“The single most important thing for the next 50 years is playing an important part in driving a transition to a zero-emission society.
We just must do this, yes, I use the phrase zero loosely.
I don't use it in the mathematical definition of zero which would be nothing, zero in my mind just means close to nothing. So, using this thinking a zero-emission society will never be mathematically zero-emission, but much, much less than what we've got now. There is a scenario that when we include offsetting mechanisms, we may achieve net-zero.
But this transition is going to be so much harder than people tend to think it is.
Net-zero is probably practical in the next 30 or 40 years for the advanced economies, but that is partly because they've offshored huge fraction of their industry.
This can perhaps be illustrated by looking at the incredible decline in emissions that the UK has achieved, this is much less impressive if you correct for the cuts due to offshoring manufacturing and other carbon intensive industries.
A much more accurate picture is achieved if you look at emissions associated with the goods that they consume. In this case the picture does not look anywhere near as good.
Much of what we consume is being manufactured in China and countries like it. We have all seen President Xi Jinping committing China to a zero emissions economy by 2060, but I find it very hard to believe that this will be achieved, as the challenges for China and the world are huge.
Another route to decarbonize the ecosystem is to use Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) but this is very hard indeed if you think about the numbers.
To do direct air capture, you must have very large fans to move air over capture mediums. It's the inverse of wind turbines. We use big wind turbines to generate electricity not to direct air capture.
You must have big fans to blow the air across membranes where you've got a process within the membranes to capture the carbon dioxide.
Consider the mass of every single air molecule, essentially pumping 2500 air molecules to bring one carbon dioxide molecule to the membrane; it is only 400 parts per million, then you must remove it – and don’t forget, those laws of thermodynamics tend to be pesky!”