The Five Horsemen of the Net Zero Transition
This week's episode of Cleaning Up is the first of a two-parter, in which I explore the bull and bear cases for Net Zero. First up, the bear case - prepare to be depressed...
Should we be optimistic or pessimistic about net zero? In this world of polarized politics, raging culture wars and scientifically illiterate journalism, it can be very hard to separate signal from noise. This episode of Cleaning Up is the first of a two-parter, in which I’ll be exploring the bull and bear cases for the net-zero transition.
One minute Net Zero will be perfectly straightforward. We just have to continue rolling out cheap clean energy technologies, become a bit more energy efficient every year, keep innovating and stop chopping down forests. What could be easier? The next minute, Net Zero will be brutally challenging. Every sector of the economy will have to switch to entirely new technologies, consumers will have to completely change their behaviour, new supply chains will have to be built, and all of this has to happen in the course of just a few decades in every country around the world, and it will cost a whole generation’s savings. Surely you can’t be serious!
To get the bad news out of the way first, in this week’s episode, I’ll lay out the reasons why Net Zero is going to be extraordinarily hard, perhaps impossible. We’ll be meeting the Five Horsemen of the Transition: five reasons why anyone hoping for rapid global decarbonization is kidding themselves:
The poor economics of clean solutions beyond wind, solar and batteries;
The inadequacy of our current electrical grid;
Soaring demand for critical minerals;
Political and social inertia; and
Predatory delay by powerful players who are going to lose out.
In Part II, which will follow next week, I will introduce the Five Superheroes of the Net Zero Transition. Will the Five Superheroes of the Transition vanquish the Five Horsemen? Does Godzilla beat Kong? Does Alien beat Predator? I’m not saying: you’ll have to listen to these two episodes to find out!
Start right now with Part I - The Five Horsemen of the Net Zero Transition.
These two episodes are based on a pair of essays I wrote for BloombergNEF, the first of which appeared last September and the second in February this year. As always, my gratitude goes to my former colleagues at Bloomberg for letting me release these audio adaptations.
And please - if you are enjoying Cleaning Up with me and my co-host Bryony Worthington, pass this email on to others and tell them to sign up for this Substack: we always need more listeners, more likes, more reviews and more feedback!