What is Net Zero

What is Net Zero

Many global economies have promised to change their Green House Gas (GHG) emission closer to zero. India is also joining a club of more than 50 countries around the world which is taking a target of Net Zero. This step of Net Zero is a vital step of managing the climate change. But what is exactly Net Zero and is it really possible?

Net Zero is going to be revival but as like the name, it is not a simple slogan. The reality of achieving the Net Zero is far more complicated. Humans burning Fossil Fuels has resulted in more Carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere which is warming the planet. To stop this warming, the level of GHG to the atmosphere has to stop rising. The ultimate ways to do that to stop the emitting it. But that’s easier to say. For some manufacturing industries eliminating this GHG emission is really hard.

In the Copenhagen conference in the year 2009, scientist realized something that it wasn’t possible to cut the emission so fast enough to meet the temperature targets the policy makers wanted. But what was needed to actively remove the GHG from the atmosphere that people began to talk about the world in which GHG emission and GHG removal has to balance each other so that overall effect is Net Zero. The countries which they signed up the Paris Agreement pledge to turn this idea into reality by agreeing to balance their emission and removal of GHG in second half of the century. To achieve Net Zero into reality, we need to do two things. One is obvious to cut our GHG emission by cutting down the burning of fossil fuels, but the other is actually to take the GHG emission out of the air and that’s the harder aspects of getting to net zero. This is known as negative emission. We need to go from the world economy that pumps up 40 billion tonnes of CO2 a year to one that sucks down to remove billions of tonnes per year in future to get that to Net Zero future. There are different ways to do this such as planting the forests that naturally through biological processes reduce the CO2 emission and improving the soil so that we can store more carbon. But what we really looking now to achieve ambitious climate targets or manmade approaches. There are new technologies which are early stage of developments, among them ways of capturing CO2 and storing it on the ground. CO2 can be directly poured from the air by machines or by growing plants burning them to generate electricity and capturing the CO2 as they burn. How much GHG need to remove from the atmosphere is dependent on how much emission can be cut. We need both i.e. massive scale of reduction of GHG as well as improving the technologies for negative emission. There is tension between the two and its easy for the government saying that we can go slower of cutting down the emissions now as it is better for economy because we can always make massive emission reduction later when innovations make those technologies cheaper and better. But it may give permission to the polluters to get way to polluting much more than need be rather than innovating ways to reduce emission now.

The other question is who take the responsibility of each molecule of GHG. What is the most difficult challenge is few countries and individual companies don’t want to own up their carbon footprint. The countries who have emerging markets are producing enormous amount of GHG and they pointed out that their products which is being consumed by developed economies like Americans or Europeans and they should do the negative emissions, or they may say developed countries got rich by putting CO2 into the air and now its our turn to lift our people out of the poverty so you pay for the negative emissions. Today the countries who pledge for net zero economy covers around two third of global economy. China, the world’s largest polluter (approx 10.6 Giga tonnes) pledge to achieve carbon neutrality before 2060. America the second largest polluter (approx 5 Giga tonnes) are working towards the targets of Net Zero by 2050 and India – the third largest polluter (approx 2.9 Giga tonnes) pledged to achieve carbon neutrality before 2070. India’s national transporter, Indian Railways, had declared a Net Zero target year of 2030. ?

Some people might say that the problem will be getting solved upon looking the ambitious climate targets but that’s not the case. The target has no guarantee to get to the goal. It’s important to have the targets as it binds the society together and give the direction of where we need to go, and markets has some idea what investments to make. However, we often short falls to the targets also. Most Govt policies focus on cutting the emissions rather than the ways to develop the negative emissions. This is far big issue, and it involves every economy and ultimately every citizen has to be involved. We every citizen have to change the way we live and its not just the technological revolution, but we need revolution in our mindset ?????????????????