Using small microgrids to help restore a healthy planet

Our climate is close to a tipping point where we will lose the ability to reverse the warming that has occurred from our cumulative carbon emissions over the past 50 to 100 years. Any measures that allow carbon emissions to continue doom the world to catastrophe.

In addition to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, emissions also release toxic air pollutants, including carbon monoxide, nitrogen dioxide and sulphur dioxide. Suggested mitigation solutions include:

1) Planting three billion trees by 2030 — even those additional trees could not counter on-going carbon emissions, but since trees sequester little carbon before they approach maturity, it would be decades before they could start drawing down the excess carbon already in the atmosphere.

2) The carbon tax, amounting to annual increases of only 3.3 cents/litre, has no effect on the driving habits of Canadians, while industry increases are much higher. Carbon tax rebates for low-income Canadians exceed what they pay, so ‘axing the tax’ would hurt those low-income families more, demonstrating that Conservative claims amount to brazen politicking. The only other benefit of the tax is that it might convince some to purchase an EV.

3) Carbon pricing has also been ineffective. While the government claim that it helped reduce carbon emissions by eight per cent was deceptive, based on a one-time outlier data point amid the pandemic in 2020, when industry and emissions had shut down for several months globally.

4) Similarly, ‘cap and trade’ simply shifts the blame for emissions elsewhere and does little to diminish emissions.

5) Carbon capture and storage (CCS) has minor potential, but fails because there would need to be thousands of these facilities, each costing many millions and years to construct, for even a small reduction in overall carbon emissions of 730 MT (Canada) and 40 GT (globally). Most have been used to pump captured CO2 emissions below oil and gas wells to improve efficiency, leading to more emissions.

6) Direct atmospheric capture (DAC) cannot offset current emissions and would have to operate for many decades to make any measurable difference in atmospheric CO.₂

7) Nuclear energy is extremely costly and takes many years to construct, while questions remain about safe storage of radioactive by-products.

8) Geoengineering, involving spraying the upper atmosphere with sulfate particles to reduce incoming solar radiation, is an extremely risky proposition with no reversal possible once implemented. Therefore, it should not be attempted.

9) Changing the psychological attitudes of people that have developed over thousands of years is unlikely to have any benefit in the near future.

10) We are already overshooting Earth’s limits to growth, along with rapid population growth that limits our ability to grow food.

All of the suggested mitigations above would have miniscule impact on countering carbon emissions, while simply allowing the fossil fuel industry to continue business as usual. This is a blatant undermining of attempts to reduce carbon emissions.

Increased heat in our warming climate leads to storm and wildfire deaths and billions of dollars in infrastructure damage. Governments and media tend to under-estimate the negative impacts of carbon emissions on health, with millions of annual deaths worldwide from heat stroke, melanoma, and lung cancer and asthma from increased aerosols. The warming climate also lessens our ability to grow healthy foods.

The way forward is through the development of clean renewable energy systems in staged, small microgrids, utilizing the free energy of nature’s wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric, and ocean wave and current systems.

As industries convert to cheaper electric energy, renewables take the lead on energy production using start-up resources that would have otherwise gone to fossil fuels. Municipal and county governments should encourage the development of microgrids. These can be as small as a single-family dwelling such as Art Hunter developed in Ottawa, or the size of a municipality, all producing energy with no harmful emissions. Renewable components can also be produced to be 95 per cent recyclable.

Federal and provincial governments need to be onside, curtailing all subsidies for fossil fuels, while providing incentives to small businesses developing clean renewable energy and upgrading major electric grids. Moreover, governments need to encourage use of public transit, providing low-cost fares for low-income families and on-demand transit for low density areas.

Finally, the Climate-Aligned Finance Act (CAFA, Bill S-243) sponsored by Senator Rosa Galvez would discourage investment in fossil fuels, an important step to improve the well-being of future generations.

The need to address these issues is urgent.

Geoff Strong is an atmospheric/climate scientist by profession, a Fellow of and former national President of the Canadian Meteorological & Oceanographic Society (CMOS, 2006-07), and has received several awards from that society during his career that began in 1963.

Richard van der Jagt is a retired hematologist /oncologist with a long-standing interest in the links between an adverse environment and exposure to environmental toxins and adverse health outcomes. He is adjunct prof of medicine at U of Ottawa.