CCL Canada Education Call with Doug Pritchard – Climate Interactive Ambassador

On Thursday, April 30, 2020, Doug Pritchard, CCLBeaches-East York, Chemical Engineer, and En-ROADS Climate Ambassador lead us on a tour of the EnROADS climate solutions simulator.

“Everyone needs to see this!” was one of the comments.

Useful notes:

1. Simulator – can be found at https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=2.7.19. Play with the simulator yourself. With each policy slider, there are three dots at the right-hand end which takes you to more detailed settings, and to the right of that settings screen is the letter “i” in a circle which gives you access to some background info. You can share a scenario by clicking on a button at the top right-hand corner of the main screen. If you have questions you can contact me with your scenario. Or contact support@climateinteractive.org – they are very responsive.

2. Training – the next live training series starts May 14. The training modules are also available online. For more info on training go to https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/en-roads/en-roads-trainings/

3. COVID – one way to simulate this would be with lower economic growth and improved transport efficiency (eg online working, cycling, etc). Some other thoughts on Covid and climate are in
https://www.usnews.com/news/healthiest-communities/articles/2020-04-01/why-we-cant-ignore-the-link-between-coronavirus-climate-change-and-inequity

https://www.dailyclimate.org/coronavirus-clean-energy-2645574291.html

4. Pan-Canadian Framework – my simulation is at https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html

This gets the world to a 2.7 degC increase by 2100. One path from there to 2.0degC includes (1) carbon price continues rising to $200, (2) include reduction of 25% in methane from ag and waste, and (3) add some growth in carbon removal technology.

5. Population Growth – Project Drawdown has Educating Women and Girls as one of its top items as it has a direct impact on family size and population growth. However the global fertility rate is already close to the replacement level of 2.1 births per woman and so the number of 0-15yo children is now pretty static at about 2 billion. These kids will grow up with improving longevity and this is the main reason that global population will continue to grow to 10-11 billion as this cohort and their successors age. This population growth coupled with increasing economic development is a huge driver of GHG emissions but there is actually not much we can do about the population growth component. If you move the population growth slider in the simulator between its minimum of 1.3% growth/yr to its maximum of 2.5% growth/yr it only moves the global temperature in 2100 by about 0.1 degC up or down.