Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.

Source: https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/entities/publication/64c7e4b9-bdd4-4761-9f3f-35fcccb4b7ef

Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.

Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.

Like many, I have been subject to ecoanxiety. To do sth about this "energy" rather than allow it to feel down, I have studied with the aim to find projects that I could contribute to.

For the non sarcastics and optimists, if you hang around climate subreddits long enough, you'll notice a lot of optimistic rhetoric... yet it did not feel right... "If we all just do a little, we can save the planet!" But if you look at the raw physics of our energy systems—the kind taught in rigorous climate engineering programs like the EDHEC Business School curriculum—the reality is much harsher.

As physicist David MacKay famously put it: "If we all do a little, we achieve very little."

To structurally replace 40 Gigatonnes of annual global CO2 emissions, we cannot rely on wishful thinking. We have to look at the cold math of energy density, scalability, and grid mechanics. Here is a breakdown of the technologies we have to rely on, which ones are actually efficient, and the massive systemic headache of balancing a modern power grid.

1. The Technology Mix: What Options Do We Have?

To eliminate fossil fuels, we generally look at four non-fossil pillars: Biofuels, Wind, Solar, and Nuclear. However, they are far from equal.

Biofuels: A Political Illusion?

Biofuels are theoretically carbon-neutral because the plants absorb CO2 via photosynthesis before releasing it when burned. But when you account for the entire production and transport chain, the efficiency differences are massive:

• US Corn Ethanol: Starch-based corn ethanol is incredibly inefficient. When you factor in the energy required to grow, fertilize, harvest, and transport it, it is at best 15% better than gasoline—and under some energy mixes, it’s actually worse. Despite this, policy mandates (like the US Farm Bill) have historically diverted up to 30% of the entire US corn crop into fuel, heavily driven by political quotas and the voting power of the Corn Belt.
• Brazilian Sugarcane Ethanol: This is highly efficient. Sugarcane leaves a fibrous residue called bagasse which is burned to power the ethanol processing factory itself. The input-to-output energy ratio is an impressive 8:1, making it completely viable without subsidies.

Wind and Solar: The Scale of a War Effort

Wind and solar have seen massive cost reductions, but their physical footprint is staggering.

• Wind: On-shore wind farms in realistic conditions (like the UK) yield a modest power density of about 2W/m^2 of land. If you wanted to produce enough clean energy to make a serious dent, the required territorial deployment would look like a World War II industrial effort. To match even a fraction of national demands, countries would have to deploy fleets equivalent to 50 times the current turbine coverage of Denmark.
• Solar: Raw sunshine at midday delivers up to 1,000 W/m^2 at the equator, but drops significantly in temperate zones. Rooftop solar helps, but because "low-grade" thermal solar can only heat water "here and now" (it can't be exported to a grid or easily stored long-term), it has limited utility. Covering every single south-facing roof in a temperate country like the UK with 20% efficient photovoltaic (PV) cells yields only about 5 kWh per day per person. A single car commute or jet flight easily burns 30 to 40 kWh per day per person.

2. Which Technologies Are Most Effective and Efficient?

If efficiency is defined by carbon abatement per square meter and human safety, the clear winner is Nuclear Energy (both Fission and modern Fusion research).

Fission: High Density, Low Mortality

Nuclear fission packs immense energy density and leaves an incredibly small footprint of high-level waste (roughly 25ml per person per year, equivalent to a small fraction of a wine bottle). Despite the profound public anxiety surrounding high-profile accidents like Chernobyl (1986), the statistical reality of nuclear safety is unmatched.

When analyzing deaths per Gigawatt-year (GWy), nuclear and wind are the safest energy sources on Earth, sitting at less than 0.2 deaths/GWy.

Energy Source Mortality Rates (Deaths per GWy) ... I am trying a simple visual representation here:

• Coal (Global Avg)   |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| 50.0+ (Heavily driven by mining/pollution)
• Oil & Gas Rigs      ||| 1.0+
• Nuclear / Wind      | 0.2 

Perspective: The World Health Organization (WHO) states that outdoor air pollution from burning fossil fuels causes 4.2 million deaths every single year.

Despite what the misinformation that I had to live with for many years in France, I now understand that the disaster at Chernobyl was fundamentally a failure of risk culture and flawed reactor design under intense Soviet production quotas, not an indictment of nuclear physics itself. When operated within a strict safety culture, fission is incredibly efficient.

Fusion: The Ultimate Goal

Nuclear fusion (forcing light elements like Hydrogen isotopes together) offers virtually unlimited energy with zero long-term radioactive waste and no risk of military proliferation. The technological hurdle is mimicking a "miniature sun" on Earth. While private and public funding for fusion remains historically low (famously noted as receiving less funding in the US than pet grooming), accelerated global focus—similar to the timeline of the COVID-19 vaccine development—could pull this forward from a distant prospect into a viable reality.

3. The Interplay Between Intermittent and Continuous ("Prompt") Energy

This is the absolute crux of modern electrical engineering, and it’s the part most often ignored in casual climate discussions.

INTERMITTENT SOURCES e.g., Solar & Wind   

• Weather-dependent
• High volatility
• Cannot adjust to demand spikes

CONTINUOUS / PROMPT SOURCES e.g., Nuclear, Hydro, Fossil Fuels    

• Baseload stability
• Dispatched instantly ("on prompt")
• Keeps the grid at a constant 50/60Hz

The Grid Gridlock

A functional electrical grid requires supply to perfectly match demand in real-time.

• Intermittent Sources (Solar and Wind): You cannot control when the wind blows or the sun shines. They introduce massive, stochastic (random) volatility to the grid. 
• Continuous and "Prompt" Sources (Nuclear, Fossil Fuels): These provide baseline stability. More importantly, when millions of people turn on their air conditioning (lucky when they have one as the summer 2026 is revaling in Europe) at 6:00 PM, the grid operator needs a prompt source—an energy supply that can be dispatched instantly to prevent a brownout.

The Balancing Act

Because large-scale battery storage is still heavily constrained by cost and resource availability, a grid that relies 100% on intermittent renewables will inevitably face system failures. If you over-stress renewables without a backup plan, you are forced to maintain fossil-fuel peaker plants (gas/coal) on standby to handle the "prompt" spikes when the wind drops.

Therefore, the ultimate interplay requires a calculated dual-track framework: utilizing cheap, high-yield intermittent renewables to handle the bulk daytime flow, backed by a massive, unwavering floor of continuous nuclear power to ensure baseload stability and prompt response.

Subsidies are an incredibly powerful tool to scale these climate technologies, but they must be designed around physical realities—targeted cleanly at grid-level storage and nuclear innovation—rather than being utilized as permanent handouts to politically favored agricultural sectors.

'If we all do a little, we achieve very little' — because uncoordinated effort doesn't scale. Yet, my approach will be "Give that same effort a market, and it compounds"

I live in Vienna, a city that has been heavily hit by a heat wave in the past week: we reached 40 degrees Celsius on Sunday. I don't have AC at my place, which is a common problem for many households in Vienna. What I normally do to find relief is to go to public places that are air-conditioned and/or go to swim in the Danube river. And this is how I got an idea: let's map all of the public air-conditioned places in the city where people can rest, have a drink, seat for a few hours during the warmest hours of the day.

The project is called Make Vienna Cool, it is completely open-source.

This is the link to the website: https://makevienna.cool

And this is the link to the GitHub repo: tommasodesantis/Make_Vienna_Cool: A map of air-conditioned places, water fountains, swim spots and WCs to survive the heat in Vienna.

Besides AC places, I also added all of the water fountains, WCs and swim spots available in the city. You can filter by accessibility, opening hours, distance from your location and other parameters.

You may wonder, why can't I search these places directly on Google Maps? The answer is that Maps doesn't have a filter to find air-conditioned places. And also in my city is not very good for finding fountains and access to water bodies.

Many people found this project useful and I was requested to do the same for other cities. The idea is to make this a collaborative project! Feel free to contribute and replicate the project for your city.

Happy to get any feedback and ideas on how to make this better and more useful!

DeSmog, the climate investigative journalism outlet, is marking 20 years with a free online event on Wednesday, July 8, 8-9pm BST, featuring Naomi Klein, Michael E. Mann, and DeSmog's founder Jim Hoggan, looking back at two decades of climate accountability reporting.

Feels worth flagging given the pressure independent newsrooms are under right now.

Free, registration here: https://luma.com/snaz4qbo?tk=DJ27do

Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.

Source: https://www.pib.gov.in/PressReleaseDetail.aspx?PRID=2278309&reg=3&lang=1

From the Press Release:

EDIT: Added the excerpt from the press release, which somehow vanished while posting.

Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.

Please use this thread to post your current Climate Action oriented discussions and any other concerns or comments about climate change action in general. Any victories, concerns, or other material that does not abide by normal forum post guidelines is open for discussion here.

Please stick to current subreddit rules and keep things polite, cordial, and non-political. We still do not allow doomism or climate change propaganda, but you can discuss it as a means of working to combat it with facts or actions.