California prides itself on being a pacesetter with respect to tackling local weather change. It is because they imagine, albeit on shaky scientific grounds, that their residents “already” face devastating penalties inflicted on them by artifical international warming – together with wildfires, sea degree rise, drought, local weather refugees, and different impacts that “threaten their well being and security”.
Thus, to decrease their state’s carbon footprint, the legislature lately handed a legislation requiring all corporations doing over $1 billion in enterprise inside California to “publicly disclose” (by 2026) all their “direct” greenhouse fuel (GHG) emissions stemming from gas combustion they make the most of, in addition to all “oblique” GHG emissions derived from the electrical energy, heating and cooling they devour.
By 2027, they have to additionally disclose “oblique upstream and downstream” GHGs emitted by sources they don’t personal or instantly management however from which they buy items and companies, together with GHG emissions related to the “processing and use of offered merchandise.”
This definitely seems to cowl nearly each mega-scale entity doing enterprise within the once-Golden State. And it would assist those that fret about local weather change sleep higher at night time. However will it truly decrease the planet’s greenhouse fuel emissions?
The straightforward reply is “no”. Let me clarify.
Since solely “zero-emission” automobiles may be offered in California by 2035, and the state will need to have 100% “clear” electrical energy by 2045, the brand new disclosure mandates ought to (at the least in concept) cowl GHG emissions related to “upstream” operations required for processing uncooked supplies, manufacturing new power technology and use applied sciences, and transporting “clear power” gear offered to or utilized in California.
The brand new mandates also needs to cowl wind generators, photo voltaic panels, electrical automobile batteries, grid-scale backup batteries, transformers, expanded and enhanced transmission strains, and different gear related to California’s rising “clear, inexperienced, renewable, sustainable” economic system.
They usually completely also needs to cowl the extraction, processing, refining, and different actions required to acquire the nonrenewable metals, minerals, concrete, plastics, paints, different supplies – and fuels – wanted to fabricate and set up these applied sciences.
The billion-dollar utility corporations that purchase and use all this gear ought to completely be required to catalog and publicly disclose all emissions related to these “clear” applied sciences.
If such a list is precisely taken, which is admittedly a bit “if”, it gained’t paint a reasonably image for these touting renewables, Inexperienced constructing building, and EV transportation “fixes”.
The Worldwide Vitality Company and different consultants report that electrical automobiles have six occasions extra metals by weight than their inside combustion counterparts. Photovoltaic photo voltaic panels require six occasions extra metals and minerals (apart from metal and aluminum) per megawatt than a combined-cycle fuel turbine that generates electrical energy just about 24/7/365; in addition they require at the least 100 occasions extra land space.
Climate-dependent, intermittent onshore wind generators want 9-10 occasions greater than a CCGT, and offshore wind generators require fourteen occasions extra uncooked supplies. Placing 850-foot-tall wind generators in California’s deep ocean waters would require mounting them on floating platforms sufficiently big to forestall them from capsizing in storms; that might possible imply 40 occasions extra supplies.
For each 100,000 tons of copper (sufficient for two,275 gigantic 12-MW offshore wind generators), corporations must blast and extract almost 60,000,000 tons of ore and overlying rock after which use warmth and chemical substances to course of nearly 23,000,000 tons of ore. Each step entails fossil fuels.
Nickel for highly effective nickel-cobalt-aluminum and nickel-manganese-cobalt EV batteries is discovered primarily in Indonesia, the place corporations mine the ore utilizing diesel-powered gear and ship it to smelters fueled by coal. As soon as absolutely operational, a single nickel-processing industrial park in japanese Indonesia will burn extra coal per yr than Brazil.
Cobalt for cobalt-lithium batteries comes principally from the Democratic Republic of Congo, entails in depth baby and near-slave labor, and, like most different metals and minerals for “renewable” applied sciences, requires fossil fuels and poisonous chemical substances and is managed by Communist China.
Manufacturing wind generators, photo voltaic panels, and batteries can be closely concentrated in China, whose coal-based energy and resultant GHG emissions now exceed these of the remainder of the world mixed. In reality, China put 38.4 gigawatts (38,400 MW) of new coal-fired energy capability into operation in 2020 alone – greater than 3 times the quantity constructed all over the place else all over the world.
In brief, California’s Inexperienced transition is more likely to be an unpleasant one for these truly intent on making an attempt to decrease greenhouse fuel emissions. One can’t assist however marvel what occurs when Californian politicians understand their grand scheme to avoid wasting Planet Earth from a artifical local weather disaster truly ends in presumably spewing out extra greenhouse fuel emissions into the ambiance.
My guess is nothing in any respect – besides, after all, to ensure such a legitimate stock isn’t carried out within the first place.
This text initially appeared in The Orange County Register
