*" Does removing the "0" morphs reduce render time or at least allow one to render larger scenes?"

*Yes, and no. The amount of Memory(Physical + Virtual) is the bottlecap that develops when you consider the size of your scene in relation to the output size of your image.  removemorphs.py, will not give you more RAM, but it make yous scene smaller, so you could output a larger render,  Or, if the size of the render you are outputting is fine; then; by making each figure in your scene smaller, it will allow you to add more figures than were previously possible.

BTW - If you open the .EXC file, for the figure you are working on, with a text editor; delete all of it's contents, and save the file, then running removemorphs.py will remove all morphs set to 0.