To move this dream forward, British Airways, LanzaJet and Nova Pangaea Technologies have kicked their partnership into high gear.
Together, these companies are overseeing Project Speedbird, first developed in 2021, which seeks to transform wood and agricultural waste derived from sustainable sources and, at its facility, would turn it into 102 million liters of sustainable aviation fuel every year.
Significant cut in emissions
If everything goes according to plan, fuel produced at the facility would reduce CO2 emissions by 230,000 tonnes a year (the equivalent of 26,000 domestic British Airways flights).
The project has also been helped by a British Government Department for Transport’s (DfT) Advanced Fuels Fund grant after it was granted £500,000 to keep the project moving forward. The move to support the project is in keeping with the DfT’s Jet Zero strategy which hopes to see sustainable aviation fuel come into common use by 2025.
British Airways Director of Sustainability Carrie Harris made the following comments on the measure: “Project Speedbird is another great step towards our mission to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner and achieve our target of using SAF for 10% of our fuel by 2030. SAF is in high demand but in short supply across the globe and so it is essential that we scale up its production as quickly as possible.”
In order to see this project through, British Airways is working with two other companies. Nova Pangea Technologies, is an industry leader in converting bio waste into bioethanol and biochar. Once this process is completed, LanzaJet then converts the bioethanol to sustainable aviation fuel.
Nova Pangea Technologies CEO Sarah Ellerby noted the help received from such an important partner as British Airways, saying, “The support from British Airways is a vote of huge confidence in our technology and will accelerate its commercialization.”
The Transition Plan Taskforce (TPT) was launched by the Treasury this April, then-Chancellor Rishi Sunak used his platform at COP26 to pledge that large businesses in high-emission sectors would be subjected to new net-zero disclosure requirements from 2023. The requirement is around net-zero transition plans, which support long-term corporate emissions goals with interim milestones and outline the necessary steps to change business models and investment. Plans should also detail how workers will be supported and the need for upskilling and reskilling addressed.
Today, the TPT has published its first proposal for a ‘gold standard’ for net-zero transition plans. It was asked to draw up such a standard to ensure that disclosures are meaningful, unified, and would deliver the emissions reductions they tout.
The proposal consists of a framework, recommending how companies should develop plans and the key elements they should include; and an implementation guidance document. The guidance includes advice on when, where and how to provide net-zero transition plans.
The TPT is proposing that companies should have to publish one transition plan next year, then an update in 2026. In 2024 and 2025, information material to the plan should be included in financial reporting, it is recommending.
Regarding the content of a ‘gold standard’ plan, the TPT recommends that organisations should state high-level ambitions to mitigate emissions as well as top-line plans on climate adaptation. This information should be built upon with a list of actions to be taken in the short, medium and long-term and plans to finance these actions.Organisations should also clearly set out how their governance is set up for the net-zero transition.
There are also close ties to TCFD-aligned reporting in the TPT’s proposal. It wants to see businesses assessing the material risks it causes to the natural environment and to communities, and the opportunities it could bring about by reducing and eliminating these harms.
The guiding principles of the proposed framework are “ambition, action and accountability”. Ambition involves “preparing for and contributing to a rapid and orderly economy-wide net-zero transition”. Action involves bolstering long-term goals with interim milestones and making sure financial flows enable their deliver. Accountability covers governance.
The Bank of England’s executive director for financial sustainability Sarah Breeden said that the resources published today “will be key in building out the transition infrastructure necessary for supporting the financial sector to allocate capital efficiently, enabling the real economy transition to net zero.”
Breeden said: “Climate change poses risks to the stability of the financial system and to individual firms. Actions taken by the private sector today will determine the size of future risks which is why it is crucial financial and non-financial firms develop and disclose robust transition plans with a focus on concrete short-term action.”
There is no word yet on which month in 2023 net-zero transition plan disclosures are set to become mandatory, and which businesses will be covered by the mandate. Some firms, including Centrica, SSE and British American Tobacco have already published net-zero transition plans on a voluntary basis.
Commenting on the TPT’s publications, EY UK & Ireland’s managing partner for sustainability Rob Doepel said: “Fundamentally, implementation of the Disclosure Framework (pending consultation) will force the hand of businesses to produce and implement rigorous net-zero plans to deliver on the bold pledges and promises they have made to date.
“Not only is this a huge step towards making the UK a net-zero economy but is a significant step towards the world’s progression to net-zero, elevating the UK into a leadership position in the global economy on holding companies to account on action. Other G20 countries are likely to stand up and take notice of the UK’s progressive approach and it could well create a ripple effect where other countries follow a similar path.
“The guidance suggests that businesses should produce a “maximalist” plan covering not only their own decarbonisation plans, but how their plans fit into the UK and the world’s transition to net zero. TPT guidance goes further than TCFD requirements and potentially a long way beyond what many businesses have considered in their net zero planning to date.”
ROCKWOOL is looking at the possibility of switching power during its manufacturing process from gas to green hydrogen.
The insulation giant has linked-up with Marubeni Europower and Mott MacDonald to develop a potential end-to-end hydrogen solution at its South Wales plant in Bridgend.
The research is being funded by the Net Zero Innovation Portfolio (NZIP) under the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy through the Industrial Hydrogen Accelerator programme.
The current process for the manufacture of ROCKWOOL’s stone wool insulation uses natural gas in the combustion systems and curing ovens. This new scheme will investigate the viability of converting natural gas usage to on-site produced green hydrogen.
Rafael Rodriguez, Managing Director of ROCKWOOL Ltd said: “The group has set ambitious decarbonisation targets verified and approved by the Science Based Target initiative, and in line with this, we are looking forward to enhancing our own understanding about the potential for green hydrogen use in our business.”
Claudio Tassistro, Energy General Manager for Mott MacDonald, said: “Our multidisciplinary team has worked on green hydrogen generation and storage projects across the world and will bring with it a wealth of knowledge, and technical and economic expertise.
“The development of green hydrogen production projects like this are critical to achieving our net-zero ambitions and meeting the challenges posed by the climate crisis.”
This is according to Francesco La Camera, director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency, based in Abu Dhabi.
Proven technology for net-zero energy production already largely exists today but it will take political will and nation-led action to reverse climate change, he told The National.
Mr La Camera took up his post in 2019 and is a little over halfway through his four-year term. He joined Irena at a decisive time for climate change and the achievement of the Paris Agreement. He is tasked by the agency to “redefine the structure and operations” to keep its 180 member countries actively engaged in the fight.
The inter-governmental body, now 12 years old, promotes renewable energy and technology and helps countries plan and carry out energy transitions.
“At the end of this decade, the world will know if the Paris Agreement will be reached or not,” said Mr La Camera. Political will around the climate change agenda “is much better” than when he took up his post two years ago, he said.
‘When we look at implementation, we notice it is very far from what is written down on paper”
Franceso La Camera, director general of Irena
Global renewable energy capacity rose by 10.3 per cent to 2,799 gigawatts in 2020, according to Irena. China and the US, the world’s two biggest economies, were the best-performing countries in terms of renewable energy growth.
Globally, more than 260 gigawatts of wind capacity were added, a 50 per cent increase compared with 2019. Solar energy made up more than 48 per cent of last year’s renewable capacity additions, accounting for 127 gigawatts.
“The reality is overcoming my expectations,” Mr La Camera said of the renewable energy capacity added in 2020.
Over time, countries are also increasing ownership of their climate agendas.
A key piece of the Paris Agreement are the “nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs. These are plans that outline climate actions and policies that each nation aims to enforce in response to climate change.
Central to the UN’s plan for the NDCs was the concept of national determination. But “a failure of the NDC was the big role of the consultants”, as well as the lack of real buy-in from governments, said Mr La Camera.
“When we look at implementation, we notice it is very far from what is written down on paper,” he said.
To that end, Irena is increasing its efforts to tailor recommendations and projects for regions and nations. In addition to its work with net-zero scenario planning, “there is support for national planning. Doing it in a way that we don’t do consultancy, we work together. It is really important that the planning is owned”.
As an agency that works among governments and the private sector, not as a political organisation, he said the rigour and objectivity of Irena’s analysis is what sets it apart from a crowded field of players aiming to set the agenda.
The “future of the agency”, Mr La Camera said, is on an online platform Irena unveiled in 2019 to connect renewable energy project owners, potential financiers or investors, services providers and technology suppliers.
Mr La Camera said the marketplace has fielded more than 200 ideas for projects since its start.
He likened it to zooming in a camera – from the global analysis done by the agency’s number crunchers, primarily based in Bonn, Germany, down to the planning and financing of a renewable energy project on the ground and monitoring its output once operational.
He pointed to the recent inauguration of one of the largest solar projects in West Africa and the first renewable energy complex in Togo, which became fully operational earlier this month.
The Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed solar photovoltaic power plant in Togo, one of the largest in West Africa, has the capacity to provide electricity to about 160,000 homes and small businesses. Courtesy: Abu Dhabi Fund for Development
The 50-megawatt Sheikh Mohamed Bin Zayed solar power plant, financed under the Irena-ADFD Project Facility, has the capacity to provide electricity to about 160,000 homes and small businesses, significantly reducing the country’s dependence on firewood, charcoal and fuel imports for energy consumption.
“This project is showing that in Africa this [energy transition] is possible,” said Mr La Camera.
Abu Dhabi financed the project and is a climate leader in the region, placing itself “in the middle” of the climate conversation, he said.
Over the past six years, the UAE has led the way in driving down the price of solar energy through some of the most competitive bids on utility-scale projects. Mr La Camera said he believes the region can help lead again in lowering the cost of hydrogen as well.
Record low tariffs for solar power projects among oil-exporting states of the Middle East could allow for the development of low-cost green hydrogen, which refers to the clean fuel produced entirely from renewable sources.
“Renewables are the cheapest source of power,” he said.
Declining costs for renewables are a challenge to coal’s dominance as a cheap source of fuel, particularly in developing economies.
Irena is also engaging with the world’s biggest economies. India, Indonesia, the US and China are of particular interest because they are “countries that are more like continents”.
This month, Irena and China announced that they will prepare a comprehensive energy transition road map to help China achieve its medium- and long-term national renewable and decarbonisation goals.
China, currently the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases and biggest oil importer, pledged to hit its carbon dioxide emissions peak by 2030 and has vowed to become carbon-neutral before 2060.
Mr La Camera said the agency is “quite confident” in China’s ability to hit its goals.
Globally, Irena forecasts that the transition to net-zero carbon emissions will be dominated by renewable power from wind and solar, green hydrogen and bioenergy.
A combination of different technology is needed to keep the planet on a 1.5°C climate pathway – nothing entirely new is needed, but incremental improvements to efficiency and the will of markets and governments can go a long way in this “decade of action”.
Mr La Camera is also a firm believer that the market will not turn back. Investors and the private sector are anticipating the energy transition and are actively looking for investment, allocating capital away from fossil fuels and towards energy transition technology and sources such as renewables.
An analysis of the S&P Clean Energy Index in 2020 by Irena found that clean energy stocks were up by 138 per cent, as compared to the fossil fuel-heavy S&P Energy Index which was down by 37 per cent.
“Will climate change? The process is unstoppable,” said Mr La Camera.
But he said one questions lingers: “will we be in time to win the fight?
The southwestern New Mexico town of Columbus, site of a 1916 raid by Pancho Villa, is now home to a border entry center that is powered by the sun and landscaped with recycled concrete “sponges” that harvest rainwater.
An apartment complex in Los Angeles created expressly for formerly homeless men and women has features that maximize natural light and airflow, a roof designed to minimize heat inside the units during summer, and a rooftop garden that attracts migratory birds.
And across the country in Brooklyn, e-commerce giant Etsy established its headquarters in a 200,000-square-foot building that previously housed a printing press for Jehovah’s Witnesses, then renovated and retrofitted so it is powered by renewable energy.
All three sites, spotlighted last year by the American Institute of Architects in its top-10 list of sustainable projects, reflect the expansive reach of “low-energy” design strategies and the building industry’s embrace of sustainability as a de facto imperative. They’re part of a remarkable evolution, one that could prove crucial since the building sector globally accounts for at least 40 percent of the world’s emissions of carbon dioxide — far more than transportation sources.
Formerly homeless people live at the Six, an apartment complex in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles designed for optimal energy efficiency. (Brooks + Scarpa)
Some advocates think the U.S. sector can achieve net-zero emissions within 20 years, a decade ahead of President Biden’s net-zero goal for the country. The administration’s initiative includes new codes and efficiency standards for homes, appliances and commercial buildings — and a clean electric grid. Dozens of cities and states are moving forward with their own measures.
“Decarbonization of the sector is inevitable,” according to Edward Mazria, founder of Architecture 2030, a nonprofit organization based in Santa Fe, N.M., that aims to reconfigure the built environment as part of the solution to global warming.
The past several years served as an “urgent call to action,” he thinks, with devastating storms and wildfires on several continents, profoundly diminished Arctic sea ice, and the highest global temperatures in recorded history. “It’s not a matter of if we transition to renewables, but whether it will be fast and well-orchestrated enough to avert irreversible climate chaos.”
In Santa Fe, N.M., architect Edward Mazria leads a nonprofit organization focused on making the built environment part of the solution to global warming. (Ramsay de Give for The Washington Post)
Since the nation’s building stock started its rapid expansion more than two centuries ago, the energy all that construction consumed and the greenhouse gases it then emitted have only increased — dramatically so.
But the numbers began changing in 2005 as building efficiency gained traction. Despite the building sector producing an additional 50 billion square feet in the past 15 years — housing, office parks, skyscrapers, hospitals, factories, schools, shopping centers and other commercial projects — its energy consumption actually dropped 5 percent and emissions fell 30 percent, data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration show.
In Mazria’s view, building “green” is not a hard sell, especially given cost-effective design approaches that can produce high-performance buildings with little to no energy consumption or emissions. Strategies include considering a structure’s shape and orientation on a site, adding “cool” roofs that reflect more sunlight and absorb less heat, and more.
“In 50 years, I’ve never heard a client say they want an inefficient building that costs more to operate and damages the environment,” Mazria said.
Sierra Atilano echoes his sentiment in Los Angeles. She is chief real estate and investment officer for Skid Row Housing Trust, which commissioned the apartment complex in the city’s MacArthur Park neighborhood where formerly homeless people, some of them veterans, now live. Passive design approaches such as the building’s exposure to prevailing winds make it 50 percent more energy efficient than conventionally designed counterparts, according to the architectural firm Brooks + Scarpa.
“Adding sustainability is a no-brainer in developing equitable housing,” Atilano said. “Affordable housing should be designed on par with market rate housing; it’s important not just for the residents but for the community at large — and the environment.”
While new construction is the obvious target for low-energy design, the American Institute of Architects also emphasizes the need to adapt and retrofit existing buildings — an especially salient point given how the pandemic has depressed demand for commercial and office space. The curriculums at the country’s leading architecture schools reflect this reality and the opportunities it offers.
“The median age of commercial buildings in the U.S. is 36, with almost a third of commercial buildings over 50 years old,” noted Erica Cochran Hameen, co-director for the Center for Building Performance and Diagnostics at Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Architecture. “Knowing most of our students after graduation will work on projects that involve an existing building, it is critical to educate them on advanced retrofit and building upgrade design strategies and technologies.”
The results increasingly are quantified. There are benchmarking policies and performance metrics. The 2021 International Energy Conservation Code set new minimum efficiency standards for myriad construction elements, part of “lifecycle accountability” for a building. Jurisdictions that adopt the code’s zero-carbon approach“have an avenue to ask for annual performance data and measure on-site energy generation and off-site energy procurement,” explained Anica Landreneau, sustainable design director for the global firm HOK.
In fact, cities from Portland, Ore., to Portland, Maine, now require such data, and Landreneau sees that as a positive. “Both benchmarking and performance standards trigger retrofits, which create domestic jobs while reducing carbon emissions, increasing energy security and improving quality of life for building occupants,” she said.
The Los Angeles-based architectural firm Brooks + Scarpa designed the Six complex to minimize summer heat inside its 52 apartments. (Brooks + Scarpa)
Yet home builders have a different take on regulatory mandates, instead supporting “voluntary, above-code programs,” Jaclyn Toole of the National Home Builders Association said. “Maintaining housing affordability must be the cornerstone to any efforts to create greener and more efficient homes.”
And fossil-fuel interests continue to oppose proposals to eliminate natural gas equipment in buildings, successfully pushing legislation in at least 12 states to bar any exclusion. “Policies that would force people to replace natural gas appliances with electric ones could be burdensome to consumers and the economy, have profound impacts and costs on the electric sector and be a very costly approach for a relatively small reduction in emissions,” said Jake Rubin, a spokesman for the American Gas Association.
“Efforts by gas utilities to fight [building] electrification represent one of the biggest threats facing the planet now,” said Rachel Golden of the Sierra Club, citing a major U.N. report on methane. “Every time a new home or building is connected to the gas system … we’re expanding the use of gas.”
A clear shift seems underway, however. In California, advocates are working to get gas out of new construction through the state energy code. More than 40 cities and counties have already passed measures requiring or encouraging that fossil fuel energy be phased out in favor of building electrification, and the Sierra Club counts more than 50 other jurisdictions in the state that are weighing such policies.
Elsewhere are similar signs of transformation. Burlington, Vt., which became the nation’s first city to go all-renewable after opening a hydroelectric facility in 2014, intends to levy a carbon fee on new buildings that connect “to fossil fuel infrastructure.” In New York City, where a recent, top-to-bottom retrofit of the iconic Empire State Building nearly cut its operational carbon emissions in half, officials are considering a gas phaseout for all new construction.
Legislation is pending in Colorado to support building electrification, establish standards for energy performance and limit emissions from gas utilities. Laws to require or encourage gas-free construction are already on the books in Massachusetts and Washington, the state that is considered the vanguard of the movement.
Kjell Anderson, the director of sustainable design at LMN Architects in Seattle, helped craft that city’s new building code. The regulations, which will phase out gas in new commercial buildings, were a direct response to Seattle’s increased greenhouse emissions between 2016 and 2018.
He predicts emissions will drop each year as buildings go all-electric and the local grid adds more renewable energy. The biggest unknown is the balance required between on-site renewables, the grid and energy storage, which he says calls for region-specific approaches.
“Nearly all ‘net-zero’ buildings generate excess energy on many days, while they draw grid power at other times,” Anderson said. “With the rapid expansion of clean-energy development and the significantly reduced cost of renewables, energy flows both ways, so utilities are becoming energy managers instead of just energy generators.”
Like so many of his colleagues and contemporaries, he thinks the transition to a carbon-neutral economy must be expeditious: “The task at hand is scaling the solution — efficiency, electrification and renewable energy — to the scope and urgency of the climate crisis.”
Our hearing organs start to develop at two or three weeks of gestation, and as we continue to develop in the womb we can hear well enough to react to sound. Sight may well be listed second in influential academic Marshall McLuhan’s ordering of the human senses into a hierarchy of importance yet traditionally, industrial design has focused on sight and touch, especially for expensive items. But, as we learn more about the design of infrastructure required for a net-zero emissions future, audio is becoming increasingly important in how we design, and for whom.
A more sustainable future means that our world will likely become quieter as energy-efficient technology has the potential to reduce noise impacts.
In most machines or systems, noise reflects a loss of energy in the system – energy being wasted rather than put to productive use. As we focus on reducing emissions and increasing energy efficiency, there is potential to achieve a quieter environment.
Creating power with solar panels or hydrogen instead of boilers and steam turbines; powering vehicles with batteries or hydrogen fuel cells rather than gasoline or diesel engines; electrifying rail lines to take diesel-electric locomotives out of service, and developing high-efficiency electric motors to make commercial processes (from air conditioning to manufacturing) whisper-quiet.
What are the ramifications of a quieter world as communities transition to net zero emissions, and how does that impact design? Could the noisiness of your factory floor or your suburb become a measure of how sustainable you are as a business or a community?
Do we need more or less noise?
This question is in the eyes (or ears) of the beholder. Rachel Carson’s seminal text ‘Silent Spring’, responsible for kicking off the modern environmental movement, argues that a healthy natural environment should be ‘noisy’ with natural life.
However, COVID-19 has revealed a mixed reaction to the relative silence that so many people experience from working remotely. For some, prolonged silence and isolation made them desperate for interaction with others; some introverts thrived in lockdown and never want to return to an office; others craved solitude after the noise of home-schooling kids, while trying to work.
Anecdotally, people are seeking out silence, as evidenced by the trend of city folks moving to regional centres. There is also the increasing use of noise-cancelling headphones, allowing people to curate their own audio environment, regardless of what sounds are actually around them.
The influence of increased or decreased noise on creativity, mental health and reflectiveness is probably down to the individual, although there are questions to be asked as we design this new audio world. Sound-masking systems conceal noise in new offices, but what if these became more common? Would organisations lose creativity if eavesdropping was lost? Research shows eavesdropping actually makes us better people. Could plugged-in employees result in decreased stress at the expense of less creativity and social engagement?
Hearing is a primal threat detector for humans and design has compensated for quieter noise in the past: for instance, the first cars were preceded by a person ringing a bell as a warning. Silence can be a problem, which is why electric trams and cable cars traditionally ring a bell to alert pedestrians to their approach, and why pushbikes have a bell on their handlebars.
Now, electric vehicle makers have synthetic sounds generated from their quiet motors – to make pedestrians aware that cars are around. While this has already become a legal requirement in the EU, other automakers are looking for workarounds: for example, Ford reportedly wants to include an ‘off switch’ for its line-up of police vehicles, presumably so officials can sneak up on suspected criminals.
How audio design can improve sustainable outcomes
Audio design in infrastructure could become a way to solve problems or achieve better sustainability outcomes. Look at start-up Ping Services, the creators of a stethoscope for monitoring the ‘health’ of wind turbines. Acoustic technology ‘listens’ to turbine blades to monitor their condition and helps predict degradation without early retirement, a common issue afflicting wind turbines.
The idea of creating an ‘acoustic fingerprint’ of well-maintained operating equipment, as a measure of equipment performance, has multiple applications across many industries such as mining and manufacturing. Ping, a small Adelaide start-up, is reaping the benefits of being an innovative first mover in using noise, or absence of it, as a measure of efficiency.
This movement towards less noise could change our property and settlement patterns, reducing urban sprawl. For instance, real estate next to busy roads may not necessarily lose value in a future of predominantly electric vehicles, because the reduced noise and reduced particulate emissions (no engines, less brake wear) will alleviate the impact on an amenity that a busy roadway would normally have.
A school in the Netherlands has placed acoustics at the heart of design under the premise that less noise equals less stress, illness and lower absentee rates. More than 30 000 m² of stone wool tiles and a long wall of reindeer moss supports the ceiling in creating a comfortable acoustical environment. Acoustic panels themselves are becoming more sustainable with options now made from chemical-free pulp.
The opportunities a net-zero future brings for design are endless. As roadways become narrower due to automated, quieter and non-emitting vehicles, the physical environment can be integrated further into design. Increased vegetation has the power to muffle harsh noise and absorb carbon dioxide. Just as rooftop gardens and flower walls are now commonplace, the best of Mother Nature’s audio like the calming benefits of birdsong could be incorporated on a broader scale.
Designing for silence
An electrified economy could potentially see increased audio pollution restrictions (for example, construction site noise limits, airport curfews) to reduce intrusions on people’s audio space. In the same way that smog and pollution were controlled in response to the industrial revolution’s excesses, the transition to a net-zero economy could include further control of public sound.
New regulations around use of drones already protect local wildlife, and sound laws have been enacted by governments and councils to account for technology that causes ambient public noise to recede from electrification and high-efficiency motors.
Not all of these will be reactions against sound: already, pleasant background sounds are actively introduced in places where people need to be calm, such as medical settings, or synthetic engine noise is simulated in electric vehicles to create a sportier sound upon acceleration.
Incorporating the design of sound into the built environment from the beginning is the best way to achieve a quieter environment, and avoids subjective tastes dictated by a few for the group. Already there are moves to design quiet spaces while, at the same time, we are warned of the psychological dangers of silence. Between the two extremes is a design challenge for perhaps audio-neutrality – more likely to be attained if we start with human need.
Decarbonising economies to combat climate change is a complex journey and won’t happen overnight, and neither will our response to lowering noise levels. Instead of the future soundscape being managed as an afterthought, more value could be obtained if we consider it early in the design phase, especially of workplaces and educational institutions, as a driver of qualitative measures such as engagement, fulfilment and purpose.
Sound is important to us. It is not only one of the first senses to develop, but it is also widely-believed to be the last sense people retain before they lose consciousness forever. While COVID-19 has provided an unexpected context in which to consider the audio environment we want to live, work and play in, climate change is providing ongoing opportunities to return to the sounds of nature.
You’ll have to keep listening to find out what a net-zero emissions future sounds like. Perhaps it might not only be smelling the roses, but also hearing the birds chirp. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world!
Aurecon’s award-winning blog, Just Imagine provides a glimpse into the future for curious readers, exploring ideas that are probable, possible and for the imagination. This post originally appeared on Aurecon’s Just Imagine blog. Get access to the latest blog posts as soon as they are published by subscribing to the blog.
The European University Institute and two influential think-tanks have predicted the European Union’s goal to have zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 will have “profound geopolitical repercussions,” including sharply lower revenue to oil and gas exporting neighbours such as Russia, Algeria and Libya.
By its own estimates, EU oil imports by 2050 would drop to 79 per cent below 2015 levels to meet climate goals, at the same time gas imports would fall by 67 per cent.
Reuters Newsagency reports EU states import most of their fossil fuel energy needs, and the experts said sharp cutbacks in these purchases would hurt nearby economies and could destabilise some countries economically and politically.
“The EU needs to wake up to the consequences abroad of its domestic decisions,” the researchers, who included experts from Bruegel and the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.
Europe’s dwindling fossil fuel consumption could in turn depress oil prices, affecting major producers such as Saudi Arabia, even if they have little trade with the EU.
The researchers said the EU should set aside funds to help neighbouring countries diversify hydrocarbon-dependent economies.
This would not only aid global climate goals, but also help EU industry enter fast-growing new markets, they said.
Reuter reports while climate policies will reduce Europe’s dependence on imported fossil fuels, the researchers said Brussels will need to mitigate other security risks, such as a dependency on imports of raw materials used in electric vehicle batteries.
Another geopolitical flashpoint is Brussels’ plan to impose carbon costs on imports of polluting goods, which could trigger retaliation from countries such as China or Russia, whose steel exports would likely be among the first sectors hit.
The researchers said the EU should work with the new United States administration to jointly introduce carbon border measures, and incentives for other countries to match their efforts.
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