By Alain Dumas, Economist, Editor at la Gazette de la Mauricie
So-called “green” technologies occupy a growing place in the news. They encompass a multitude of processes that aim to reduce the negative effects of economic activity on the environment, such as CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. For most of their promotors, these technologies will allow us to maintain the present-day rhythm of consumption and production, thus producing “green” economic growth. Is this promise realistic? Do we have the time and the resources necessary to put these innovations to use for us?
New green technologies include the electrification of transport, energy-efficient infrastructure and renewable energy sources, as well as decarbonized industrial processes.
Some of these technologies are currently being deployed, like solar and wind power. Others are only in the development stage.
A Brief Survey
Solar and wind power have the advantage of being totally renewable. Both benefit from free, inexhaustible primary energy resources. But they have two limits. First of all they are energy inefficient (the energy produced in relation to the sunshine and wind captured): 25% for solar power and 40% for wind power, because sun and wind are intermittent. Secondly, their deployment capacity is limited because both require vast territory, to the point that their construction sometimes takes up forest and agricultural land.
Some people stake their hopes on green hydrogen as a clean energy fuel. This is different from gray hydrogen, which emits a lot of CO2 because it is produced from natural gas. Green hydrogen emits no CO2 because it is produced by electrifying water. Some scientists, like Professor Claude Villeneuve, doubt its viability because it is inefficient. It requires more energy to produce than it produces. As well, its production costs are high.
To achieve carbon neutrality by 2050 and still continue to prosper, the world’s oil giants, including the oil sands industry in Alberta, are betting on carbon capture technology that will bury CO2 underground. This technology is being greeted with some scepticism due to the very high cost of capturing CO2 in the air, on the order of between $200 and $300 U.S. for a single tonne of carbon. Imagine the bill for capturing the 16 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted each year by the petroleum industry.
Among the most eyebrow-raising of all green technologies, solar geo-engineering takes top prize. This technology consists of injecting sulfur into the stratosphere (up to 15 km in altitude) to create a mirror effect on the sun’s rays. This, it is thought, would lower global warming. The catch with this idea is that it would reduce the productivity of solar panels as well as of agriculture.
Electrifying Transport
Electrifying transport raises a fundamental question: how will we replace the world’s 1.5 billion gas-powered cars? Will we replace single-owner cars with collective transport? This question is very important when we consider that electric car batteries require substantial quantities of “green” metals (lithium, graphite, cobalt, titanium, etc.), which are non-renewable resources. Lithium will become increasingly rare, given that its demand is expected to rise 40 times between now and 2030. This is expected to increase the price of electric vehicles.
To illustrate this, if Quebec wanted to replace just 30% of all its cars by 2030, we would need 10,000 tonnes of lithium, which is more than 10% of the world’s annual production. Imagine the situation on a world scale!
Climate Crisis
As we have come to see, most of the technologies proposed may take a long time to be proven feasible. Yet our world has a very short time to limit global warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C, as world climate accords dictate. The climate crisis is here now: the planet has already warmed up by 1.2°C.
If the global heating limit of between 1.5°C and 2°C is indispensable, it’s because above that range, climate warming becomes uncontrollable. This would result in a whole host of consequences, including the acceleration of the melting of Greenland’s glaciers (already begun), which reduces the mirror effect on the sun’s rays, which precipitates the melting of the world’s permafrost, which fees up the hundreds of billions of tonnes of methane it contains into the atmosphere, which leads to the destruction of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, causing risks for the health and well-being of human populations.
That’s why we have to decarbonize much more quickly than we are at present. Not only do we have to replace fossil fuels with forms of renewable energy, we must also reduce our energy consumption. To do this, individual gestures are important, but insufficient. That’s why we have to radically restrain the production and consumption of new material things. We must put an end to our current system based on extraction and unlimited production for short-term profits. Otherwise, the technological solutions to the climate crisis will only aggravate the biodiversity crisis.
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