The price that is mentioned nowhere

Ask any minister how much money the world spent on “climate” in 2024. They do not know off the top of their heads. The answer: $2,400 billion. That is more than the entire GDP of France. In a single year. On wind turbines and solar panels that will end up in landfill in twenty years.

Meanwhile, global CO₂ emissions in 2024 did not fall. They rose by 0.8 per cent. Source: Copernicus Global Carbon Budget 2024. Official. Peer-reviewed. Published.

Two-point-four trillion dollars. Emissions up. This is not failure — this is policy.

What you do not hear on the NOS news

In 2024, solar panels worth $2.8 billion were destroyed by hail. Figure from DNV Energy Systems, the world’s largest insurer of energy infrastructure. Total weather damage to solar farms: $50 billion per year. Next year it will be more, because the climate change we are fighting is making hail larger. Peer-reviewed research (PMC iScience 2025) shows that: 10 cm hailstones are becoming the new standard. Existing solar panels are certified for 2.5–7.5 cm.

The entire global rollout is being battered by the weather.

Wind turbine blades are composite material that cannot be recycled. Each blade: 60 metres long, 20 tonnes. Service life: 20–25 years. According to the sector federation WindEurope, 14,000 blades will be discarded in Europe alone every year by 2030. Where will they go? To landfill. Wyoming has established special “windmill graveyards”.

And shipping? Maersk is investing $17.4 billion in “green methanol” ships. The fuel is made in plants costing $2 billion each (SunGas Louisiana), with each plant producing 400,000 tonnes of methanol. Six such plants cost $9 billion in total and produce 13 TWh of energy combined.

For comparison: global shipping consumes 2,500 TWh per year. So 1,150 SunGas plants are needed. Total cost: $1,700 billion. For shipping alone. Just to make methanol.

What DOES exist

There is a grass-like plant, developed in the 1980s by the Chinese scientist Lin Zhanxi (FAFU University, documented by the UN SDG programme). It grows on poor, saline, semi-arid soil. 425 tonnes of biomass per hectare per year. Without fertiliser. With minimal water. Already proven across tens of thousands of hectares in China, Mauritania, South Africa, Fiji, Papua New Guinea.

That biomass can be used — with commercially proven, peer-reviewed technology in which Dutch companies such as DSM-Firmenich and Corbion are global leaders — to make fuel. And bioplastic. And aviation fuel. And permanent CO₂ storage.

Several certification systems for this CO₂ storage exist. The best known is Puro.earth (listed on Nasdaq since 2020, traded by Microsoft, Google, Stripe, Shopify — at €125 per tonne). But a second system is under development that is gaining broader international support, with the involvement of the UN, developing countries and providers such as you and me. It does not focus on individual corporate certificates for large technology corporations, but on collective, verifiable CO₂ accounting that is fairly divided between producer and client. More on this in later editions.

The expected permanence: more than 95 per cent after 100 years. Peer-reviewed. Physically explicable. Awaiting the right institutional architecture.

The calculation anyone can make

Take your calculator.

• Total length of the world’s desert margins: 16,650 km (Sahel, Sahara, Arabia, Gobi, Kalahari, Namib, Atacama, Patagonia, Caatinga)
• Available arid land: 2,362 million hectares (source: FAO Global Land Cover)
• To replace all global oil used for transport and heating and remove 35 gigatonnes of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere: less than 20 per cent of the available arid land
• Cost per TWh of energy: 1/5 of SunGas methanol
• Cost per tonne of CO₂ avoided: 1/8 of direct air capture (DAC) by Climeworks

For comparison. Climeworks — the Swiss “miracle company” into which Microsoft and Stripe have poured hundreds of millions — captures CO₂ from the air for €600 per tonne. The grass-like plant route: €65 per tonne net, after deducting energy and material yields.

Yet Climeworks appeared on the cover of The Economist last year. And this plant did not.

The question no one dares to ask

Why not?

Not because it is impossible. It is physically, technically and economically possible. Every component has been used commercially:

• Puro.earth proves that the market for permanent CO₂ certificates works (since 2020)
• Nasdaq CORCX records the price every day
• Wageningen University has been researching Juncao since 2015
• Corbion and NatureWorks produce PLA bioplastic on an industrial scale
• Praj Industries has commercial SAF conversion technology
• DSM-Firmenich has the fermentation technology

Every piece of the puzzle exists. What is missing is the political will to put the pieces together.

Who benefits from the current path?

That is precisely the problem. Who lobbies for a plant that grows by itself? Nobody — because nobody gets rich from it as long as the plant is not part of a patented supply chain.

What the established media will not write

That the current climate strategy systematically transfers money from taxpayers to shareholders of well-connected companies. That every solar panel destroyed by hail is insured — you pay the premium through your energy bill. That every wind turbine blade ending up in landfill is subsidised with SDE funding — your tax money. That the European EU Emissions Trading System has raised €150 billion in twelve years, of which less than 15 per cent went to CO₂ removal.

The rest went to administration. To consultants. To bureaucracy.

Closing sentence

Anyone who says "this sounds too good to be true" is right about the way it is presented, and wrong about the physics. The figures in this article have been verified with IRENA, IEA, DNV, Copernicus, Puro.earth, Nasdaq, FAO and WindEurope. No conspiracy is needed to explain why the current course is being followed. All that is needed is vested interest. And that exists.

Anyone who claims that science is "unclear" on all the questions that remain open must explain why Microsoft, Google and Shopify are already buying hundreds of millions’ worth of permanent CO₂ removal certificates today — and why ordinary citizens cannot access them. They know something you are not allowed to know. And the private market they use is not the final form — a fairer system is on its way.

The calculation is here. The names are here. The amounts are here. What you do with them is up to you.

The silence that follows uncomfortable questions — that is the sound of a system that can no longer defend itself. So call. Ask. Publish what you receive in response. We are watching.