IVZ media thread, page-5600

What Net Zero will mean for the Global Economy - An Opinion.....


Economic growth as we know it is impossible if governments shift to 100 per cent renewable energy, a renowned French climatologist has said.

Jean-Marc Jancovici, the author of World Without End, the graphic novel on climate change which has sold nearly a million copies in France, said that wind, solar and hydroelectric power offer no miracle solution and “will not allow us to maintain today’s modern industrial world”.

He said: “Globalisation is basically ships, trucks, planes and computers, and all this relies on fossil fuels.

“It’s also an unproven assumption to claim that renewable energy will remain cheap in a world with only renewable energy.”

The idea that we can keep all that in a world with only renewable energies is a bold assumption and I don’t believe that such a shift is compatible with maintaining growth in physical economic output.

“The probability of keeping to the 1.5 degrees is zero unless a comet hits the earth or there is all-out nuclear war, or a new pandemic more harmful than Covid,” he said, scoffing at suggestions that the latest “historic” Cop28 climate deal was a game changer.

It offered nothing legally binding as “there is no boss of the world” to enforce pledges.

It’s simple maths, said the professor. “To respect the 1.5 objective, global emissions must start decreasing by 7 to 8 per cent per year right away,” he said.

“Seven per cent is India’s share of world emissions. So for the plan to work, India’s emissions would have to disappear next year.

In year two, two-thirds of Europe’s need to go. That’s the rate at which things must evolve.

Even for two degrees, we would need an extra Covid each year to stay on track.”

Similar colour blindness was in evidence over air travel, said Jancovici, whose “four long-haul-flights-per-life” calculations were recently slammed by Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury as “despairing”

(Given that the world’s commercial air fleet would double in the next 20 years.)

“It’s a calculation, not a suggestion,” hit back Mr Jancovici, who hasn’t flown in 20 years.“It’s a rough figure."

"It could be four, it could be three, it could be six."

"I also assumed that the right to fly was evenly distributed among the world population. So people in Somalia or Kenya or Brazil could fly as much as French and British, which is not the case.”

But he insisted: “Democratic commercial airlines are something that appeared with oil and will disappear with oil because there is no substitute to scale.”

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/01/06/shift-to-renewable-energy-make-economic-growth-impossible/