Preface

In this century of COP27, almost all delegates, including the United Nations, have requested rich countries to stop using coal by 2030 and poor countries by 2040. Otherwise, before now, climate professionals have shown that heat waves, coastal floods and tropical cyclones will continue to produce devastation that is more violent if the world does not rapidly effect policies, build infrastructure and develop skills and workforce to make clean electricity, transportation and other energy applications. It is convenient to remind humans that in 2015, more than 200 governments agreed to stop global warming by 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) by the end of the century. However, seven years later, as they meet again for a climate summit in COP27 in Egypt, policies that will enable heating the planet by less than this value are being pursued.

It therefore becomes obvious that for world leaders to honour their promises, they must sharply cut the amount of heating on the planet by immediately transiting the use of coal, petroleum oil and gas or fossil energy sources to cleaner energies such as hydrogen, fuel cells, solar, wind, biomass and renewables into the air each year. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions such as carbon dioxide (CO2) methane (CH4) would have to fall by 45% by the end of the decade and reach net zero by 2050. The main driver for optimistic shift would be to generate clean electricity, clean fuels for transportation and other stationary applications instead of using fossil fuels, and electrifying activities that involve burning coal, petroleum oil, gas, etc.

Most of the world now generates power for grid, households and transportation from coal, the dirtiest source of energy, and fossil oil and gas, which are cleaner but still polluting. Combusting these fuels releases GHGs into the Earth, heating the planet and making extreme weather worse as is currently observed around the world, whether developed or underdeveloped. About a year after the previous COP26, less than 40% of the world's electricity still comes from low‐carbon sources like solar, wind, nuclear and hydropower, to mention but a few.

This book therefore presents transition mechanisms and model (Figure 1) that the world can adopt to move from fossil fuels as energy sources to renewables and other clean energy technologies, as mentioned above. The manuscript can thus be used by energy policymakers, trainers and educationists in both elementary and tertiary education, including research and development experts.

The main objective of compiling the author's previous works and reports with the students and colleagues into this book is therefore to provide sustainable development plans for both policymakers and end users, while the book is aimed at developing an innovative planning tool to assess the effect of energy consumption and production on the overall carbon emissions. It is also to measure, calculate and benchmark against set standards and government policies. Technologies to compact or control GHG emissions are also proposed and applied in case studies distributed across the chapters. This tool is used for both modelling of imminent global warming and assessment of current situations, supported with examples and case studies, which may involve the use of triangulation tool to convert gradients of CO2 emissions to spatial coordinates and bearings.

Policymakers and educators with technical backgrounds will find the book useful. Individuals and environmentalists, engineers, scientists, students, etc., will buy the book. In addition, because of the inclusion of a chapter on policy with reference to the preceding chapters on calculations, measurement and decision‐making, it will be a reference textbook accessed through libraries serving academic researchers and teachers for classroom teaching and learning resource materials.

Figure 1 Effect of carbon footprint on global warming: (a) modified image (Gambrill 2021), (b) drying lake bed at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa as of 2023. (c) The Ocean Foundation highlighted that seagrass habitants are up to 35× more effective than Amazonian rainforests in their carbon uptake and storage abilities (Owens et al. 2019).

1 Topics

The book comprises the following seven chapters: (1) ‘Introduction, Carbon Footprint and Climate Change’ that establishes the background and implementation of the tool to determine carbon footprint and its impacts on climate change. (2) ‘Vegetative Sinks for Carbon Capture’ that introduces and applies carbon sequestration as the process of capturing molecules of carbon dioxide (CO2), which is one of the leading GHGs in the atmosphere. Trees, forests and even microalgae are used as vegetative sinks that sequester carbon through photosynthesis, including food gardens. (3) ‘Carbon Transition for the Petrochemical Sector’ involves transformative actions to decarbonise the chemical, petrochemical, oil and gas sectors in finding alternative non‐fossil carbon feedstocks and provides overall understanding of the environmental implications, scientific, engineering resources and equipment. (4) ‘Energy Transition and Power Reforms from Coal’. Since power supply is a major component to the social and economic development of any nation and is a component of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations, energy demands increase with increasing population and in turn more coal, oil and gas are burned for power generation. This exacerbates GHG emissions and environmental concerns, whereas abundance of renewable energy in Africa in general calls for new energy policies that will promote renewable energy‐sourced power generation and ensure a cleaner environment for South Africa and the continent as a whole. (5) ‘Carbon Footprint of Internal Combustion Engines and Mitigations’ involves the transportation sector as a major contributor to CO2 release into the atmosphere, which in turn acts as the key culprit in increasing climate change. In order to meet the long‐term climate change mitigation targets, as set by the Paris Agreement and for individual countries, policies towards decarbonising road, air and ocean transportation should be built around more efficient transport, society and larger shares of renewable fuels and faster introduction of electric vehicles and engines. (6) ‘Application of Carbon Footprint to Climate Change Solutions’ presents that investments in development and use of renewable energy will facilitate the transiting from fossil fuels to clean and renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, wave, tidal and geothermal power and hydrogen and help with climate change solutions since global warming and climate change are inseparably the world's most topical issues in the current environment‐economy dialogue. Thus, since CO2 emission is the main GHG responsible for global warming and climate change, many scholars and policymakers are beginning to tune the relationship between climate change, energy production, and sustainable economic growth. (7) ‘Climate Change Policy and Skills Education’ involves skills development policies and green job creation plans. It then presents an elegant, thought‐provoking inquiry on how the engineering discipline can impact and battle climate change to build a more sustainable world and ensure that engineering should be the key to delivering a sustainable future.

2 Acknowledgements

This excellent compilation entitled Measuring Climate Change to Inform Energy Transitions: Carbon Footprint Calculations would not have been possible without the support from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), Johannesburg, in South Africa, which has given permission to use the University's policy on climate change and its associated works. The current Head of School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, Professor Josias van der Merwe, permitted the use of the School's Quinquennial Review Report (QQR) for the period from 2017 to 2022 on the curriculum for skills training and education of experts on climate change, carbon transition and global warming.

The Wits students' design reports and postgraduate research, which were supervised by the author and other colleagues, became handy as the author received permission to include extracts of these reports in this textbook. The examples and case studies from these students provide the credibility and resourcefulness the reader will find in the work, which are gratefully appreciated. It is therefore with heartfelt gratitude that the author gives recognition to the following former students who have magnanimously allowed their hard work to be included in this manuscript.

Dr. Osayi Ilawe Julius, whose research work is entitled Production and characterisation of biocrude from used tyres and natural rubber. Miss Thandeka Lukhele and Mr. Thembalethu Sibuye who researched into evaluation of membrane electrode assembly performance based on hydrogenated and sulfonated polystyrene‐butadiene rubber in a single‐cell PEM fuel cell and electrolyser and process design and integration of proton exchange membrane electrolyser for 500 kW proton exchange membrane fuel cell to power the Richard Ward building at Wits University, respectively. The excellent design reports presented as case studies were co‐authored by Mr. Darren Bouttell, Ishaam Ismail and Ketalya Reddy on their design work entitled Balance of Plant Design for Simultaneous DME and Methanol Production and Power Generation. Mr....