I strongly recommend that you read the entire article co-authored by Ronald Stein and John McBratney, engineers, published on the Friends of Science Blog.
However, to encourage you, I have included some quotes, slightly edited for clarity, below.
Today, “Green” and “Net Zero” policymakers setting policies are oblivious to the reality that so-called “renewables”, ONLY generate electricity but CANNOT make anything like the more than 6,000 products in our materialistic economy, nor the transportation fuels that supports cars, trucks, ships, construction equipment, and airplanes.
In addition, everything that NEEDS Electricity, like iPhones, computers, X-ray machines, defibrillators, and datacenters are made with petrochemicals manufactured from crude oil, coal, or natural gas.
These sources [of energy] do different things:
Renewables ONLY provide for the generation of electricity, totally dependent on favorable weather conditions.
Crude oil once refined provides more than 6,000 products and transportation fuels to economies around the world.
Infrastructures that did not exist 200 years ago DEMAND continuously increasing supplies of the more than 6,000 products that are made from fossil fuels for our materialistic societies inclusive of:
- Hospitals
- Airports
- Military
- Medical equipment
- Telecommunications
- Communications systems
- Space programs
- Appliances
- Electronics
- Sanitation
- Heating and ventilating
- Transportation – road, rail, ocean, and air
- Construction – roads and buildings
Policymakers need to STOP using the word ENERGY and start referring to the demands of the economy for reliable supply chains of:
- Products, i.e. more than 6,000 that are made from oil derivatives manufacture from oil.
- Transportation Fuels, i.e., to support demand of cars, trucks, ships, and airplanes.
- Electricity, i.e., economically priced, continuous and uninterruptable.
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Andrew's Views 
The inspiration of the article is good but it does not answer the question of how much money has been wasted.
As I have written previously, the “cost” of climate policies include these categories:
The direct financial costs to governments of climate programs, subsidies and tax concessions;
The direct financial costs to consumers and businesses;
The costs represented by reduced economic activity (i.e. lower GDP);
The opportunity costs of economic projects that might have been undertaken but have been foregone because of climate measures.
Some authorities have tried to calculate the costs. The most recently published academic modelling places the cost of the world attaining Net-Zero by 2050 as between USD 3.5 trillion and USD 9.2 trillion per year (i.e. between USD 87.5 Trillion and USD 230 trillion). McKinsey and Company estimates the cost as USD 120 trillion. In fact, no one can hope to come up with an accurate number because of all the uncertainties involved in modelling an unprecedented issue and because governments refuse to provide the data that would allow one to do so.
And that does not even include the costs of the transfers between countries in the form of climate aid that allegedly will rise to USD 1.3 trillion per year by 2035.
Think of all the other things that the world could spend that money on.
It is all part of what I call “the wall” that climate policies will inevitably hit.
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Bob,
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Andrew,
I had another thought about this subject.
The total expenditures of the Allied Countries during World War II was USD 5.74 trillion in 2024 dollar terms.
That means that the amount the world is being asked to spend on responding to climate change, a “problem” that exists only theoretically based upon highly questionable modelling, is, if one uses the McKinsey and Company estimates, 21 times what the Allies spent to fight the Second World War.
That puts the insanity into some perspective.
Bob
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