Those advocating climate change mitigation policy have
hitherto wagered everything on the success of renewable energy
technologies. The steadily accumulating data on energy and emissions
over the period of intense policy commitment suggests that this gamble
has not been successful. Pragmatic environmentalists will be asking
whether sentimental attachment to wind and solar is standing in the way
of an effective emissions reduction trajectory.
For almost as long as there has been a climate policy, emissions
reduction has been seen as dependent on the replacement of fossil fuels
with renewable energy sources. Policies supporting this outcome are
ubiquitous in the developed and developing world; markets have been
coerced globally, with varying degrees of severity it is true, but with
extraordinary force in the OECD states, and particularly in the European
Union. The net result of several decades of such measures has been
negligible. Consider, for example the global total primary energy mix
since 1971, as recorded in the International Energy Agency datasets, the
most recent discussion of which has just been published in the World Energy Outlook (2018):
Figure 1: Global Total Primary Energy
Supply: 1971–2015. Source: Redrawn by the author from International
Energy Agency, Key World Energy Statistics 2017 and 2018. IEA Notes: 1.
World includes international aviation and international marine bunkers.
2. Peat and oil shale are aggregated with coal. 3. “Other” Includes
geothermal, solar, wind, tide/wave/ocean, heat and other.
It is perfectly true that the proportional increase in modern
renewables, the “Other” category represented by the thin red line at the
top of the chart is a significant multiple of the starting base, but
even this increase is disappointing given the subsidies involved, and in
any case it is almost completely swamped by the increase in overall
energy consumption, and that of fossil fuels in particular. Renewables
in total, modern renewables plus biofuels and waste and hydro, amounted
to about 13% of Total Primary Energy in 1971, and in 2016 are almost
unchanged at somewhat under 14%. Thirty years of deployment, almost half
of that time under increasingly strong post-Kyoto policies, has seen
the proportion of renewable energy in the world’s primary energy input
creep up by about one percentage point.
Furthermore, what is true at a global level is also true in every
national jurisdiction of importance, with the exception that in the less
economically vibrant parts of the developed world, including the EU and
the UK, energy consumption is actually declining, largely due the
transfer of much manufacturing to other parts of the world, principally
China.
It should therefore come as no surprise to anybody that emissions not
only continue to rise, but have recently started to increase at the
highest rate for several years, a point that is revealed in the latest
release of the Global Carbon Budget, 2018, and can be conveniently illustrated in the chart derived from this paper’s data and published in the coverage of the Financial Times:
Figure 2: Global Emissions 1960 to 2018. Source: Financial Times, 6 December 2018, drawn from Global Carbon Budget Report 2018.
These dismal facts are producing the obtuse reaction that the current
renewables dependent policies are insufficiently aggressive, or, to use
the accepted jargon, ambitious, and that the world must try harder. The reaction of the BBC’s Matt McGrath may be typical. He asks: “Why are governments taking so long to take action?”.
But this is a misplaced question. The plain reality is that the
global market coercions, and related policy pressures favouring
renewables are already intense and incessant, and have been so with
growing intensity for over fifteen years. Many economies, large and
small, have tried very hard indeed, but the global energy markets have
barely moved. Why? Because the effort is wasted; the picked winners, the
renewable technologies, remain stubbornly uneconomic, with the
consequence that spontaneous, uncoerced and rapid adoption remains a
dream.
This is what policy failure looks like. At what point do
those sincerely concerned to see prompt and sustainable emissions
reductions begin to wonder whether the renewables industry is a
liability and an obstacle to the aim of climate change mitigation?
Instead of blaming lazy governments, or the irrational consumer, now
rioting in the streets of Paris in protest at climate policy impositions
on transport fuels, environmentalists and campaigning analysts might
spend their time more fruitfully by reviewing the wisdom of the policies
that they have pressed on decision-makers. In doing so they could
reflect that climate change mitigation is in certain important respects
no different from other insurance policies, and must therefore pass the
same tests: Is the policy providing real cover and is the premium affordable and proportional to the risk?
Since the rising trend in emissions leaves no doubt that the current
policies have as yet provided no real insurance, discussion of
affordability becomes in a sense academic, though we can note in passing
that it is also true that the emissions abatement cost of renewables is
so great that it exceeds even high end estimates of Social Cost of
Carbon, meaning that the policies are more harmful than the climate
change they set out to mitigate. – This is not only wasted effort, it is
counterproductive to human welfare.
It will take time for this evidence and reasoning to change minds.
Many environmentalists have a sentimental attachment to renewable energy
flows in spite of their evident thermodynamic inferiority as fuels.
They see them as Goop energy, pure heavenly gifts, handed down, naturally, from a benevolent sun, as opposed to the dirty and artificial earthly products
of the soil that are fossil fuels and nuclear. But such feelings must
be set aside in the interest of practicality. Climate campaigners must
now ask themselves which they prefer, renewables or the stable and
long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, for it is increasingly
clear that they cannot have both. The renewables industry, the vested
interests of Big Green, and the widely endorsed imperative for climate
change mitigation cannot co-exist for much longer. One or the other, or
perhaps both, has to give way.
