Carbon itself is not a problem – after all, we are carbon based, as are trees and all other living organisms. Like trees, we are part of the carbon cycle: During our lives we collect and retain carbon and after our death we release it again. If we are buried the carbon is sequestrated while if we are cremated the carbon is released into the atmosphere. In this respect we are also little different from a tree that may fall into a swamp after it dies or may become victim of a forest fire.
Man’s problem with carbon has its roots in our ability to accelerate the carbon cycle. We do this by digging up the carbon based deposits that nature has sequestrated and using them as fuel. When we burn these fuels, carbon is released into the atmosphere. The rate at which we are burning these deposits far outstrips the rate at which nature created them in the first instance or would, in normal circumstances, recycle them. This has implications for both the environment and the economic systems of the industrial world.
The environment cannot cope with the volume of carbon we are adding to the carbon cycle. A surplus of deposits is finding its way into the upper atmosphere where particles lock in heat energy and contribute to global warming.
Nature created carbon deposits in geological time. If we used them at the same rate – or even in biological time – there would be little immediate impact on the world’s economy. Unfortunately, in recent decades we have been extracting and burning carbon based deposits in ‘Internet time’. If time were compressed so that the rate at which nature sequestrated carbon was of the same order of magnitude as the rate at which we are consuming carbon based fossil fuels, then the burning of all of the earth’s oil and coal would sound like the bang of a firework with a very short fuse. As supplies of these natural resources dwindle, so prices rise and security of supply starts to impact on Western industrial economies which are now totally dependent on oil, gas and coal.
We are rapidly approaching two potential points of no return. The first is environmental: the point at which global warming starts feeding on itself and no matter how much emissions are reduced the world will continue to get warmer. The second is economic: the point at which the remaining fossil fuels become to scarce and expensive that they cannot be used to build the infrastructure required to power an economy using renewable sources of energy.
There is no single answer to this problem; the solution lies in a number of individual and, in some cases, seemingly unrelated technologies, services or programmes. In this CarbonFree report we list 101 initiatives that could potentially play a role in a renewable energy based world and could also provide key components in a new and rapidly growing industry.
Read the full report