Curiosidade do dia

Há anos que penso e escrevo aqui que os políticos puseram-se a falar do ambiente porque era algo lá muito à frente e, assim, não corriam o risco de serem desmentidos pela realidade.

Só que as coisas começaram há alguns anos e a hora de cobrar vai chegando. Acontece que a maioria já não está no poder e os outros não são relevantes. Por exemplo, recordo:

• Os ursos polares à beira da extinção;
• A Grande Barreira de Coral à beira de desaparecer.

Na política temos demasiados exemplos de medidas que impactam negativamente a vida dos cidadãos, mas que por questões ideológicas, são forçadas e implementadas. Agora está a chegar o payback time de algumas dessas medidas relativamente ao ambiente.

No FT de ontem, "Costs of the green transition loom large for Europe's manufacturers":

"A Norwegian car dealership weighing selling petrol or diesel cars next year, a Swedish industrial start-up urgently needing fresh capital despite having raised an eyewatering $15bn already, the poor uptake for heat pumps across Europe this year.

They may be three seemingly disparate news items, but together they offer signs of the struggles that some European business leaders report over the green transition of industry. They worry that Europe's policymakers are ill prepared for just how expensive the shift is likely to be for the continent, pointing to hundreds of billions of euros in investments and subsidies that are needed.

...

"I don't think European governments have woken up at all to the realisation of just how expensive this will all be."

No WSJ de ontem "Green Hydrogen's Cost Is Steep, Study Says" [Moi ici: Esta não têm desculpa, basta atentar na Cp do hidrogénio]:

"A Harvard University study casts doubt on the viability of hydrogen as a fuel in the U.S. The researchers say the costs of producing, moving and storing the gas are higher than they are for using fossil fuels and removing carbon from the atmosphere afterward.

...

"The argument made is that hydrogen is expensive now but [production] costs will come down," said Roxana Shafiee, postdoctoral researcher at the Harvard University Center for the Environment who led the study. "If you look at the value proposition as a whole, there is no way [it's cost effective]. It has to be cost competitive." Hype around hydrogen and in particular green hydrogen, which is made through renewable energy, cooled this year, as rising costs and low interest from energy producers and heavy industry put a number of projects on hold.

...

"The hype was so strong that it was expecting hydrogen to deliver in 10 years what LNG has not been able to achieve in 50 years, nor nuclear, which has hardly achieved half of this progress in 70 years," said Pierre-Etienne Franc, CEO of Hy24, a clean-hydrogen specialist investment manager. "People are getting realistic with what it takes to deliver a significant new energy wave-the last needed to make the transition work.""

Portanto, antes de nos deixarmos levar por mais uma série de previsões alarmistas e promessas de revoluções tecnológicas que vão "mudar o mundo", talvez seja melhor ser mais cuidadoso. Lembrem-se: quando alguém promete salvar o mundo, especialmente se isso só vai acontecer daqui a muitos anos, há sempre um bom motivo para questionar se não será mais uma "fake news" política. Afinal, palavras bonitas e visões utópicas são mais fáceis de vender do que soluções práticas e viáveis.