Even as the evidence of global warming mounts, the international response to this serious threat is coming unraveled. The United States has formally withdrawn from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol; other key ...nations are facing difficulty in meeting their Kyoto commitments; and developing countries face no limit on their emissions of the gases that cause global warming. In this clear and cogent book-reissued in paperback with an afterword that comments on recent events--David Victor explains why the Kyoto Protocol was never likely to become an effective legal instrument. He explores how its collapse offers opportunities to establish a more realistic alternative.
The production of electricity from renewable sources plays a strategic role in the future of energy because it helps to effectively manage climate change through an energy generation portfolio with ...lower emissions of greenhouse gases.
Photovoltaic solar energy is safe and sustainable and is characterised by a growing trend with a cumulative installed capacity that has reached a total of 40GW in 2010.
In this paper, investigations are presented using multiple calculations: Energy Payback Time (EPBT), Greenhouse Gas per kilowatt hour (GHG/kWh), Energy Return on Investment (EROI), Greenhouse Gas Payback Time (GPBT) and Greenhouse Gas Return on Investment (GROI). These metrics make it possible to define the energy and environmental performances for a building-integrated photovoltaic system located in Italy.
The module efficiency, the embodied energy and the annual solar irradiance are variables that play a strong role in this analysis. The key parameters include the type of solar cells (e.g., mono-crystalline silicon, polycrystalline silicon, amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride) and the location where the system is installed (Milan, Rome and Palermo).
The results determine whether solar energy has a viable strategic role in the global energy market.
A neurosurgeon’s climate fight Aron, Adam R
Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science),
10/2022, Letnik:
378, Številka:
6617
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Cutting greenhouse emissions will require less brain and more (collective) brawn
A rapid and deep decarbonization of power supply worldwide is required to limit global warming to well below 2 °C. Beyond greenhouse gas emissions, the power sector is also responsible for numerous ...other environmental impacts. Here we combine scenarios from integrated assessment models with a forward-looking life-cycle assessment to explore how alternative technology choices in power sector decarbonization pathways compare in terms of non-climate environmental impacts at the system level. While all decarbonization pathways yield major environmental co-benefits, we find that the scale of co-benefits as well as profiles of adverse side-effects depend strongly on technology choice. Mitigation scenarios focusing on wind and solar power are more effective in reducing human health impacts compared to those with low renewable energy, while inducing a more pronounced shift away from fossil and toward mineral resource depletion. Conversely, non-climate ecosystem damages are highly uncertain but tend to increase, chiefly due to land requirements for bioenergy.
Greenhouse gas emissions have increased rapidly since the industrial revolution. This has led to an unnatural increase in the global surface temperature, and to other changes in our environment. ...Acknowledging this observation, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change started an international environmental treaty. This treaty was extended by Kyoto protocol, which was adopted on 11 December 1997. Using the stochastic frontier analysis, we analyze the efficiencies of countries in terms of achieving the lowest greenhouse gas emission levels per GDP output in the years between 1990-2015. We find that the average greenhouse gas emission efficiencies of world countries for the time periods 1990-1997, 1998-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2015 are 82.40%, 90.37%, 89.54%, and 84.81%, respectively. Moreover, compared to the 1990-1997 period, 92.50%, 79.51%, and 59.84% of the countries improved their greenhouse gas emission efficiencies in the 1998-2007, 2008-2012, and 2013-2015 periods, respectively. Hence, the Kyoto protocol helped in increasing greenhouse emission efficiency. However, this efficiency-boosting effect faded away over time.
Biofuel and bioenergy systems are integral to most climate stabilization scenarios for displacement of transport sector fossil fuel use and for producing negative emissions via carbon capture and ...storage (CCS). However, the net greenhouse gas mitigation benefit of such pathways is controversial due to concerns around ecosystem carbon losses from land use change and foregone sequestration benefits from alternative land uses. Here, we couple bottom-up ecosystem simulation with models of cellulosic biofuel production and CCS in order to track ecosystem and supply chain carbon flows for current and future biofuel systems, with comparison to competing land-based biological mitigation schemes. Analyzing three contrasting US case study sites, we show that on land transitioning out of crops or pasture, switchgrass cultivation for cellulosic ethanol production has per-hectare mitigation potential comparable to reforestation and severalfold greater than grassland restoration. In contrast, harvesting and converting existing secondary forest at those sites incurs large initial carbon debt requiring long payback periods. We also highlight how plausible future improvements in energy crop yields and biorefining technology together with CCS would achieve mitigation potential 4 and 15 times greater than forest and grassland restoration, respectively. Finally, we show that recent estimates of induced land use change are small relative to the opportunities for improving system performance that we quantify here. While climate and other ecosystem service benefits cannot be taken for granted from cellulosic biofuel deployment, our scenarios illustrate how conventional and carbon-negative biofuel systems could make a nearterm, robust, and distinctive contribution to the climate challenge.
In the Anthropocene, in which we now live, climate change is impacting most life on Earth. Microorganisms support the existence of all higher trophic life forms. To understand how humans and other ...life forms on Earth (including those we are yet to discover) can withstand anthropogenic climate change, it is vital to incorporate knowledge of the microbial 'unseen majority'. We must learn not just how microorganisms affect climate change (including production and consumption of greenhouse gases) but also how they will be affected by climate change and other human activities. This Consensus Statement documents the central role and global importance of microorganisms in climate change biology. It also puts humanity on notice that the impact of climate change will depend heavily on responses of microorganisms, which are essential for achieving an environmentally sustainable future.
Collectively, reservoirs created by dams are thought to be an important source of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to the atmosphere. So far, efforts to quantify, model, and manage these emissions have been ...limited by data availability and inconsistencies in methodological approach. Here, we synthesize reservoir CH4, CO2, and N2O emission data with three main objectives: (1) to generate a global estimate of GHG emissions from reservoirs, (2) to identify the best predictors of these emissions, and (3) to consider the effect of methodology on emission estimates. We estimate that GHG emissions from reservoir water surfaces account for 0.8 (0.5–1.2) Pg CO2 equivalents per year, with the majority of this forcing due to CH4. We then discuss the potential for several alternative pathways such as dam degassing and downstream emissions to contribute significantly to overall emissions. Although prior studies have linked reservoir GHG emissions to reservoir age and latitude, we find that factors related to reservoir productivity are better predictors of emission.
•Cryptocurrencies mining are catching the attention of the community.•Fintech development is helping economies towards the low energy transition.•Fintech development can help reducing greenhouse gas ...emissions.•Policymakers should focus on the cost and benefits of technological development.
In the recent years, the concerns raised by environmentalists, over the excessive usage of electricity, particularly in the mining of cryptocurrencies, have caught the attention of the community at large. In this regard, regulators and stakeholders have been reevaluating the costs and benefits of technological development in general, as well as in Fintech, specifically targeting their efforts towards the restoration of the environment. Considering that technology has long been perceived as dual edged sword for the environment, this would be the appropriate time to assess its true role in the environmental improvement, or rather, even deterioration. Therefore, this study attempts to address the question of whether the Fintech development is helping economies towards a smooth transition towards a lower level of carbon and greenhouse gasses emissions. Our results in this aspect are highly encouraging, and confirm that Fintech development can in fact help to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, after the inclusion of appropriate control variables. Moreover, these results are robust even after the incorporation of the potential endogeneity of Fintech development, by the usage of 2SLS and GMM estimations.
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