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July 12, 2006 Researchers at SOLAR 2006 were optimistic that climate change can be stopped with more aggressive renewable energy policies. Photo: NREL |
"Things that normally happen in a geologic time frame
are happening during the span of a human lifetime. It's like watching the Statue
of Liberty melt before your eyes."
-- Dennis Dimick, a reporter for National Geographic who writes extensively on
climate change
Denver, Colorado [RenewableEnergyAccess.com] Global climate change can be significantly slowed with the proper economic incentives and technological developments, according to presenters at the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) conference in Denver, Colorado. The presenters spoke Tuesday morning, highlighting the current impacts that carbon (CO2) emissions have on the climate and scenarios projected for the future. Despite the dire predictions, the mood was optimistic as the speakers focused on solutions to the problem of global climate change.
Aggressive renewable energy programs are the solution,
said Dr. Frank Kreith, Professor Emeritus at the University of Colorado. We have
the technological capabilities to produce our energy from solar, wind and
biofuels, but there must be more political will and economic incentives.
Kreith outlined the most important tools that will encourage utilities and
consumers to invest in alternative energy. System benefits charges, portfolio
standards, net metering and national multi-year goals were the top tools that he
believed would promote renewables. He pointed out that 18 U.S. states have
enacted programs that will collectively produce 29,000 MW of electricity from
renewable sources by 2017. And although the U.S. is still very much addicted to
fossil fuels, Kreith said that the country could go 20% renewable by 2020. He
was optimistic that the goal could be met.
Dr. Donald Aitken, a Senior Consulting Scientist for the Union of Concerned
Scientists said that an aggressive strategy is necessary now. "We can really
pull this off. We can slow or even stop climate change if we face the social,
technical and economic factors that drive the problem," he said.
Aitken described the need for developing countries to integrate renewable
resources into their energy portfolios. He said that the technology is
available, there just need to be incentives such as emissions trading credits
and the removal of "procedural, institutional, and economic barriers to
renewable energy."
"The developing nations have the opportunity to move directly into the renewable
energy transition, skipping many of the large scale centralized power systems
that are now becoming obsolete and dangerously unreliable in the developed
countries," Aitken said.
Action needs to happen before it is too late, explained Dennis Dimick, a
reporter for National Geographic who writes extensively on climate
change. He said that meteorological and ecological shifts are already occurring
as a result of CO2 emissions. The CO2 levels in the atmosphere are far higher
than at any point in the last 450,000 years, causing temperatures to rise and
glaciers to melt rapidly. The arctic has seen a 9% decline in ice cover over the
last 30 years.
"Things that normally happen in a geologic time frame are happening during the
span of a human lifetime," Dimick said. "It's like watching the Statue of
Liberty melt before your eyes."
According to Dimick, and many other leading scientists and researchers, humans
are disrupting the carbon cycle, which is spurring climate change. He said that
we are "taking from the geological side of the carbon cycle and putting it into
the biological side of the cycle," which is affecting plant and animal life all
over the world. And some of the problems we have yet to see or understand,
Dimick warned.
To combat global climate change, then, there needs to be a major shift in the
way the United States and the rest of the world produces and consumes energy. It
will just take a lot of creative thinking and aggressive tactics from the
renewable energy industry.
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