(light music)
- [Dr. Richard Newell] There's really no doubt
that the climate's changing.
We have levels of carbon dioxide that are as high
as they've been in 2 million years.
We've got other major greenhouse gases
like methane and nitrous oxide
and those are at their highest levels
in at least 800,000 years.
It's led to temperature increase globally on the land,
over oceans, and over ice.
- [Dr. Virginia Burkett] We have changes in the rate of decline
of ice sheets.
We have changes in the distribution of plants
and animals, increases in wildfire, tide gauge records
from around the world showing an acceleration
of sea level rise.
- [Eric Drummond] We are just now at a point
where climate change is clearly impacting virtually
every segment of our population.
When you start to have that happen
and it becomes clear that it's a call to action.
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- One of the benchmarks that's come into prominence
over the last several years is a focus
on different degrees of allowable temperature change
that we should tolerate globally.
And there's been conversation
around 1.5 degrees Celsius change relative
to what it was before we had major industrialization,
kind of what's called the pre-industrial era.
- IPCC initiated a special report
and the current trajectory
with greenhouse gas emissions would increase temperature
to 1.5 degrees or higher
above pre-industrial by 2050 roughly
unless greenhouse gas emissions are curtailed quickly.
- We're looking at having already achieved around an average
of one degree C from pre-industrial times to now.
- Under 1.5 degrees we're already seeing some
of the impacts of climate change.
We're seeing stronger storms.
We're seeing ecosystem impacts.
We're already seeing wars
and civil unrest over water and natural resources.
While in a future with mass ecosystem devastation,
those problems will be worse.
- We can't afford to get it wrong.
And if we get it wrong, our future generations
are gonna be worse off than the past generations.
What is going well is that there is an awareness
that is starting to build.
- What virtually all countries agreed to
at the Paris Agreement was to take actions
to limit temperature increase to no more
than two degrees Celsius and to make best efforts
to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius temperature increase.
So that then led to a focus on, well,
what does it mean to reach 1.5 degrees?
You know, how fast would the global energy system
and how fast would our emissions have to change to try
and limit temperature to that level?
- If your goal is to prevent the additional accumulation
of CO2 in the atmosphere, one way to get there is
to zero out your emissions,
to stop all processes that would emit CO2
and those processes or things like burning fuels
like we use for our cars or our power plants
or reacting cement to make concrete
in kilns that will produce CO2.
There are a lot of things we do
that produce CO2 in the atmosphere.
Decarbonization has three steps in my view.
The first step is efficiency and conservation
which is light bulbs, mass transit, building codes,
that kind of thing.
Step two is electrification.
So when you electrify things, you get inherent efficiencies,
but also the power sector is decarbonizing
because wind and solar are so cheap, and gas,
historically, at least the last decade or so,
has been cheaper than coal.
If we look at the America economy,
about 40% of our primary energy use is for the power sector.
We're gonna have to at least double that,
but whether we're electrifying 70 or 80 or 90%
of the economy, there are parts
of the economy that are difficult to electrify.
Aviation, marine shipping, certain types of industrial heat,
but we still need to decarbonize.
And that's the third step, to use fuels
that don't have those emissions
or come up with alternatives.
That's really hard.
So, another alternative
is to go to something called net zero
where we still have some emissions
and then we'll remove the equivalent CO2
from the atmosphere with say, direct air capture,
or planting trees, or doing soil carbon sequestration
or something like that.
- So, the benefit of net zero is that we can keep
these processes that maybe are highly optimized,
but we don't yet have a great substitute for
or would just require massive investment
in infrastructure changes
and then remove the emissions afterwards.
And it's not perfect, certainly.
And we shouldn't necessarily think
of these carbon removal technologies
as purely a way to keep doing what we're doing,
but they are complimentary to a decarbonization mindset.
- One of the things that is really powerful
about the concept of a net zero
is that it's a decision rule and it's a target and a goal
that can be applied at multiple levels of decision making.
It makes sense
for the global planet because to stabilize temperature,
we need to get global net emissions down to zero.
It works at a country level as a target.
The notion of that a country's own emissions
when added up should get to net zero.
It works at a company level
and we've seen many companies commit
to having net zero in their emissions.
It works at kind of a technological level.
So, it's actually remarkably resilient
and applicable concept
at multiple levels of decision making.
And it's pretty unique in that regard.
It's incredibly important
for the United States to lead on climate change
and to not only decarbonize our own economy,
but to really serve as a role model
and a demonstration to the rest of the world
that this can be done.
We are the wealthiest country on earth.
We have the highest degree of technical capability on earth.
- We became a large geopolitical power through pollution,
through our energy systems and our industry systems.
But I think we can maintain that status
by becoming a leader in cleaning it up.
And I think that we can grow our economy that way.
I think that we can become a leader
in net zero technologies and in decarbonizing technologies.
- The truth of the matter is we have the technologies
that are likely available to get us on the pathway
through the next 10 years or so, to the end of this decade.
But beyond this decade and into 2050, we will have to bring
into the marketplace technologies
that aren't in existence now.
They're on the bench in the lab.
they're a part of a entrepreneur's business plan.
Technologies that need to be commercialized
out of universities.
- The workforce is demanding
that we go to a low carbon future.
The consumers are starting to demand that we go
to a low carbon future.
Major industrial customers
are now requiring that their source of electricity
or energy is low carbon.
Customers like Microsoft and Amazon,
big energy consumers, people who care about the bottom line.
And the third factor is the investors
are starting to demand it.
So if the investors, the employees,
and the customers are all demanding
that we change, we're gonna change.
Policies can slow it down or speed it up,
but they can't stop it at this point.
The markets have spoken
and the markets have said, we're gonna make this change.
- We can solve this and continue
to have affordable, reliable, and sustainable energy,
but we've got to take a systems approach.
Stop the lab exercises of saying
we're gonna try this boutique solution here.
We're gonna do this there.
We're gonna have to start doing things at scale
and try out every one of these approaches.
Whether it is bringing solar and wind at scale,
whether it is looking at geothermal,
if it's looking at electrifying transportation,
hydrogen as an industrial fuel, whether it's CO2 capture,
whether it's direct air capture,
all of these are going to have to be deployed.
And if we deploy it at scale
and we start to find the appropriate winners
that provide us affordable solutions that are reliable
and are sustainable, we can solve the problem at hand.
- I think we'll know if we're on the right path
to achieving net zero goals
if we start to see the emissions declining,
that's really the key metric.
There might be some lags between, oh,
we start seeing emissions declining,
but we're still seeing extreme weather patterns
and things like this.
But if we see those emissions declining,
we know that that will result in our goal.
- [Eric Drummond] We have to act now by bringing the right policies
to the fore, technology, and partnerships.
If we do that, we will be able to hit net zero by 2050.
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