Engineering Climate Change for a just transition

Engineering is a discipline, based on science, that works to achieve realistic outcomes for deploying technology to solve problems within boundaries set by deadlines and economic constraints.

Engineering Discipline and Climate Change

 

Following the science to the low carbon world is best implemented by engineering professionals.

Professor Susan Krumdieck, a New Zealand engineering academic, is currently Professor and Chair in Energy Transition at Heriot-Watt University, where she leads the academic programme of the Islands Centre for Net Zero. Her research and teaching since 2000 at Canterbury University in New Zealand focused on developing the engineering methods and innovative technologies for adaptation to reduced fossil fuel production and consumption.

Transition Engineering is an emerging field where engineers in all disciplines use a standard methodology to change unsustainable practices through innovating and carrying out “carbon shift projects” that achieve the deep 80% downshift in fossil fuel use, while increasing long-term real values, reliability and wellbeing… There are thousands of carbon shift changes that stop fossil carbon from being extracted and reduce the risk of runaway global warming..1

Six Areas where Transition Engineering can apply established methodology to determine the most suitable path to reduce fossil fuel production and consumption are:

1. OIL, GAS AND COAL PRODUCTION
2. TRANSPORT
3. ELECTRICITY
4. CAPTURING AND BALANCING EMISSIONS
5. AGRICULTURE
6. POPULATION

OIL, GAS AND COAL PRODUCTION

Deep and rapid reduction of emissions requires deep and rapid reduction of fossil fuel extraction and production and engineering analysis to inform international and national policy energy transition to low carbon.

 

TRANSPORT

Transport Transition Engineering is paramount for reduction of automobile production, decommissioning of fuel depots and service stations, growth of electric rail, urban trams and coastal shipping, and particularly in innovating ways to adapt for freight logistics and airline travel.

 

ELECTRICITY

Electric Power Engineering experts will work with Energy Managers, Energy Engineers, and Building Services to develop demand-side participation innovations that marry up the supply and demand. Engineers work with politicians and the public to determine the potential energy supply, costs and power grid stability.

 

CAPTURING AND BALANCING EMISSIONS

Engineers in coal and gas power generation, fertiliser production and steel production will be honest with politicians and the public about the possibility to engineer the transition to 80% less emissions with Carbon Capture Utilisation and Storage (CCUS), and begin immediately to either install such systems or engineer the transition in some other manner.

 

AGRICULTURE

Agricultural Transition Engineering to achieve economically effective downshifting of fertiliser use, water consumption, and ruminant stock numbers.

 

POPULATION

The Transition Engineering ethos of preventing what is preventable leads engineers to work on problems that have not previously been the purview of engineering.

 

The training and experience of engineers needs to be applied to the transitions required by climate change. In this way, expertise in the deployment of technology according to a plan that calculates the requirements for a just and economically feasible outcome, can result in career opportunities for technologists, technicians, and tradespeople in the low carbon world necessary for our best lives in the coming decades.

 

References

  

1 (2021, June 18). The Role of Engineering in Addressing Climate Change - Panmure .... Retrieved November 20, 2021, from https://www.panmurehouse.org/perspectives/articles/the-role-of-engineering-in-addressing-climate-change/