Climate neutrality is a state in which human activities result in no net effect on the climate system. The author recognizes that such a state can only be reached if each individual works towards it. This article outlines how a plan to reach climate neutrality for the author on a personal scope would look like.
The IPCC glossary
defines climate neutrality as Concept of a state in which human activities
result in no net effect on the climate system.
This includes net zero CO₂ emissions, which we will discuss in this article
in depth.
To reach net zero CO₂, there are two possibilities: Reduce consumption and build new machines that produce the same products but with less CO₂ emissions as the old ones. As we will see, I am already acceptable at the first part. The second part is a different story.
There will be no way around building new machines and lots of them. This means that there must be people that build these machines. Consequently, if we want to keep our prosperity at the same level, people must work more. This means everyone will have to work more hours per week. It is a problem that cannot be solved simply by moving numbers around. Actual people need to do actual work. Neither taxing the rich nor plunging the government into more depth can change that.
This article lines out a plan how an individual could reach net zero CO₂ personally by the example of the author. It also shows the author's progress towards the described goals but it does not say anything about the author's intentions.
Since the main concern is CO₂, we first have to note where it comes from. The main source is burning stuff in order to get energy of some form. Therefore, it makes sense to pay special attention to energy consumption.
The overview table summarizes my yearly energy consumption and CO₂ emissions. The Cost-e and CO₂-e columns list the cost and the amount of CO₂ produced if the energy were provided by electricity only.
Purpose | Cost | Energy | CO₂ | Cost-e | CO₂-e |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Electricity at home | 500CHF | 1MWh | 50kg | 500CHF | 50kg |
Heating at home | 500CHF | 4MWh | 1000kg | 2000CHF | 200kg |
Transportation | 2000CHF | 3MWh | 400kg | 1500CHF | 150kg |
Food | 5MWh | 2000kg | 2500CHF | 250kg | |
Other | 4MWh | 2000kg | 2000CHF | 200kg | |
Compensation of storage losses | 2MWh | 1000CHF | 100kg | ||
Sum | 19MWh | 5450kg | 9500CHF | 950kg | |
Rounded | 20MWh | 5t | 10kCHF | 1t |
These numbers are already extremely low. On average in Europe, energy might very well be at 60MWh, CO₂-e at 3t and actual CO₂ at 12t. In fact, I do not see a way to reduce them further in my case. This also means that it won't be possible to reduce CO₂-e below 900kg.
The main goal is to reduce CO₂ emissions. Simply put, this means to burn less things. But this requires that the energy must come from somewhere else: Instead of burning fuel for heat, use a heat pump which is driven by electricity. Instead of running cars on gasoline or diesel, use electric cars or run the cars on fuels that are produced from CO₂ and water using electricity. All this while producing electricity with as less CO₂ emissions as possible. This gives the following course of actions:
Another important approach is, of course, to reduce the number of people. After all, only the total amount of CO₂ emissions across the planet are of relevance, not the amount per person. Also, reducing the number of people will make CO₂ sinks more effective as it increases the size of the sinks per person. On a personal level, this can only be done by not having children, which indeed, I don't.
The goal is to reduce CO₂ emissions down to 600kg per person. (Sinking as population increases, probably down to 400kg in 2050 considering Switzerland's current population growth.)
Energy, measured in Wh (Watt hours), is the amount of work that has been performed by a generator or consumed by consumer. Power, measured in W (Watts), is the production or consumption at a point in time. You might need 10kWh in a year to heat your house. But the power you need at each time during the year fluctuates: It is 0W while the heater is off. While it is on, it may be several kW. Of course, your heater will be off during the summer and switch on regularly but not continuously in winter.
Extrapolating the 20MWh to Switzerland using a population of 8 million, this yields 160TWh. Indeed, current energy consumption of Switzerland is around 200TWh of which 50TWh are electricity. Hoping for improvements in efficiency, this means that the yearly total of production likely needs to be doubled to provide all the energy via electricity.
While coal and oil can be easily stored, electricity cannot. In fact, the laws of physics enforce that at any time as much electrical power is produced as is consumed. The consumers decide how much is consumed/produced and the producers have the challenge to keep the electric grid within required parameters, such as voltage and frequency. The most important component to ensure these parameters is mass: Generators act as flywheels that rotate with the frequency of the grid. Should consumers unexpectedly increase consumption, production is matched up by extracting power from the flywheels, reducing the rotation speed and therefore the frequency. On the other hand, a reduction of consumption means that the flywheels become consumers themselves by converting power to rotation and therefore keeping consumption and production in balance. Power plants need to react quickly enough and increase/decrease their own production such that the frequency never leaves the acceptable range.
This means that yearly energy totals are of no consequence when it comes to electricity. Instead, one has to look at the power at all times. Solar and wind power plants are very unpredictable and very uneven across the year. For instance, here in Switzerland, we get roughly 10% of the sunlight (Globalstrahlung) during dark winter days as during the bright summer days. There is no sunlight at all during the night of course. This means that power produced by renewables must be stored in a different form than electricity to even out day-night cycles as well as the seasons.
Since this is very difficult to estimate on a personal level, I simply postulate: In order to use renewables for production of electricity and in order to run all heating and transportation on electricity, a fourth of my yearly energy consumption, 5MWh, must be stored for 100 days. That gives a total need for storage of 40TWh for 8 million people in Switzerland. Switzerland has currently only 10TWh of storage. This means that the storage in Switzerland must be quadrupled!
What is often overlooked, also in publications by the government, is that all kinds of energy storage leak and have inefficiencies during conversion. We assume a loss of 50% across the 100 days. This requires additional energy production and additional storage.
Note that this problem could be greatly reduced by using nuclear power, which neither has day-night cycles nor seasonal cycles.
The optimistic running cost of a storage facility to hold 5MWh for 100 days would be 5kCHF each year, assuming 0.01CH/kWh/day. But we like to use the cost of installation of the facility instead. After all, most of these facilities need yet to be built. Hold onto something, because these things are unbelievably expensive.
Let's go with a cheaper mix of 250kCHF in order to transfer the 5MWh from summer to winter. To make up for storage losses, we add 2MWh to the required production.
My personal plan involves investments in production of electricity, storage solutions, and CO₂ absorption technologies, in that order. Investment means buying stocks of specific companies or mutual funds, and potentially investment in specific projects.
The idea is to calculate the total electricity a company produces over the year and then buy as many shares to own as much of the power plants to cover ones own consumption. Summing up the yearly production of each power plant owned by the company and dividing by the total number of shares gives the yearly power production per share.
Company | Yearly production | per share | required | owned |
---|---|---|---|---|
Energiedienst | 2.5TWh | 75kWh | 270 | 600 |
I have achieved this goal.
A more honest goal is to buy as many shares of electricity producing companies and other companies involved in production and distribution of electricity until the dividends match the cost of the electricity (column Cost-e). This means that I am basically paying my power bills to myself: After all material and all people tirelessly producing and bringing the electricity right into my home have been accounted for and payed, the amount on my invoice comes right back to me as dividends just for owning parts of the companies.
Company | dividend per share | owned | dividend |
---|---|---|---|
Energiedienst | 0.85CHF | 600 | 510CHF |
Landis Gyr | 2.15CHF | 150 | 322CHF |
Sum | 832CHF |
This requires an investment of about 500kCHF and shows the massive investment required to reach the goal of net zero CO₂. If every person in Switzerland (say, 8 million people) invested as much, it would add up to 4 trillion CHF! Of course, there is already an electrical grid, so a certain amount of investments have already been made. As we have seen, storage must be quadrupled and yearly production doubled. So it seems that we are only half-way there. But since buying shares means also buying what already exists, this goal includes all the 500kCHF.
Note that all investments to power production, storage, and distribution count towards this goal even if they have been made to work towards one of the other goals.
Goal: 10kCHF dividends. (8% achieved)
The power plants invested in the previous steps produce enough energy across a year but may not produce enough power at each point in time. This means investments in storage plants are required too, including further investments into production to cover leakage. As discussed above, an investment that is dedicated to building new storage facilities of about 250kCHF is required.
Goal: Investment of 250kCHF (0% achieved).
The previous goals are actually just laying the basis for the reduction of CO₂ output: Only once there is enough electricity at the right time available, heating can be done by heat pumps, cars can be run on electricity, planes can run on e-fuels, and so on. But this adaption has to be financed too.
Let's make a crude estimate: The installation of a heat pump used for heating homes that produces 20MWh of heat per year costs 60kCHF. This calculation uses the worst number, namely the one for water-water heat pumps because many industrial applications may be much more complicated than a simple heat pump.
Goal: Investment of 60kCHF. (0% achieved)
This is essentially a part of Goal 3 as e-fuels are a storage solution. I can currently not estimate how much of these fuels will be needed in the end.
Goal: Not yet defined.
Some CO₂ emissions will be unavoidable. They will have to be compensated somehow. If natural sinks are not enough, technical measures have to be taken.
Goal: Not yet defined.
Now comes the kicker: Using the numbers calculated for my personal lifestyle, ignoring any growth of the population, and ignoring the goals that are missing a calculation, how many work hours need to be spent to solve the problem for Switzerland alone? I have calculated an investment of about 600kCHF. I have assumed that half of the infrastructure has already been built. With 8 million people in Switzerland, this gives 2.4 trillion CHF (2.4TCHF). The average salary in Switzerland is 80kCHF a year. About 6 million people in Switzerland are working. This gives 5 years per person from now until 2050, which is about 20%. This means that on average everyone needs to work 20% more to achieve the goal until 2050 without loss of lifestyle. Fun times!