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posted by cmn32480 on Wednesday June 10 2015, @11:57AM   Printer-friendly
from the brains-unite! dept.

A group of scientists have called for a "moonshot" renewable energy research program called the "Global Apollo":

They say they have generated interest from major nations in their plan for an investment of 0.02% of their GDP [about $150 billion over 10 years, and about the cost of the Apollo program in 2015 dollars] into research, development and demonstration (RD&D) of clean electricity. Their report, launched at London's Royal Society, says on current projections the world will exceed the 2C danger threshold of climate change by 2035.

The academics are led by the UK's former chief scientist Professor Sir David King. He told BBC News: "We have already discovered enough fossil fuels to wreck the climate many times over. There's only one thing that's going to stop us burning it – and that's if renewables become cheaper than fossil fuels. "Under our plan, we are aiming to make that happen globally within a decade." Another of the authors, former Cabinet Secretary Lord O'Donnell, told BBC News: "People never believed we could put a man on the Moon - but we did. People don't believe we can solve climate change - but we have no choice."

It complains that renewable energy has been starved of investment to a shocking degree, with publicly funded RD&D on renewable energy only $6bn a year – under 2% of the total of publicly funded research and development. The authors say this compares poorly with the $101bn spent worldwide on production subsidies for renewables and the $550bn "counter-productive" subsidies for fossil fuel energy.

Solar is the most favoured renewable source as the group says it has greatest potential for technology breakthroughs, and most new energy demand will be in sunny countries. The cost of solar has been plummeting and is already approaching competitive prices in places as different as Germany, California and Chile. But the authors believe next-generation plastic photovoltaics can to keep prices tumbling. They believe battery technology is improving fast – but think batteries and other forms of storage need to be massively developed to store intermittent renewable energy. The authors say much smarter software is needed to enable electricity grids to cope with the new sources of power. Some experts believe that energy technology has developed so fast that it simply needs further price support to keep volumes rising and costs falling. Others will complain that the Apollo group has done little to tackle the immense problem of replacing fossil fuels in heating.


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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:58PM

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday June 10 2015, @02:58PM (#194539)

    Yes, but aside from extremes and wars, when/if "we" agree to do something, which seems near impossible, then the thousand times bigger battle will begin over what goal to set.

    Where my butt is sitting right now had more than a mile of ice in the last 20Kyrs, and it most certainly will again. So there's not mere fine tuning involved.

    An interesting hard-ish sci fi story could be written about upper midwest terrorists blowing up CO2 sequestration wells in 9000AD to save their families from freezing in a glacier. Someone better read than I am probably can name some examples of that plot already in print, LOL.

    On the topic of war, you could get a "real" world war lit up by figuring out what climate state best serves, say, eastern hemisphere northern half and noting that doesn't exactly match the global optimum for perhaps western hemisphere southern half or whatever and off go the nukes.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:36PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 10 2015, @07:36PM (#194639)

    Where my butt is sitting right now had more than a mile of ice in the last 20Kyrs, and it most certainly will again. So there's not mere fine tuning involved.

    > Implying that humanity's alteration of the atmosphere to date constitutes "fine tuning".

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/1c/Carbon_Dioxide_400kyr.png [wikimedia.org]

    http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Atmospheric_CO2_CH4_Degrees_Centigrade_Over_Time_by_Reg_Morrison.jpg [wikimedia.org]