Efforts to totally stop burning ancient organic remains within the next few decades are impractical and inconvenient, a study found.
Replacing all fossil fuel-powered machines and equipment by the year 2030 is unfeasible. This is the conclusion researchers reached after exploring several possibilities.
“There is simply just not enough time, nor resources to do this by the current target set by the world’s most influential nations,” said the Geological Survey of Finland’s latest assessment into extra capacity required for alternative energy electrical power systems to completely replace fossil fuels.
“The existing renewable energy sectors and the electric vehicle technology systems are merely steppingstones to something else, rather than the final solution. It is recommended that some thought be given to this and what that something else might be.”
The remarks came after at least 30 governments and six car makers pledged to phase out internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow.
Associate research professor Simon Michaux revealed many of these nations and manufacturers hope to replace ICE vehicles with electric- (EV) and hydrogen-powered models.
If there are an estimated 1.39 billion passenger cars, commercial vans, delivery trucks and buses this equates to travelling 14.25 trillion kilometres a year. In this case 65.19 terrawatt hours (TWh), or 282.6 million tonnes, of lithium ion batteries are required. A further 6158.4 TWh of electricity will need to be supplied to the power grid for recharging.
However, there is not enough lithium, cobalt and nickel to manufacture the first generation of batteries for all EVs and stationary power storage. Even if every battery was recycled there would still not be enough raw materials to go around.
“If we want to transition away from fossil fuels, mining of minerals and using recycled minerals and metals from industrial waste streams in new ways will have to increase greatly,” Michaeux said according to News Limited.
“Recycling cannot be done on products that have yet to be manufactured,” the report added.
Another environmental initiative involves replacing coal and gas power with solar, wind, hydroelectric, nuclear, geothermal, bio waste and other renewable energy sources.
However, this requires expanding clean energy capacity by 300 per cent to 38,114.8 TWh. Namely 84,206 new non-fossil fuel power stations would need to be built and linked to the grid by the year 2030.
“Each of the modelled non-fossil fuel systems have practical limitations to expansion. For example, it was proposed to develop 16,504 new hydroelectric plants of average size but of course hydroelectricity can only be sited in very specific geographic conditions, and there may not be sufficient new sites globally that would be viable,” the report said.
“These scenarios had seriously underestimated the amount of additional electrical power that will be required to phase out fossil fuels, and further had underestimated the effectiveness of renewable power generation systems.”
Nuclear technology is also unable to supply enough electricity to completely replace fossil fuel’s 37,670.6 TWh global capacity.
“After continuous expansion for 76 years the nuclear power plant fleet capacity was able to deliver only an annual electrical power of 26,294 TWh, which was only 69.8 per cent of the required 37,670.6 TWh,” the report said.
“After this point of production all known uranium resources classes were calculated to be exhausted, and the stockpile of spent nuclear fuel … had expanded 4137 per cent from 2016 quantities.”
Click here to download the full report.
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