The UN Climate Change report was once again serious but not the emotional document that it has been the past. We should all agree that focus, hard work, and international cooperation are essential steps forward to improvement in the issues.
Engineering has developed many solutions that should be major components of all G7 Governments policies to mitigate the man-made impacts on the climate. I hope that other like-minded professionals who agree with the methods noted in this message will lobby our political leaders.
More Small Climate Mitigation Projects
Of late PR Releases claim to be the largest in Europe or the biggest in the world. As E F Shumacher wrote in 1973 “Small is Beautiful”. So, for climate mitigation why not many more small installations?
The flagship of Renewables is wind has become ever cheaper per unit of power generated, even though its engineering is more complex than solar. Building should continue around our coasts, but onshore should only happen in the rare cases and where there is strong local support, which I suspect is unlikely. However, in industrial coastal areas such as ports, installations should happen.
The second string in the UK is solar, but the sun never shines at night and not for long in the UK winter, so we should look for other sources.
The world’s population will always produce waste and there are now very sophisticated recycling plants on stream to recover valuable raw materials, to mitigate the increasing resistance to their mining. Some are also designed to provide local amenities such as ski slopes.
Energy Extraction is one of the approved steps in the lifetime of waste. Burning the rubbish for waste to energy should eliminate any pollution going into waterways and on to the sea. The first step is to ban the lowest step in the Waste Hierarchy, landfill, not just charge for it by the tonne.
There are also Anaerobic Digesters to harvest bioenergy. Food waste, cooking fats and left-over used grain from distilleries and brewery processes can also be converted into useful fuel.