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Jordan Buford

Prof. Hellmers

English Composition II

20 March 2022

Research Question Literature Review:

How does net-zero carbon emission become a reality on a global scale and is it possible?

The climate debate has been a hot topic for the last few decades, but the problem of

climate change is multifaceted, and no single solution will solve it. So, we must ask the hard

questions. The hard science has been settled and we have semi-accurate depictions of what the

climate will look like in the future with current co2 trends. The debate is no longer about the

scientific facts; the debate is much more in the realm of energy and economic policy. The first

big question can’t be “how do we solve climate change?” Instead, one must segment and specify

the query more directly and effectively. The first big question should be, do we have the

technological capability to reduce carbon emissions to zero? The answer is yes, but at what

economic cost are societies willing to pay? And how will this affect regular people’s ability to

live? How will the costs affect developing countries who are only now building their own

infrastructure off the bounty of fossil fuels? After flourishing in their current biome of

prosperity, how do Western countries have the right to deny the developing world the same

access to fossil fuels? How do humans transition to renewables as a species? After reviewing the

following academic sources, hopefully a more concise and effective research question can be

established with a clear path towards the answer.

Reed Karaim, a freelance writer for CQ Researcher lays out a comprehensive background

on climate change and its history on the world stage in his November 2021 report titled “Clean
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Energy Transition.” The debate for when exactly human activity began to make an impact on the

rise of carbon emissions is still open ended but as Reed reports it, “some believe it began as early

as 7,000 years ago, when humans first started clearing larger swaths of land and domesticating

animals for primitive agriculture (Karaim 10).” This may be the case for the early start of carbon

emissions but the consensus among the scientific community is quite clear. Dramatic and, as

some point out, irreversible changes began in the middle of the 19th century at the birth of the

industrial revolution. In 1861, the Irish physicist John Tyndall and later, Swedish chemist Svante

Arrenius confirmed that these heat-holding gasses were problematic (Karaim 11). Throughout

the 20th century scientists continued to find evidence that carbon emission levels were rising and

finally in 1988 over one hundred years later, the UN established an official scientific panel on

tracking climate change. Karaim explains that the debate would be divisive and contested

politically over the next three decades (Karaim 11).

In his report, Karaim also asked the question “Is Biden’s aggressive agenda feasible?”

This question was posed as the subtitle to Karaim’s late 2021 report with the intention of

updating an academic audience on the current political pulse. The source that prompted this

question was President Bidens’s plan for a net-zero American economy by the year 2050 and

reaching half of that goal by the year 2030 (Karaim 4). The report offers balanced coverage from

both ends of the policy agenda while incorporating plenty of raw data throughout the paper from

several other credible sources. The report mainly uses information from the Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which is charted by the United Nations and globally

recognized by all as “the '' consensus on climate change science. Karaim’s report continues by

citing energy production and consumption numbers among many nations including the United
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States who are responsible for 13% of mankind’s carbon emissions which is a lot when people

consider that the population of the U.S. is only 4% of the total global population (Karaim).

On the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) portion of the U.S. Energy Information

Administration’s (EIA) website, one can find an entire chart detailing the energy production

breakdown of all U.S. energy by Billion kWh and the percentage of each energy source's

individual market share for the year 2021. Where rhetoric fails, raw data and basic arithmetic

reigns supreme. With the intention of informing the general public on the facts, the breakdown

explains that as of March 4, 2022, in the United States, energy production totals at 4,116 Billion

kWh. At the top of that list is fossil fuels producing 2,504 Billion kWh or 60.8% of the market

share. To put that in perspective, renewables only represent 826 Billion kWh, 20.1% of the

market share; and nuclear only produces 778 kWh or 18.9% of the market share. This U.S.

Governmental source is a useful and highly credible tool for perspective on energy usage and

scale for other arguments (U.S. Energy Information Administration).

How numbers are used to represent energy produced and consumed are important and at

U.C. Irvine, Professor Emeritus of Physics & Astronomy, Dennis Silverman provides a useful

energy and conversion chart that will help with the breakdown of all the energy usage jargon and

how energy production numbers convert into CO2 pollution. When the phrase Billion kWh is

referenced and thrown around, it’s important to know what that means. This number is a

representation of Power. Power (P) equals Current (I) multiplied by Voltage (V) or (P = IV).

When this equation is played out the term Watt is used to represent 1 current multiplied by 1 volt

equals 1 Watt; 1,000 Watts to equal 1 kilowatt; 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) represents the energy (E)

of one kilowatt of power floating for one hour with time being represented by (t) or (E = Pt). So,

when the U.S. EIA states that energy usage in the united states equates to 4,116 Billion kWh that
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means the equation (E = Pt) looks more like 4,116 x(1 x 109 ) or 4,116 multiplied by 1 Billion

equals roughly 4.12 Trillion kWh. Professor Silverman’s chart also breaks down how efficient

fossil fuels are by demonstrating how many British Thermal Units (BTU) each one produces per

ton or barrel and how many pounds of CO2 per billion BTU each one emits. Overall, this chart is

a figurative Swiss Army knife when it comes to breaking down energy math jargon from other

research sources (Silverman).

In this Washington Post article, Emily Rauhala reports on the current economic and green

energy policy debates within the European Union (EU). The piece highlights the EU’s recent

move to relabel natural gas and nuclear power as green energy regarding the current tax

incentive structure behind Europe’s move towards a carbon neutral economy. The EU has no

shortage of critics calling the move a detriment toward Europe's collective climate goals.

However, the EU council stands firm on their decision while pointing out that these steps are

necessary and lesser evils that must be undergone in order to sustain the EU’s economy during

the transition toward net-zero carbon by 2050. Rauhala points out that the European Parliament

could squash the move all together, but it is likely to pass (Rauhala). In addition to this article,

it’s relevant to point out that the rise of more recent tensions in the Ukraine with Russia, and

countries like Germany heavily relying on their oil supply will likely speed up the decision-

making process on this specific proposal. In general, this article informs the American public on

energy issues abroad and provides contextual perspective that might otherwise be lost.

In the Meishan District Planning Proposal for Ningbo, China, Xiaoyan Xu and her

colleagues go into great depth and detail with the types of energy and carbon capture technology

deployment and placement for the area. The plan is the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC)

response to the Paris Climate Accords and includes everything from terminology to clarification
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of differences between the East and the West. China is the biggest polluter on planet earth at a

stunning 30% of total human emission contribution. Compare the former statistic with the fact

that China only represents 18% of the world's population. Overall, the tenor of China’s plan

towards a net-zero economy is surprisingly pragmatic, realistic, and comprehensive sounding.

The proposal is labeled as the Near-Zero Carbon Emission Demonstration District (NCEDD)

which is a 5-year plan consisting of a three-step planning method. The Planning method includes

Objectives of establishing the NCEDD; strategies of reducing energy demand, efficiency, and

utilizing waste heat and renewables; and finally, approaches for a “demand-supply-grid-storage”

system that would make the energy grid both flexible and modular. The proposal is less of a

research paper and more of a combination of known regional elements and resources mapped out

into a building block model that can be modified as needed for any region throughout China

looking to implement their own NCEDD (Xu et al). The reliability of China to be honest on the

world stage is debatable, but the content of various international sources is relevant to the topic

at large, and the insight to various perspectives is invaluable.

The common misconceptions of climate change are generally in the policy making of

how to deal with climate change and a general ignorance on how individual energy production

processes work and how much energy and pollution they each produce. Additionally, normal

people are often pitted against one another by hyperpolarized ideological camps. These

ideological thought camps tend to ramp up the extremes on both sides. And these extremes get

propped up in the media, but in reality they are fringe group-think ideas like climate change

denial or calling for an end to all fossil fuels overnight, which the latter would kill tens of

millions in the same span of time. Most normal people want a pragmatic approach that won’t

bring radical change or hardship to their standard of living. Therefore, it’s important to talk about
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the raw data and numbers surrounding energy production, carbon emissions, economic impact;

fundamentally it’s even more important that people not rely on talking points and rhetoric from

politicians and bobble-head-pundits.

Possible solutions can be found, but first we must identify the root problem that would

inhibit practical solutions. If the root of all evil is money, then apparently so is any halt on

progress towards renewable energy sources. It appears that one side of the debate fears the

potential hazards of climate change so much that they’re willing to sacrifice anything and

everything to reach their green energy goals as quickly as possible. While on the other side of the

debate, opponents to renewables don’t think the forecasts by the IPCC warrants any action that

would harm profits in any measurable way. The solution to this issue like so many others can

generally be found squarely in the center. Coal production, while the most efficient of the fossil

fuels, is the largest contributor to carbon emissions. So logically, this should be phased out,

reserved only for niche non-carbon-emitting markets, and replaced with less damaging fuel

sources while fully green renewables are ramped up in the marketplace to a point of affordability

and a relative level of practicality. Nuclear power is almost an energy unicorn; that is to say, that

Nuclear power is nearly perfect if it weren’t for the issue of having to deal with the disposal of

its byproduct and the expensive build costs. Nuclear would be more efficient and produce more

reliable power in the long run than other renewables. Therefore, while the ideal end goal is to

have solar and wind be king, the primary backbone should be Nuclear or Geothermal and

supplemented by Natural Gas until those former two are common enough to phase Natural Gas

out completely.

After going through the numbers and the data on what it takes to achieve net-zero carbon

emission, it has become very clear the goal is possible. However, there are so many varying
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attitudes on policy positions that one’s head could simply spin off in the absence of common

sense. The question originally posed “how does net-zero carbon emission become a reality on a

global scale and is it possible?” has only created more questions and in short could be answered

as yes. The answer is in the policy, but the question should be more along the lines of “how does

society come to a consensus on the most pragmatic and realistic policy positions? There is much

more reading and research to do before reaching a firm question and answer(s) to the tough

quandaries in this writer’s mind but a challenge that is most welcoming.

Works Cited
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Karaim, Reed. “Clean Energy Transition.” CQ Researcher, vol. 31, no. 40, 12 Nov. 2021,

pp. 1-30. https://library-cqpress-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/cqresearcher/

document.php ?id=cqresrre2021111200&type=hitlist&num=0.

Accessed 03 March 2022.

Rauhala, Emily. “E.U. plans to label natural gas, nuclear energy "green."”

Washington Post, 02 March 2022. EBSCOhost,

https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

direct=true&db=nfh&AN=wapo.005bae3a-845d-11ec-8319-

de6effcde01c&site=ehost-live.

Accessed 02 March 2022.

Silverman, Dennis. Energy Units and Conversions. U.C. Irvine, Physics and Astronomy,

https://www.physics.uci.edu/~silverma/units.html.

Accessed 02 March 2022.

U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) - US

Energy Information Administration.” EIA, U.S. EIA, 2020,

https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=427&t=3.

Accessed 2 March 2022.

Xu, Xiaoyan, et al. “Integrated Energy Planning for Near-Zero Carbon Emission

Demonstration District in Urban Areas: A Case Study of Meishan District in

Ningbo, China.” Energies, vol. 15, no. 3, Feb 2022, 874-N.PAG. EBSCOhost,

https://doi.org/10.3390/en15030874.

Accessed 03 March 2022.