Some weeks ago I argued that we must recognise the need for a zero fossil fuel society, and as no-one is likely to vote for a serious reduction in quality of life we will have to get there mostly with new technology.

We have the technology, or soon will have, and although the cost looks a little high it is perfectly acceptable.  However this isn’t just about changing light bulbs or more efficient cars – on their own these can never get us to zero emissions.  What we need is a slew of new infrastructure and capital assets.  Changing our cars to electric means new ways of generating and distributing energy; improving public transport means new forms of road, rail and air transport with new roads, railways and types of airport; continued use of fossil fuels means finding ways to capture and bury CO2 and to shift gas use out of the household.

All these infrastructure changes share some key characteristics: they need to be developed by companies or governments, they need vast amounts of capital, and they will shape the way we live for a very long time.  Some of our road systems hark back to Roman times; our railway network was established by the Victorians; our national electricity grid centres on coal mining areas developed a century ago; and our airfields were developed from military airfields of 70 years ago.

Some of our key assets also have exceptionally long lives.  A power station may live 50 years or more between first planning and closure.  The first 747 design studies began in 1963.  New 747s coming off the production line today will fly for 30 years  – giving an overall life for the design of 75 years or more.

We don’t have that kind of time to solve the problem of global warming. Both the US and the UK have committed to an 80% cut in emissions in the next 40 years.  After you subtract what is needed for agricultural emissions that feed us, and a few unavoidable things like methane leaking from old coal mines, this means Zero from fossil fuels.  Thus everything we do from now on that has a long life has to be consistent with a Zero emissions world.

No company, however well intentioned, can afford to go bust; bankrupt companies cannot build new infrastructure or invent new products.  So, to get companies to develop the Zero emission solutions, they need the right signals and incentives which will come from things such as the price of carbon.

Ultimately the price of carbon and its surrogates, such as green electricity tariffs, is set by policy.  The carbon price today is low – considerably lower than the price needed to drive us to zero emissions from fossil fuel.  It is low because the temptation to ease ourselves into the low carbon world instead of biting the bullet and dealing with the difficulties immediately means we have set ourselves weak short term reduction targets.  We seem to ignore the fact that the last 100 million tonnes of emission reductions will be much more difficult to achieve than the first 100 million.

The tragic result of a low carbon price will be companies and governments developing the wrong assets and infrastructure.  The carbon price will determine how much they spend to get emissions down, but although developing power stations, aircraft and houses that reduce emissions by 50% may reflect the economic reality of today’s carbon price, it simply won’t be good enough.

As we recognise the increasing urgency of the problem targets will tighten and prices increase, and then we will realise the judgments we made but a few years before were wrong and we need to start again.  Our shiny new infrastructure and assets will be obsolete long before they are worn out, and we will have wasted a huge amount of treasure, human resource and time.   If we aren’t bold enough the second time we may even have to repeat this process more than once.  Then we will come to deeply regret not getting the carbon price right the first time.

As my grandmother kept telling me – “A stitch in time….”

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