We’re almost 1/4 of the way through the 21st century, and sustainability has become a hot topic. So what will the world be like, from a sustainability perspective, in 2050? Let’s look at this question when it comes to one of the great environmental challenges – the greenhouse gase emissions driving climate change. Now making predictions is kind of fun, you hope you’re right but you’re also pretty sure that you’ll probably be wrong. But what I really love about this exercise, is how imagining the future opens up possibilities.
2050 is the year in which most countries have made commitments to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps because it’s a convenient round number – exactly halfway through the century, and also, several years ago, back when those commitments were made, 2050 seemed like a long way away. As we approach 2025, however, 2050 doesn’t seem that far away. Will most of the world get to net zero? Well, at our current rate of progress it looks extremely unlikely. But could that change?
This is part 2 of a 2 part essay on this topic, and has a focus on the role that the choices of energy users has on the likelihood of net zero being achieved by 2050.
Part 1 had a focus on technologies.
Greenhouse gas emissions arise from billions of choices
Each day every one of us makes decisions that involve energy usage and thus greenhouse gas emissions. These choices can have small impacts– such as whether to switch a light on or off, through to larger impacts – how you get from A to B and how often you travel.
Whilst I believe the technological solutions that enable net zero by 2050 will exist – and be cost effective – will that mean that we have embraced these solutions or not?
Choices are shaped by availability, income, aspiration, beliefs, convenience, and probably a few other factors a psychologist could explain. In this essay I focus on affordability and availability, with a global perspective on those who aren’t wealthy.
Legacy equipment using fossil fuels
A key challenge I see with getting to net zero emissions is with the legacy equipment that uses fossil fuels.
Have you ever been in an old car, on that is at least 15 years old? You probably have, perhaps you even own one. Next year, around 85% of cars sold globally will have an internal combustion engine in them. Even in 2035 fossil fuel powered vehicles could still be produced – look at a company like Toyota which appears to be still betting its future on hybrids. Will the owners of those 15 year old vehicles in 2050 be able to afford to replace them with electric cars, or have them retrofitted to be powered by batteries?
A building may have a life of 100 years. The chances are that the building that you are reading this in will still exist in 2050. If you are in a cold climate, how is your building heated – does it use natural gas? As an energy auditor I have seen plenty of old gas-using equipment in buildings. Its likely that some countries will still be constructing gas-heated buildings well into the 2030s. Will the building owners’ be willing to rip out the gas appliances and replace them with electric by 2050?
The affordability challenge
In recent years I have worked a lot with shipping ports in Pacific Island countries. The domestic vessel fleet in these countries – fishing vessels and domestic ferries – are almost all second-hand vessels of indeterminate age, but which certainly aren’t young, like the ones in this photo. Buying a new vessel is generally out of the question. Will the owners of these vessels be able to afford a battery – electric propulsion system come 2050 (in Part 1 I explain how I believe that this will be cost-effective)?
For legacy equipment used by those who aren’t wealthy, for it to be affordable to decarbonize, retrofit electrification of both stationary and mobile energy using equipment will need to be radically inexpensive.
Think of a ship, for example, powered with diesel engines, in a Pacific Island country, in 2045. Buying a new ship is out of the question for the owner. But will replacement of the diesel engines and fuel tanks with a battery electric drive system be affordable?
Here are the five conditions necessary for this to happen.
- A battery can store the same amount as useful energy as a fuel tank in a car, ship or aeroplane, weigh no more, be no bigger, be intrinsically safe and be modular (e.g. so you don’t have to make a hole in the side of the ship to install the battery). This requires approximately a 10 to 20 fold improvement in battery energy density compared with current batteries.
- The electric motor must be as small as, and as powerful as, the fossil fuel powered engine it replaces. This is already the case.
- Electricity must be half or less than the cost of fuel, per useful energy unit. Or in simple terms, for liquid fuels such as diesel, the cost per kWh must be less than 10% of the cost of fuel per litre. So if fuel cost $2/litre, electricity would need to cost less than 20 cents a kWh.
- The upgrade must be very safe. Safe enough that an insurance company won’t have any problems at all with the upgrade. This is not necessarily straight forward. For example, with a ship, the weight balance in the vessel will need to be pretty close to what it originally was. With batteries the fire risk, and consequences of a fire should it occur, would have to be no worse than for diesel.
- The overall payback of the upgrade should be 2 years or less. This means that the total cost, including labour to do the changeover, must be less than the cost of one year’s worth of fuel usage. This, combined with cheap electricity, gives an overall payback of about 2 years, which may be affordable to the owner, particularly if finance was available.
Now, can all these conditions be met, say at least 5 years before 2050 to enable enough time for the great legacy retrofit? Condition 2 exists, and condition 3 already exists in most parts of the world for liquid fuels, but not yet for natural gas (except where heat pumps can replace gas) or coal. We will need a large drop in stable, round the clock renewable energy generation costs to be able to cost effectively replace natural gas used for high temperature heat, as is commonly used in industry. Yet, with solar and batteries being products with still very large untapped market potential, the experience curve tells us that this is possible. Which will also enable condition 1. That leaves us with conditions 4 and 5. Can we get upgrade safe enough, and costs low enough? This is really dependent on how far we go with robots and AGI, and probably the extent to which we can create a much more circular economy.
Radically low upgrade costs are needed
You may think that the current levelized cost of energy of utility scale solar PV, as low as USD $0.029/kWh is low. But, still, I say, nowhere near low enough. Battery pack prices, now as low as USD $54/kWh look low, but energy density needs to improve by at least a factor of 10, and price probably the same, to make the transition away from fossil fuels affordable everywhere. For example, did you know that the cost of fuel in Egypt is just USD $0.20 per litre?
Without Artificial General Intelligence and skills enhancement, I think that labour and materials costs for retrofits like that given in the example above, will be too high.
For retrofits a wide range of skills and knowledge is needed. For the ship example above, this includes skills in:
- assessing and measuring the existing fossil fuel based power source
- designing and specifying the upgrade
- ensuring all standards that are required by insurers and ship registrars are met and that approvals are issued
- sourcing the equipment and arranging for its transport
- removing the old equipment (mostly mechanical skills)
- creating pathways for the old equipment to be recycled
- disposing of any residual fuel safely
- installing the new equipment (mechanical and electrical skills)
- integrating the new equipment with the ships controls
- commissioning and training.
Not to mention the business and financial skills in juggling all this and in ensuring that the funding is available. A broad range of expertise is needed, and it needs to be replicated across the huge range of fossil fuel powered equipment used globally if we are to be able to do the retrofits needed for net zero emissions by 2050.
As an engineer, today this to me looks like a heck of a challenge! Are you up to it? I hope that these two essays have been as eye-opening to you as they have been to me in writing them, and all the best for your contributions to a more sustainable future.
The first image in this article was AI generated by DALL:E, I took the photos
