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Energy

COP 29 is immoral

Published

4 months ago

11 minute read

Energy Talking Points

By Alex Epstein

COP 29 seeks net-zero, which would radically increase climate danger and ruin billions of lives

COP 29 seeks net-zero—rapidly eliminating fossil fuels—in the name of protecting us from climate danger.

In reality, net-zero would radically increase climate danger and ruin billions of lives.

People should condemn COP and embrace energy freedom.

  • The COP 29 climate conference has a consistent theme: previous COPs have done an okay job of restricting fossil fuels in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but this one needs to eliminate fossil fuel use far faster so as to reach net-zero by 2050.This is 180° wrong.
  • COP 29’s goal of rapidly eliminating fossil fuels to reach net-zero is deadly because:1. Fossil fuels are making us far safer from climate along with improving every other aspect of life
    2. Even barely implementing COP’s net-zero agenda has been disastrous.

Fossil fuels are making us far safer from climate.

  • The justification of COP 29’s net-zero agenda is that fossil fuel use is causing an escalating “climate crisis.”But if we look at the full effects of fossil fuels on climate danger, we find that overall fossil fuels have dramatically reduced climate danger.
  • Myth: Climate danger is higher than ever because of fossil fuels’ CO2 emissions.Truth: We have a 98% decline in climate disaster deaths due to our enormous fossil-fueled climate mastery abilities: heating and cooling, infrastructure-building, irrigation, crop transport.¹
  • Myth: Mainstream science shows that rising CO2 is an “existential threat” that will soon cause global catastrophe and then apocalypse.Truth: Mainstream science shows that rising CO2 levels will lead to levels of warming and other changes that we can master and flourish with.
  • For the full story on how fossil fuels overall make us far safer from climate and will continue to do so, read this:

Even barely implementing COP 29’s net-zero agenda has been disastrous.

  • While COP 28 leaders bemoan how slow their restriction of fossil fuels in pursuit of net-zero has been, even “slow” restriction has caused a global energy crisis.
  • Myth: Net-zero policies are new and exciting.Truth: Net-zero policies have caused catastrophic energy shortages even with minuscule implementation. Just by slowing the growth of fossil fuel use, not even reducing it, they have caused global energy shortages advocates didn’t warn us of.
  • Minuscule net-zero policies causing huge problems:US: frequent power shortages after shutting down fossil fuel power plants.

    EU: deadly fossil fuel dependence after restricting their domestic fossil fuel industry.

    Poor nations: can’t afford fuel due to global restrictions.²
  • If just restricting the growth of fossil fuels in a world that needs far more energy is catastrophic, what would it mean to reduce CO2 emissions by the 50% many “climate emergency” advocates want by 2030 and the 100% they want by 2050?Global misery and premature death.
    Every "net zero by 2050" myth, refuted

    Every “net zero by 2050” myth, refuted
    ·
    September 21, 2023
    Read full story

COP 29’s net-zero agenda harms poor nations most of all.

 

  • The net-zero movement led by COP is particularly dangerous to Africa and other poor regions.Consider: 1/3 of the world uses wood and animal dung for heating and cooking. 3 billion use less electricity than a typical American refrigerator.

    Only fossil fuels can provide the energy they need to develop.³
  • Every prosperous country has developed using fossil fuels.No poor country has been able to develop to the point of prosperity without massive fossil fuel use.

    Development requires energy, and fossil fuels are a uniquely cost-effective and scalable source of energy.⁴

  • Fossil fuels are so uniquely good at providing low-cost, reliable energy for developing nations that even nations with little or no fossil fuel resources have used fossil fuels to develop and prosper. E.g. South Korea (83% fossil fuels), Japan (85% fossil fuels), Singapore (99% fossil fuels).⁵
  • The obvious path for African development and prosperity is to use fossil fuel whenever it’s the most cost-effective option, which is most of the time, and certainly to responsibly produce the significant fossil fuel resources that exist in Africa.Yet COP tells Africa to forgo fossil fuels.
  • COP 29 is fundamentally immoral because its goal of “net zero by 2050” would deprive billions of the energy they need to prosper.Good people who care about energy and human flourishing should condemn COP and net-zero can champion energy freedom instead.

The path forward: reject net-zero and embrace energy freedom.

  • The path to global prosperity and increasing climate safety is energy freedom: allowing us to use all forms of energy so we are prosperous, resilient to climate danger, and in the long-term innovate new, truly cost-effective alternatives to fossil fuels.
  • Rejecting net-zero and embracing energy freedom means scrapping the Paris Agreement, whose pursuit of net-zero is committing virtually all nations, including the world’s poorest, to rejecting the fossil fuels they need to prosper.
  • While many at COP are saying that a US withdrawal from Paris by the next administration would be irresponsible, it is the only responsible action to take given that Paris commits us to banning most of the fossil fuels that we and our allies need.
  • Rejecting net-zero, including the Paris Agreement, and embracing energy freedom requires collaboration among pro-freedom countries like the US, developing nations such as African nations, and any reasonable energy companies.
  • Developing nations, above all African nations, need to reject net-zero and embrace energy freedom: the freedom to produce and use all cost-effective sources of energy—including, essentially, fossil fuels—which means rejecting all net-zero targets. Here’s a blueprint for doing it.
  • The energy industry and obviously the fossil fuel industry should condemn COP and its net-zero goal. Appalling, ExxonMobil and others are actually calling for the US to stay in the net-zero Paris Agreement!Here’s why this is both immoral and impractical.
  • Any attendee of COP 29 should thoroughly reject the conference’s “net zero by 2050” goal and instead proudly advocate for energy freedom and climate safety through climate mastery.If they do that, they have a real chance at stopping the conference from ruining the world.

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UC San Diego – The Keeling Curve

For every million people on earth, annual deaths from climate-related causes (extreme temperature, drought, flood, storms, wildfires) declined 98%–from an average of 247 per year during the 1920s to 2.5 per year during the 2010s.

Data on disaster deaths come from EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium – www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Population estimates for the 1920s from the Maddison Database 2010, the Groningen Growth and Development Centre, Faculty of Economics and Business at University of Groningen. For years not shown, population is assumed to have grown at a steady rate.

Population estimates for the 2010s come from World Bank Data.

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Economy

Latest dire predictions about Carney’s emissions cap

Published on March 22, 2025

By

From the Fraser Institute

By Kenneth P. Green

According to a new report from the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), the federal government’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap will curtail production, cost a not-so-small fortune and kill a lot of jobs. This news will surprise absolutely no one who’s been paying attention to Ottawa’s regulatory crusade against greenhouse gases over the past few years.

To be precise, according to the PBO’s report of March 2025, under the proposed cap, production for upstream industry oil and gas subsectors must be reduced by 4.9 per cent relative to their projected baseline levels out to 2030/32. Further, required reduction in upstream oil and gas sector production levels will lower GDP (inflation-adjusted) in Canada by an estimated 0.39 per cent in 2032 and reduce nominal GDP by $20.5 billion. And achieving the legal upper bound will reduce economy-wide employment in Canada by an estimated 40,300 jobs and fulltime equivalents by 54,400 in 2032.

The federal government is contesting the PBO’s estimates, with Jonathan Wilkinson, federal minister of Energy and Natural Resources of Canada, claiming that the “PBO wasted their time and taxpayer dollars by analyzing a made up scenario.” Of course, one might observe that using “made up scenarios” is what making forecasts of regulatory costs is all about. No one, including the government, has a crystal ball that can show the future.

But the PBO’s projected costs are only the latest analysis. A 2024 report by Deloitte (and commissioned by the federal Treasury Board) found that the proposed “cap results in a significant decline in GDP in Alberta and the Rest of Canada.” The main impacts of the cap are lower oil and gas activity and output, reduced employment, reduce income, lower returns on investment and a higher price of oil.

Consequently, according to the report, by 2040 Alberta’s GDP will be lower by 4.5 per cent and Canada’s GDP will be lower by 1 per cent compared to a no-cap baseline. Cumulatively over the 2030 to 2040 timeline, Deloitte estimated that real GDP in Alberta will be $191 billion lower, and real GDP in the Rest of Canada will be $91 billion lower compared to the no-cap (business as usual) baseline (in 2017 dollars). Employment also took a hit in the Deloitte report, which found the level of employment in 2040 will be lower by 2 per cent in Alberta and 0.5 per cent in the Rest of Canada compared to a no-cap baseline. Alberta will lose an estimated 55,000 jobs on average (35,000 in the Rest of Canada) between 2030 and 2040 under the cap.

Another 2024 report by the Conference Board of Canada estimated that the “oil and gas productions cuts forecasted lead to a one-time, permanent decline in total Canadian real GDP of between 0.9 per cent (most likely outcome) to 1.6 per cent (least likely outcome) relative to the baseline in 2030. This is equivalent to a loss of $22.8 to $40.4 billion (in 2012 dollars)… In Alberta, real GDP would fall by between $16.3 and $28.5 billion—or by 3.8 per cent and 6.7 per cent, respectively.”

Finally, a report by S&P Global Commodity Insights (and commissioned by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers) estimated that a “production cut driven by a stringent 40% emission cap could cause $75 billion lower upstream spend and $247 billion lower GDP contribution (vs. a no cap reference case).”

All of these estimates, by respected economic analysis firms, raise serious questions about the government’s own 2024 Regulatory Impact Analysis, which suggested that the proposed regulations will only have incremental impacts on the economy—namely, $3.3 billion (plus administrative costs to industry and the government, estimated to be $219 million). According to the analysis, the “proposed Regulations are expected to result in a net decrease in labour expenditure in the oil and gas sector of about 1.6% relative to the baseline estimate of employment income over the 2030 to 2032 time frame.”

But according to the new PBO report, the costs of the government’s proposed cap on greenhouse gas emission from Canada’s oil and gas sector will be costly and destructive to the sector, it’s primary province (Alberta), and its employees in Alberta and across Canada. All this in the face of likely-resurgent U.S. oil and gas production.

Now that policymakers in Ottawa have seemingly recognized the unpopularity of the consumer carbon tax, a good next step would be to scrap the cap.

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Economy

Welcome to the Era of Energy Realism

Published on March 22, 2025

By

Key figures from JP Morgan’s 2025 Energy Report

From Truth in Energy and Climate 

The Honest Broker Roger Pielke Jr.

Every year for the past 15 years, JP Morgan publishes an outstanding annual energy report by Michael Cembalest. Last week JP Morgan published its 2025 edition and today I share five important figures from the many in the report, which I highly recommend.

Cembalest’s top line:

[A]fter $9 trillion globally over the last decade spent on wind, solar, electric vehicles, energy storage, electrified heat and power grids, the renewable transition is still a linear one; the renewable share of final energy consumption is slowly advancing at 0.3%–0.6% per year.

You can see that in the figure below — my graph using data from the 2024 EI Statistical Review of World Energy — which shows the proportion of global energy consumption from all carbon-free sources. Since 2012, that proportion has increased from about 14% to a bit over 18%. Exactly as Cembaest observes — that increase has been linear. At that rate of change the world would hit 100% carbon-free sometime after 2200.

Let’s take a look at some of the figures I found most interesting in the JP Morgan Report.

Solar Reality Check

“. . . when you boil it all down, solar power accounts for ~2% of global final energy consumption, a figure we expect to reach 4.5% by 2027. Even if these solar trends continue into the 2030’s, human prosperity will be inextricably linked to affordable natural gas and other fossil fuels for many years.

Human prosperity, in places where it thrives, relies heavily on steel, cement, ammonia/fertilizer, plastics, glass, chemicals and other industrial products which are energy- intensive to produce. . . these products currently rely on fossil fuels for 80%-85% of their energy.

And remember, prosperity itself is energy-intensive: among the tightest relationships in economics is the connection between a country’s per capita GDP and its per capita energy consumption.”

I remain very bullish on solar, but it won’t displace much fossil fuels anytime soon.

Electrify Everything is Proceeding Slowly

“Remember this key aspect of the energy transition: until an energy use is electrified, it’s hard to decarbonize it using green grid electrons. And while grid decarbonization is continuing at a steady pace, the US has made little progress increasing the electricity share of final energy consumption for the reasons discussed in last year’s “Electravision” piece. One major obstacle: transmission line growth is stuck in a rut, way below DoE targets for 2030 and 2035. Another obstacle: shortages of transformer equipment, whose delivery times have extended from 4-6 weeks in 2019 to 2-3 years. . . “

The panel on the rgiht above indicates that the U.S. was never going to meet the emissions reduction targets of the Biden Administration — which has been clear for several years now.

“The US is not unique with respect to the slow pace of electrification, although a few countries are making faster progress. Over the last decade China made the largest advance, bringing it in line with the OECD.

Part of the challenge may simply be the long useful lives of existing industrial plants, furnaces, boilers and vehicles. In other words, electrification might accelerate as their useful lives are exhausted. But the high cost of electricity compared to natural gas (particularly in places without a carbon tax) is another impediment to electrification that is not easy to solve since this ratio reflects relative total costs of production and distribution.”

(In order to coerce users, a carbon tax is necessary)

Energy Dependence and Independence

“The US has achieved US energy independence for the first time in 40 years while Europe and China compete for global energy resources. China’s imports are similar to Europe in energy terms but half as much as a share of domestic energy consumption. Energy intensive manufacturing has shifted to the developing world since the mid 1990’s. China is negotiating with Russia and Turkmenistan regarding future gas pipeline projects. China has the benefit of time: China gas imports are projected to reach 250 bcm by 2030 vs 170 bcm in 2023, almost all of which can be met by already contracted supplies. What was Taiwan thinking by shutting down nuclear power which has fallen from 50% to 5% of generation? Taiwan is now one of the most energy dependent countries in the world, resulting in rising economic costs if China were to impose a blockade.”

The Trump administration’s trade war with Canada risks upending North America’s energy dominance. What can they be thinking?

Fossil Fuels Falling and Rising

“Fossil fuel shares of final energy are falling faster in China, Japan and Europe than in the US. Growth in fossil fuel consumption is slowing but no clear sign of a peak on a global basis. Hydraulically fractured oil and gas account for 60%+ of US primary energy consumption. Global LNG export capacity is set to expand by one third by 2030. Coal consumption is roughly flat in final energy terms as rising EM consumption offsets falling OECD consumption.”

US Secretary of Energy Chris Wright spoke at an energy conference in Houston, and his remarks have been transcribed by Robert Bryce. Here is an excerpt:

Let’s do a quick survey of energy access today. Roughly one billion people live lives remotely recognizable to us in this room. We wear fancy clothes, mostly made out of hydrocarbons. We travel in motorized transport. The extra lucky of us fly across the world to attend conferences. We heat our homes in winter, cool them in summer, store myriad foods in our freezers and refrigerators, and have light, communications and entertainment at the flip of a switch.

Pretty awesome.

This lifestyle requires an average of 13 barrels of oil per person per year. What about the other seven billion people? They want what we have. The other seven billion people, on average, consume only three barrels of oil per person per year versus our 13. Africans average less than one barrel.

We need more energy. Lots more energy. That much should be obvious.

Read Wright’s speech alongside Cembalest’s energy analysis — We are at long last in an era of energy realism.

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