Understanding Climate Change: Bite 6.2 – There’s hope.
The energy supply side will require a mixture of sustainable sources that can provide variable demand cycles with sufficient base loads. This is likely to include Wind, Solar, Hydro, Biomass, Nuclear and Geothermal power generation, whilst incorporating energy storage systems. There are promising developments in nuclear (1) and geothermal (2) electricity generation that should produce safer and more cost effective base load generation.
There are some industrial processes that currently are difficult to decarbonize, namely: Steel, Concrete, Fertilizer (from ammonia) and Plastics (from ethylene) manufacturing. However, there are very promising developments in all these sectors, particularly if the production of green hydrogen can be made cost effective at scale (3).
Also a few transportation sectors have no obvious electrification solutions: Aviation, shipping and heavy goods transportation. Again, green hydrogen could well be the fuel of the future for these applications (4).
So what will it take to scale up green hydrogen production for these applications? It currently costs approximately 2-3 times the cost of hydrogen production for hydrocarbon sources. This article explains what is needed to make green hydrogen production cost competitive (5).
Finally, carbon capture and sequestration is critical if we are to reduce the enhanced warming effect of increased GHGs in our atmosphere. There are many ways to achieve it including capture in: organic matter in soils, trees, oceanic vegetation, inorganic carbonates etc.….(6).
The possibilities are enormous. The $275tn investment required (7) to get us to net zero by 2050 is a huge and exciting opportunity for the world to embrace.
