Simon Barker:

The same goes for coal-fired power stations.  Shutting down one or two isn't enough.  You have to shut down most of them across the entire World.  But that requires all governments to cooperate, and many won't.

It also requires significant engineering work to compensate for the lost generation capacity.


This could be demand reduction, but as there is also a requirement to replace other fossil fuel consumption with electricity to achieve 'Carbon Neutral', that is unlikely.

Therefore you need alternative electricity generation systems. These all require resources, concrete, steel, copper, cobalt, lithium, rare earths etc as well as energy. I await with interest a study, with data, to show what is actually required to achieve this and what the energy/carbon payback time would be. It will considerably increase our emissions in the short to medium term certainly until 2050, probably until 2100. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries are not made from unicorn poo.

Simon Barker:

The same goes for coal-fired power stations.  Shutting down one or two isn't enough.  You have to shut down most of them across the entire World.  But that requires all governments to cooperate, and many won't.

It also requires significant engineering work to compensate for the lost generation capacity.


This could be demand reduction, but as there is also a requirement to replace other fossil fuel consumption with electricity to achieve 'Carbon Neutral', that is unlikely.

Therefore you need alternative electricity generation systems. These all require resources, concrete, steel, copper, cobalt, lithium, rare earths etc as well as energy. I await with interest a study, with data, to show what is actually required to achieve this and what the energy/carbon payback time would be. It will considerably increase our emissions in the short to medium term certainly until 2050, probably until 2100. Wind turbines, solar panels and batteries are not made from unicorn poo.