Net Zero Delusion

Why Renewable Promises Don’t Match Physical Reality

Manufacturing Reality

The “Net Zero” concept deliberately ignores the massive carbon footprint required to manufacture renewable energy infrastructure. This selective accounting creates a fundamentally flawed premise:

  • Solar panels and inverters produce approximately 250+ kg of CO2 during their entire production cycle, including raw material extraction, processing, and manufacturing
  • With a 30-year lifespan, this equates to ongoing carbon emissions of 8.3+ kg CO2 annually per installation (not arguing we shouldn’t install solar, only that it’s FALSE to claim “net zero”)
  • Nearly all solar panels and battery components come from coal-powered factories in China, regardless of tariff policies
  • There exists NO solar/wind-powered factory that manufactures solar/wind equipment, making “Net Zero” fundamentally unsustainable

Historical Perspective

  • Massachusetts’ current population (7 million) could not exist without fossil fuels
  • Colonial Massachusetts (1790) had only 378,000 residents pre-fossil fuel economy
  • Fossil fuels originated from ancient organic matter deposited between 50 and 400 million years ago, and transformed into oil, gas, and coal over tens of millions of years through intense heat and pressure deep within the Earth. These are non-renewable resources on any human timescale.
  • The long geological formation period highlights that fossil fuels are a one-time inheritance—not a renewable resource we can recreate within human timescales.
  • We’ve likely depleted approximately half of all recoverable fossil fuels, with the easiest-to-extract portions already consumed

Fundamental Misconceptions

  • Technology ≠ Fuel or Energy (The central delusion of the “Net Zero” movement)
  • Technology cannot create fuel; it merely makes extraction and consumption more efficient
  • Natural gas requires significant energy input for liquefaction, transportation, and storage
  • Solar and wind cannot sustain industrial society due to orders-of-magnitude lower energy density and lack of scalable storage.

Critical Dependencies

  • Modern civilization depends on DIESEL, GASOLINE, and JET FUEL, for which our only viable source is petroleum
  • These are ONE-TIME resources we cannot commercially reproduce from their constituent elements
  • Direct Air Capture and synthetic fuel production remain speculative technologies

Problems Ignored

  • Grid Stability Challenges – intermittent renewable generation creates grid instability requiring expensive backup systems
  • Massive land footprint needed for solar/wind to replace equivalent fossil fuel generation
  • Renewable infrastructure performance degrades during extreme weather events
  • Cost projections for average households under accelerated Net Zero timelines
  • Case Studies: (Germany, California) where aggressive renewable policies led to higher costs and reliability issues
  • Germany’s Energiewende led to household electricity prices over €0.30/kWh — nearly double the EU average, while emissions plateaued.
  • Rare earth and lithium extraction for renewables have sparked environmental and human rights concerns in the Global South
  • Defense infrastructure cannot rely on intermittent energy sources
  • Heavy transportation (shipping, aviation, trucking) cannot realistically function on renewables

Massachusetts Energy Policy Failures

  • By rejecting pipeline infrastructure, Massachusetts increases its vulnerability to future fuel shortages
  • Any first-year geology student could explain that fossil fuels will only become more scarce and expensive
  • When Massachusetts finally confronts these realities, it will be at the mercy of fuel suppliers

Demanding Evidence-Based Solutions

We must stop treating renewable deployment as a symbolic victory. Real climate solutions require open, verifiable data on energy return, emissions payback, and economic sustainability:

  1. DATA: Carbon emissions required to build solar/wind installations
  2. DATA: Actual production output from renewable installations
  3. ANALYSIS: Projected economic viability combining these datasets

How can communities make informed decisions while operating on unproven hypothetical data?

Conclusion

Until renewables are held to the same scrutiny as fossil fuels, ‘Net Zero’ remains an aspirational slogan—not a strategy.

Manufacturing Reality

  1. Producing one ton of polysilicon—a key solar panel component—can emit 20+ tons of CO₂, especially in Chinese coal-powered plants.
  2. Over 80% of global solar panel production occurs in China, where the electric grid is predominantly coal-based.
  3. The aluminum used in panel frames is one of the most energy-intensive industrial materials to produce.
  4. Life-cycle emissions of solar panels range from 20–60 g CO₂e/kWh depending on geography and panel type.
  5. Wind turbine blades are made from petroleum-derived epoxy resins and cannot currently be recycled at scale.
  6. No solar panel or wind turbine factory is powered entirely by solar or wind energy—it’s fossil fuels and hydro doing the work.

Historical Perspective

  1. The U.S. population grew 18-fold since 1800, directly linked to fossil fuel access.
  2. One barrel of oil contains roughly 5 years of human labor if converted to energy terms.
  3. Without mechanized farming, food production could not support current urban populations.
  4. 90%+ of all goods are transported via fossil-fuel-powered cargo ships.
  5. Every industrial revolution—steam, oil, electricity—was fueled by a concentrated energy source.

Fundamental Misconceptions

  1. Battery energy density is about 1% that of diesel by weight, making it impractical for heavy logistics and aviation.
  2. Converting electricity into fuel (e.g., Power-to-Liquids) is energy-negative without abundant fossil backup.
  3. Solar and wind are intermittent and seasonal; demand is not.
  4. Grid-scale lithium-ion storage is limited to hours, not days or seasons—making it insufficient for full decarbonization.
  5. Most “clean tech” only works by assuming constant fossil fuel availability to fill gaps.

Critical Dependencies

  1. Jet fuel cannot be replaced at scale by hydrogen or batteries due to weight and energy density limitations.
  2. There is currently no global commercial process that converts CO₂ from air into fuel at cost-effective scale.
  3. Diesel engines dominate mining, agriculture, freight, and construction due to unmatched torque and runtime.
  4. Oil refining cannot be reversed—once burned, it’s gone.
  5. 97% of global transport energy comes from petroleum.

Problems Ignored – Supporting Facts

  1. Wind and solar require up to 10x more land per unit of energy than natural gas.
  2. Grid instability in Texas and California has been partially attributed to misaligned renewable inputs during peak demand.
  3. Mining for lithium, cobalt, and rare earths often leads to environmental degradation and child labor in countries like the DRC.
  4. Germany spent over €500 billion on Energiewende, yet coal made a comeback in 2022.
  5. Solar panel performance drops 10–25% during snowstorms or extended cloud cover.
  6. Emergency backup systems for renewables are often powered by diesel or natural gas.
  7. Most militaries have no plan for a post-fossil fuel operating model.

Massachusetts Policy Failures – Supporting Facts

  1. Massachusetts imports liquefied natural gas (LNG) from overseas rather than build regional pipelines—raising cost and risk.
  2. Winter natural gas shortages have forced industrial cutbacks and price spikes in New England.
  3. ISO New England has repeatedly warned of reliability risks due to pipeline constraints and over-reliance on renewables.
  4. LNG shipping emits significantly more CO₂ per unit of energy than domestic pipelines.
  5. Political resistance to pipelines conflicts with continued fossil fuel dependence.

Evidence-Based Solutions – Supporting Facts

  1. Most Net Zero models assume radical breakthroughs in technology and behavior change that have not materialized.
  2. Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE) for renewables often excludes transmission, storage, and backup costs.
  3. No national grid has yet run reliably on more than ~50% wind/solar without substantial fossil or hydro backup.
  4. Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) for solar/wind is lower than fossil fuels once you include storage and grid costs.
  5. Climate policy discussions often exclude full lifecycle emissions, focusing only on operational emissions.