In the drive for electric transport, Boris Johnson’s government intends bringing forward a ban on selling petrol and diesel cars by five years to 2035.
It will simultaneously scrap the £3,500 grant towards the purchase of low-emission vehicles.
The move comes after experts said 2040 would be too late if Britain wants to achieve its target of emitting virtually zero carbon by 2050.
I suppose that this demonstrates that the UK can be more woke than the EU.
As it happens, I have been looking at the UK’s zero-carbon challenge – in part to find something else to discuss now that Brexit is done.
According to the Government’s data, in 2018 the UK used 380 Terawatt hours (TWh) of energy fuelling cars and vans. Six TWh are the equivalent of about one supertanker full of oil.
At the same time, we produced just 175 TWh of non-CO2 electricity, of which about 30 percent came from nuclear. So if we wish to electrify road transport, we need to produce twice as much electricity from clean sources.
In fact, it’s worse than that, as the total UK energy consumption is 1,660 TWh. So we need ten times as much clean electricity.
That comes out at 250,000 wind turbines (we currently have 10,000), 4.5 million acres of solar panels (which is about ten percent of all the land in agricultural production) or 50 Hinkley Point C nuclear power plants.
All of which can be done, at a cost of £1 trillion to £2 trillion.
The final problem is getting the electricity to where it is needed when it is needed. Battery storage is neither cheap nor widely available. All the battery storage currently deployed in the UK could run the country for about five seconds.
The options are to massively upgrade the grid – and work is starting on that – or to use the electricity to generate hydrogen.
This can then be distributed down the gas grid, which is already capable of taking it and act as a direct replacement for natural gas. Domestic heating is responsible for about 30 percent of our emissions.
Better yet, hydrogen can be used to power a car, either through a fuel cell, which is in effect a hydrogen-powered battery or by direct combustion, i.e., in place of petrol or diesel.
This also gets over the fundamental problem of batteries, which is that in the short term they cause more emissions.
The energy required to make batteries is huge, so the lifetime CO2 saving of a battery car is just 20 percent over a petrol one.
Zero carbon is achievable, but it will take engineering and finance. And we are lucky in the UK to have some top-notch engineers and the world’s financial center.
If BoJo wants to do something environmentally sensible, it would be to scrap the HS2 railway project and apply the £100 billion saving to developing nuclear-powered electrolysis plants.
There’s a company in Crewe that could do it. It’s called Rolls-Royce and it makes nuclear reactors.
The time for political grandstanding has passed. David Attenborough can enjoy his retirement, Greta can go back to school and the Government can start working out how to pay.
Read more at Conservative Woman
If zero carbon is really the goal, then nuclear is the answer.
But the eco-wackos don’t like that answer.
Because CO2 is not really the issue.
Why would I listen to dreamer who insists that conventional vehicles emit carbon? Carbon emissions are known as soot. If CO2 is carbon, then H2O is hydrogen. Fill er up, fool.
Why displace natural gas from existing infrastructure with hydrogen? Nat gas has been proven as vehicular fuel. It’s not easy or cheap because it’s dangerous, yet hydrogen is even more explosive.
Forget the carbon dioxide alarmism and let AGW survive as a theory awaiting proof.
I doubt that hydrogen is a viable option. It does have the advantage of not using batteries, but like electric cars the power has to come from some where. Nuclear is probably the best option, but the scale would be huge. Nuclear electric power is a lot more expensive than fossil fuels, and then there is the cost of the hydrolysis and compressing the gas to 10,000 pounds. Like most climate change proposals, I’m sure no one has sat down and calculated the cost or feasibility. In addition, we not only have no climate energy, we have no reason to do anything about this fraud.
Does the target of “emitting virtually zero carbon by 2050” mean every person and animal of every kind, plus plants processes, plus oceanic life, plus all breathing exhalation must cease? Along with every process of all industrial production and food and transport? Even speaking will have to be banned. Nasty CO2……..
The Warmists’ targets are aspirations , far into the future, invisible. They will never allow us to successfully push that rock over the hill. If we get close, they’ll replace it with a bigger rock.