THE CLIMATE CRISIS
ADDRESSING FIVE KEY AREAS FOR CHANGE Part 2 - Emissions (TRANSCRIPT) by: Rob Hanson, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Monolith.
In this lesson, we’ll examine a strategy for transitioning to clean energy. We’ll look at the role of hydrogen in greenhouse gas emissions. And we will review the new processes and technologies to reduce and remove carbon emissions from the air.
This lesson was written by Rob Hanson, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Monolith, a U.S.based startup. At Monolith, he leads the development of next-generation technology for producing low cost, low-emission hydrogen and carbon black, an important raw material used in the manufacture of rubber and plastic. Prior to Monolith, Hanson served as the global director of product management for AREVA Solar, the solar division of the world’s largest nuclear company. He has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.
As Hanson explains, today, roughly 80% of global energy comes from burning fossil fuels. When you burn a fossil fuel, you release energy, but also greenhouse gases, which are accumulating in the atmosphere and leading to the warming of the planet. The Energy Transition. We need to make a transition from the status quo to a future where we still produce large amounts of energy, but without the release of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. This is called the energy transition. Strategy for the Transition Hanson explains that there are several ways to produce energy without emitting greenhouse gases. Solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and nuclear are all options for producing electricity without increasing carbon in the air. Unfortunately, even with the broad deployment of these clean technologies, and advanced batteries for light transportation, we will only be able to “decarbonize” — meaning to reduce and remove carbon — from around half of the global economy.
Image by United States environmental protection agencyThat’s because large portions of the global economy are both essential and impossible to decarbonize with clean electricity and batteries alone. For example, fertilizers in agriculture, heavy transportation like trucks and ships, and industrial processes like steel and cement production are not readily decarbonized solely with renewable electricity and batteries. Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Economic Sector (Source: https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/globalgreenhousegasemissionsdata ) Enter hydrogen, the simplest of all the elements. An energy dense compound, hydrogen is the key building block for many more complex chemicals, such as ammonia and synthetic fuels, and contains the reducing power needed for steelmaking. By adding hydrogen to certain production processes that generate greenhouse gases — solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear and batteries map emerges for deeply decarbonizing along with wind, — a real road economy. But to achieve that goal, the process must produce what we call clean hydrogen. Clean hydrogen is produced in a manner that generates no greenhouse gas emissions, uses 100% renewable or clean energy sources in its production, and demand . Almost all hydrogen produced today is not clean. Over the past decade, Hanson writes, Monolith has been developing commercial meets market scale processes to produce clean hydrogen. In the near term, industry must meet the world’s energy demands without harmful CO particularly where electrification is difficult, according to Hanson. In the long 2 emissions, term, producing negative hydrogen will remove CO2 carbon from the atmosphere, at a gigatons scale. This reduction of from the atmosphere is called drawdown.We need many more companies and new technologies to decarbonize the various sectors of our economy. Through ingenuity, perseverance, and the right supporting infrastructure, we can make the energy transition and live in a high energy, low emissions future.
At the global scale, the key greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are:
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