New World of Energy – Carbon Management: Challenges and Opportunities

The Panel Discussion on New World of Energy – Carbon Management: Challenges and Opportunities will take place on November 8th, 2018 in Menlo Park, California, US. Goalposts for the 2015 Paris Agreement to undo global warming have moved. Meanwhile, consumption of petroleum products internationally gallops ahead. The world’s top climate scientists in early October declared that keeping Earth’s temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius – per the Paris agreement – is no longer sufficient. Instead, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a consortium of experts from 40 countries, said that unless warming of 1.5 C (or 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels is prevented, billions of people will face social and natural dangers such as rising seas, melting Artic ice, and massive agricultural, industrial, and economic damage.

Carbon management, also called decarbonization, isn’t just about electrifying vehicles, increasing non-fossil fuel sources of electricity such as solar and wind, and improving energy storage with better batteries. Decarbonization of industrial processes, such as steelmaking and cement making, sequestering carbon underground, and reducing the carbon produced by heating and cooling, aviation, and long-distance transport by trucks and rail are very challenging.

Combating global warming through social action and technology innovation – including converting carbon dioxide from a global liability to a neutral element or even a profit center – seems to be gaining strength in the U.S., despite the U.S. government’s plan to walk away from the Paris accord. Is it possible to successfully transition our infrastructure from carbon producing to a net-zero carbon emissions energy system? What would it take to cut carbon emissions by half before 2030, and go carbon-neutral by 2050? This expert panel will discuss working innovations and others that are needed to affordably generate emissions-free electricity, create alternative materials, and reduce carbon dioxide from our world’s air.