Technofixes To Climate Change Arent Living Up To The Hype
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Technological solutions to combat climate change fall short of expectations
Technological solutions to combat climate change fall short of expectations
/The climate report's most important update is a reality check on untested hydrogen and carbon capture technologies.
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The updated climate change roadmap challenges the idea that unproven technologies can play a major role in preventing natural disasters.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) today updated its road map for the energy sector to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. This doubles the need for a rapid transition to renewable energy sources while minimizing the use of renewable energy technologies. in the demonstration and prototype phase, including carbon capture and hydrogen fuel.
Originally set up to protect the world's oil reserves, the IEA in 2021 published its historic road map with a bleak outlook for fossil fuels: it called for no further investment in new oil, gas and coal projects. It outlines the steps every country on Earth must take to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to about 1.5 degrees Celsius. But the planet continues to warm, reaching 1.2 degrees Celsius, leading to more extreme weather and climate disasters and forcing the IEA to revise its global road map to reflect new realities.
The biggest difference in this new report is that new technologies, which have received much attention as high-tech solutions to climate change, will now play a much smaller role in 2021 than expected. These technologies include hydrogen fuel cells for vehicles and heavy equipment. The filter system, which filters CO2 emissions from chimneys or ambient air, now helps reduce emissions by 35 percent instead of about 50 percent.
Because? The report clearly states that they simply did not live up to expectations.
“I think it brought some realism, and I'm interested in how that realism will impact the industries in this report,” said Dave Jones, global research director at energy think tank Ember.
Today, “hydrogen production is more of a climate problem than a climate solution,” the report says. Hydrogen as a fuel is nothing new, but most of it is still produced using gas. Some countries, including the United States, are investing in ways to make hydrogen more sustainable through the use of renewable energy or fossil fuels and carbon capture. If it takes off, it could produce cleaner fuel for planes, ships or trucks.
Building the infrastructure to transport hydrogen is a bigger hurdle than expected, Jones said. On the other hand, charging infrastructure is growing faster, although it is still limited. The IEA's updated roadmap reduces the share of heavy fuel cell electric vehicles on roads by 40 percent in 2050, compared with the original forecast for 2021.
Likewise, the roadmap reduces the role of carbon capture technologies in reducing emissions from electricity generation by about 40 percent. “So far [the carbon sequestration story] has been largely a story of unfulfilled expectations,” the IEA says in a new report. The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on failed carbon capture projects, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report.
“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is very expensive. “We must do everything we can to prevent them from getting there,” BEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said in a press release. If pollution doesn't fall fast enough and the planet warms by more than 1.5 degrees, countries could try to use "expensive and untested" carbon capture technologies to stop some of that warming, the press release said. However, the use of these technologies is associated with large climate risks.
Global renewable energy capacity must triple by 2030 to stem the pollution that causes global warming in the first place, a report says. Spending on clean energy is expected to more than double by the start of the next decade, from $1.8 trillion this year to $4.5 trillion. Energy efficiency should also double over the same period, and the world's richest countries should reach net-zero emissions ahead of the global 2050 target.
The timing of this updated roadmap is critical. It follows the United Nations' first global report on how countries are tackling climate change. In short, they are being left behind as emissions continue to rise despite pressure to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
Last week, the United Nations held a climate summit in New York and called on countries to increase their clean energy commitments, but the leaders of the world's biggest carbon emitters (China and the US) did not attend. They will get another chance at a larger UN climate conference in Dubai in November.
