You are probably
reading this
editorial from home, just as I am writing it from my home because
of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The past few months (the exact duration
depending on our locations) have been unprecedented in our professional
and personal lives, as people across the globe face and respond to
the increasing threats posed by the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2).
I hope you and your loved ones continue to stay safe and healthy in
this difficult time. We should all express our sincere gratitude to
the healthcare workers who are fighting for us on the front line,
who do not have the option to work from home. I know you are probably
as frustrated as I am about not being able to carry out the requested
important experiments to revise an exciting manuscript (please see
a recent editorial about this
1
), but we
must do our parts to help “flatten the curve” and hence
accelerate the process for all of this to pass (and yes, this will
pass eventually).
I must confess that, even though I generally
understood the potential
impacts of a pandemic that could propagate exponentially, the accelerating
pace of this global crisis and the extent of its impacts on everyone’s
daily life surprised me. When I was traveling internationally in mid-February
of this year to attend conferences in Australia, coronavirus was already
on everyone’s mind and a common topic of discussion, but it
mostly seemed to be a distant problem only for our scientist colleagues
in China (or at most, from East Asia). I could not have imagined that
we would be shutting down lab research activities and working from
home in just another month in the small city of Madison, Wisconsin
in the Midwest of the United States and that those conferences would
be the last ones I would attend in the first half of 2020 (or maybe
even most of this remaining year). But in retrospect, should the emergence
of this crisis have been so surprising to us given the many dire warnings
we have received over the years from our top infectious disease experts
and global health leaders
2
and the several
recent, smaller-scale but no less deadly, epidemic outbreaks? As the
initial shock and confusion dissipated and the reality and routines
of staying at home sank in, I began to see the connections between
the COVID-19 crisis and the climate change challenge
3
that motivates many of us working on renewable energy research
(Figure 1
). No, I am
not talking about the noticeable reduction of air pollution and carbon
dioxide emission due to the shut downs,
4
which indeed has been observed and will contribute to the mitigation
of climate change (though maybe temporarily). Instead, what I mean
is that there are actually many parallels between the challenges in
fighting this global pandemic and fighting the climate change in the
longer term. This clear and present COVID-19 crisis should serve as
a wake-up call for us to act now and work even harder to prevent a
climate crisis. Let me explain:
Figure 1
Challenges of the COVID-19 crisis and
climate change facing our
planet.
(1) We are all in this together.
A pandemic and climate change
are both existential challenges facing the whole human race who share
this planet together. Neither coronavirus nor climate see country
borders. We have learned that it is not the question of if, but the
question of when and how severely people throughout the world will
be affected by COVID-19. Whether it be droughts in California, flooding
in Midwest plains, bush fires in Australia, growing deserts in central
Asia, retreating glaciers in the Alps, or melting polar ice caps,
the consequences of climate change will impact all of us in some form
at some point. These problems are not just “their” problems,
but “our” problems. So long as we share the planet Earth
we call home, no country can really be safe if there are still uncontrolled
outbreaks elsewhere in the world; similarly, no country can escape
the consequences of climate change unless we all act together.
(2) We must act now before it is too late. By the time the coronavirus
hit our big cities hard and the hospitals began to be overwhelmed,
only then did most of us realize the severity of the challenge. But
in some sense, it was already too late. We could ask ourselves what
we could have and what we should have done a few weeks prior to that
point (e.g., enact social distancing measures
5
) to avoid, or at least slow down, the imminent exponential explosion
of patients, or a few years before in terms of the small investments
in monitoring, prevention, and preparedness that could have helped
to minimize the impact of the pandemic.
2
We will not be able to turn back the clock to reverse the loss of
lives, even though the peak of the pandemic will pass and some new
normalcy in life will return. Similarly, by the time the truly catastrophic
consequences of climate change materialize, it could be too late and
we might not be able to do anything fast enough to significantly reverse
the damages, or the economic costs to do so would be much more daunting.
The less immediate time frame of climate change is more dangerous
as it makes it easy for us to be complacent and just “kick
the can down the road”. But learning from the fresh lessons
of COVID-19, we must act NOW so we avoid the fate of being the frogs
boiled alive in warming water.
(3) Science and facts matter.
For both COVID-19 and climate change,
ignoring the growing scientific evidence and pretending that one could
wish the problems away does not help us and cannot save us from the
consequences. The facts will catch up with all of us no matter what
one believes in. It will just be a matter of time: a few weeks in
the case of COVID-19, and perhaps a few decades in the case of climate
change. Now is the time facts and science matter the most, because
our health and the wellbeing of humanity depend on them. Making rational
decisions based on the science and facts is our best weapon against
our common enemies.
(4) Innovation is key. We need the most
innovative medical and
technological solutions to address these unprecedented global challenges.
Whether it be the diagnostics, prevention, or treatment of infectious
diseases, or the understanding and modeling of the climate trends,
or the development of new renewable energy or energy-saving technologies,
we scientists and engineers need to rise to these challenges.
(5) International collaboration is critical. We are all in this
fight together, so we (scientists, specifically, and society, in general)
need to work collaboratively to address the challenges. In the case
of COVID-19, the global data sharing and collaborations have been
impressive.
6
The genetic sequence of SARS-CoV-2
was determined and uploaded online on January 11 by Chinese scientists.
By January 23 the PCR test for the SARS-CoV-2 was developed by German
scientists and then quickly mass produced in China, South Korea, and
many East Asian countries and also distributed by WHO to enable the
rapid testing, isolation, and treatment of the patients. Based on
such genetic sequences, the first RNA vaccine was designed and developed
in the United States within a record two months. The biomedical research
community not only acted with the utmost sense of urgency but also
worked collaboratively across the globe. Many research papers, often
authored by multiple institutions from multiple countries, were posted
on various preprint servers before official publication, so that everyone
could immediately build on others’ research results. Similarly,
the understanding and modeling of climate change has been a global
collaborative effort over the last few decades through the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
3
This is
a model everyone can aspire to and learn from.
(6) We must respect
mother nature and learn to peacefully coexist
with her. Despite the tremendous advances in modern science and medicine,
the human race is just another perfect mammalian host for the coronavirus
to spread to in an exponential manner, if left unchecked. However
dominant, we as a species are guests of this beautiful (and maybe
unique) planet in this vast universe, maybe just for a short while.
Respecting mother nature and keeping a sense of humility may well
help us prosper a while longer in a more responsible and sustainable
way.
Given the similarities of these two crises, what can we,
the renewable
energy research community, do to meet these challenges? While most
of our ACS Energy Letters readers may not engage
in biological and medical science research to directly contribute
to the scientific fight against COVID-19, we can contribute. For example,
we hear about manufacturing companies in the renewable energy sector
trying to retool and directly address the challenges in the fight
against COVID-19 and researchers contributing their expertise in materials
and engineering to come up with technological solutions (such as face
masks and other protective gears).
6
But
perhaps our very personal and maybe life-changing experiences during
this pandemic in 2020 could also finally convince all of us that we
must act now and work collaboratively over the globe to address the challenge of climate
change before
it is too late.
We need all kinds of creative technological
solutions and “all
hands-on deck” in the fight to mitigate climate change. We
need to develop the most efficient solar cells with the lowest cost
and mass produce and deploy them quickly.
7
We need to advance the research to harvest all forms of renewable
energy from the environment such as wind, wave, and heat.
8
But in order to utilize intermittent energy sources,
such as solar and wind, on a massive scale, without destabilizing
the electrical grid, more efficient and less expensive grid-scale
energy storage solutions such as redox flow batteries
9
and sodium-ion batteries
10
need
to be developed. We could also integrate solar energy production with
energy storage.
11
We can produce chemicals
and fuels efficiently using renewable electricity using new electrocatalysts
12,13
or generate electricity from all kinds of fuels more efficiently
using advanced fuel cells.
14,15
Electrifying transportation
can reduce the consumption of fossil fuels (despite the temporary
historic negative crude oil price), so greater capacity, less costly,
and safer Li-ion batteries are needed. We can minimize the energy
consumption in lighting with more efficient LEDs and reduce heating
and cooling cost with energy-saving windows in buildings.
16
The scale and diversity of the renewable challenges
are so enormous that we need all of the above and we need them as
soon as possible to solve the challenges facing us. The energy research
community (us) must take on the scientific and technological challenges
collaboratively with the utmost sense of urgency now. What we do today
to minimize and mitigate the impact on climate by developing, investing
in, and deploying renewable energy technologies can and will make
the difference in the years or decades down the road.
Hindsight
is always 20/20. Maybe the year 2020 will go down in
the history book not only as the year we did not have our beloved
ACS, MRS, or APS meetings, or the Summer Olympic Games, but also as
the year we collectively understood that we could have done something
before 2020 to avoid (or at least minimize) the catastrophe we now
face. More importantly, we can learn from our current situation in
order to avoid another pandemic like this, as well as avoid the catastrophe
of climate change in the future. Perhaps this awakening and foresight
could be the silver lining of the dark clouds over us now. Remember,
we are all in this together. Act now, work together, and we can and
will win this fight.