Ten-fold deployment of marine renewable energy needed to mitigate worst effects of climate change
A large-scale and rapid deployment of marine renewable energy is necessary to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuel burning which are leading to ocean acidification, global warming and climatic changes, says Dr. Martin Attrill, director of Plymouth University's Marine Institute.
Done well and sensitively its deployment could be beneficial to marine wildlife compared to the alternative scenario of greater levels of climate change, he says in a briefing paper Marine Renewable Energy: necessary for safeguarding the marine environment?
According to new research by the Met Office in the UK, global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) need to peak in 2016, with annual declines of 3.5% every year afterwards, in order to provide even a 50:50 chance of avoiding a 2 degree rise in global average temperatures.
Yet despite major international meetings and agreements focused on reducing the output of GHGs, global emissions have continued to rise, indeed accelerate, over the last 10 years.
Consequently, recent predictions of future global warming are now at the top end of models produced a decade ago or so and suggest that, without rapid action, temperatures may increase by 4 degrees or more above pre-industrial temperatures.
The briefing says climate change is now a visible reality. Each of the last 11 years is in the top 12 warmest years on record, the only other year in this top 12 being in 1998, which was an exceptional global El Niño year and saw unprecedented bleaching of the world's coral reefs.
Notable warming of the seas around NW Europe has been recorded over the last 30 years and 2012 has also seen the lowest ever cover of summer Arctic Sea ice.
Sea level rise is now measurable, due to both thermal expansion and ice melt, with a global average rise of 3.3 mm/year between 1993-2009. This rate is accelerating: a 1m sea level rise by the end of the century in some areas is an increasing possibility, with major consequences for the integrity of low-lying coastal and wetland ecosystems.
Finally, ocean acidification is becoming measurable, heading us on the predicted locked-in path to lower pH seas with severe consequences for organisms such as reefs, molluscs and some key planktonic producers.
It is thought that the current rate of acidification is 10-100 times faster than any time in the past 50 million years. Today's change may be unlike any previous ocean pH change in Earth's history.
Dr. Attrill says it is therefore clear that the marine environment is already being damaged by the increasingly apparent impacts of climate change; however it is not too late to make a difference to avoid more extreme impacts (including, obviously more extreme impacts on global societies and economies).
To do so requires a major decarbonisation in the UK and other countries. The Committee on Climate Change has recommended that the UK decarbonise electricity to 50g/KWhr of CO2 by 2030.
This will require at least a ten-fold expansion of Marine Renewable Energy (MRE) even if carbon capture and storage technology or nuclear power is deployed (both of which seem unlikely at significant scale by 2030).
Read the full briefing here: Attrill briefing [616kb]
Professor Martin Attrill is a marine ecologist whose research has focused on patterns of biodiversity in time and space and how human activity can impact those patterns He has published over 100 peer-reviewed papers, had two chapters in a recent summary textbook on climate change and is joint author of the UK's leading Marine Ecology textbook.
In May, Dr Attrill was invited to New York to advise the United Nations on the environmental impact of marine renewable energy. He was assisted in the writing of this briefing by Mike Childs, Head of Policy, Research and Science at Friends of the Earth.
Picture: Dr Martin Attrill. Credit Alan Stewart
