Quote:
Originally Posted by JD001
Mixed post here, as I was tempted to post it in 'today I learned'... Anyway, UK will require more than half million kilometres of cable to get to net zero... wondering whether the work involved and materials used will ever be taken into account when working out if we are net zero??
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That question is nonsensical because net zero address the ends and not the means. Net zero is about reaching a point where human production of greenhouse gases is balanced with capture. We are somewhere around 420 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can reach 500, 600, 1000 ppm trying to get to net zero, but when we get to net zero, we will be at net zero.
Obviously we also want to not raise CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in the meantime, but just because we are expanding the grid doesn't mean we are moving from a state of overproducing CO2 to hyper-producing CO2. We might just be allocating production from other projects to new projects like instead of building a new football stadium, building another coal power station and laying a thousand miles of asphalt, we are building ten thousand miles of grid, plus a solar and wind farm or whatever. If we are in a state of hyper-production on a fast track to get to net zero then CO2 could go up faster, but we would have to weigh that against the gain of CO2 over a longer period of not upgrading the grid.