3.3 Attempts to Solve the Climate Change Problem by Technological Innovation
3.3.1 Overview
GHG emissions are produced from and spread across a variety of both point and non point sources and from mobile and stationary sources. Unless significant emission reductions are achieved from all of these sources, the climate change problem will not be solved. This will not be easy nor is it likely to occur in time to prevent potentially irreparable and harmful climate change from taking place.
For example, to stabilize the global climate at 2?C warmer than present day due to a doubling of the pre-industrial carbon dioxide level would require installing the equivalent of nearly 1000 MW of carbon emissions-free power generating capacity each day over the next 50 years, essentially replacing all existing power stations with these non-emitting ones, an impossibility at present (51). A related analysis (52) concluded that in general, technologies often cited as the solutions to bringing about a GHG-free system of energy use within a few years are either decades away or simply not ever going to be feasible. And these studies only looked at power generation (for electricity and transportation), ignoring food production and other sources of GHG forcing such as deforestation for which solutions are even more uncertain.
Attempts to develop and deploy technologies to reduce GHG emissions or their effects on climate have so far also been unsuccessful, primarily due to their cost or the fact they are not ready for use. These fall into five categories: improving efficiency of energy use (e.g., development of hydrogen fuel cells for power generation and transportation); switching to less carbon-intensive energy sources (e.g., substituting natural gas for coal in electric power generation or natural gas for heating oil in residential/commercial heating); developing renewable energy sources like wind or solar power; managing carbon by capturing carbon dioxide from power plant emissions and disposing of it as a waste in the ocean or underground geologic formations and geoengineering.
Geoengineering refers to altering the climate by means other than emissions reduction, either by increasing the growth of ocean phytoplankton in iron deficient areas of the ocean in order to reduce ambient carbon dioxide levels or by reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the earth’s surface (17, 53-54).
A review of how and when each of these types of innovations will potentially impact the major sectors contributing to GHG emissions and forcing is presented in this section. The relative percentages assigned to each sector are our estimates of the global forcing due to each sector from 1750 to 2000. Estimates of the percentage contribution to global forcing on a sector-by-sector basis are not available. Typically, the contribution to emissions in metric tons of carbon equivalent in the late 1990’s is what is presented, not radiative forcing. We have chosen to show the relative forcings, since the goal of this research is to determine how best to offset forcings and not reduce emissions. We have used available information (13, 55-57) to arrive at these figures. Our purpose is not to present these as consensus estimates, but to illustrate our point that GHG emissions and the resulting forcings come from a multitude of both large and small and to date, uncontrollable sources.
In the 21st century, increases in carbon dioxide emissions due to increased fossil fuel combustion are expected to increase the share of total forcing due to transportation, power generation and process and commercial/residential heating, while the relative contributions due to other sources like food production and deforestation will be reduced. Simply put, the population will not grow as fast as its demand for energy and the need for food and land will not grow as fast as the need for energy.
