There are very few things that climate scientists, CEOs and politicians can all agree on, but it seems that they all love metaphors and catchphrases. Successful talks teem with these word wizardries and over time, one hears some of the particularly successful ones recycled in various contexts. In this manner, what started out as a mere expression actually becomes an acknowledged term. One of these champions of the lexicon is the “low-hanging fruit”.
“Low-hanging fruit” (LHF) has effectively become the George Clooney of the climate change lingo. Upon its discovery, people were obviously enticed by the inherent sex appeal that LHF exudes. As LHF matured, this appeal grew and it became the symbol of the suave sophistication that we know so well. It is slightly aloof, and its resolve unwavering.
LHF, however – unlike Clooney – will play a vital role in climate change mitigation. The term has come to encompass the mitigation options that present easy and rapid mechanisms by which to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Energy efficiency is often discussed in the context of LHF. By decreasing the energy wasted by well-established processes, one effectively manages to reduce associated carbon footprints without having to overcome the inertia of the system itself. This mitigation option involves retrofitting, modifying or replacing parts of technological systems in all sectors. Its appeal is that the payoffs are large for the effort invested (check out President Obama discussing a few specifics of its appeal here). In this way, energy efficiency is akin to picking a juicy apple off a nearby tree. You know – one of the fat ones that strains the very cellulose microfibrils of the branchlet it’s hanging from.
There will be other easily accessible fruits. We might just as easily pick off (and probably will) other options such as landfill gas recovery. This technique involves capturing methane produced anaerobically by bacteria in waste degradation and burning the recovered gas as an energy source. The benefits of this strategy are twofold: 1) a viable contribution to the energy portfolio and 2) the conversion of methane into carbon dioxide (which is between 20-25 times less potent a GHG). Other waste management processes within grasp would also seek to derive energy or raw materials from our refuse.
In the current climate, the crisis is driving us to reach for these LHFs and many others. Unfortunately, the LHFs only goes so far. The apples don’t grow back. Therefore, in the longer term, acquiring these fruits will require more effort on our part. We may need to build ladders or who knows, perhaps work together (?) to keep adding apples to our fruit basket.
Innovation and cooperation. Both are fundamentally important to achieving a sustainable future and ensuring that there are enough apples to meet our mitigation goals. These might buy us some time, but in the end we will have no option but to reach higher towards the more difficult and expensive strategies. Among the technologies that come to mind are of course the renewable energies and carbon capture and storage (CCS), the latter providing a means by which to ease the “phasing-in” of the former (and overcome the inertia of the fossil fuel economy).
In the end, we effectively find ourselves trying to solve the quintessential time-old problem of the apple and inertia. We just no longer have the time to sit around and wait for the answers to fall on our heads.