Achieving Net Zero in Engineering Terms

Abstract:

“I imagine that I have been appointed the first CEO of a new agency set up by Her Majesty’s Government with the explicit goal of actually delivering Net Zero by 2050. I asked for a few months to be able to scope the project and to estimate the assets required to succeed. This is the result of that exercise, and the consequences that flow from the scale and timescale for meeting the target. 

The cost to 2050 will comfortably exceed £3 trillion, a workforce comparable in size to the NHS will be required for 30 years, including a doubling of the present number of electrical engineers, and the bill of specialist materials is of a size that for the UK alone is comparable to the global annual production of many key minerals. On the manpower front we will have to rely on the domestic workforce, as everywhere else in the world is working towards the same target. If they were not so working, the value of the UK-specific target is moot. The scale of this project suggests that a war footing and a command economy will be essential, as major cuts to other favoured forms of expenditure, such as health, education and defence, will be needed. Without a detailed roadmap, as exemplified by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors that drove the electronics revolution after 1980, the target is simply unattainable.”