Archive for September, 2019

17
Sep
19

Act now and avert a climate crisis

By Prof D Chandrasekharam Closed
Categories: Geothermal Energy

EDITORIAL 

 15 SEPTEMBER 2019

Act now and avert a climate crisis

Nature joins more than 250 media outlets in Covering Climate Now, a unique collaboration to focus attention on the need for urgent action.

………….””One of our articles reveals how countries are progressing towards their obligations under the 2015 Paris climate agreement. Sadly, greenhouse-gas emissions continue to climb, even as nations pledge to make substantial reductions. The one glimmer of hope is that energy from renewable sources is now growing faster than that supplied by fossil fuels. However, fossil-fuelled power continues to rise at a rapid rate, and its share of the global energy supply far eclipses that of renewables.””

Carbon free renewable energy that can support baseload electricity supply is geothermal. This is a fact that all of us should accept. We should also accept that solar pv is not a solution to mitigate CO2 emissions. To manufacture solar cell a large quantity of quartz needs to be processed from metallurgical grade to electrical grade. Both the processes are highly energy intensive. By the time solar pv cell emerges it has already emitted sufficient quantity of CO2 to the atmosphere. Solar  is not a glimmer of hope to battle carbon dioxide emissions and control global temperature rise. The more one promotes solar pv the more CO2 is emitted. Added to this is the storage batteries. Li or Cd batteries. These two are not a commodities that are freely available in nature that the battery companies can buy. These two elements have to be extracted from minerals and purified to suit battery standards. This process is again energy intensive. This energy has to come from fossil fuels only. The last phase……disposing solar waste. Wake up and think wisely and don’t be under the cloud that solar pv is a clean energy. Now the data is open and available to everyone on this earth. Sit back and calculate the CO2 emissions from the life cycle of solar pv cell. Apparently greenhouse gas emissions continue to climb. A business guy always masks this fact so that his business flourishes. But science is business for scientists. Act now and avert climate crisis.

03
Sep
19

What these countries discuss during the Conference of Parties ??

By Prof D Chandrasekharam Closed
Categories: Geothermal Energy

CoP 14 is going begin in India today (2 Sept. 2019) and will last for week. The parties will take stock of what has been discussed at Ordos, China…….The theme for the CoP 14 is combat desertification. Integration of sustainable development goal 14. The decision read like “” “Integration of Sustainable Development Goal 15 and target 15.3 into the implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification and land degradation neutrality 27. Background: By its decision 3/COP.13 and recalling decision 3/COP.12, the COP invited Parties that formulate voluntary targets to achieve land degradation neutrality (LDN) to ensure that their LDN targets and the activities to achieve these targets are directly linked to their national Sustainable Development Goal agendas and create leverage and synergies with their countries’ climate and biodiversity agendas. Furthermore, the Parties are invited to use the monitoring and evaluation approach adopted in decision 7/COP.13, including the progress indicators therein, and, as needed, add additional indicators to monitor, evaluate and communicate progress towards achieving the LDN target. 28. The same decision invited all Parties and multilateral and bilateral partners to scale up and facilitate effective financing for combating desertification/land degradation……………………” “ By its decision 3/COP.13, paragraph 3, all Parties are further invited to enhance the implementation of the Convention and Sustainable Development Goals by: (a) fostering national-level synergies among the three Rio conventions; (b) strengthening national-level coordination and cooperation among those responsible for addressing DLDD, socioeconomic development, finance, food and water security, agriculture, environment, etc., as appropriate; (c) seeking to leverage the cross-cutting benefits of sustainable land management (SLM) in national-level policies and programmes relating to poverty reduction, food and water security, agriculture, environment, finance, etc., as appropriate; and (d) engaging all relevant stakeholders………………………

All such meetings end with recording the minutes and open new agenda for the next meeting. What action is being taken is any ones guess. Ground realities are different from discussions in cosy comfortable conference rooms.

Reality: Take for example Djibouti & Eretria. Djibouti, except for the town, the rest of the land is desert. People live below poverty in the rural area. (Chandrasekharam D. et al. 2019.  Geothermal energy for desalination to secure food security: case study in Djibouti. Energy, Sustainab. Society, 9, 24-30. doi.org/10.1186/s13705-019-0206-3; Chandrasekharam, D. 2018. Energy and Food security through desalination using geothermal energy: Eritrea. Arabian Journal of Geosciences 11:523 doi. 10.1007/s12517-018-3892-9.). No water, electricity and food. What CoP should discuss is to pump funds to develop the geothermal energy in Djibouti and Eritrea and provide energy to the rural population. ). Solutions do exists. Attitude of the countries providing financial aid should be positive. There is no reason why these resources could not be developed? Technology exists. Europe, Iceland USA …..what are these countries doing?? Read the above papers to find solution to the energy-food- water problems.  If desertification has to be stopped, then make use of the existing energy sources (free and environmentally green and sustainable). This will give positive results before the next CoP.