New sources of energy for the future

Renewable energy sources and their impact on global climate change

Corina Cristea, 04.06.2021, 14:00

The International Energy
Agency has delivered a tough and pointed warning to the energy industry. The
Energy Agency emphasized the fact that investors should not earmark funding for
new natural gas, oil and coal-based projects any longer, if humankind wants to
reach the zero-gas emissions target until 2050. It is estimated that, globally,
gas emissions this year are sure to increase at an alarming rate as global
economy recovers from the pandemic-generated crisis. Climate-wise, the economic
recovery occurring in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis is in no way sustainable
at the moment. The Agency also added that governments worldwide need to move
fast in order to reduce gas emissions or else we’re highly likely to face an
even more serious situation in 2022.UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has
in turn called on the developed countries to gradually eliminate the use of
coal until 2030 and stop building coal-fired power plants altogether. All that
has occurred against the backdrop of an estimated increase in electrical energy
demand, the fastest in the last decade. There is nonetheless good news to that
effect, such as the reported increase in the production of solar and wind
energy in China. By the same token, the government in Berlin has adopted a plan
meant to speed up the implementation of the climate objectives; Germany is set
to reach the neutrality of gas emissions by 2045. Actually, the developed
countries in the last months have ambitiously committed themselves to reducing
polluting emissions. Such far-reaching pledges need to be complied with. In
turn, French president Emmanuel Macron shared the belief whereby the African
states should not be stuck up with the fossil energies. The African states will
have to make sensible progress to that end, at the same pace with the rest of
the world. Accordingly, massive investments need to be drawn in renewable
energies sector. In fact, the appeal made by the French president highlights
the heart of the matter from the viewpoint of production and the economy.
Basically, it is all about a groundbreaking change in society and economy.

Here
is what Professor Mircea Dutu told Radio Romania:

In the last
200 years or so, the progress made by the entire society and the economy on the
planet has been based on an energy model that heavily relied on fossil fuels:
coal, oil and gas. Therefore, under the circumstances, in a bid to harmonize
the economic development with what happens in terms of climate change, the
option has been made for the change of that fundamental way of producing
energy, that is doing away with the fossil fuel energy and using the renewable
energy instead, and, in some case, the nuclear energy, at any rate, such an
option resorted to energy sources with low greenhouse gas emissions. The stated
aim of the action to be taken at global level, in a bid to mitigate effects and
adapt to the ensuing climate change, is, from the sheer climate viewpoint,
reaching the 2 degree Celsius temperature limit, even 1.5
Celsius degrees, if possible, as against the reading levels prior to the modern
age, the pre-industrial age, that is, and concurrently but definitely
concertedly, reaching the climate neutrality level in mid-century, all that as
a component of the action humankind takes in order to comply with the set
target of reaching the average temperature limit at global level.

To what extent human
activities have accelerated changes in climate at global level, as of late? To
a great extent, certainly. And we are even more accurate stating that than we
were 10 years ago, or at least that’s what climate expert Roxana Bojariu says.
According to the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Climate change
study group, human activities have caused 95% of the reported increase in
temperature readings beginning the second half of the 20th century.

Roxana Bojariu:

These are numerical
experiments, they are the perfect equivalent of the physics lab experiments
revealing the fact that, unless we take into account the increased
concentration of the greenhouse gas emissions, we will not be able to obtain
the upward trend of the average temperature reading at
global level. So the natural factors do not have any effect whatsoever on
the creation of the upward trend of the global average temperature reading,
basically. The activity of the sun, the volcanic activity, they cannot explain
that overwhelming increase either, we can all see records are set from one year
to the next, from one month to the next. The last six years have been the
warmest six years in terms of recorded temperature readings, beginning the
second half of the 19th century. The last decade was the warmest of
all decades for which temperature readings have been recorded. But these
all-time high temperature readings go with extreme phenomena, record-highs in the case of
several manifested phenomena. Last year, we recorded the hurricanes’ most
active season in the Atlantic. Concurrently, we have an accelerated melting of
the ice layer in Greenland, but also in western Antarctica. Unfortunately, such
phenomena are highly likely to intensify in the future. Fires will break, like the
ones we had in Australia but also in the Amazon, in much the same way as we had
fires that flared up in southern Europe. Numerical experiments even point to
the fact that in Romania, vegetation fires will unfortunately have an increased
impact as the upward trend continues in the case of the global average temperature
readings, as the ongoing change expands .

As for the climatic
neutrality, we need it by 2050. Which means that all our activities that
eventually lead up to emissions in the atmosphere must be balanced out. All
things considered, we need to have net zero emissions, so that our imprint, the
imprint our activities have on the environment, all that should no longer
exist, according to climate expert Roxana Bojariu.