Climate change has been a tremendous problem since its scientific assessments began in the 1970s. Within the last two decades, technology has been advancing in many ways and the one way that I will talk about today is a way that mitigates climate change.
Electric vehicles are one of the most known technological inventions to save the environment. According to European Environmental Beuro electric cars in Europe emit on average 75g of CO2e/KM over their entire life cycle, which is approximately 69 % less greenhouse gases than comparable petrol-driven vehicles. This sounds great, however, the utilization of an electric battery from vehicles is not environmentally friendly at all. About which no one talks about.
Green building technologies are something that very few people know about but they contribute a lot to lower energy consumption and reduce emissions in the construction and operation of buildings. One kind of green building technology is zero-energy buildings, which as the name suggests, emit no CO2 at all thanks to solar panels and wind energy generators. Sounds ideal, doesn’t it? There is one problem with it: you have to rely on renewable energy all year long and there is no guarantee that the energy will fulfil the house owner’s needs. This technology also includes electrochromic glass. Electrochromic glass uses a tiny gust of electricity to charge ions on a window layer and alter the light it reflects. This means, that during hot and sunny days the windows tint to some degree and while it’s cold and cloudy they let more temperature in this way house owners reduce their ventilation heating and air conditioning costs by up to 25%.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a process that separates pure streams of carbon dioxide from industrial, next treated and then transported via road transport, pipelines or ships to special storages that are located either in deep geological formations or in the form of mineral carbonates. The question that you might ask regarding storing all this CO2 is what about the capacity of the mentioned storage? With the current CO2 production rates it would take 900 years to fill them fully, which gives us plenty of time to find a better way to deal with this problem. It is also estimated, that the current CCS aim for 90% capture efficiency. I’m a bit sceptical about these numbers because several projects to this day fail to meet this goal. All of this sounds utopian, however, there are a few drawbacks. Firstly it is high costs and energy intensity, which have to be optimised for the CCS to stay with us. Next, there are environmental risks that come from storing CO2 for longer periods. Lastly there scale of the process is limited, but I’m sure, that if we were to focus more on CCS it would quickly become much more efficient, affordable and safer.
All of the aforementioned ways to mitigate climate change, already have a tremendous impact on our climate, however, there is still plenty of space for improvement. Within the last two decades, there has been an unimaginable technological leap, which unfortunately came along with greater CO2 emissions and many other not-climate-friendly consequences, however, if we were to focus on the right innovations and current matching upgrades the world will not only be a more suitable place for us, but also a safe place for our and future generations.
Sources:
https://www.un.org/en/climatechange/what-is-renewable-energy
https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/what-is-ccs-how-does-it-work
https://blog.verde.ag/en/carbon-capture-and-storage-pros-cons/
The impact of technology on climate change mitigation is a critical topic that demands our attention, thx for u attention
Addressing climate change is urgent, and tech’s playing a huge role in this as it helps to raise awarness as well as fight this problem in more technological way. Electric cars cut emissions, but we overlook battery concerns. Green building tech, like zero-energy buildings, is amazing, but renewable energy reliability is what we should work on. Its really great that u adressed this issue as i thgink many people dont care about this enough.
I am deeply concerned about the effects of climate change and the need for technological innovation to address this global challenge. The author makes a strong case for the potential of these technologies, but we must also be mindful of the challenges and invest in research and development to make them more efficient and scalable.
The post effectively captures the complexity of technological solutions to climate change and underscores the idea that while significant progress has been made. Very enjoyable to read.