Climate Change and Technology Solutions

Technology and Climate Change

• Introduction

  • The semester has focused on energy and systemic issues.
  • Exploring how technology and individual actions can address climate change.
  • Upcoming: Class activity on Thursday to continue this exploration.

Assignments and Schedule

• Upcoming Classes

  • Third to last class today.
  • Thursday: Bring laptops for a group activity.
  • Blogs due Friday.
  • Comments due next Tuesday.
  • Optional call for proposals to be posted.
  • Expert panel next Tuesday (Zoom call).

• Expert Panel

  • External Zoom call setup in the classroom.
  • Panelists will be visible on screen.
  • Students can ask questions.
  • Content covered on the exam.

• Exam Details

  • Weeks 11-14 material on the exam.
  • Exam on May 19 (Monday).
  • Similar format to previous exams.
  • Lowest of three exam scores will be dropped.

Expert Panel Details: Fighting Climate Change Today

• Panelists

  • Lauren Baby: Former student, Environmental Defense Fund, specializing in oil and gas production regulation, focusing on methane emissions.
  • Methane dispatch from oil wells is extremely harmful.
  • Nayid Merchant: Co-founder and executive director of Carbon Removable Canada, focusing on carbon dioxide removal technologies.
  • Larissa Prisioso: Eastern Shore of Land Conservancy, community engagement on sea-level rise, land subsidence, and conservation.

• Engagement

  • Students encouraged to research panelists and come prepared with questions.

Pathways for Climate Action (Nordhaus Reading)

• Three Approaches:

  • Mitigation: Stopping carbon emissions at the source.
  • Technological progress in solar, wind, natural gas, energy efficiency, and electric vehicles has made mitigation possible.
  • Federal funding for research and development.
  • Geoengineering: Engineering the climate.
    • Removing carbon dioxide or heat from the atmosphere.
    • Ethical considerations must be addressed.
  • Adaptation: Adapting to the changing climate.
    • Minimizing current and future damages.
    • Investments to increase resilience to extreme weather events.
    • Technology can help people live and thrive despite climate change.

Historical Lessons: Nuclear Energy

• Nuclear energy was once viewed as a cheap, modern energy source.

  • Promise of splitting atoms to create electricity "too cheap to meter."

• Investment and Development:

  • Technology developed in the mid to late 1960s.
  • Many nuclear reactors were ordered.

• Decline in the US and Western Europe before incidents like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.

  • Increasing costs were a significant factor.
  • Became more difficult to get government approval and raise money.

• Recent Investments:

  • Three new nuclear reactors have come online since 2016.

The Economics of Nuclear Energy

• A study from 2010-2012 showed that the costs of nuclear energy increased over time.

  • Regulatory and financial challenges.

• Cost comparison with other technologies (from a 2022 study):

  • Nuclear costs increased (dollars per megawatt).
  • Coal costs remained relatively stable, with potential increases due to environmental regulations.
  • Natural gas costs decreased due to hydraulic fracturing.
  • Wind and solar costs decreased dramatically.

Solar Energy Innovation

• Dramatic decrease in costs for solar technology (thousandfold cheaper between 1960 and 2020).

  • Correlates with increased global adoption.

• The International Energy Agency (IEA) consistently underestimated solar energy's technological progress.

Innovation and Cost Reduction

• Sources of Innovation:

  • Research and Development (R&D): Positive externalities to knowledge, but private firms may underinvest.
  • Learning by Doing: Innovation comes from experience, but starting from zero presents challenges.
  • Economies of Scale: Larger operations have lower costs per unit, but starting small is often prudent.

Policymaker Role

• How to spur innovation through policy:

  • Price Carbon: Creates an incentive to invest in R&D and build renewable energy plants.
  • Incentives for R&D: Subsidies, grants, and demonstration projects.
  • Strong Patent Laws: Protects intellectual property rights and encourages investment.
  • Address knowledge spillovers.
  • Priming the Pump: Production subsidies in addition to carbon pricing.
  • Tension of encouraging technological progress.

Multiple Approaches to Slowing Down Climate Change

• Mitigation: Reducing emissions flow into the atmosphere.

  • Involves economic costs.
  • Actions are incremental due to the global externality problem.
  • Incremental in time because the problem is already baked in.

• Geoengineering A: Removing greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere.

  • Carbon capture and sequestration.
  • Planting trees.
  • Composting.

• Geoengineering B: Reducing the Earth's albedo (brightness) to reflect more heat.

  • Painting rooftops white.
  • Creating or modifying clouds.
  • Releasing sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere.

Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS)

• Capturing carbon dioxide from smokestacks (coal or natural gas power plants) and pumping it underground.

  • Expensive but makes "clean coal" possible.

• Direct Air Capture: Taking carbon dioxide directly from the air using solar power.

  • More expensive but can be located anywhere, especially near cheap power sources.

Strategies for Geoengineering B

• Methods for reducing Earth's brightness:

  • Making surfaces white.
  • Increasing reflectivity of clouds.
  • Putting sulfur dioxide or aerosols into the atmosphere.
  • Putting a giant white thing in space.
  • Reducing cloud cover at certain altitudes.
    Does not adress greenhouse gases.

Comparing Mitigation and Geoengineering A

• Mitigation: (Painful Costly & Incremental)

• Geoengineering A: Also costly an incremental, does not solve free rider problem.

Carbon Removal (Geo A) and Climate Impact

• Challenges in scaling up carbon removal:

  • Cheap methods like planting trees are less effective and permanent.
  • Advanced methods are costly (e.g., direct air capture costs $200-$1000 per ton).

• Potential for direct air capture to become economically viable depends on:

  • Reducing costs through research, learning by doing, and economies of scale.
  • Higher carbon prices.

• Direct air capture is essential for achieving net-zero emissions.

Geoengineering B (Solar Radiation Management)

• Reducing Earth's brightness as an alternative to addressing greenhouse gases.
  Painful costly? No.
  Incremental? Also No.

• Potential catches with geoengineering B:

  • Not technically proven; has high uncertainties.
  • Reduces ozone layer.
  • Potential for rogue actors.
  • Weather pattern changes.
  • Doesn't incentivize decarbonization.
  • Ethical considerations about allowing research and development.

Termination Shock

• If GeoEngineering is stopped abruptly, there will be an immediate spike in temps world wide. This effect can be offset by constantly continuing program.

Three Factors for Slowing Down Climate Change

• Mitigation: Reduce emissions flow.

• Geoengineering: Target the drivers of climate change directly.

• Adaptation: Learn to live with climate change.

Final Exam Discussion

• Discussion sections are valuable for students because of group settings, discussions, thinking through these issues and having a good time with your peers.

Review logistics

• It will be on August, Monday, May 19, '4 to '6 PM.
• Send any questions to sunshine and or and would be best.
• It will be two hours long, same format as before. So an individual portion and then a shorter group portion.
• There will be a multiple choice section and a short answer section as before
• It is cumulative, but there is an emphasis on lectures 23 to 29.
• equations will be given for the exam, and I believe similarly to the second midterm, they'll have written out, like, what all of the variables need in those equations because at this point, you've learned so many that it's you know, we're not gonna ask you to remember what capital l means in every single equation.