Evolving Environment and the World

On World Environment Day, 5^th June, it is more so poignant that I am scribbling these notes on world sustainability and its possible mitigating strategies. 

The increasing spewing of greenhouse gases by progress of civilization will eventually alter the planet. 

Period.

The first step to fix a problem is to acknowledge it. The world needs to action upon strategies which can delay the inevitability or give a chance to self-healing abilities of the planet to reverse it.

In the last few score years of growth, the world has seen extraordinary erosion of the climate situation and studies conducted by GISS shows how the CO2 emitted has a direct correlation to the global temperature anomaly.

Figure Alongside: Greenhouse gas forcing and global temperature anomaly. Image courtesy : GISS.

The other huge problem is a more political play for countries and increasing geo-political power play for regional blocks.

The humongous subsidies provided for the usage of fossil fuels which is a major impediment in the change towards renewable energy. Such subsidies are channelized by giving up productive investments in public welfare and by incurring public debt, which discourage the investment scenarios by technocrats and corporate. Subsidies alter the behavior of the market participants, consumers, producers and mediators alike playing havoc with the market pricing forces and its evolution.

This indeed deters investors as it pressure down the potential return scenario by investors or companies, who would be pioneers or early adopters in the scenario to explore the renewable energy market.

In a study by the fiscal affairs department of the IMF, the global subsidies accounted for more than 6% of the world GDP and to the tune of more than USD 5,000 Bn annually. The need of the hour is to rise above the strategical and geo-political fossil fuel power play.

The world is now trying to tackle the situation by coming together on reduction of the Co2 emissions. With inconclusive results from Copenhagen climate conference, a few major economies reluctance and US withdrawal from Accord de Paris doesn’t show a very strong promise for a coordinated action movement.

Positively, there are pockets of change underway, majorly being, the consumer moving from energy agnostic to energy literate.

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Few economics such as China, India and the Middle East are gung-ho on the solar PV market and its ever-increasing scope, rightly so. Estimations by various studies pegs Solar Photovoltaic installed capacity to be generating 1,764 GW and 1,840 GW respectively by Greenpeace and Bloomberg by 2030.

Saudi Arabia’s ACWA Power record for the 300 MW, Skaka IPP PV solar project is a landmark on its own.

The innovations and disruptive technological advancement do not stop just right here, emerging areas such as electricity generation, smart grid and storage are seeing a whirlwind of changes and ideas which challenge our existing paradigm of thought processes.

Thanks to corporates, research universities, PE investors and Asset Management firms who have seen the opportunity to encourage or be an early mover to patent and promote such initiatives. It is very critical for large energy firms to look at these opportunities and turn these innovations into viable and commercial realities from prototypes.

The next wave of competition will undoubtedly be fought in this battleground of innovative patents and scaling up the discoveries to the consumers at the most affordable price.

The technologies of methane dissolution and retreating of GHG gases is going to be another frontier. Till now the cost of implementation economically and socially was very low but in the coming years, we will see companies pushing these research as the cost of GHG emission increases and starts heavily impacting the shareholders.

Well I couldn’t just help by ending the thoughts without delving to the use of distributed ledger technology (DLT) and how it would benchmark data, records and its source bringing in transparency, parallelly creating new social and economic systems for companies to adapt and adopt.

The DLT calls for another story of its own right as the technology has the potential to manage/ streamline the carbon currency. It has its own deterrents as corporations wouldn't want a open auditable accounting system for such reporting, but the society would make a run for this tech in about a decade.

 

I intend to continue with the strain of thoughts …

Do comment below on what you want to hear more about.