1. Less Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Production: Replace fossil fuels

STOP MAKING IT WORSE AND IT WILL GET BETTER NATURALLY!

Produce less GHG, then let nature take its course as GHG do have a half-life in the atmosphere, meaning they will dissipate over time. Unfortunately, that is often decades or centuries in the case of CO2 (which is why we are so concerned about CO2 particularly; it stays around so builds up even if we add just a little).  If we can decrease GHG production, at least some short-lived GHG will decrease over the next few decades so we have a chance. For the most part this means replacing the energy obtained from the combustion of fossil fuels with energy sources that do not produce GHG.

We have the tools we need to make significant headway

In his book No Miracles Needed: How Today’s Technology Can Save Our Climate and Clean Our Air (2023. Cambridge University Press), Mark Z. Jacobson, an engineering professor at Stanford University and an environmental activist, details his reasons for believing that the available technology, primarily solar, wind, water (hydroelectric) (and geothermal power along with some others being developed, such as tidal power), in conjunction with well thought-out approaches to particular sectors (transportation, buildings, industry), can be sufficient to mitigate climate change. His is an engineering approach, and certainly there are other considerations (economics and social justice, the limits and concerns of extractive technologies), but he does provide hope and has done the work to show that we can tackle this problem, it is tractable, and solutions are at hand.

In fact, thirteen countries have electric grids with 97.5 to 100% generated by wind-water-solar. These countries are Congo (yes, the nation that mines cobalt we use for electric vehicle batteries at this time with great human misery and environmental destruction- ironic), Ethiopia, Kenya, Nambia, Scotland, Tajikistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Paraguay, Albania, Costa Rica, Norway, and Iceland. In some of these countries the per capita energy use is relatively low, and most use geothermal or water power, mostly water, which are not available everywhere or are already near maximum use for many countries and regions. Scotland is an important exception: a relatively high per capita power use, high-income country that relies primarily on wind power!

(source: No Miracles Needed. Mark Z Jacobson. St. Martin’s Press. 2023. pages 282-284.)

Think about where we use fossil fuels the most: transportation, electricity generation, industrial agriculture, building, heating and cooling buildings.

When we use renewable sources of electricity that do not produce GHG, we still have to adapt our technologies and infrastructure to use electricity for these critical sectors.

Electric heat pumps, for example, could aid in heating and cooling buildings, and if solar, wind or other renewable power is used it avoids the use of coal or methane (natural gas). A refrigerator works by using a coolant to absorb and remove heat from the box and releasing the heat from the coolant to the air in the room. Reverse that process and the box warms up. If the box is a building, you can see that a heat pump can cool or heat, it just depends on where you send the chilled air or the warm air (inside or outside the house).

For transportation we can make inroads with electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are catching on, but are expensive and we need more charging stations to be useful for long distance traveling (as of September 2022 money is being released for this by the federal government as part of the Inflation Reduction Act).

Long-distance trucks, aircraft flying more than short distances, and cargo ships would need batteries that are much too large and heavy to be feasible. It can be a problem if the electricity goes out and you don’t have another source of electricity available (like solar panels on your roof).

Also among the downsides: materials needed for the battery and car computers are expensive and are often found in “unfriendly” countries, enriching dictators. We need to recycle batteries and transition away from cobalt used in batteries for electric vehicles for this effort to be “green” and to minimize harm. There is also the problem of what to do with spent batteries. We would need to do major upgrades on our power grid as well if we have a large fleet of electric vehicles. Also see our discussion of electric vehicles on our lifestyles page.

Of course, while mining for minerals needed for batteries and other technologies is an environmental and social justice/equity concern, so is fossil fuel extraction! The damage and huge environmental cost of obtaining fossil fuels cannot be overlooked even beyond the effects on climate change of burning carbon in combustion engines.

It is also important to realize that the lithium used in batteries for electric vehicles is a finite resource. Our stock of lithium can be extended by using more efficient means of transportation like mass transit and lower energy transportation (e.g., electric bicycles, walking). Mass transit can be very useful if used. Expensive to create and build, difficult to use in a spread-out city, but it is an alternative mode of transportation that saves on GHG and serves a wider segment of the public. Even in spread-out Los Angeles, there were 800,000 boardings each day in 2022 and there were more daily rides before the Covid pandemic. Buses can be electric for short city runs that allow charging in a timely manner, or even hydrogen powered.

An additional benefit: how different the political landscape would be if Europe wasn’t dependent on Russia’s natural gas for heating their homes.

While there is no “free lunch,” and many changes and improvements are needed, we must transition from inefficient, polluting, GHG-producing gasoline-powered combustion engines and electricity production.

• Solar and wind power

While nothing comes without a price in terms of potential harms, from the planetary health perspective the benefits of clean energy carefully planned and done with care far outweigh the drawbacks. This is especially obvious comparing these technologies to the harms of climate change, pollution and environmental destruction we have endured at the hands of the fossil fuel industries.

The good news is that the use of solar and wind power to generate electricity is catching on, not only in the United States, but globally as well. Indeed in 2022 we saw that we are ramping up renewable energy faster than we thought we would.

As we reported in the Now and News section in December 2022, the International Energy Association estimated that by the end of the 2022-2027 period the capacity to generate electricity will increase globally by 30% more than was predicted just a year before, with over 90% of new capacity generated by renewable sources, mostly wind and solar! Solar energy capacity will triple in the next five years, wind double. The amount of increased renewable energy capacity in the next five years will be as much as in the previous 20 years. By early 2025 renewable sources of electricity are predicted to surpass coal globally for the first time ever.

Solar panels (photovoltaic panels; photo= light, voltaic = creating voltage, i.e., electricity) convert the power of sunlight directly into electrical power. The amount of sunlight, electromagnetic waves, reaching the Earth is immense, and we have the technology to capture that and create electricity. They can be used from the smallest scales (backpacks and roofs) to very large arrays. The price of solar panels has decreased remarkably, a real success story (although the whole process of installing panels and connecting them to the grid is still expensive).

Wind is an age-old source of energy. Windmills have been around for centuries, but the wind turbines of today bear little resemblance to their forebearers.

Ultimately wind power is a form of solar energy: the Sun heats up the earth, which heats the air, which creates wind. In the United States the use of wind power for generating electricity has caught on particularly in the Midwest, and Texas has more wind power than any other state.

The ideal is, whenever possible, to have both wind and solar power available in a given region; if it is not sunny, it may be windy. Wind can blow during the night as well. When the Sun is not available.

Wind and solar energy industries have the additional benefit of creating new jobs.

The bad news is that the energy from solar and wind cannot be stored very efficiently at scale when it isn’t sunny or windy, so we still need additional back-up.

There are clever ideas for storage of energy generated by the Sun and wind, such as pumping water uphill with wind or solar during the day and using the stored gravitational energy to power turbines at night letting the water flow down, a form of hydropower.

Modern lithium batteries are expensive and large, but have been used both on the scale of homes as well as back-up for larger communities. Batteries can work on a very large scale. Mike Ferry reported in a Los Angeles Times editorial on 9/13/22 that huge batteries in arrays prevented loss of power during the September 2022 heat wave. On 9/5/22 “California’s batteries provided more power — over 3,360 megawatts — than the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, the state’s largest electric generator, which tops out at 2,250.” In one 3-hour period they provided 4% of the energy during peak demand. There were no rolling brownouts, let alone blackouts, in California during the heat wave.

Since the large size and weight of batteries needed to power large trucks, ships, and planes for long-haul transportation is a real problem, the use of electricity in those cases is not feasible at this time. Trains can be electric, though many for long distance travel and hauling are diesel. In September 2022 Air Canada ordered 30 electric planes that can fly 124 miles and seat 30 passengers. There are also electric trucks that can do medium-haul transport. Impressive, but still a limited range. International ocean transport is also a particularly difficult problem because of the huge masses of material being shipped long distances.

Concentrated solar power (CSP) is a step more indirect than photovoltaic solar energy for producing electricity. In CSP sunlight is focused by mirrors so that the concentrated energy is very hot (about 500-1000 degrees C, or 900-800 degrees F). This intense heat can be used to heat water to make steam that can power turbines to generate electricity. The basic idea of using the Sun to create steam, on a small scale, was proposed about 150 years ago by Augustin Mouchot in France. The solar generated heat energy can be stored in a heated fluid, a real advantage. Unfortunately, CSP systems for generating electricity at scales we need are expensive, generate a lot of heat, needs land (this does NOT go on your roof), and can kill a lot of birds.

There are other ways that solar energy can be manipulated to advantage, for example, to regulate the temperature inside buildings. “Smart buildings” have technologies that decrease energy use. There are systems for automatically adjusting the ambient temperature automatically and efficiently. Often this is a form of passive solar adjustments. For example, there are provisions in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act for a 30% tax break on “smart glass.” Smart glass uses metal oxides and a small amount of electricity to change the tint of the glass in windows, a form of passive solar climate adjustment. Smart glass can save as much as 20% on heating and cooling. It is like shutting your blinds or curtains in the summer, or opening them to the sun in winter. For large buildings full of busy people, this can save a lot of energy. Since smart glass is still expensive, it’s probably best to stick to adjusting the blinds or curtains at home for now.

Solar energy on a smaller scale can also be used for passively heating water and homes without creating electricity. Solar ovens are very simple and can be useful in areas where electricity and other clean ways to cook are not readily available.

Another way to alter the effect of the Sun is painting the roofs of buildings and other surfaces a reflective white that reflects the Sun’s rays, keeping the buildings cooler. Rooftop gardens can increase shade, which can keep buildings cooler in the summer, and retaining heat in the winter, saving energy.

• Hydroelectric power

Hydroelectric power uses the energy in water, stored behind a dam, then used to spin turbines and generate electricity. Since the water level is higher behind the dam, when water is released the gravitational energy in the higher water level turns into kinetic energy (movement of water) and that kinetic energy can be used to spin turbines and generate electricity. Some states and countries use it to great advantage.

This process itself does not produce GHG. However, dams are now about everywhere they can be, so there isn’t a lot of room to add more in most countries. Also, dams often create environmental havoc and require concrete to build, and concrete production produces CO2 (perhaps acceptable as an initial environmental cost that would result in net negative CO2 in the long run, if there weren’t other problems). Old dams are expensive to maintain, and a breach can be a major disaster. Further, with the droughts and low water levels in many areas globally, from the American Southwest to the Yangtze River in China, hydroelectric power is looking less and less reliable.

• Tidal power

Similarly, much like the power in water stored behind a dam, the tides embody a huge amount of energy (using the gravitational forces generated by the moon primarily). So far, although there have been some small projects using tidal power, using water power in the form of tidal forces has not been scalable. It is important to consider where the devices to capture tidal energy would be located as they may have multiple negative effects on the local (ocean, estuary or river) ecosystem.

• Geothermal energy

Many areas use the heat generated by geologic processes to either produce electricity or to heat buildings directly, and even for cooling buildings! This has been limited to areas where the technology to exploit the Earth’s deep store of heat energy are more readily available to exploit, but the United States Department of Energy thinks we can do more. Some newer proposed technologies to exploit geothermal energy overlap with oil and gas technologies (e.g., fracking) and there may be unintended consequences. Will it be a way to make that technology work for good, or a Faustian bargain? Stay tuned.

• Nuclear fission

Nuclear fission reactions “split the atom,” breaking up the atomic nucleus of large, heavy atoms, like uranium, releasing energy. Nuclear energy using fission is an option since it does not directly produce GHG (beyond building the facility); doing the math, some find it hard to see how we can survive climate change without it. Others disagree, saying other alternatives would be sufficient if aggressively pursued.

There are great concerns about nuclear energy:

• Nuclear power plants take a long time to build and are very expensive to construct and maintain safely.

• The long-term problems of nuclear waste storage and transporting the waste to storage facilities.

• There is the ecological damage from the vast amounts of water used for cooling (which is returned to the ocean or other body of water it came from as hot water, along with other contamination).

• There are also security risks. They can be a target for terrorists (the nuclear fuel is well on the way to being bomb material). In the summer of 2022, nuclear plants in the Ukraine have been damaged during the Russian invasion, certainly a security risk!

• Nuclear plant accidents with releases of radioactive material.

Because of the problems there had been no new nuclear power plants in the United States for decades until July 2023 when a new one came on line in Georgia.

While supporters highlight that to date few deaths have been attributable to radiation from accidents at nuclear energy power stations, the Chernobyl disaster in 1986 sent clouds of radioactive material into the atmosphere and wreaked havoc on the local environment. Few died from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan directly due to radioactive exposure, but it is hard to know what the long-term consequences of the radioactive releases may be (including into the ocean). And the next accident may be larger, especially in countries with less oversight and more corruption.

Some say that much smaller local nuclear facilities or devices (Advanced Small Modular Reactors or SMRs) would have less security risk, less risk of disasters with the release of radioactive materials, and wouldn’t need the vast amounts of water for cooling, so would be safer over all and easier on the local ecosystem. In January 2023 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved designs for the first small modular nuclear reactor in the United States.

Even Greta Thunberg, the young activist, referring to German plans to decommission nuclear power plants but continue coal generated electricity, felt that it is not the time to decommission active plants if the replacement is coal or natural gas.

Many of us have learned not to trust nuclear energy and the industry behind it. Is it possible there are safer ways to do it? Is it our only way out of climate change if we are to be fair and have energy for a growing population around the world?

Some say yes. Some say no, never, no way, and for very good reasons. Another Faustian bargain?

• Nuclear fusion

Some consider nuclear fusion as a source of energy a holy grail, an answer to many of our problems, but it isn’t possible to use fusion for energy production yet.

Fusion is a form of nuclear energy as atomic nuclei are involved, but it is quite different from the fission reactions that are currently used to generate electricity in nuclear energy power plants. Fusion reactions smash two small, light nuclei together to form a larger atom, releasing a lot of energy. Fusion reactions are what power the Sun. They are why the universe isn’t just a cloud of hydrogen.

Nuclear fusion reactions, like fission, are “clean” sources of energy in the sense that no CO2 or other GHG are released. Fusion as a source of power has a big leg up over fission in that fission-based nuclear energy reactions produce long-lived weapons-grade radioactive waste, but fusion reactions don’t! An additional safety factor with fusion is that, unlike fission, fusion doesn’t rely on chain reactions, so if something goes wrong with a reactor, the fusion will stop.

The problem isn’t that we can’t make fusion happen. Think of the awful destruction that fusion-based hydrogen bombs can produce, much more than fission atomic bombs that use heavy atoms like uranium. We also use fusion reactions in research, but it takes a lot of energy.

The problem is controlling fusion in a way that makes the released energy useful and doesn’t take more energy to get going than it produces. As described in our news post of December 14, 2022 a potentially huge leap was made when lasers were used to initiate a fusion reaction that produced more energy than was put in!

Now, it wasn’t a lot of energy that was produced (one estimate was enough to boil five kettles of water!), but as a “proof of principle” it holds great promise. But while some scientists say we may see this bear real practical fruit in 10-20 years, they are just guessing. We don’t know yet if it can scale up sufficiently in that time. Let’s call it an educated guess, if not totally wishful thinking.

Let’s hope it can scale up and we can use fusion reactions to generate electricity! It would be a game changer for humanity and so life on Earth.

• Agricultural waste and biofuel

Agricultural waste as an energy source is different from growing crops for biofuel. Growing crops for biofuel is not very useful since, although the growing crops do draw down CO2, it uses valuable land and water and takes equipment that generates GHG. Growing crops for biofuel therefore puts pressure on the food supply and creates GHG for little gain.

However, if agricultural waste is really unavoidable waste (it often isn’t, but rather is the result of poor practices), then using the waste isn’t using agricultural resources and generates less extra GHG. Further, if we just put the waste in a landfill it will create much more GHG (methane) by natural processes of microbiological metabolism. Similarly, cooking oil, garbage, and manure can be raw materials for biofuel. Katherine Hayhoe in Saving Us writes that United Airlines has been refueling flights out of Los Angeles with agricultural waste biofuel since 2016!

• Hydrogen

Hydrogen as a fuel, especially for powering vehicles, has potential, but it is hard to separate out the real promise from hype.

Hydrogen burns clean, releasing only water vapor and no GHG. There are hydrogen-powered vehicles out there already.

To be useful it would require a lot of resources and infrastructure to scale up. The hydrogen fuel has to be transported and stored safely and be available. California, for example, is planning on increasing the infrastructure for hydrogen-powered vehicles. One idea that would need less infrastructure is to use hydrogen for mass transit, for example buses in cities and suburbs, where they would be refueled in a central location.

The source material for hydrogen is water. Whether to use fresh water, a scarce resource during droughts, or to alter the ecology of sources of salt water and performing extra energy-requiring steps to remove the salt, isn’t a trivial concern.

The benefit is that no greenhouse gases are produced when hydrogen is used as a fuel. However, how “clean” hydrogen production is depends on whether or not clean energy sources are used to run the reaction of splitting the water into hydrogen and oxygen (which takes energy).

• “Brown or black” hydrogen is produced from energy derived from coal.

• “Grey” hydrogen uses methane (natural gas) and generates CO2.

• “Blue” hydrogen at least captures the CO2 generated using methane.

• The best is “green” hydrogen that uses renewable energy sources to power the production of hydrogen for fuel.

• White hydrogen is hydrogen in natural deposits deep in the earth. While some large deposits have been found, it is not clear just how many such deposits there are that are accessible, what energy and resources it would take to extract the hydrogen, and whether it can it be obtained economically. It may take way too long to figure out, decades or more, but there is a lot of interest in this (including by fossil fuel companies whose technology and expertise can be adapted to exploit white hydrogen).

• Gold hydrogen is formed by microbial action in oil and gas wells.

  While white and gold hydrogen do not need energy to create the hydrogen from water, it will take energy to extract and transport the hydrogen.

There are bipartisan efforts to use provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act (see the August 16, 2022 news post) to make hydrogen fuels more affordable in the United States. The devil of how the tax incentives will work is in the details, which are still being worked out.

Hydrogen is currently used primarily by the chemical industry. Even if not practical for transportation, green hydrogen would be a boon. A concern is that the hype around hydrogen is a form of greenwashing by the chemical industry! For now, it is very expensive to produce green hydrogen and it isn’t clear what role hydrogen powered vehicles may have given the energy used to produce and distribute hydrogen and upgrade the infrastructure to handle it.

See our October 15, 2023 News post for further discussion about hydrogen as fuel.

• Less meat and less organic waste in landfills

Less meat in our diets, especially from cows and sheep, would have many benefits. It takes up a lot of CO2-producing resources to feed the animals (growing their feed and cutting down trees for the land to use for the livestock and to grow their food), and to ship and process the meat. Why cows and sheep in particular? These ruminants produce GHG (methane belches are not trivial when in the billions). Cows produce 10 times more GHG than chickens do pound-for-pound. See personal actions for more details.

Landfills are a major source of methane. Less organic waste in landfills means less methane is produced as the waste breaks down. We need to create less food waste and do more composting on large scales in our communities. Los Angeles has started doing so in 2023.

• Solving concrete

Making concrete releases vast amounts of GHG, particularly CO2. This is not just due to the energy used, it is part of the chemical reaction in concrete formation; even if clean energy is used, CO2 is produced when concrete is made. Research into new processes is being done. None are quite ready for prime time at the scale we need.