How Transformative Innovation Can Shift the Needle on Climate Change
UN Climate Change News, 15 December 2022
Energy, food and construction are three key areas in which impacts can be made to significantly shift the needle in terms of slashing greenhouse gas emissions and building resilience to climate change, while making progress on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.
In these sectors, proven technologies exist which have major potential to alleviate the climate crisis. The challenge is to quickly overcome barriers and to scale up transformative solutions to climate change so that the global economy can be decarbonized by 2050 and societies can be made resilient to impacts of climate change including more heatwaves, floods and droughts. One way to do this is through intelligent matchmaking and coalition building between institutions, companies and governments.
Green hydrogen for the first time in the focus as a major solution to climate change
Green hydrogen is produced with help of renewable energy, notably wind and solar. It is above all urgently needed to decarbonize heavy-polluting industries such as steel and cement and can be used in hydrogen fuel cells in trucks and cars.
The fact is that whilst there is presently a huge demand for green hydrogen in the world, from sectors ranging from steelmaking to transport, there is very little of the substance available.
Betting on bamboo as a highly sustainable building material
At the Global Innovation Hub, experts highlighted the potential of bamboo as a sustainable building material which can be used for affordable housing. Bamboo can play a key role in reducing carbon emissions especially in developing countries and emerging economies of the global south.
Since bamboo is highly suitable to plant on unproductive agricultural land, degraded grassland, or eroded slopes, it is potentially an effective tool to help countries implement their national climate action plans
This ambitious scheme aims to not only address the housing deficit, but also to develop building solutions that help people adapt to extreme weather resulting from climate change while generating new green jobs.
Promoting beans as one of the world’s most sustainable foods
Beans are one of the planet's most sustainable protein sources as they dramatically use less water, land, and petroleum compared to livestock. Some species are also particularly resilient to extreme weather conditions.
Due to their nitrogen-fixing properties, legumes that produce beans have a reduced need for fertilizers, which, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization, helps decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
However, much research and capacity building are still needed, as well as innovations to scale up the development and deployment of bean value-chains that constitute integrated mitigation, adaption, and resilience approaches. Read the full article here.