The best academic estimates show that over the century policies to achieve net zero would cost everyone on the planet the equivalent of more than $4,000 every year, writes Bjorn Lomborg. (Credit: Peter J. Thompson/National Post/Postmedia files)
In 2021, Canada committed itself legally to achieving “net-zero” carbon emissions by 2050. At various times, prime minister Justin Trudeau promised climate action would “create jobs and economic growth,” as well as a “strong economy.” The truth is that net-zero policies generate vast costs for very little benefit — and Canada would be better off changing direction.
Achieving net-zero carbon emissions is far more daunting than politicians admit. Canada is nowhere near on track. Annual Canadian CO₂ emissions have increased 20 per cent since 1990. While Trudeau was prime minister, fossil fuel energy supply actually increased by more than 11 per cent. Similarly, the share of fossil fuels in Canada’s total energy supply (not just electricity) increased from 75 per cent in 2015 to 77 per cent in 2023.
Over the same period, the switch from coal to gas, combined with a tiny 0.4-percentage point increase in the energy from solar and wind, reduced annual CO₂ emissions by less than three per cent. On that trend, getting to zero won’t take 25 years; it will take more than 160 years. Economist Ross McKitrick recently estimated that the government’s current plan, which won’t even reach net zero, will cost a quarter million jobs and reduce GDP by seven per cent and wages by $8,000 on average.
Achieving net zero worldwide will be even harder. Canada accounts for just 1.5 per cent of global CO₂ emissions though it has and uses plenty of energy. If it had to cap its use, that would be one thing. But the world’s poor want much more energy. In order to achieve global net zero by 2050, we would have to remove the equivalent of the combined emissions of China and the United States in each of the next five years. This puts us in the realm of science fiction.
The COVID lockdowns of 2020 only reduced global emissions by about six per cent. To achieve net zero, the UN says, we would need to have doubled those reductions in 2021, tripled them in 2022, quadrupled them in 2023, and so on. This year they would need to be sextupled, and by 2030 increased 11-fold. So far, COVID apart, the world hasn’t even started reducing global carbon emissions, which last year hit a new record.
Data from both the International Energy Agency and the U.S. Energy Information Administration give added cause for skepticism. They foresee the world getting more energy from renewables: from today’s 16 per cent to between a quarter and a third of all primary energy by 2050. But that is far from a complete transition. On a linear trend, which is optimistic, we’re a century or more from achieving 100 per cent renewables.
Politicians blithely suggest the shift away from fossil fuels isn’t unprecedented, because in the past humanity transitioned from wood to coal, from coal to oil, and from oil to gas. In fact, there has never been a real energy transition, not even once. Coal didn’t replace wood but mostly added to it. More than two billion people still depend on wood for cooking and heating, which continues to provide about five per cent of global energy. In the same way, oil and gas mainly added energy. And solar and wind are now mostly adding to global energy output, not replacing fossil fuels.
More than four-fifths of the world’s energy is from fossil fuels. Over the past half-century, dependence has declined slightly — from 87 per cent to 82 per cent — but in absolute terms use of fossil fuel is up more than 150 per cent. On the trajectory we have followed since 1971, we will reach zero fossil fuel use nine centuries from now. Even on the faster post-2014 trajectory getting to zero would take us more than three centuries.
Global warming will create more problems than benefits, so net zero would bring real benefits. Over this century, the average person would experience benefits worth $700 a year. But the cost of getting there would be much higher. The best academic estimates show that over the century policies to achieve net zero would cost everyone on the planet the equivalent of more than $4,000 every year. Because most people in poor countries cannot afford anywhere near this, if the cost falls solely on the rich world, the price tag is almost $30,000 per person per year. That’s $120,000 per proverbial family of four. Every year for the rest of this century, global costs would exceed benefits by over $32 trillion each year.
Costs would be much higher for transport, electricity, heating and cooling, and, as businesses would have to pay for all this, there would be drastic increases in the price of food and all other necessities. Just one example: net-zero targets would likely increase gasoline costs some two to four times even by 2030, costing consumers up to $US52.6 trillion. It’s a policy that just doesn’t make sense — for Canada or for the world.
Bjorn Lomborg is a visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. This is the ninth of 10 articles running here Tuesdays, based on a forthcoming series to be published by the Fraser Institute.
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