Materials Hold The Biggest Lever Against Global Warming, Drawdown Shows

2021-12-05 original Science

Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming

Drawdown is a project-style book led by an American writer, with contributions from researchers around the world. It lays out what can be done to achieve “drawdown”—the point at which carbon dioxide levels begin to decline—split broadly into an overview of measures already underway and an introduction to future technologies. The section on “understanding the current state” was shocking to me personally, since I didn’t know the details of, or in some cases even know about, many of the items it covers. It deserves to be called required reading for working adults. That said, at over 400 pages in two-column format, the book is easily equivalent to three ordinary ones, and it took me, a fairly fast reader, more than a month to finish.

So I’d like to extract and organize its essence to some degree. Whatever else you say about it, this is a book perfectly suited to grasping the “big picture.”

Here I’ll cover the materials sector, along with items that didn’t fit clearly into any category.

Recycling

Some impoverished countries have recycling rates on par with those of developed nations. Small-scale recycling is, in fact, a typical business model for micro-enterprises.

Der Grüne Punkt (the Green Dot): a German system in which manufacturers pay the costs and businesses handle collection. EPR (Extended Producer Responsibility): the concept that obligates producers to handle collection and recycling. Used in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Materials marketplace: an online marketplace for trading secondary raw materials (recycled materials).

Refrigerants

This is the item with the greatest expected reduction in greenhouse gases. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), once used as refrigerants, became a problem because of ozone layer depletion, and their use has been declining. But hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), the so-called alternative refrigerants, have a greenhouse effect 1,000 to 9,000 times that of carbon dioxide. 90% of greenhouse gas emissions from refrigerants occur at disposal, and the challenge is to reuse or neutralize them. If these emissions can be avoided, the potential for greenhouse gas reduction is considered greater than for any other measure.

China’s air conditioner usage rate rose from 7% to 95% between 1995 and 2007.

In 2016, the Kigali Amendment, which includes enforcement mechanisms and penalties, was created.

Natural refrigerants using propane, ammonia, high-pressure carbon dioxide, and the like are expected to play a role.

Bioplastics

Polymers (chain structures that give rise to plasticity) exist everywhere, and there is little real reason petroleum needs to be used to make plastic.

Cellulose is a polymer that forms plant cell walls
Chitin is a polymer that forms the exoskeletons of crustaceans and insects
Potatoes, sugarcane, tree bark, algae, and shrimp all contain polymers

Ivory billiard balls once drew criticism, which led to the development of celluloid. It ultimately proved unsuitable for billiard balls, but it found use in combs, toothbrushes, film, and more. Petroleum-based Bakelite followed celluloid, and bioplastics were largely forgotten until the oil crisis of the 1970s.

In 1941, Ford built a soybean-based car using bioplastics, but it lost out because petroleum prices were at rock bottom.

Polyethylene (PE) shopping bags derived from sugarcane or corn do not biodegrade, but polylactic acid (PLA) does, at high temperatures. Some varieties biodegrade even at low temperatures and are thought to be useful for addressing the ocean plastics problem.

In reality, only 5% of all plastic is recycled; the rest is incinerated or landfilled.

Concrete

The Pantheon in Rome, built in the year 128, is the oldest and largest unreinforced concrete structure, and its strength exceeds that of typical modern concrete. Concrete would not evolve further until the 19th century.

One technique absorbs carbon dioxide into concrete to increase its strength. But the emissions from the concrete manufacturing process itself are far larger.

Cement is produced by burning materials in a kiln, which releases carbon dioxide. Blast furnace slag, an industrial byproduct of steelmaking, and fly ash, an industrial byproduct of coal power generation, can substitute for cement in this process. Fly ash doesn’t require a kiln. New York uses crushed glass bottles instead.

Paper

The paper manufacturing industry’s greenhouse gas emissions exceed those of aviation.

The following are uncategorized items.

DAC: Direct Air Capture

A technology that absorbs carbon dioxide using chemical substances (amine-based) or porous honeycomb ceramics. Applying heat after absorption releases the carbon dioxide, allowing the absorbent material to be reused.

The problems are that extracting a meaningful amount of carbon dioxide requires exposing enormous volumes of air, and that releasing the carbon dioxide again requires energy input. The market for compressed carbon dioxide is also difficult. There are uses, as fuel, in carbonated beverages, and elsewhere, but since carbon dioxide is already abundant, it can’t compete on price. In practice, burying it underground is about the only option.

Cookstoves

40% of humanity still cooks using primitive stoves. Fuels include firewood, charcoal, animal dung, crop residue, and coal. These produce smoke and soot that shorten the lives of residents.

Indoor air pollution causes more premature deaths than HIV, AIDS, and malaria combined.

Soot (black carbon) produced by incomplete combustion has a greenhouse effect a million times that of carbon dioxide, but it dissipates within about ten days (SLCP: short-lived climate pollutant). Reducing black carbon therefore has an immediate effect. A quarter of black carbon originates from households.

GACC: the Global Alliance for Clean Cookstoves. This has been a long-running project, but the results have been insufficient. Many companies have developed new stoves, yet progress has been poor, dominated by manufacturers who built products that missed the mark by ignoring user experience, or that did little to reduce greenhouse gases. Stoves need to blend into culture.

Gender Equality

Data shows that women reinvest a greater share of their income into health and education. There is also a correlation between progress toward gender equality and crop yield per unit area.

Malala Yousafzai won the Nobel Prize for advocating women’s rights under Taliban rule. She has also survived a Taliban attack. “Social vaccine.” She has argued that simply improving girls’ education could solve most of the world’s problems.

Population Issues

Population is not a problem confined to countries like Uganda or Uzbekistan. It is a problem for countries like the United States, where 45% of women experience unwanted pregnancies and per-capita fossil fuel use ranks among the highest in the world.

Originally published in Japanese at https://clazytech.com/2021/12/824/. Translated with LLM assistance and reviewed before publication.