Yesterday, The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an exciting report about the potential of Renewables and the world energy market.
Over 120 world experts produced a scientific document over 1,000 pages long that provides a solution to 'business as usual' carbon emissions.
They believe that we could meet the globe's energy needs with 80% renewable energies by mid-century. This would be a socially, politically, and physically strenuous task.
If we eliminate all the complications and shift our paradigm, we still have issues like that which Ramon Pichs, Co-Chair of the Working Group III, added: “The report shows that it is not the availability of the resource, but the public policies that will either expand or constrain renewable energy development over the coming decades. Developing countries have an important stake in this future—this is where most of the 1.4 billion people without access to electricity live yet also where some of the best conditions exist for renewable energy deployment.”
The renewable energies discussed in the full report are: Bioenergy, Direct solar energy, geothermal energy, hydropower, ocean energy and wind power.
You can learn more here: http://srren.ipcc-wg3.de/
While there are over 160 scenarios of how to play out this solution, I think it is important we remember our social values just as strongly as our economic and environmental ones. This possible concern reminds me of the social and cultural issues we are now facing with carbon offsetting programs.
Quick Tutorial: Carbon offsetting is a program designed mostly for corporations - it allows you to use a simple calculator to determine how large your carbon footprint is, then for some determined amount of money, you can pay to protect an area of wilderness. The idea being that the trees saved will 'absorb the carbon' that your business produces.
Problem: There is the clear issue that instead of eliminating the sources of the problem: common business practices, greed, lack of planning (in addition to lack of consequence), etcetera- corporations believe they can buy their way into 'Green Business Practices'. It's the same issue I have with carbon trading.
The bigger problem is that the pristine areas set aside for those who participate in the programs aren't actually complete wilderness; in many areas there are tribal families, or impoverished families, or forest farming families who have made homes and livelihoods in those areas and are forced to move out because they are a threat to the forests that wealthy 1st-world corporations have paid to set aside to account for their carbon use.
Ok, well I got off on a tangent but I think you can see how using some of the poorest areas of the world/ best locations for renewable energy harvests in the world could be an issue.
Overall, the IPCC kind of thinking is in the right direction- because at least we are talking about it.
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