Pond Ingenuity Winter 2021

Pond Ingenuity | Winter 2021 9 I n the state and year of my birth, Hawaii, 1958, Dr. Charles David Keeling began recording carbon dioxide concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory, confirming Svante Arrhenius’s proposition of the possibility of anthropogenic contribution to the “Greenhouse Effect.” So began the “Keeling Curve  1 ” and its connection toglobal warmingdue to increasingCO 2 concentrations in the atmosphere. 1  https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu 2 “Statement of Dr. James Hansen” Climate Change. June 23, 1988. 3  https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-paris-agreement 4  https://www.cnbc.com/2020/11/20/biden-to-rejoin-paris-climate-accord-heres-what-happens-next-.html 5  https://www.renewableenergyworld.com/2020/03/04/how-can-utilities-meet-net-zero-emissions/#gref 6 Hansen, James, Prevented Mortality and Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Historical and Projected Nuclear Power, 2013, Environmental Science and Technology 7 “Top climate change scientists issue open letter to policy influencers – CNN.com” . Thirty years later in 1988, Dr. James Hansen, then Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies testified to Congress  2 . He warned the country that global warming had begun and would be of dire consequences if the industrialized countries continued to ignore the rising concentrations of CO 2 in the atmosphere. His warning included a prediction of a significant rise of 0.8°C or more in the mean world temperature over pre-industrialized levels over the course of the next thirty years. Thirty years after that, the world crossed over the 1°C threshold predicted by Hansen. At the current rate of warming, the world will cross the 1.5°C threshold by 2040 and the 2°C threshold as early as 2060, if nothing is done to slow CO 2 emissions. But the world is doing something. In 2015, 196 nations signed onto the Paris Accords  3 to hold global temperature rise well below 2°C and seek programs to limit the rise to 1.5°C. To reach this goal, countries aim to achieve a carbon dioxide net neutral world by mid-century. Now that President Biden has declared the US intention to rejoin the Paris Accords  4 , it should only take thirty days (the end of this month) before American leadership joins the fight to achieve carbon neutrality. In his book Designing Climate Solutions Hal Harvey suggests scientists and environmental advocates are most hopeful that net carbon neutrality or net zero can be realized most quickly by focusing on the electric grid. This is because, according to Harvey, “If we can quickly decarbonize the electric grid and electrify everything else, we get to net zero everywhere the electric grid goes.” Scientists advocate for substantial increases of renewable energy generation to achieve net zero on the electric grid. “At the current rate of warming, the world will cross the 1.5°C threshold by 2040 and the 2°C threshold as early as 2060, if nothing is done to slow CO 2 emissions.” The Quest for Net Zero Can utilities reach net zero by 2050 with the intermittent nature of wind, solar, hydro, tidal and biomass? According to a column in Renewable Energy World most independent experts agree  5 the US electric grid cannot operate at the same level of service relying only on renewable sources, given current economically feasible technologies. Maximum utilization of renewable sources will most likely require the use of nuclear and natural gas-fired generation to enhance system reliability. Even Dr. Hansen made the same point about nuclear energy as a necessary part of the mix in a paper presented in Environmental Science and Technology  6 . In a letter to policy makers co-signed by Hansen in 2013, he stated, “Continued opposition to Nuclear Power threatens humanity’s ability to avoid dangerous climate change  7 .” The Renewable Energy World column goes on to state that, given the energy density and utility of hydrocarbons, it seems very likely that natural gas will be part of an “All of the Above” strategy that will include nuclear, renewable , energy storage, demand response, and efficiency technologies. Of course, I hear some asking the question, “How can natural gas be part of a net zero solution, when its combustion releases CO 2 ?” Our answer here at Pond is quite simple. There are plentiful renewable energy natural gas products which are a by-product of our existence on Planet Earth. These products can be captured and used for energy, lest the byproducts are released as methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that is twenty-one times more potent than CO 2 .These include but are not limited to: • landfill gas from our nationwide system of landfills; • anaerobic digester gas from our waste-water treatment plants; • biogas from animal waste sites; • coal bed methane gas from our system of closed mines; and • gases released due to industrial processes. For those that worry about the CO 2 emissions when we capture and destroy these gases through combustion or other technology applications, such as fuel cells, etc., we have carbon sequestering projects that can neutralize their impacts, such as: • planting more trees; • sequestering carbon in soils; • capturing CO 2 at the point of emissions; or • converting CO 2 emitting technologies to zero emission, such as, mobile fleets to EV.