current cropland – risking massive food shortages and biodiversity loss. This is because these scenarios do not strive for zero, or at least near-zero emissions, with a small amount of remaining emissions compensated. Instead, they make maximum use of the word ‘net’, and assume continued fossil-fuel burning long after net zero is reached.
So where are we now?
If current net zero policies are mostly useless, and the prospects for a sensible approach to net zero are dim, where does that leave us? The answer is rather straightforward, but all the more difficult to accept: we are, and always have been, on a path where stabilising the climate – the purpose of net zero – is being achieved exclusively by means of leveraging existing economic forces, with only the slightest impact of political decision making. These, at best, lead to a geographical shift in emissions, but there is no evidence of an impact at the global scale.
We are currently seeing stationary energy production move towards renewables due to much lower costs: first electricity production, then room heating. Electrified ground transportation is next in line. But all those transitions are accompanied by an increase in energy demand: in 2023, half of all passenger cars were inefficient and resource intensive SUVs, the vast majority of them of the internal-combustion type. And the lowered demand for fossil fuels also offers entirely new opportunities outside the realm of surface transportation: a US company has already secured 130 orders of a yet non-existent hypersonic passenger jet that can fly at roughly four times the speed of sound, while a Chinese company is not far behind.
And where will we end up?
There is now much concern that the election of Donald Trump could seriously harm efforts to reach net zero and destabilise the climate. But what is usually overlooked is that the entire approach to solving the climate crisis has always been growth based, which for now mostly means fossil-fuel driven. It is so much easier to point the finger at others, rather than admit one’s own shortcomings.
Given all this enthusiasm for bigger and faster, which is not something that Donald Trump invented, it is inconceivable that we are headed for anything less than three degrees of warming. The Climate Action Tracker gives an estimated range of 2.2 to 3.4 degrees Celsius by end of the century based on ‘current policies’. But as we should be very aware of by now, current policies and ambitions can turn both ways.
Currently, there is also no viable path to completely phase out fossil fuels. It is not even remotely on the agenda at the upcoming COP29 UN climate talks. And given the economics and dangers of removing the CO2 en masse, there is also no viable path towards net zero this century. So if we are lucky and do not hit three degrees this century, we will almost certainly do so during the next one. This is not irrelevant: my daughter will be, all going well, 84 on 1 January 2100. I have friends that age who are fully in their lives. I hope my daughter will be, too.
For everything else, we are firmly on terra incognita.
Wolfgang Knorr
“I support Brave New Europe because global crises urgently require reporting free of corporate and government ideology.”
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