Almost every country is bearing the brunt of climate change. The extremities of natural disasters such as floods, cyclones, wildfires etc. are testimony to what the future holds if timely actions are not taken. Accelerating the momentum to reach net-zero emissions by 2030, requires efforts to invent, innovate, as well as to actively adopt innovative technologies.
A study by McKinsey shows that for the world’s climate goals to be attained, the power sector needs to decarbonize fully by 2040.
McKinsey has also identified “Ten families of climate technologies” that are critical to mitigating carbon emissions.
Here is the list of the 10 crucial climate mitigation technologies:
Renewables
Countries around the world are looking for renewable source of energy like solar, hydro, and wind energy. With the application of geospatial technologies, suitable sites for generation of the renewables can be identified, facilities management, economic analysis and forecasting can be done by empowering a variety of geospatial data and maps.
Every aspect of modern life is underpinned by energy, and geospatial and location have an integral role to play in the transition from fossils to renewables.
“Geospatial and smart grid technologies have an important role to play in developing and managing renewable energy resources. By providing timely and detailed information on energy consumption, smart grids allow utilities and consumers alike to be more efficient in their energy use”, as per Esri India MD Agendra Kumar.
Net-zero transition is going to act as an enabler in changing the world’s energy system. Infrastructure and transport, which are the one of the major energy consumers, will look for renewables instead of fossil fuels through climate technologies. Similarly, to meet the ever increasing demands of renewables, alternate sources of energy will be identified. Thus, the energy demand shift is going to break some value chains while making way for new ones.
According to McKinsey, innovation will accelerate for most climate technologies.
Circular economy
The concept of Circular economy has opened floodgates for the companies and government to optimize resource use. Technologies such as IoT, AI, Blockchain and Big Data along with geospatial technologies play a significant role in enabling circular economy, which helps in connecting suppliers and partners, monitoring product lifecycle, and calculating the product’s environmental impact.
Many companies are looking for innovative ways to manufacture their product, for example Lush Cosmetics has developed digital solution using AI to come up with a waterless, signage and package-free shop. Similarly, Topolytics created an app for real-time tracking of waste flows in UK and now is available in other countries for use.
Batteries and energy storage
Limited availability of natural resources, rising pollution affecting the climate change and geopolitical conflicts across the globe such as the Russian-Ukraine war, has created a space for innovation in the alternative energy sources. This is where electric vehicles and innovations like gasification of high ash coals and fluidized bed technology have found new growth opportunity.
Coal gasification, combined with carbon capture, use and storage is expected to be the basis for affordable clean fuels and feedstock substitution for producing clean steel, hydrogen, ammonia, methanol, and other lower-carbon chemicals.
Volkswagen notes, “Electric cars are significant contributors to climate protection. An important growth driver is use of lithium in the batteries of electric vehicles; it is also used in the batteries of laptops and cell phones, as well as in the glass and ceramics industry.”
Building technologies (BIM)
Construction is another booming industry and rightly so. Due to growing population, it is important to build infrastructure to accommodate all. To make the AEC sector more sustainable and environment friendly, combination of digital technology along with geospatial technology is the only answer.
BIM streamlines the AEC sector towards more efficiency, productivity, cost savings, ROI and faster project timelines. The integration of BIM and GIS workflows enable monitoring of technical installations and tracking of energy consumption using spatial data, which helps in delivering sustainable and energy efficient built infrastructure.
A detailed report published by Geospatial World in collaboration with Esri and Autodesk highlights the benefits of the integrated solution.
Industrial-process innovation
Industries are constantly working on the process of innovation to stay ahead and meet the demands of the future, industrial-processes need sustainable solutions combined with geospatial technology into the innovation.
Climate technologies are assuming center stage due to the rising demand from nations to meet net-zero emission targets.
Industry leaders will need to weigh the near-term earning potential of their current holdings against possible opportunities for exponential growth in climate tech markets. They will need to decide how much more of their resources should invest in serving markets that are likely to start shrinking- and how much to commit to producing mature climate technologies and inventing next-generation ones.
Then they will need to organize or join ecosystems helping new technologies to gain acceptance and achieve scale, as McKinsey stated in their report.
Hydrogen
Hydrogen fuel has the potential to replace many electric generation process for which either fossil fuels, solar or wind energy are used and in addition it is clean, non-toxic and renewable source of energy, which is why it is suitable for vehicular applications.
Aerospace firm Airbus believes hydrogen holds more promise for decarbonizing planes than batteries because of the energy it can store by weight. By modifying their existing internal combustion engines, they say they could use hydrogen to fuel their planes.
“As the demand for autonomous and electric vehicles rises, governments need to invest in electricity and grids to sustain the market demand. Electric renewables, energy storage, and hydrogen are going to be the priority industries of the future,” says Ola Rollén, CEO & President, Hexagon.
Nanotechnology promises attractive opportunities in the vehicular application that will lead to cleaner, quieter, more pleasant cars in the future and thus gentle to the environment.
Sustainable fuels
Technologies are being developed to find more sustainable solutions to our existing problems since there is limited access of natural resources and in the process of extracting them, the environment is getting hammered badly, ultimately everyone around the globe is suffering.
While some companies are developing sustainable fuel out of waste plastic, food stocks like solid waste from homes and businesses (packaging, paper, textiles and food scraps etc.) which otherwise find their way into the landfills and produce carbon emissions. These sustainable fuel can be used as biofuels as well as in aviation.
Recently, Shell partnered with Accenture and American Express Global Business Travel to form a dataset to track the data on sustainable fuel demand from corporate flyers and to encourage others to de-risk investments in the production of SAF and the development of next-generation fuel.
Besides, British Airways and Aer Lingus have made an agreement with Aemetis to supply SAF for their operations at San Fransisco. Then, Japanese airlines are planning to increase their usage of SAF.
Nature-based solutions
In order to fight against climate change, harnessing the nature-based solutions is the best solution, which includes protecting, restoring and sustainably managing the natural ecosystems, biodiversity and human well-being. To tackle the challenges such as food security, water security, disaster risks and conserve natural habitats, geospatial technology sits at the heart of it.
Proper utilization of satellite imagery to identify the areas, indigenous people, ocean health that needs constant monitoring to forecast or report the incidents and take timely action.
GIS and sensors are used to create maps, collect spatial data on biodiversity and ecosystem services to produce reports for the policymakers and government as well as private organizations to make informed and timely decision.
Carbon removal, capture and storage
Technologies like satellite data, AI and ML are used to monitor the earth’s surface and map the GHG emissions.
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) to reach net-zero over 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide will need to be captured per year by 2070.
“Carbon capture is required to meet the world’s climate goals and lower cost solutions are absolutely essential for countries and companies to meet net zero emissions targets,” said Michael Kearney, Partner at The Engine. “In order to drive decarbonization across strategic energy-intensive industries, low-cost carbon capture is a critical need.”
“By pinpointing exactly where emissions are coming from, we can work to mitigate them quickly. This technology development is very recent and of critical importance in our time-bound efforts to curb climate change,” says Dr. Dan Cusworth, Carbon Project Scientist at Carbon Mapper.
Agriculture and food
To address the systematic challenges, accelerate productivity and mitigate the risks precision farming, autonomous farming and agriculture technologies play a significant role in tackling the food security issues.
Many technologies such as AI, IoT, ML and blockchain have the potential to stimulate the transition process to smart agriculture.
Technologies used in the precision farming calculates soil moisture, crop health, fertilizer quantity to be required, pest control down to the point of predicting drought areas and what caused it, thus the soil fertility can be maintained and farmers can enjoy good harvest.
A geospatial dataset for agriculture has been available over the United States for several years now, but NASA’s Applied Sciences Water Resources recently funded the program for development of the global ESI dataset
SERVIR works in over 45 countries in partnership with leading regional organizations to help developing regions of the world use satellite data and other geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use.
