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Can We Go Carbon Neutral Today?

Can We Go Carbon Neutral Today?
SubjectToClimate

Written By Teacher: Emily Rogers

Emily has a bachelor’s degree in English and French and a master’s degree in library and information science. She spent seven years teaching information evaluation and research skills as a school librarian in K-8 public schools. As a lifelong resident of Southern Louisiana, Emily has a particular interest in how climate change affects coastal regions. She hopes to connect educators with resources that will help them to teach their students about the disproportionately adverse effects of climate change on historically marginalized communities.

The concept of carbon neutrality touches on essential topics like energy use, technological innovation, and environmental responsibility, making it relevant to students’ lives and futures. While the prospect of achieving carbon neutrality is exciting, it’s also important to teach students about greenwashing campaigns that perpetuate false claims of carbon neutrality. Have students watch this video which explains how some companies and governments use terms like “net zero emissions” to gain the public’s trust as they continue to produce carbon emissions. While the world isn’t in a position to be carbon neutral right now, students should learn about current technologies such as non-carbon energy and carbon capture that are helping to curb emissions. You can also guide students in exploring how science, engineering, and policy intersect, empowering them to envision creative solutions to one of the greatest challenges of our time. 

MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

Written By: MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative

The MIT Climate Change Engagement Program, a part of MIT Climate HQ, provides the public with nonpartisan, easy-to-understand, and scientifically-grounded information on climate change and its solutions.

What would our world look like if we became completely carbon neutral? Could we still enjoy today’s electricity, transportation, heat and manufacturing if we put no more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than we take back out? “Unfortunately, these are not solved problems,” says Desiree Plata, MIT Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “While we do have the technology to make a lot of systems nearly carbon neutral, none of these systems can run the same way they do today and the cost to implement [some of today’s solutions] is prohibitively high.”

First, the good news. We’ve gotten pretty good at making low-carbon electricity. Today, solar panels and wind turbines can make electricity at a similar price to coal or natural gas. And we can also use that clean electricity to drive (like with electric cars) and to heat our homes and water (like with electric furnaces and hot water heaters): things that today mostly run on oil or gas.

However, says Plata, it’s not so simple to switch out the old, fossil fuel technologies for the new, low-carbon ones. Solar and wind power aren’t always there when we need them, the way coal and gas are. “For example,” Plata says, “solar energy is best captured and stored during the middle of the day, but is least accessible at night when the demand increases. One of the only technologies to meet that rapidly accelerating demand is fossil-derived carbon.” In other words, we still need fossil fuels to fill the gap when we don’t have enough sun or wind. To get more of our electricity from wind and solar, we first have to change the way we use and distribute electricity, or come up with better ways to store energy that can work on a large scale and at low cost.


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