The technology group Wärtsilä has launched a lifeboat for buildings, not a real product, to draw attention to rising sea levels caused by climate change.
The lifeboat was designed by Wärtsilä Ship Design and is powered by 100 renewables renewables, like synthetic renewable fuels and solar energy.
“This hypothetical lifeboat is a way for Wärtsilä to amplify the critical need to move climate change discourse to action. In fact, the concept is not as unimaginable as we first think. The boats would have been useful in the recent floods in Italy and Indonesia. We must act now, together. Or the unthinkable will happen, and this lifeboat will have to be built for real,” says Marco Ryan, Chief Digital Officer.
Technology plays an important role in the mitigation of the impacts of climate change, says Marko Vainikka, Director, Corporate Relations and Sustainability. “Sustainability has been at the forefront in everything we do for decades. Our sustainability targets call us to reduce our own energy consumption by seven percent by 2025 and reduce greenhouse gas emission from gas engines by 15 percent by 2020. These goals among others need to be achieved in order to avoid a future where lifeboats for buildings are needed.”
The promotion of the lifeboat comes as the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that world’s advanced economies will see an uptick in their carbon dioxide emissions this year, bucking a five year-long decline. Based on the latest available energy data, energy-related CO2 emissions in North America, the European Union and other advanced economies in Asia Pacific grew, as higher oil and gas use more than offset declining coal consumption. As a result, the IEA expects CO2 emissions in these economies to increase by around 0.5 percent in 2018.
The IEA also expects emerging economies to emit more CO2 than last year. The IEA’s full global energy and CO2 data for 2018 will be released next March, but all indications point to emissions growth globally, driven by rising energy use and a global economy expanding by 3.7 percent.
Global oil demand is set to grow robustly in 2018, global gas use is also increasing strongly, pushed in particular by Chinese policies aiming to curb air pollution in cities, while large numbers of new coal power plants continue to be built and come online.
Although the growth in emissions is lower than the 2.4 percent rise in economic growth, it is particularly worrisome for global efforts to meet the Paris Agreement, says the IEA.
Countries are gathered at the COP24 climate conference this week and next to take stock of efforts to limit emissions. Global energy-related CO2 emissions need to peak as soon as possible and then enter a steep decline for countries to meet climate goals.
Source:maritime-executive
