#PowerToX Part II: How greenhouse gases get into the atmosphere and who’s responsible for it
Alright, we’re back. To summarize part one of this blog series — earth’s heating up like a greenhouse because of certain gases being sent into the atmosphere?
That’s absolutely right. There are specific gases we emit into the atmosphere preventing the sun’s energy from being released back into the universe. And that’s why our planet is getting warmer and warmer. Nitrous Oxide, for example, is emitted when producing fibers such as nylon, making your sports clothing climate relevant. And the excretion of cattle contains a lot of Methane, which is why your way of nutrition is directly connected to our climate situation.
According to scientists, it’s the following chemicals that are turning our atmosphere into a gigantic greenhouse:
Carbon Dioxide (CO2), Methane (CH4), (Di)Nitrous Oxide (N2O), [Hydro]fluorocarbon (HFCs), Sulfur, Hexafluorid (SF6), Nitrogen Trifluorid (NF3)
Oh, sweet mother! This is getting more painful than chemistry class — what are all these terms? And why is everyone always only talking about CO2?
Well, first of all, CO2 makes up for the biggest part of greenhouse gases. Secondly, each of these gases do have a different impact on climate change. To simplify things in climate controversy, all gases are all summed up and addressed as a CO2 equivalent. Let’s look at the example of Methane again.
Scientists assume that one gram of Methane accounts for 25 times the effect on climate change than one gram of Carbon Dioxide. So, if one gram of CH4 gets converted into 25 grams of CO2E (the little E standing for equivalent) then technically, most of the time when people talk about only CO2, what they are really referring to is CO2E. We refer to all greenhouse gases as CO2 to simplify our discussion about all the gases that impact the climate, without having to name them all.
Well, yes, the simplified version is a lot better. But if you say that CO2 makes up for the biggest part — where does all that Carbon Dioxide come from?
I’m sure you’ve heard people saying that we live “in the fossil area”. This simply is a description of the fact that we are using fossil fuels as our primary energy source. Or rather than use, let’s say burn.
As you know, fires are very hot and light, as they emit energy in the form of heat and light. It is the same with burning fossil fuels, a lot of energy emerges when we burn them.The term fossil fuels basically means crude oil — in the form of fuel, diesel, kerosene — natural gas and coke. All of these fossil fuels consist of a very high amount of Carbon. And what we call fire is basically a chemical reaction with the air’s oxygen. So, in the language of chemists, what happens when burning fossil fuels is the following: C + O2 → CO2
Simply put — when we burn fossil fuels to gain energy, we emit CO2!
And in which situations do we burn the most fossils and therefore emit most the CO2?
The graphic blow illustrates the need for energy and therefore the connected CO2 emissions in basically all sectors of our modern industrialized world.
We are generating electrical power by burning coke, enabling us to have light and power for all our lamps, devices, refrigerators and so on. We’re heating our houses by burning oil or gas. We’re burning fuel in combustion engines in order to move cars, busses, planes or big vessels. And of course, we need a lot of energy to manufacture all the goods we’re using and consuming. A good example for energy-intensive industries is the production of concrete and steel, which is in huge demand all around the world as it is essential for buildings and other appliances.
But if the emission of CO2 is the single most harmful thing for our climate — how much longer can we actually maintain today’s lifestyle?
It’s not easy to give an exact answer to that question, but there are certain approaches to calculate that.
Scientists have been tracking both the earth’s average temperature and the atmosphere’s CO2E concentration. That is why we know proportionally (see our Blog Part 1) how much CO2E it takes to increase the heat within the atmosphere by one degree. We could therefore simply calculate how much more CO2E we can get away with producing in order to stay underneath the 1.5°-degree goal of the Paris Agreement.
However, that calculation was rather simplified and does not take into account the so-called tipping points. One typical example of a tipping point is the permafrost soil in Siberia. As the name already suggests, those swamplands have been frozen for a long time already and a lot of CO2 is captured in the frozen ice. At some currently unknown point of global warming, this soil will start melting and it is expected to start a massive chain reaction. As the previously captured Carbon Dioxide emerges into the air, climate change would be accelerated and the knock-on effect would be that more and more of the swamplands would melt, thereby releasing more CO2 and so on and so forth. Similar effects are imaginable once Greenland starts melting. The current white ice shield reflects a lot of the sun’s radiation back into the universe, while the dark ocean absorbs heat into the planetary system. Climate warming would lead to darker and reduced white areas and a similar chain reaction would be seen as with the swamps deteriorating.
Every now and then, scientific experts publish new models and calculations, leaving us between 8 (most recent) and somewhere around 20 years left without catastrophic destruction of the white ice shield. At the end of the day we don’t know exactly when but can guess at the scale and this is the most important thing. We’re not talking about millennia or centuries — it is going to happen soon. Most people on earth are already, or soon will experience the effects of climate change. And that means we need to move quickly to prevent hitting one of those tipping points!
Additionally, we can observe a large inequality on our planet regarding this point. You may have heard about the “Earth Overshoot Day”. That day marks the point in each calendar year when mankind has used up the planet’s resources theoretically available for the whole calendar year.
As you can see from the figure below, that point in the year is constantly advancing to an earlier date, meaning that overall excess-consumptions is on the rise.
And one of the main culprits for overshooting the planet’s natural budget is carbon emissions. In fact, they currently make up 60 percent of humanity’s ecological footprint.
But not only the fact that whole mankind is overshooting the planet’s available resources, distribution between developed and underdeveloped parts of the world is highly unequal as depicted by the following figure.
Looking at rapidly developing China and India for example, that means that the effect is very likely to speed up.
And it raises a fundamental equity question: How could one forbid those rapidly developing countries to pursue the same prosperity level by applying the same means that the developed countries have?
In our view only by providing working and equal alternatives which we will outline in our series at least for energy production.
That makes sense. But what do we have to do in your opinion to prevent that development?
The imperative is quite clear.
(a) We need to cut back CO2E emissions back to zero as soon as possible
(b) That won’t be easy, so we need to foster technologies capturing CO2E back from the atmosphere
While this sounds pretty straight forward, option (b) is pretty complicated. As one person once put it: “CO2 in the air is a bit like the salt in your soup: it’s pretty easy to put it in there, but comparably much tougher to get it out again!”
That’s why we need to focus on option (a) as the first and biggest priority.
I’m pretty sure, even that’s easier said than done?
You bet it is. But it’s also the only chance that is fail proof and that we see as the best way to prevent reaching a tipping point. Theoretically, there is enough energy produced and provided by renewable resources to the achieve goal (a).
The good news is — there is light at the end of the tunnel. For most of our energy creation, we do have carbon neutral alternatives already. Wind and solar power do — after they’re installed — not emit any CO2 at all.
A great example of an independent initiative: Microsoft just released a very ambitious plan which includes not only being carbon neutral up by 2030, but also being carbon negative by 2050, meaning that they will attempt to capture CO2E from the atmosphere to the equivalent of what they have emitted since they were founded in 1975.
However, this is only one example and admittedly, it’s easier for a software only company to attempt to achieve all this. But it shows that there is forward motion in the whole topic.
Additionally, in terms of transport there are many interesting technologies around. But it’s been a long day and I will explain this in our next blog series.
This blog is a part of a six-part series highlighting a possible solution for fighting climate change and still meeting our energy demand.
The series is based on known scientific facts and is broken down as follows:
1. Why climate change is real, and why it matters
2. How greenhouse gases get into the atmosphere and who is responsible
3. An exemplary sector use case: Mobility could be run on non-fossil fuels
4. The disadvantages of hydrogen mobility and how we solve those
5. What are the consequences if we could transfer global energy supply to Power-to-X
6. What is likely to happen and what can we each contribute personally
