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Climate change: Do we have the skills to tackle it?
Former Community Member
By working more closely with schools, colleges, and universities, can industry prioritise reskilling and upskilling the current workforce? How do we ensure future engineers have the right skills to address climate change? Comment below to share your thoughts! You can also learn more in our recent IET skills for net zero and a green recovery 2020 survey.
As we are looking for an engineering solution to this we first need to define the problem. There are three things mentioned in the OP:
i) Climate Change
ii) Net Zero
iii) Green Recovery
What are they and what are the problems we are trying to solve?
i) Climate Change has happened, is happening and will continue to happen. Man’s influence on it is at best dubious. The IPCC noted the pause and the deviation from the models in AR5. I am awaiting to see how they deal with this in AR6.
Most of the problems were discussed in this thread which was then closed by the moderators:
What does CO2 Neutral mean? 1) Don’t burn anything that contains carbon? 2) Burn things containing carbon and then stick the carbon back in the ground somehow? 3) Burn things containing carbon and buy carbon credits (indulgences)?
The technology for 2) does not exist in an industrial form yet and probably won’t by 2050. It might be available by 2100. If the whole world is trying to become CO2 neutral there won’t be enough carbon credits to go round for 3) to be practical so that leaves 1).
1) means don’t burn coal, oil or gas (possibly wood as well) for: a) Electricity generation b) Process heating c) Domestic heating d) Transport
iii) Green Recovery, also known in the UK as Build Back Better. What does this mean? What is ‘Green’? It currently seems to mean shift all the pollution to China and then ignore it. In Germany it seems to mean cut down forests to install wind turbines. I guess they can at least burn the wood and get a double ‘Green Boost’. Does it mean cover as much of the landscape as possible with low energy density wind and solar PV generation?
The main problems I see are pollution and overuse of finite resources. Both of these are made worse by the increasing world population. Is the IET looking at these or just virtue signalling about ‘Climate Change’
As we are looking for an engineering solution to this we first need to define the problem. There are three things mentioned in the OP:
i) Climate Change
ii) Net Zero
iii) Green Recovery
What are they and what are the problems we are trying to solve?
i) Climate Change has happened, is happening and will continue to happen. Man’s influence on it is at best dubious. The IPCC noted the pause and the deviation from the models in AR5. I am awaiting to see how they deal with this in AR6.
Most of the problems were discussed in this thread which was then closed by the moderators:
What does CO2 Neutral mean? 1) Don’t burn anything that contains carbon? 2) Burn things containing carbon and then stick the carbon back in the ground somehow? 3) Burn things containing carbon and buy carbon credits (indulgences)?
The technology for 2) does not exist in an industrial form yet and probably won’t by 2050. It might be available by 2100. If the whole world is trying to become CO2 neutral there won’t be enough carbon credits to go round for 3) to be practical so that leaves 1).
1) means don’t burn coal, oil or gas (possibly wood as well) for: a) Electricity generation b) Process heating c) Domestic heating d) Transport
iii) Green Recovery, also known in the UK as Build Back Better. What does this mean? What is ‘Green’? It currently seems to mean shift all the pollution to China and then ignore it. In Germany it seems to mean cut down forests to install wind turbines. I guess they can at least burn the wood and get a double ‘Green Boost’. Does it mean cover as much of the landscape as possible with low energy density wind and solar PV generation?
The main problems I see are pollution and overuse of finite resources. Both of these are made worse by the increasing world population. Is the IET looking at these or just virtue signalling about ‘Climate Change’
