Thwarting the Gigaton at the Gate
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Addressing climate change is going to take more than simply managing what is measured, purchasing carbon offsets, or making sure that your company’s sustainability reports are printed on recycled paper. It will require a systematic approach that reduces the total amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.
Sunil Paul’s Gigaton Throwdown project released a report today that outlines how currently-available technology, if scaled appropriately, could each reduce the carbon emissions by a gigaton (1 billion tons) annually. The report asks: What would it take to aggressively scale up clean energy to have a major impact on job growth, energy independence and climate change over the next 10 years?
To attain gigaton scale, a single technology must reduce annual emissions of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases (CO2e) by at least 1 billion metric tons — a gigaton — by 2020. For an electricity generation technology, this is equivalent to an installed capacity of 205 gigawatts of carbon-free energy by 2020.
The notion of gigatons, says Paul, “made a lot of sense because one gigaton per year is enough to make a major difference by 2020. We chose an amount that matters and we chose a time frame that’s relevant to entrepreneurs and investors.”
Of the technologies reviewed, there are seven — building efficiency, concentrated solar power, construction materials, nuclear, biofuels, solar photovoltaics and wind — that are ready to scale up aggressively today. One, geothermal, can scale up fully after an intense period of research, development, and deployment of pilot plants. Combined, these eight technologies can meet over 50 percent of new global energy demand while avoiding over 8 gigatons of CO2e reductions globally.