A way to achieving <2°C global warming? A solution emerges! Achieving the political-techno-economic-social accord needed for our future.

Having been in the field of climate change technology for 10 years now I have been following humanity's response through the agendas of industry, governments, NGOs and environmental groups and the newly emerging global climate change think tanks. I have also been following the lens of the global media, as it tries to make sense of the debate to make it comprehensible to every day people. People that care about the future for their families and communities.

Climate change is complex. To tackle it, we need a global solution, an approach that achieves political, economic, technological, and social accord. This may seem impossible, and we may be facing disastrous climate change if we do not. The last 10 years of public awareness of our situation after “An Inconvenient Truth” has produced little in change on our global emissions of CO2, however it has initiated a change in attitudes, in technology and in climate action especially on renewables. 

Until now there has been no global narrative that paints a realistic picture for action on climate that is optimistic. There doesn’t seem to be a way forward that all peoples, governments and industries can believe in, that is achievable and appears credible in the short, medium and long term for this century. Most economies run on fossil fuels and this dependence is hard to break. Paris is a breakthrough but is only an alignment of awareness and is aspirational with no real solutions yet on the table except for attempts to places targets on emission reductions with scenarios that model the impact of action or non-action on climate.

I want to share with you an 'emergent solution' to achieving our Paris climate change goals of <2°C warming. One that seems to be happening already by itself. If it continues it could be politically, technically, socially and most important through its transition – economically viable.

Simply put the narrative goes like this:

Don't expect 100% renewables. Expect 300% renewables. The trajectory for renewable adoption and innovation is now like a runaway train. The International Energy Agency and others continually underestimate the rate of technological progress and adoption of wind and particularly solar.

The public in most countries support the uneven playing field that has driven their policy makers to support renewables as a 'public good' through national and local incentives even without a carbon price or market mechanism for pricing carbon. This avoidance of direct confrontation against the incumbent fossil fuel generators and running a parallel game of renewable energy generation is happening globally and is the expression of peoples’ expectation of their governments to act on climate change but not distressing their economies. 

Renewables are a pendulum that is swinging locally and globally and have a long way to go to potentially provide us with our solution to deal with climate change this century. Abundant renewable energy.

Now the excess energy or overcapacity from renewables will be needed to power what is almost universally agreed to be needed - negative carbon emissions. This means extracting CO2 out of the atmosphere and storing it away permanently. Possibly 1Trillion tonnes or more this century is required to achieve our climate targets. Even after we stop emitting CO2 we will need to be removing CO2 from the atmosphere until we stabilise our climate.

Also beneficially, the excess energy from renewables can be used to make hydrogen from water which can be used to supply our other energy and industrial demands and importantly provide energy security through the cleanest and largest scale energy storage technology available to mankind. This would provide energy storage, transport fuels and a parallel hydrogen economy.

All the climate modelling for 2°C scenario suggests we need to stop emitting CO2 as soon as possible through lowering emissions and utilising or storing captured CO2 permanently through carbon utilisation (CU) or CCS through geological storage. This is what my group is doing at MCi. We are transforming CO2 into building materials and producing valuable products for industry. Ultimately we will need to store away the CO2 into carbonates on very large scale to be a viable solution. Putting carbon back where it came from – into the Earth. We need many more air capture and storage solutions ready to be deployed as soon as possible for negative carbon emissions.

Now I have to declare that this ‘solution scenario’ was not conceived by me. I was introduced to this scenario in July 2017 by a global figure in climate change and energy policy named Dr. Julio Friedmann. His many roles have included Deputy Secretary for the Department of Energy in the US, and Chief Technology Officer at Lawrence Livermore Labs in California. He is a senior advisor for energy innovation to many governments. I met Julio first in a small but significant workshop of leading scientists working on mineral carbonation and the emerging field of negative carbon emissions in December 2016 in San Francisco. However last month I met him again significantly spending several days with him at the 15th International Conference on Carbon Utilisation in Shanghai where he spoke about this trajectory towards a 300% renewable scenario.

I will be watching the data carefully and hope that this scenario or something equally optimistic will be the climate change solution we can believe in, follow and contribute to. It is personally encouraging and raises my hope that this could be the solution to the largest problem humanity has ever faced and it is emerging by itself through technology innovation and human endeavor.