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Solutions

"Disaster caused by warming are speeding up, ... 

but so are solutions" Jeremy Grantham


Introduction 



Yet many of the means to achieve the necessary transformation already exist. Almost daily, there is promising evolution and acceleration of climate solutions, alongside growing efforts to sunset fossil fuel infrastructure and prevent expansion of these antiquated and dangerous energy sources.  

At Bay2Bay, we want to become a transmission belt between innovation entrepreneurs and the society stakeholders in order to accelerate humanity system transformation for a better planet  We want to reach to those entrepreneurs and discover their solution. 

As we have to act now, we are convinced that those solutions must not remain in the domain of specialists or select group.  Widespread awareness and understanding of climate solutions is vital to kindle agency and effect change worldwide.  

We all have roles to play in this great transformation and society is well equipped to begin that transformation today.  

Now is better than New!

Solutions' inventory - key findings

To help us to "connect the dots", and understands how the solutions contribute to stop climate change, let's take the credit of the comprehensive analysis made by "the Project Drawdown".

What are the key findings :

1. "We can reach drawdown -point in the future where levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere stop climbing and start to steadily decline- by 2050 if we scale the solutions already in hands"
Certainly more solutions are needed and emerging, but there's no reason (and time) to wait on innovations, we need to accelerate the scaling up and spreading them. This requires capital shift, and policy framework changes.

2. "Climate solutions are interconnected as a system and we need all of them".
Many climate solutions combine and cooperate, leveraging or enabling others for the greatest impact. 

3. "Climate solutions can contribute to a better and more equitable world"
A climate solution having a positive effect on the external ecological limit of the "Human well-being doughnut", can also have a positive effect on the internal social foundation limit (such as health, illiteracy, employment or hunger).

4. "The financial case for climate solutions is crystal clear, as savings significantly outweigh costs"
As computed by Project Drawdown team, the costs over the next 30 years would roughly sum up at 25 T$ while the savings can be estimated between 96 and 143 T$, depending on hypothesis.

5. "We need to combine several stop/start actions simultaneously": improve energy efficiency AND replace fossil fuel consumption by alternatives AND enhance nature's carbon sinks AND reduce food waste AND fostering equality through education and health programs.

6. "Existing solutions opens possibilities to act at all levels: individual, community, organizational, regional, national and global ". It will takes a whole ecosystem of activities and actors to create the transformation that's required

Taking into consideration these findings, one can stay petrified by the immense commitment it takes  to reach this draw-down point before 2050. Together, have have all to succeed:

"You must take action. You must do the impossible. Because giving up can never be an option" Greta Thunberg, US congress 2019


So, practically where can we act in order to reach the draw-down point within a 30 years reach ?
We should play on parallel, massive and coordinated initiatives while remembering the inter-dependencies between them. Initiatives which can becomes enablers, multipliers or dividers of one to another. In the following sections we'll classify them in buckets / sectors / and sub-groups , and present the potential CO2 savings for the next 30 years. This will allow us to RANK them based on their potential impact according to the Project Drawdown ("plausible scenario" taken here, as potential impact amplitude depends heavily on ecologic, economic, political or societal parameters):

The figure below is sumerizing graphically the most important drivers (all buckets and sectors combined)

source : Project Drawdown op. cit.



1/ Reduce Sources (of Greenhouse Gases) 

1.1/ Electricity 

1.1.1/ Shift production from fossil fuel to alternatives 

- Onshore wind Turbines (50 to 150 GT CO2eq.. Rank #6)
- Large Solar Photovoltaics  ( 42 to 120 GT CO2 eq., Rank #8)
- Distributed solar photovoltaics (28 to 68 GT CO2 eq., Rank #10)
- Concentrated solar plants (18 to 24 GT CO2 eq., Rank #15)
- Off shore wind turbines (10 to 11 GT CO2 eq., Rank #26)
- Geothermal plants (6 to 10 GT CO2 eq., Rank #40)
- Nuclear plants (2,7 to 3,2 GT CO2 eq., Rank #51)
- Others like micro wind turbines, small hydro power, ocean power, biomass power, ...

1.1.2/ Enhance efficiency to reduce demand of electricity

- LED Lighting (16 to 17 GT CO2eq.. Rank #18)
- Others like building insulation and automation, district heating, solar hot water, dynamic glass...

1.1.3/ Improve the system to allow transition to happen

- flexible grids, micro grids, effective energy storage,....

1.2/ Food, Agriculture and Land Use

1.2.1/ Address waste and diets 

Reduced Food Waste (86 to 93 GT CO2eq.. Rank #1)
Plant Rich diets (65 to 91 GT CO2eq.. Rank #3)

1.2.2/ Protect Ecosystems 

Peatland protectoin and rewetting (25 to 50 GT CO2eq.. Rank #12)
- Indigeneous Peoples Forest Tenure (25 to 50 GT CO2eq.. Rank #30)
- Forest Protection (4,4 to 9,8 GT CO2eq.. Rank #41)
- Others like Grassland and Coastal wetland protection

1.2.3/ Shift Agriculture Practices 

- Nutrient management (2,2 to 12 GT CO2eq.. Rank #54)
- Improved Rice production (4 to 6 GT CO2eq. Rank #50)
- Others like sustainable intensification for smallholders, conservation agriculture, farm irrigation efficiency, ... (see also chapter 2 for major CO2 reduction impact not captured through electricity production shift)

TO BE CONTINUED

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