Clean Tech Solutions

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To understand the climate disaster that we are in, let us first know what is the difference between pollution and climate change. Generally, pollution is on account of local pollutants like oxides of sulphur (SO_x), nitrogen (NO_x, except N₂O), particulate matter, smoke, foul odour etc. Whereas, global warming is caused due to excessive concentration of greenhouse gases (GHGs) with high potential for retaining radiation. These include six gases identified by the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), i.e., carbon dioxide CO₂, methane CH₄, nitrous oxide N₂O, Hydro fluoro carbon HFCs, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride SF₆. The first three are natural and others are man-made. While pollution causes breath difficulties and illness, GHGs cause long term effect on the earth’s atmosphere. As observed lately the frequency of extreme events such, as cloud bursts, severe cyclones, extreme heat, glacial lake outburst floods, is increasing world over. In developing countries such as India this may impact agriculture, fishery as well as urban areas. A large proportion of population lives in coastal areas near sea and rivers and they are exposed to the rising sea level.

The IPCC Working Group 1, responsible for physical science basis, published its report as part of IPCC’s 6^th Assessment Cycle in August 2021 [1]. The report sounded a danger bell that things with earth’s atmosphere and climate are terribly wrong and most probably the humanity is hurtling towards a point of no return! It states: It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land [For curious readers some more details of the report findings are given in endnote [i] ]. Without burdening readers too much with jargon, it’s time to think what can we, the common people do to save our planet from this ultimate disaster?!

So, the international community under the auspices of the UN framework convention on climate change has been seeking ways to save our climate. As the IPCC has come out with several studies and concluded that the only way to achieve this is by ensuring that the global average temperature rise is limited to 1.5⁰C. The governments at national level are deciding their commitments through Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) which were submitted first in 2016-17 and are to be updated every five years in an ambitious progression.

While that is being done, we the common people who contribute to the warming and face the fury of nature and are vulnerable to the harmful effects, must contribute in whatever way we can.  To decide what we should or should not do, we must first understand which of our daily life activities lead to emissions of GHGs. The well-known main areas are use of electricity, gas, fuels for our houses, cooking, heating and transportation. Urban houses are highly energy intensive consuming all these energy sources. The products that we use and consume also have used fuels and energy during manufacturing (embodied energy or emissions). The electricity we get from grid has been produced in mainly thermal power plants based on coal, natural gas, lignite, diesel etc. So, every unit of electricity that we consume has caused emissions of GHGs[2]. So, let us decide how we can help in the fight against global warming.

In our house:

• The first thing that we can do is to minimise the number of electrical gadgets in our house and limit their usage. Switch off what we are not using, fans, lights in empty rooms, switch off TV from the mains when not in use. Minimise use of ACs, keep doors/windows shut in AC rooms.
• Second is use of water; we don’t realise but the water we get in cities comes from 100s of kilometres pumped by huge size pumps, treated in sophisticated plants both consuming lot of electricity.
• The other hidden sources of emission are from solid waste and wastewater that we in cities generate. For generations we have been under impression that anything that we discard there is someone who takes care of it. However, the outskirts of most cities are filthy dumps where the discarded waste rots and leads to uncountable problems like foul odour, rodents and other vectors and worst, poor rag pickers who seek any “valuable” items, and stray animals which search their food. Besides these it also generates; a leachate which seeps into the soil and methane rich landfill gas! One person’s waste is of value to another person/creature.
• We must ask ourself before buying something, whether we really need it. If yes, we should buy just sufficient quantity, reuse if possible, and recycle after use. There are many NGOs in cities that collect dry waste such as plastic, old furniture etc. and convert it in other valuable product.
• The waste that we generate in our kitchens, green waste, has good potential to rot and produce methane (a GHG that has warming potential of 28 times that of CO₂). Resort to home composting (see my video on this[3]), it generates high value manure good for our own pots at home.
• It is ideal to consume vegetarian food; a) It avoids weight gain b) You can remain healthy and fit and more importantly, c) The carbon footprint of all non veg foods is very high. For example, the emissions of GHG from mutton was estimated at 32,082 gCO₂/Kg as against  1,000 gCO­₂/Kg of most vegetables[4]. Activities such as rearing animals, manure management leads to large scale emissions of methane.
• Buy all locally grown vegetables and fruits and not imported from long distances.
• The cities are growing at alarming rates and are going vertical to save space. But this is putting immense burden on our climate. The ultimate solution is to stop further population growth, but that is impossible.
• Lastly, buy clothes , food items only to the extent of living decently and not fill up their wardrobes!
• Teach your children the importance of reducing emissions, after all they would bear the brunt of warming earth more than our generation!

Out of homes in offices and elsewhere

• Avoid travelling by personal vehicles to the extent possible and use public transport. It is a good idea to bicycle instead of driving. Use public vehicles to commute to place of work.
• Insist on conserving electricity at office by installing occupancy sensors and other control devices.
• Use natural light to the extent possible.

In the community

• Spread the knowledge about environmentally friendly habits

Hope the current young generation is able to arrest the temperature rise otherwise the future of next generation appears bleak. On the occasion of start of Conference of Parties’ 26^th meeting let’s make all-out effort to arrest the rise in earth’s temperature!

Global surface temperature will continue to increase until at least the mid-century under all emissions scenarios considered. Global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C will be exceeded during the 21st century unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades. Many changes in the climate system become larger in direct relation to increasing global warming. They include increases in the frequency and intensity of hot extremes, marine heatwaves, and heavy precipitation, agricultural and ecological droughts in some regions, and proportion of intense tropical cyclones, as well as reductions in Arctic Sea ice, snow cover and permafrost. Continued global warming is projected to further intensify the global water cycle, including its variability, global monsoon precipitation and the severity of wet and dry events. Under scenarios with increasing CO₂ emissions, the ocean and land carbon sinks are projected to be less effective at slowing the accumulation of CO₂ in the atmosphere. Many changes due to past and future greenhouse gas emissions are irreversible for centuries to millennia, especially changes in the ocean, ice sheets and global sea level.

With further global warming, every region is projected to increasingly experience concurrent and multiple changes in climatic impact-drivers. Changes in several climatic impact-drivers would be more widespread at 2°C compared to 1.5°C global warming and even more widespread and/or pronounced for higher warming levels.

From a physical science perspective, limiting human-induced global warming to a specific level requires limiting cumulative CO₂ emissions, reaching at least net zero CO₂ emissions, along with strong reductions in other greenhouse gas emissions. Strong, rapid and sustained reductions in CH₄ emissions would also limit the warming effect resulting from declining aerosol pollution and would improve air quality.

Footnote:

^[i] Widespread and rapid changes in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere have occurred. The scale of recent changes across the climate system as a whole and the present state of many aspects of the climate system are unprecedented over many centuries to many thousands of years. Human-induced climate change is already affecting many weather and climate extremes in every region across the globe. Evidence of observed changes in extremes such as heatwaves, heavy precipitation, droughts, and tropical cyclones, and, in particular, their attribution to human influence, has strengthened since 5th Assessment.

References:

[1]https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_SPM.pdf

[2] Termed as grid emission factor (GEF). Current Indian GEF is around 0.9 KgCO₂/kWh

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FFwaMbA9g0

[4] H. Pathak et al. / Agriculture, Ecosystems and Environment 139 (2010) 66–73a