Technology

According to this graph from 2016 those emissions were about 1.7% of the whole pie. Reducing emissions is definitely a step in the right direction, but in this case it’s not going to be a very big step.

Just to give you some perspective, road transport is responsible for about 11.9%, so tackling that should be a significantly higher priority IMO. We could take that step by developing electric lorries, trucks and vans and other electric cars, but they would also need to be recharged using nuclear or renewables.

Energy use in buildings covers about 17.5% so that should probably be even more urgent. Burning oil to heat up your house in the winter should be replaced with more ecological options. As usual, running your air conditioning in the summer also contributes to the problem if the electricity comes from coal, oil or gas.

People tend to forget that 24.2% comes from industry, so optimizing that part should be among the top 10 of our priorities IMO. In many cases, you could switch from carbon based fuels into other sources, but that may require building more nuclear, wind, solar and grid energy storage.

Steel production is also pretty big (7.2%), and as far as I know, there’s no easy way to replace coke. However, it is possible to capture the CO2 right at the source, but currently there are no economic incentives to build an entire carbon processing factory right next to your steel mill. Carbon tax might a good way to make the steel industry look for ways to reduce emissions. If keeping the old factory running costs hundreds of millions a year in taxes, while building that carbon plant costs about the same, many companies might consider it… or they might just outsource everything to China instead.

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