Net Zero: Learning from Europe

By Andrew Stuttaford

Satuday, September 03, 2022

 

In the middle of a Reuters story about soaring Chinese coal shares (how about them “stranded assets”?), I noticed this:

 

“Demand for coal will remain big in China. The supply of renewable energy is not stable,” said Yuan Yuwei, hedge fund manager at Water Wisdom Asset Management.

 

A reckless, “Great Leap Forward” campaign to slash carbon emission would only create more peril than pollution, Yuan added, as it threatens to choke the economy and industrial output.

 

To quote that great historian, Austin Powers:

 

Ouch baby, very ouch.

 

Meanwhile (via Bloomberg), a report from South Africa:

 

South Africa’s energy minister dismissed the notion that renewable electricity can bring an end to years of rolling blackouts, pointing to Europe’s pivot back to the use of fossil fuels as evidence of the constraints of using green energy.

 

Solar and wind plants could be used to supplement coal, gas and nuclear power generation, but had limitations when it came to meeting South Africa’s needs, such as supplying mines, Mineral Resources and Energy Minister Gwede Mantashe said.

 

“The excitement of moving from coal to renewables is becoming a myth,” Mantashe, a former miner and labor-union leader, said in an interview Tuesday in his office in Pretoria, the capital. “Many think that renewables are the so-called savior, and we know that it is not. Germany has learnt that painfully.”

 

Europe’s leaders liked to boast of how their, well, great leap forward toward net zero (greenhouse-gas emissions) was setting an example to the world.

 

I’m not 100 percent certain this is what they meant.