Climate change has been a growing concern, as it impacts how businesses operate, how developing countries strive to obtain resources, and how to rebuild local communities after suffering the effects of disasters due to global warming.
What is Climate Change?
The effects of climate change are overwhelming for humanity as well as the planet.
Climate change encircles the long-term changes in temperatures and weather patterns. These changes can be due to natural causes or new forms of production and consumption that significantly contribute to global warming.
Climate change has been changing our lives and will continue to do so until we stabilize the rapidly rising global surface temperatures.
Climate Change: Causes, Impact
The critical cause of climate change is the greenhouse effect - a natural phenomenon that, far from being harmful, allows the planet to maintain the conditions required to support life on Earth.
These gases in the atmosphere retain a part of thermal radiation emitted by the sun after heating the Earth's surface, keeping the temperature at a level suitable for life to grow. The greenhouse effect is essential as without it, the Earth's average temperature would be around -15°C.
However, greenhouse gas emissions, including carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide, and fluorinated compounds — have been leading to a rise in the Earth's temperatures. These gases have increased in the last 150 years due to a model of development based on a linear economy.
It is time to mitigate the effects of these gases to improve the environment and everyone's lives. This involves promotion of a circular economy, use of renewable energies, reforestation, and the implementation of technologies to capture CO2 and reuse it efficiently.
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Effective Climate Change Solutions
The most important component to combat climate change is to reduce fossil fuel consumption drastically. The burning of coal and natural gas for industrial processes and transportation is responsible for a majority of emissions, leading to the warming of the planet. In addition to altering the climate, these energy sources also come with unacceptable ecological and health impacts.
Solutions for Climate Change: Practical Strategies for a Sustainable Future
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Fostering Use of Renewable Energy
Making the shift from fossil fuels to adoption of clean energy is the key to winning this ongoing fight against climate change. Businesses need to understand the economic benefits of shifting to a more eco-friendly business model, including the use of renewable energy, to reduce business costs. Fostering a sustainable mindset can further help provoke the interest of employees, customers, and investors.
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Promoting Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency is considered as the first fuel. The more energy-efficient a system is, the less real fuel it consumes. Today, efficiency is considered as the largest energy resource. As the technology harnessing it has advanced, efficiency has contributed more to the energy needs than oil, coal, gas, or nuclear power.
Energy efficiency strategies need to be applied across multiple sectors. However, some of these climate-friendly strategies can be enormously complex, like enabling utility companies to adopt performance-based regulation systems. On the contrary, other strategies are extraordinarily simple, like weatherproofing buildings, installing cool roofs, replacing air conditioners with super-efficient heat pumps, and switching out light bulbs from incandescent to LED.
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Sustainable Transportation
Transportation is considered one of the top sources of greenhouse gases. It is therefore important to eliminate pollution from the billions of vehicles, which is essential to achieving net-zero global emissions by 2050.
By 2035, it is estimated that electric vehicles (EVs) will account for more than half of all new sales. The year 2035 is also expected to witness a turning point in the adoption of EVs as countries worldwide have announced goals to phase out gas-powered cars and light trucks in this fight against climate change.
It is also critical to consider all the different ways to build sustainability in each of them. By increasing access to public transportation - like buses, ride-sharing services, and subways - and embracing congestion pricing, we can cut down on releasing millions of tons of carbon dioxide every year. Encouraging zero-emission forms of transportation like walking and biking can further help reduce emissions. However, boosting these alternate forms of transportation will require funding, planning, and designing supportive infrastructure across the local, state, and national levels.
To address the full set of transportation sector impacts, there is a growing need for holistic and community-led solutions.
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Sustainable Buildings
The energy used in buildings makes them the single largest source of carbon pollution across most cities. These structures can be made energy efficient by adding insulation to walls and upgrading windows, which will help bring these numbers down. It is also more important to raise public awareness related to cost- and carbon-saving changes for individuals to make their homes and workplaces energy-efficient.
Beyond these measures, private businesses and governments need to support decarbonization by making more efficient buildings and replacing fossil fuel–burning appliances with clean-powered ones. For these changes to reach the scale required, it is equally important to invest in the affordable housing sector that is efficient and accessible to homeowners and renters.
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Reforestation- A Potential Solution for Climate Change
Urgent steps need to be taken to cushion the effects of climate change. Countries, companies, and individuals can reduce carbon emissions into the atmosphere to do so.
Companies need to commit to sustainable climate solutions like emissions compensation initiatives to create, restore, or protect carbon solutions, promote the use of biofuels, and develop technologies capable of driving the energy transition.
Individuals can undertake actions such as responsible consumption of products sourced from nearby stores, recycling, sustainable mobility, energy-saving in homes, and a reduction in the generation of waste.
Best Technology Solutions to Climate Change Mitigation
There are plenty of technological solutions to tackle the existing climate crisis. Technology can be used as a solution or a cause for more problems. By defining technical solutions to support environmental monitoring and planning, renewable energy technology can help reduce environmental and carbon footprint, as well as industrial carbon capture.
These technologies can assist with different purposes:
- Reducing greenhouse gases by depending on renewable energies like wind, solar, and hydropower.
- Embracing energy-efficient practices or training to use soft climate technology equipment.
- Technology development and transfer highlight the importance of boosting resilience to climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Integrating Carbon Capture Solutions
The concept of industrial carbon capture solutions often creates a misleading impression that our everyday lifestyles require no alteration. However, it is imperative to take immediate action to confront the climate crisis. Industrial carbon capture and climate engineering should not serve as distractions that delay responsible actions. Enacting changes in everyday behaviors can help avoid a forthcoming environmental and climatic catastrophe. Using nature-based, proven solutions can significantly reduce carbon and environmental impact. This proactive approach is critical to avert potential disasters and ensure a sustainable future.
Use of Hydrogen and Sustainable Fuels
Hydrogen fuel can be used as a replacement for many electric generation processes that require fossil fuels. Hydrogen is a clean, non-toxic, and renewable energy source that can be used for vehicular applications.
Sustainable fuels are fuels in gas or liquid form that come from renewable sources or decarbonized electricity. This indicates that the carbon intensity of the electricity, and therefore its emissions, can be reduced. These types of fuels include e-fuels like e-methane, e-kerosene, and e-methane - which combine hydrogen and CO2 to produce alternative sources to power vehicles.
The utilization of renewable fuels has its potential challenges and harms biodiversity and sustainability. Extracting fuels from renewable sources requires extensive cultivation of specific crops, leading to
- exacerbated issues of habitat degradation due to agricultural expansion,
- establishment of monocultures that can adversely affect biodiversity,
- competition with food production is a critical concern surrounding the growing global population.
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Investment in Green Technology: Supporting Climate Solutions
Finding sustainable solutions is gaining momentum, and one of the major areas of focus is the development of green technologies to address the existing critical issues in energy production, water and waste management, and eco-friendly construction.
Green technology is the development and use of tech that has a positive impact on the planet. This involves innovations that show promising outcomes in different fields ranging from energy production and use to sustainable agriculture.
The goal of green tech is to:
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)
- Minimize resource consumption
- Promote ecological balance
Green technology also aims to prevent the loss of biodiversity by reducing the impact on ecosystems.
The use of green hydrogen is emerging as a critical factor in addressing climate change. Green hydrogen can be produced through electrolysis with zero greenhouse gas emissions. This is an interesting solution for decarbonizing industries and setting up green energy at scale. However, green hydrogen is five times more expensive than fossil hydrogen.
Green hydrogen investments can be coupled as follows:
- Green hydrogen can act as a commodity for large-scale renewable energy production.
- Green hydrogen is to be used to reduce carbon emissions in challenging areas like steel, cement, fertilizer production, and aviation fuel.
- Green Hydrogen at a distributed level includes green hydrogen from agriculture and the related transport and filling infrastructure.
As concerns about climate change are becoming more pressing, there is a growing need to advance green technology. For sustainable investors and impact investors, now is a pivotal time to make investments in green technology that will ensure future economic success while also reducing carbon footprint. Industry leaders and investors need to fund essential infrastructure to further encourage research and development.
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Summary: What is the Most Effective Solution to Climate Change in the World?
While the outlook for climate change in 2024 looks grave, attempting to improve the state of climate change around the world is not a lost cause. There are many measures that can be executed to improve the current state of climate change.
One of the significant measure companies, countries, and individuals can undertake is to strive to be more climate-positive instead of just joining the movement to transition to net-zero emissions.
As individuals, the key to solving the climate crisis is to take climate action in everyday life. By switching off fossil fuels in homes and being more mindful of the climate footprint, we can contribute to moving the needle.
Becoming climate-positive can help reduce the carbon footprint. Being climate-positive is better than transitioning to net-zero emissions as it helps tackle the root cause of the problem– excessive greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide emissions. It can also improve business endeavors – as investors, customers, and employees can strive to collaborate with companies that seek ways to directly reduce climate change.
It is when we act collectively that real change happens. By responsibly considering the implications of our choices and reducing the burdens of climate change, we cannot merely shift them somewhere else.
A leader in ESG Services, SG Analytics offers bespoke sustainability consulting services and research support for informed decision-making. Contact us today if you are searching for an efficient ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) integration and management solution provider to boost your sustainable performance.
About SG Analytics
SG Analytics (SGA) is an industry-leading global data solutions firm providing data-centric research and contextual analytics services to its clients, including Fortune 500 companies, across BFSI, Technology, Media & Entertainment, and Healthcare sectors. Established in 2007, SG Analytics is a Great Place to Work® (GPTW) certified company with a team of over 1200 employees and a presence across the U.S.A., the UK, Switzerland, Poland, and India.
Apart from being recognized by reputed firms such as Gartner, Everest Group, and ISG, SGA has been featured in the elite Deloitte Technology Fast 50 India 2023 and APAC 2024 High Growth Companies by the Financial Times & Statist.
