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How can we overcome Climate Change?

Prof. Diana Mangalagiu

Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford

Global Climate Forum diana.mangalagiu@ouce.ox.ac.uk

Global Leaders Forum 2018: The Invisible is Changing the World!

November 12-13 2018

Conrad Hotel Seoul

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My talk

• Where we stand

• How to solve the problems posed by climate change?

• Technology, digital tech and AI as game changers?

• Technology is not enough

• How to avoid the risks posed by technologies

• So what?

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There is a lot of fear and uncertainty going around about the future of our planet.

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4 Credit: Kira Morris

5 Credit: Tom Schifanella

6 Credit: Probal Rashid

7 Credit: Hira Ali

8 Credit: Abrar Hossain

9 Credit: KONRAD K./SIPA/REX

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Lake Chad

Lake Chad

Lake Chad

1960: Africa’s 4th largest lake

1963-2000: Shrunk by +90%

Photos taken approx. same date each year. Sources: UNEP, NASA, Transaqua

Natural catastrophes worldwide, 1980 – 2010 Number of events by peril with trend

Source: Munich Re, Geo Risks Research, NatCatSERVICE

Source: SRI, 2016

Planetary Boundaries: processes regulating the stability of the Earth system

Source: Steffen et al. 2015

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World’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Source: WRI, 2018

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Source: IEA, 2017

What action is being taken?

Paris Climate Agreement •Adopted in December 2015 •Aims to prevent global temperatures from rising by 2ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100 •It also calls on countries to pursue measures that cap temperature rise to 1.5ºC

IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC •Launched in October 2018 in Incheon •To avoid the worst consequences of climate change the world must transform society and the economy on an “unprecedented scale”

Global Green Growth Institute •Established in 2010 in Seoul •Inter-governmental organization to support inclusive and sustainable economic growth in developing countries

Entrepreneurs from around the world are creating innovations to mitigate climate-change impact

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Six of the 17 goals apply directly to the environment and humans’ influence over it!

Using (Traditional) Technology To Fight Climate Change Energy sector

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• The use of renewable energy reached a global tipping point in emerging and developed markets

• Small-scale off-grid solar

• Efficiency technologies worldwide

• Energy storage technologies

• CO2 capture and storage (CCS)

• Smart-grid and IoT make energy grids more efficient, reliable and less costly

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• Smart and precise agriculture

• Livestock methane reduction

• Efficient seeds and crop varieties in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia

• Silvopasture: integrates trees into pastures for livestock

Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit and the Institute for Sustainable Investing, 2018

Credit: AgTech

Using (Traditional) Technology To Fight Climate Change Agriculture

Using (Traditional) Technology To Fight Climate Change Built Environment and Land Use Change

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• Green building retrofits in cities

• Energy retrofit

• Automated building management systems detecting usage patterns of lighting, heating and air conditioning

• Rooftop solar even in low-income countries

• Vertical farming

• Tropical forests

• Remote sensing systems to monitor deforestation and alert authorities to illegal logging

• Reforestation

Using (Traditional) Technology To Fight Climate Change Transport

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• Growing demand of electric vehicles and low-emission transport in developed and developing economies

• Hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles

• Solar-panel equipped vehicles

• Integration of electric vehicles into the renewable energy map

Using (Traditional) Technology To Fight Climate Change Industry

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• High-efficiency industrial power generation

• Refrigerant Management

• Montreal Protocol phased out ozone-depleting HCFCs and CFCs. But HFCs are still very much around (very GHG-intensive)

• Quantum computers

• Find better materials for manufacturing and construction

• Find new sources of energy to replace fossil fuels

• Carbon capture and storage technologies

• Solar radiation management

• Inject reflective particles into the stratosphere

• Alter clouds

From artificial trees to solar radiation management

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AI for the Planet, AI for Good?

• AI is expected to have the deepest Fourth Industrial Revolution impact beyond productivity gains, permeating all industries.

• AI advances environmental knowledge, conservation, and the eco-efficiency of global business.

• May 2018: Second AI for Good Global Summit: Accelerating progress towards the SDGs: designed to connect AI innovators with public and private-sector decision-makers to advance sustainable development.

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AI for the Planet

The most important consideration in the development of AI is to ensure that it benefits humanity, which includes being both

“human-friendly” and “Earth-friendly”

27 Source: WEF 2018

AI for Climate Change

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Source: WEF 2018

• Improve climate models • Optimized energy system forecasting • Smart grids for electricity use • Optimized decentralized & peer-to-peer • renewable energy systems • Optimized virtual power plants

• On-demand shared transport mobility

• AI-enabled electric cars • Autonomous vehicles • Optimized traffic flows • Demand-response charging

infrastructure

• Supply chain monitoring and transparency

• Smarter fresh-food replenishment

• Smart recycling systems • Integrated municipal &

industrial waste management

• Early crop yield prediction • Precision agriculture & nutrition • Hyper-local weather forecasting for crop management • Automated land-use change detection for avoided

deforestation • Monitoring health & well-being in livestock farming

• Smart urban traffic & parking systems

• Sustainable building design • Energy-efficient building

management • Optimized urban energy

generation and use • Automation for smart urban

planning

AI for the Planet: possible timeline?

29 Source: WEF 2018

Can the digital tech sector move the world from incremental to transformational action on climate change?

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Things are happening: •Apple targets 100% circular economy throughout its supply chain •Alphabet became world’s largest corporate purchaser of renewable energy •$1 billion Breakthrough Energy Ventures fund (Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Jack Ma, Richard Branson and others)

But: The biggest influence the digital tech sector can have is not on its own emissions or those of its suppliers (2-2.5% of global emissions). Digital tech companies are the interface with global consumers and citizens. On a daily basis, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Weibo, WeChat… influence the behaviour of billions of people.

Technology is not enough. Behavioral changes are needed!

• Family planning

• Educating girls

• Plant-rich diets

• Reduce food waste

Examples:

• Apps to track and reduce your carbon footprint (some using gamification)

• Green hacking: apps combating food waste reduction, mapping energy efficiency by city, encouraging environmentally conscious individual choices

• …

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AI unguided could accelerate environment’s degradation

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• AI as a wild card for the future of global sustainability

• Are we exaggerating the value of AI for sustainability?

• Are the dangers AI could bring minimized?

• AI can accelerate the extraction of natural resources. It can push even further consumerism. AI is destabilizing employment. AI is empowering big business and militarized states.

• We need to understand the consequences of AI, how and why AI is transforming global environmental governance.

An example: free floating bike schemes

Free floating bike schemes

It’s time to put AI to work for the planet

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• Technologies are increasingly connected: digital, physical and biological realms are merging

• Technologies are enabling societal shifts by having an effect on economics, values, identities and possibilities for future generations

• We have a unique opportunity to harness this Fourth Industrial Revolution to help address environmental issues and redesign how we manage our shared global environment.

• This transformation will not happen automatically. It will require proactive collaboration between policymakers, scientists, civil society, technology champions and investors.

• We live in exciting times: it is now possible to tackle some of the world’s biggest problems with emerging technologies such as AI.

From Moore’s Law to the Carbon Law

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• The world needs to halve emissions every decade globally until 2050

• The first halving can be done with traditional technology

• For the rest, can we get inspiration from how tech companies kept pace with Moore’s Law and build coalitions of technology leaders to drive action?

• We need to harness technological innovations and support them by governance, financing and multi-stakeholder collaboration

• We need a transformational roadmap combining technology, behavioural change and policy, set goals and milestones and keep track of shifts in policy and behaviours

• And we need to move from bleak and fear narratives towards inspiring and empowering ones.