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Accelerating the Energy Transition Using Emerging Geoscience Skills
- Source: First Break, Volume 42, Issue 10, Oct 2024, p. 81 - 88
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- 01 Oct 2024
Abstract
How can we speed up the energy transition as part of our response to the climate change challenge? The essential tools for enabling rapid reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are well known, but implementing these vectors of decarbonisation is challenging, partly for economic reasons and partly due to social resistance. We argue that geoscientists have a critical role to play in meeting these challenges: (a) they need to engage technically to enable low-carbon emissions projects to proceed, and (b) they need to communicate and explain the risks and benefits of emerging projects to our society in a more effective way. After reviewing recent progress in reducing global CO2 emissions, we discuss societal responses, identifying some important biases in the social discourse concerning low-emission energy projects. We then present a simple summary of the physics of CO2 as greenhouse gas, to help dispel some typical misunderstandings and to support geoscientists in their discussions about climate change science. Finally, we outline the key role that geoscientists can play, drawing from specific examples in the fields of CO2 storage and marine monitoring.