Sep 25, 2021 3 min read

On the day Gov. Tom Wolf announced the state’s Climate Action Plan, an energy expert discussed decarbonization as a guest of Washington & Jefferson College.

“We have to experience a decline in CO2 emissions beginning right now,” Dr. Varun Rai, an expert on energy transition and adoption of sustainable energy technologies, told a virtual audience on Wednesday morning.

His hour-long address – “Decarbonization: Pathways to a Sustainable Future” – was the kickoff webinar of programming planned by W&J’s Center for Energy Policy and Management for this academic year.

“Decarbonization is not an option, it’s a necessity,” said Rai. He is a professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, where he directs the school’s Energy Systems Transformation Research Group and its Energy Institute.

With climate change as a backdrop, he outlined initiatives the nation could follow to achieve net-zero carbon dioxide emissions – and beyond – by the middle of the 21st century. “There is a great need to have storage for CO2. But it’s not just going for net zero. We may have to go to net negative.”

Rai employed graphics during his talk, one declaring ominously that “human influence has warmed the climate at a rate that is unprecedented in at least the last 2,000 years.” Three topics of concern were listed on that graphic, all of which have been occurring across the United States: hot extremes, heavy precipitation and drought.

Rai said a transition to cleaner energy should be done in a “fair and equitable” manner. He listed four socioeconomic goals that the nation should pursue: strengthen the economy; support communities, businesses and workers; promote equity and inclusion; and maximize cost-effectiveness.

Tech goals, he said, include increasing the use of electric vehicles; deploy heat pumps in 25% of residences; improve energy efficiency and productivity; and produce carbon-free electricity.

Rai acknowledged that natural gas “has played a very, very significant role in the last decade or so” across the country, and says it has a strong future. “But it is important to capture emissions.”

He, however, expressed greater concern about emissions of methane, a gas that Rai said “is 84 times more potent than CO2.”

An overriding goal is to limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, compared with pre-industrial levels. That is part of the Paris agreement, an international treaty that includes the United States.

Wolf unveiled “Pennsylvania Climate Action Plan 2021” on Wednesday, urging action on climate change by government, industry, business, agriculture and community organizations.