Oh, I’m shocked that the global warming feel-good targets are unattainable without horrific consumer energy price increases. At least you felt better when you signed them. I’m sure you enjoyed sneering at the US for not buying in to this incredible opportunity.
If the U.K. can’t find an affordable supply of natural gas via hydrofracking of its shale deposits, it might have to restart mothballed coal-fired power plants to keep the lights on in future decades. “One way or another, we’ll muddle through,” says George Day, economic strategy manager at the Loughborough-based Energy Technologies Institute, a partnership between industrial firms and the U.K. government. “Whether we’ll hit our carbon targets is another question,” says Day.
And I want a pony…
Those targets would slash greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 from 1990 levels. For the country to get there, the U.K. power industry would have to slash its carbon intensity from more than 500 to 50 grams of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour by 2030, according to the quasi-independent Committee on Climate Change. Under that committee’s roadmap, 60 percent of new cars sold in 2030 should be electric, rising to 100 percent by 2035.
Not So Fast 