Technology -a developing medicine for climate change

Technology- a developing medicine for climate change

Climate change is the defining issue of our time and we are at the defining moment. From shifting weather patterns that threaten food production, to rising sea levels that increase the risk of catastrophic flooding, the impacts of climate change are broader in scope and unprecedented in scale. Human action itself is the major cause for this lingering problem and we are indebted to take drastic action today or face the risk of a situation far worse in the near future.

There is a short pointer to the future effects of climate change, according to the report by NASA

• Temperatures will continue to rise as a result of global warming.
• Frost free season will lengthen: In a future in which heat-trapping gas emissions continue to grow, increases of months of frost-free and growing periods will be experienced.
• Changes in precipitation patterns: In the US and some Southwest countries, increase in precipitation can be seen.

Potential health impacts of climate change- WHO

Change in world climate would influence the functioning of many ecosystems and their member species. Likewise, there would be impacts on human health. Some of these health impacts would be beneficial. For example, milder winters would reduce the seasonal winter-time peak in deaths that occur in temperate countries, while in currently hot regions a further increase in temperatures might reduce the viability of disease-transmitting mosquito populations. Overall, however, scientists consider that most of the health impacts of climate change would be adverse.

Climatic changes over recent decades have probably already affected some health outcomes. Indeed, the World Health Organisation estimated, in its “World Health Report 2002”, that climate change was estimated to be responsible in 2000 for approximately 2.4% of worldwide diarrhoea, and 6% of malaria in some middle-income countries. However, small changes, against a noisy background of ongoing changes in other causal factors, are hard to identify. Once spotted, causal attribution is strengthened if there are similar observations in different population settings.

The first detectable changes in human health may well be alterations in the geographic range (latitude and altitude) and seasonality of certain infectious diseases — including vector-borne infections such as malaria and dengue fever, and food-borne infections (e.g. salmonellosis) which peak in the warmer months. Warmer average temperatures combined with increased climatic variability would alter the pattern of exposure to thermal extremes and resultant health impacts, in both summer and winter. By contrast, the public health consequences of the disturbance of natural and managed food-producing ecosystems, rising sea-levels and population displacement for reasons of physical hazard, land loss, economic disruption and civil strife, may not become evident for up to several decades.

Technology as a solution

Advancements in various levels of technology have enabled us to solve any problem in the world. But at the moment, it is a necessity that we should use technology effectively and try out more methods of improvisation as the crisis that we face gets more complicated.

Electric vehicles

Plug in electric vehicles ( also known as EVs ) share a major part in reducing atmospheric pollution and hence substantial reduction in climate change and its effects. An electric vehicle uses one or more electric motors or traction motors for protection.

What is the difference?

All electric vehicles have an electric motor instead of an internal combustion engine. The vehicle uses a large traction battery pack to power the electric motor and must be plugged in to a charging station or wall outlet to charge. There are many advantages for electric vehicles over gasoline engines due to the difference in construction and working.

• Direct emissions: These are emissions through the tailpipe, through evaporation from the fuel system, and during the fueling process. Direct emissions include smog forming pollutants (such as nitrogen oxides), other pollutants harmful to human health, and greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide. This is a major pollutant from gasoline engine vehicles.

One of the major benefits of electric vehicles is that it doesn’t cause direct emissions. All-electric vehicles produce zero direct emissions, which specifically helps improve air quality in urban areas. Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), which have a gasoline engine in addition to an electric motor, produce evaporative emissions from the fuel system as well as tailpipe emissions when operating on gasoline. However, because most PHEVs are more efficient than comparable conventional vehicles, they still produce fewer tailpipe emissions even when relying on gasoline.

• Life cycle emissions: Life cycle emissions include all emissions related to fuel and vehicle production, processing, distribution, use, and recycling/disposal. For example, for a conventional gasoline vehicle, emissions are produced when petroleum is extracted from the ground, refined to gasoline, distributed to stations, and burned in vehicles. Like direct emissions, life cycle emissions include a variety of harmful pollutants and GHGs.

All vehicles produce substantial life cycle emissions, and calculating them is complex. However, EVs typically produce fewer life cycle emissions than conventional vehicles because most emissions are lower for electricity generation than burning gasoline or diesel. The exact amount of these emissions depends on your electricity mix, which varies by geographic location. Hence the pollution rate and environmental conditions by EVs varies among nations and let us have a look at some important nations.

Air pollution and carbon emissions in various countries:

UNITED KINGDOM

Unlike other countries, in the UK, a stable proportion of the electricity is produced by nuclear, coal and gas plants. Therefore, there are only minor differences in the environmental impact over the year.

Two thirds of automobile contamination arise from tire, brake, and road dust, the UK government disclosed in July 2019. Particulate matter pollution continues to increase even with electric cars.

A study made in the UK in 2008, concluded that electric vehicles had the potential to reduce carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40%, even taking into account the emissions due to current electricity generation in the UK and emissions relating to the production and disposal of electric vehicles. The savings are questionable relative to hybrid or diesel cars.

But because UK consumers can select their energy suppliers, it also depends on how ‘green’ their chosen supplier is in providing energy into the grid. Unlike other countries, in the UK a stable proportion has the largest emitting sector of the UK economy at 126MtCO22e, accounting for 28% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. The CCC has recommended that if the UK is to meet the 2050 net zero target the market for electric cars should scale upto 100% of new sales by 2035 at the latest.

UNITED STATES

The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) published in 2012, a report with an assessment of average greenhouse gas emissions resulting from charging plug-in car batteries considering the full life-cycle (well-to wheel analysis) and the fuel used to generate electric power by region in the U.S. The study used the Nissan Leaf all-electric car to establish the analysis’s baseline. The UCS study expressed the results in terms of miles per gallon instead of the conventional unit of grams of carbon dioxide emissions per year. The study found that in areas where electricity is generated from natural gas, nuclear, or renewable resources such as hydroelectric, the potential of plug-in electric cars to reduce greenhouse emissions is significant. On the other hand, in regions where a high proportion of power is generated from coal, hybrid electric cars produce less carbon dioxide emissions than plug-in electric cars, and the best fuel efficient gasoline-powered subcompact car produces slightly less emissions than a plug-in car. In the worst-case scenario, the study estimated that for a region where all energy is generated from coal, a plug-in electric car would emit greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to a gasoline car rated at a combined city/highway fuel economy of 30 mpg‑US (7.8 L/100 km; 36 mpg‑imp).

Based on data on power plant emissions released in February 2018, driving on electricity is cleaner than gasoline for most drivers in the US. Seventy-five percent of people now live in places where driving on electricity is cleaner than a 50 MPG gasoline car. And based on where people have already bought EVs, electric vehicles now have greenhouse gas emissions equal to an 80 MPG car, much lower than any gasoline-only car available.

AREAS TO IMPROVE

Even though it is possible to reduce the production of various atmospheric pollutants and hence helps in keeping an eye on climate change, these are many limitations which are still to be rectified in EVs.

Common technology for plug-in hybrids and electric cars is based on the lithium-ion battery and an electric motor which uses rare earth elements. The demand for lithium and other specific elements (such as neodymium, boron and cobalt) required for the batteries and powertrain is expected to grow significantly due to an increasing demand for electric vehicles. So maintaining the availability of raw materials is a major challenge faced.

Some amount of pollution also occurs during the production of engines of plug in EVs due to the use of fossil fuels in construction, so that amount of pollution is also to be reduced.

POWER GENERATION

Approximately 40% of global CO2 emissions are emitted from electricity generation through the combustion of fossil fuels to generate heat needed to power steam turbines. Burning these fuels results in the production of carbon dioxide (CO2) — the primary heat-trapping, “greenhouse gas” responsible for global warming. So while thinking of a major way to use technology as a method of controlling climate change, various ways of power generation other than the conventional methods are to be given a glance.

ELECTRIC GRID

Electric grid comprises three major sectors: generation, transmission and distribution grid, and consumption. Smart generation includes the use of renewable energy sources (wind, solar, or hydroelectric power). Smart transmission and distribution relies on optimizing the existing assets of overhead transmission lines, underground cables, transformers, and substations such that minimum generating capacities are required in the future. Smart consumption will depend on the use of more efficient equipment like energy-saving lighting lamps, enabling smart homes and hybrid plug-in electric vehicles technologies.

Existing electric grid

For more than a century, the electrical grid consists mainly of three sectors: generation of bulk power using generating stations, normally outside urban areas, transmission of this power through overhead transmission lines at high voltages (to decrease current and thus decrease losses and decrease the cross-sectional area of the conductors), and distribution to customers (residential, industrial, commercial, and others) at customer voltage using underground cables.

Traditional (thermal) methods are based on burning fuel (coal, oil, or natural gas) to heat water in a boiler to get steam. The steam drives a turbine that rotates conductors within a magnetic field to generate electricity. Burning of fuel in power plants releases carbon, sulfur, and nitrogen oxides, which have harmful impacts on the environment. Emissions that result from the combustion of these fuels include carbon dioxide, which is the major greenhouse gas (GHG) causing global warming, sulfur oxides, and nitrogen oxides. These oxides cause acidic rain, respiratory illnesses and heart diseases, particulate materials (PMs), which cause lung cancer, and heavy metals such as mercury, which are hazardous to human health.

Sometimes nuclear reactors are used to create the heat necessary for boiling the water. Nuclear power plants are not a source of GHG emissions, but they do produce two kinds of radioactive problems: contamination with radioactive emissions and disposal of used nuclear fuel (uranium) that requires specially designed storage containers due to the long life time of the radioactive uranium.

The smart electric grid

The Smart Grid represents an unprecedented opportunity to move the energy industry into a new era of reliability, availability, and efficiency that will contribute to our economic and environmental health. During the transition period, it will be critical to carry out testing, technology improvements, consumer education, development of standards and regulations, and information sharing between projects to ensure that the benefits we envision from the Smart Grid become a reality. The benefits associated with the Smart Grid include:

• More efficient transmission of electricity
• Quicker restoration of electricity after power disturbances
• Reduced operations and management costs for utilities, and ultimately lower power costs for consumers
• Increased integration of large-scale renewable energy systems
• Better integration of customer-owner power generation systems, including renewable energy systems
• Improved security

Power generation is likely to move towards more renewable and distributed generation (DG). Some renewables like wind farms are large-scale and interface with transmission networks, but many renewables are small-scale, and hence appropriate for interconnecting at the distribution level. This fundamentally changes the design of the grid and needs special interfaces. It incorporates distributed (or local) generation such as PV, biogas/biomass, and wind, which will be supported by battery storage and fast-starting generation sources.

Renewable energy sources like hydropower, solar, and wind energy are environment friendly sources. However, they are not available everywhere. Hydropower energy is stuck to dams, and solar energy requires sufficient irradiation intensities. Wind energy requires a constant unidirectional wind speed. In most cases, solar and wind energies are coupled with a traditional diesel or gas generator to supply power when these sources are insufficient. Certain technical problems arise when plugging such sources to the grid.

So what can the smart grid do to address climate change? The smart grid can’t stop climate change, but it does support mitigation and adaptation strategies.

For example, aggressive integration of clean renewable sources of electricity generation to replace fossil fuels that spew greenhouse gases (GHGs) will slow or mitigate the rate of climate change. Many energy efficiency measures such as technology improvements that reduce electricity consumption in appliances and electronics have important cumulative effects to reduce overall loads on the grid. Weatherization programs reduce the electricity requirements to heat and cool buildings. Smart grid technologies and policies can also support adaptation measures — including solutions that create a new class of consumers called prosumers that can produce/consume both kilowatts and megawatts of electricity.

A case study of Egypt

About 90% of the total generation plants are thermal (steam, gas, combined cycle). Nine percent comes from hydropower sources, and only 1% comes from renewables. The combustion of these fossil fuels results in emission of GHG, namely carbon dioxide, in addition to sulfur and nitrogen oxides, causing temperature rise and contributing to the black cloud phenomena: an extreme air pollution phenomena appearing over Cairo and Delta cities.

The estimated carbon dioxide emission from the world’s electrical power industry is 12 billion tonnes yearly. Egypt has a contribution of 64 million tons of carbon dioxide from electrical power plants annually.

Due to these problems, Egypt is now working on improving the electricity production from various renewable resources. Egypt can achieve many technical and environmental benefits from applying smart grid technologies, especially in the field of increased electricity generation from wind and solar energy sources as well as from activating its geographical role as an electricity center between hydroelectric Nile basin power, wind and solar power from North Africa, and its ability to interconnect with Europe across the Mediterranean. More efforts are needed to introduce the capabilities of the smart grid to the decision makers for fast funding and planning actions, as well as programs for consumer education for conserving energy and its associated benefits of preserving our environment.

GEO ENGINEERING TREATMENTS

Not only with the enhancement of existing technologies, but also new inventions and brilliant ideas can bring a good and stable climate for our world. Let us look into some geoengineering solutions for climate change.

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR)

CDR refers to different techniques for removing carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, reducing warming. The most established of these processes is bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has already incorporated into its modelling.

This involves burning biomass for energy, and capturing and storing the emissions underground. Alternative forms of CDR include direct air carbon dioxide capture and storage (DACCS). This was used in a commercial operation by ClimeWorks that opened last year. Soil carbon sequestration (SCS), afforestation and ocean fertilisation, where added nutrients cause CO2 to be trapped in the deep ocean, are also methods of CDR.

Stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI)

SAI is the main type of solar radiation management (SRM) considered in the IPCC report. This is where geoengineering gets more controversial. Whereas CDR addresses the cause of global warming, reducing greenhouse gases, SRM only masks it or offsets it. In the case of SAI, gases are pumped into the stratosphere to reflect some of the sun’s heat, mimicking an effect that happens naturally in a strong volcanic eruption.

Marine cloud brightening (MCB)

Like all forms of SRM (Solar Radiation Management), MCB involves reflecting sunlight away from the earth in some way. In this case, sea salt or other particles are sprayed into marine clouds to make them thicker and more reflective.

Cirrus cloud thinning (CCT)

CCT is almost the opposite of marine cloud brightening. High-altitude Cirrus clouds are thin and wispy, so they don’t reflect much solar radiation back into space, and instead trap long-wave radiation on earth. CCT proposes thinning them further through cloud seeding, letting more long-wave radiation escape.

Ground-based albedo modification (GBAM)

The word albedo refers to how much solar radiation a planet reflects from its surface. Modifying earth’s albedo from the ground could come from small architectural measures, like whitening roofs and land-use management. It could also take on a much larger scale; ideas mentioned in the IPCC report include covering glaciers or deserts with reflective sheeting.

There are many more solutions and technical innovations that are coming up and that can be useful for our present climatic conditions. When the whole world is under major threats of drastic changes in atmospheric temperature, precipitation and many other climate related issues, the use of renewable energy sources and upcoming inventions on electrifying vehicles to higher efficiency along with geo-engineering solutions are greatly beneficial.