Zero Carbon by 2050?

In 2015, almost 200 countries, including the United States, adopted the Paris Agreement with a goal of zero carbon by 2050. Although the USA exited from the agreement on November 4, 2020, it reentered it on January 20, 2021. How are we doing in our progress toward that goal? Is it even possible that we could reach carbon neutrality by 2050?

In April, PBS/NOVA aired a documentary showing that we have the technology to reach that goal. A green industrial revolution will take political will, good leaders, and a sense of urgency similar to the attitude that drove production in World War II. Here are some of the program’s major points.

• Our current climate issues have been building since the dawn of the Industrial Age. Our primary fuel sources have gone from wood to coal to oil. Moving to renewable resources is the next step in the energy evolution of our society.
• Greenhouse gas emissions come from five sources: transportation, electric power, industry, buildings, and agriculture. In order to reach zero carbon, we need to reduce carbon emissions as much as possible and then capture and store the carbon we can’t avoid emitting.
• Ford Motors has successfully built and introduced an all-electric F-150 pickup (the Lightning). In addition to having no emissions, the electric engine is 85% – 90% efficient compared to 40% efficiency in gasoline powered engines. The lack of EV charging stations is dampening consumers’ enthusiasm to switch to electric vehicles.
• Converting furnaces to heat pumps drastically reduces carbon emissions from buildings. BlocPower (blocpower.io) manages and helps customers obtain financing for green building upgrades. Its selling point is that payments for new green systems are less than customers’ current power bills.
• Induction cooking is superior to cooking with gas. In 2016, Chatham University opened its Eden Hall Campus near Pittsburgh. It successfully uses induction appliances for all of its food services. Induction cooking has caught on in Europe and Asia, but so far United States consumers have been reluctant to make the change.
• The Permian Basin spans 86,000 square miles in Texas and New Mexico. Fracking oil and gas from shale in this oil field releases huge amounts of methane. The nonprofit organization Earthworks (earthworks.org) supports the transition from fossil fuels to a 100% renewable energy economy.
• The University of Maine is developing fixed and floating wind turbines to increase sources of wind energy. Fixed turbines can only be used in water up to 200 feet deep. Floating turbines can be set up farther offshore, which will be especially useful on the west coast in the depths of the Pacific Ocean.
• Energy storage is also critical for reaching net zero emissions. Lithium-ion batteries are expensive, but an MIT professor has co-founded Form Energy (formenergy.com), a company that has developed an iron-air battery that uses rust for energy.
• Geothermal energy shows promise. Sage Geosystems (sagegeosystems.com) is working to find better ways to tap into this energy source in areas such as California’s Salton Sea.

We have a lot of work to do to reach zero carbon emissions by 2050. But humanity has made big energy transitions before, and we can make the change to a green industrial revolution now.