Prof. GREGORY S. PATIENCE (Canada Research Chair in high temperature, high pressure heterogeneous catalysis, Polytechnique Montreal), will held a seminar on: New Zero Dreaming: Fossil Fuels or Darkness and Hunger
3-04-2024
"The Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act (NZEA), which became law on June 29, 2021, enshrines in legislation Canada’s commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050".[1] The government has invested $8 billion in the Net Zero Accelerator. The NZEA is an ambitious pledge but somewhat incoherent with the International Energy Agency (IEA) projections in which renewables (and nuclear) only accounts for 52% of the energy mix in 2050, while today it accounts for 25 %. The growth is from solar and wind as biomass stagnates, and hydro power increases in proportion to the drop in nuclear energy. Globally, coal drops 22 % to 7 % and oil declines from 30 % to 20 %. These projections contradict trends witnessed in the last 120 years in which energy and population growth have increased quadratically.[2] The NZEA commits to lower emissions by 45 % with respect to 2030 but during this time the population will have grown from 32 million to 42 million - a 30 % increase. Considering that population and energy are correlated, Canadians must double their energy efficiency or further develop renewable resources, which will require significantly more financial incentives and regulations and this has become a difficult sell to many. For example, since 2015, 328 wind projects in United States have been rejected by local communities. New Hampshire refused to allow Hydro Quebec's power to dissect their pristine mountain landscape. Quebec, in turn, rejected a $14 billion project to supply Europe with Canadian natural gas. Nuclear power would seem to be a viable option but after the Fukushima disaster in Japan (2011) many communities would resist any attempts to build new power facilities. Quebec shut down their only nuclear facility in 2012 and in April 2023, Germany shut-down their last nuclear power plant. We extract 100 million barrels of oil per day and about the same quantity of natural gas and coal (oil equivalent), which is 6 L/day/person and 20 times more than the energy in the food we consume (2000 kcal/d). Grain production in Canada has increased by an order of magnitude in the last century while maintaining the same cultivated area. To replace fossil fuels requires 20 times more land or productivity. Luckily, organic growth increases linearly with CO2 concentration and if agricultural engineers continue to make progress at the same rate, biomass might be an option in the next century for 8 billion people (but probably not for 16 billion people).
prof. GREGORY S. PATIENCE (Canada Research Chair in high temperature, high pressure heterogeneous catalysis, Polytechnique Montreal)