Out of Kyoto: Warming Up to Materials
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Out of Kyoto: Warming Up to Materials By any measure, the Kyoto protocol worked out after days of intense negotiations during the recent United Nations Conference on Global Warming is pathbreaking. For the first time, all nations of the world have volunteered to cut back their countries' emission of heat-trapping gases. The promised reductions vary from country to country. The industrially developed countries have pledged to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2010 to a few percent below their 1990 levels. Countries of the European Union will cut their gas emissions by 8%, the United States by 7%, and Japan by 6%. The developing nations, notably China and India, were given no targets but have also agreed to explore ways of minimizing their industrial emissions. This will be crucial since energy demands in developing countries are growing rapidly. China, for instance, will need about 83 quadrillion BTU by 2015, an increase over 130% of its current demand. Some areas of protocol sounded controversial. The "rich" countries, for instance, could buy credits from lower polluting countries, the so-called "carbon trading," or claim emission credits for implementing clean energy systems in other countries. The amount of warming predicted by scientists was itself challenged (it is 2.38
degrees, or less, or even more) along with the usefulness of the recommended cutbacks in preventing global warming. There were also concerns that the rewards for the cutback would come only in the distant future, or not at all. The cutback would also involve changes in behavior by billions of people. Will it ever be possible to achieve this? There is a major gap between the Kyoto protocol and current policies. Technologies and policies are going to be the tools that industries and governments will have to use to implement the Kyoto goals. While governments may introduce new legislations and tax breaks to control emission levels, encourage energy efficient alternatives, and to increase the use of renewable energy options, the major response will have to come from cost-competitive and environmentally friendly technologies. In these areas, the technology wish list can be grand, ranging from radical innovations that will make
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solar panels or fuel cells the cheapest generators of electricity, to more mundane alternatives like reengineering the existing turbines to operate more efficiently and with less pollution. In all these, materials hold the key. Materials have to be tailored to operate at the highest thermodynamic efficiency and they should be affordable. Such developments are already happening in a few areas. Solar cells are once again coveted. It is estimated that the needs of a typical home in the United States, for instance, can be met by a mere 30 square ft.
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