Blueprint for the sunlit bounce-back era--late 2010s to early 2020s

Blueprint for the sunlit bounce-back era--late 2010s to early 2020s

The decarbonization of the energy system is a fundamental effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and its pillars are the large-scale introduction of renewable energy, the electrification of the industrial, transportation, and residential sectors, higher efficiency, and the upgrading of the power grid. At that time, the efficiency of solar and wind power generation was improving year by year, and the development of large-capacity, long-life storage batteries was progressing. Furthermore, the evolution of grid interconnection technologies, such as digital control and bidirectional operation of the power grid connecting power generation and consumption areas, has made the absorption of fluctuations and wide-area distribution of renewable energy power more realistic.

Carbon removal from the atmosphere (CDR) is positioned as an indispensable complementary measure when emission reductions alone are not enough. Methods range from naturally occurring approaches such as reforestation and soil carbon fixation to engineering measures such as direct air capture and CCS combined with bioenergy. All of these are aimed at permanently sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and "removing carbon from the atmosphere" itself is a pillar of the strategy.

Radiation management, or the method of reflecting sunlight back into space, is a technology that artificially adjusts the global radiation budget to reduce the heat received by the earth's surface, thereby reducing the rise in temperature. Specifically, aerosol dispersal into the stratosphere, cloud reflectivity enhancement, and restoration of reflectivity on sea ice and ice sheet surfaces are being considered. These technologies have the potential to temporarily alleviate dangerously high temperatures and, in some cases, reverse the temperature increase. However, they also present challenges such as persistence of effects, regional differences, unforeseen side effects, and the difficulty of reaching international consensus.