Who is causing the problem?

We all know the usual suspects and the invectives towards these. Are you driving a car and is that car older, or has it a “bigger” engine or is it even a diesel? You are destroying the planet. Are you taking the plane to go on holiday from time to time? You are a climate killer. And are you eating meat?

Well, forget it that’s causing too many emissions. As the overall knowledge and the willingness to change something spread, many started to look for the culprits especially in the scopes they can reach and change. But the important question is, are these really the things we need to change the most to reach the carbon neutrality? Looking at the statistics1 visualizing the emissions by the responsible sector, we can see that there is an absolutely dominating segment – Energy. To have a more accurate idea a second look at the graph and its inner ring is very helpful. There we can see that the segments are mostly relatively small and spread throughout the whole ring. What would be the conclusion? There is not necessarily a habit or standard we need to change which would solve the whole problem in a matter of a few years. Yes, let’s stop eating meet, an action which will get us almost 6% reduction. We might stop flying, that will bring us just shy of 2%. In the end it means that we need a complex solution which would reduce the emissions. A solution that can affect the whole circle with all its sectors. Focusing only on one or a few segments won’t be sufficient and can actually mean, that emissions from that given branch will only be moved to another because usually it is not possible to just stop something without any, or at least a certain degree of supplement of some sort. In case you are reading carefully you might have noticed that I have failed to mention the impact of the car. Is it because the share of “road transport” is nearly 12% and therefore one of the biggest chunks in the graph so my attempt to question the invectives a have cited earlier wouldn’t work here? Yes, to a certain extent but mostly because I am addressing this topic in an upcoming paragraph.

Three quaters for the energy production?

It is an absolute utopia obviously, but disregarding the economy and even the sociology, simultaneously considering that one would have the power to change the habits of all the people, we could change a lot of things in a matter of weeks. We could stop eating meat and substitute it with something more ecological. We could cease flying for fun and for business and reduce it to minimum. We could dramatically reduce the transportation and production. In that utopian imagination we can save tens of precent throughout the whole chart but electricity, that’s something we would need even then in pretty much the same amounts. Electricity is something absolutely fundamental for us and majority of “greener” improvements actually even increases our dependency on this entity. This seems to be one of the biggest problems in the decarbonization discussion now. We can agree on the fact that it is a problem and that we need to do something, but this harmony collapses with the word “how” or partially also with the question “in what order”.

Will new technology help to decarbonize or do we need restrictions?

How, is the question then. Related to that question, often we are confronted with the argumentation that it all started with the industrial revolution and was only worsened by the discovery of oil as the dinosaur burning boom spread around the world. Industrial revolution can be seen as the symbol of technology, that moved humanity with its production and its pollution exponentially forward. New technology is mostly developed by the industry so obviously the industry needs to be blamed for our current climate problem and probably won’t be part of the solution… If so, the statistics will confirm this theory. Let’s take a look at a couple of these charts.

At the first glance, it is obvious that it really is the industry that is to be blamed and that by a lot. The second place is occupied by the aviation, just as we would expect it to do and not far behind is the transport which pretty much covers all our usual suspects. Well at first it would be good to look at the charts title and both of its axis. The data is representing the relative change from 1990 over almost 30 years. Is that making anything better? The industry’s emissions rose by whopping 187%, aviation and shipping by 109%, transport by 80%, similar to electricity and heat and what is worst, everything rose by at least almost 10% and is still rising. The only hope there would be, is possibly land-use and forestry which would be the only segment showing negative digits. But even there, from the -80% border reached in 2013 it again went up to “just” -27% in 2018. So, it does not seem that the look at the title or the axis would be making anything better.

The relative change is not looking good then for the industry and transport. Let’s take a look at the absolute numbers. Suddenly it is a completely different story. Industry together with aviation disappeared in the lower heap, transport is rather high but still at the half of the segment that really skyrocketed, and that is, electricity and heat. So again, one more conformation that this is the topic we need to focus on the most. And here comes the question again. Shall it be the technology that helps here or do we need restrictions that would reduce the overall consumption? So far, I said that it is the industry that is providing us the technology, I also said that the industry is not the real problem regarding the emissions and that electricity is an entity whose need can not really be lowered. We need the technology then. And we actually already have it. We can use water, solar and wind energy to produce power and for the fundamental stability of the power grid we have nuclear power plants. I know the nuclear power plants… but whether you like it or not, they are a safe 3, accessible, cheap 4, dependable and most importantly ecological 5 power source.

We need new technology to solve this problem. It was new technology in the car industry that gave us the chance to supplement the fossil fuel. It was new technology in construction and isolation thathelps to save majority of the energy needed to heat up buildings. It was new technology that gave us much more efficient LED lighting. And it was also new technology that facilitated the producers to recycle and reuse old materials. And it probably will be the new technology called “fusion reactors” that will eventually solve this problem. And no, this time it is not utopia since the current ITER project6 might be ready to do so in the next two or three decades. All these emission lowering steps were done not because someone would order it, but because they are economically more efficient. Are there any major restrictions that would be so successful? I always thing about the Germany’s nuclear power phase out which ultimately ended up with German government forced to subsidize coal power plants, the largest radioactive polluter by the way, to ensure a stable power production able to cover the demand.

And what about the cars then…

At the very end, as promised, the cars. Overall a very good example since it covers a lot of the things I said so far. Cars, or road transport generally, is something we need today and that we will need in the future. In that future it will need to become more ecological, but it will also need to stay affordable. Those are the facts, so what about the situation now? It often looks like conventional combustions engine cars are the only source of all the problems and that we need to move from these  towards the E-mobility over the next five years otherwise all hopes are lost.

And so the big transformation began and it is a very disruptive one. Other promising alternatives like hydrogen powered cars are mostly disregarded and the population was split into two groups. One that does not accept anything else than fully electric cars and the other that is not necessarily against but hates the other group because of their invectives. Car manufactures started to outrun themselves, who will make more electrically powered cars or models and who sets the diversion  from the dinosaur burning engines earlier into their business plans.

But are the E-cars really better regarding the emissions? Depending on the region in which the car is used yes, but globally, not at all. As long as the electricity is not completely “green” the cars won’t be driving ecologically either. If the charging power is really “dirty” the E-car will be even worse than a conventional one, although typically we can say that in the worst case it doesn’t make a significant difference7. But even then, it is still just those 12% we are talking here about. And are they more economical? Again, it depends. In either case they are usually supported by state subventions (a sort of “positive restriction”) which is negating the price difference and potentially stopping the manufactures from improving the technology. And that is the danger coming with market manipulation and artificial demand generation.

You can ask yourself if you are aware of an ecologically motivated restriction that bans something  just as it is. I might be wrong, but I am only aware of these, that are prohibiting the use of an  obsolete technology that has been replaced by a new one and are therefore “only” quickening that change. We all should be more grateful for the new technology being created and support the industry creating these instead of complaining about them because they are to slow, because it is not perfect yet or because they are able to make money with it. As it is now, we are increasing our dependency on electricity, which promises to be and will be ecological in the future, but for now, do not think that any device, that’s connected to the power outlet, is automatically contributing to the decarbonization.

References

1 Global greenhouse gas emissions, Climatewatchdata, https://www.climatewatchdata.org/, (12. April 2022)

2 C2ES – Global emissions, https://www.c2es.org/content/international-emissions/ (12. April 2022)

3 What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?, https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

4      Stromgestehungskosten,    https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stromgestehungskosten

5 What are the safest and cleanest sources of energy?, https://ourworldindata.org/safest-sources-of-energy

6 ITER – Project milestones, https://www.iter.org/proj/ITERMilestones#208, (12. April 2022)

7 MyClimate – CO2 Calculator, https://co2.myclimate.org/de/car_calculators/new, (12. April 2022)