4IR technology can help solve climate change challenge

4IR technology can help solve climate change challenge

Saudi Arabia has pioneered the framework of the Circular Carbon Economy (CCE) as a way of overcoming the climate change challenge. This approach was endorsed unanimously last year at the G20 summit of world leaders held under the Saudi G20 presidency. CCE advocates the reduction, recycling, and reuse — the 3 Rs — of carbon emissions across industrial processes, which are goals that are now familiar and accepted across the world as a way of mitigating harmful emissions. Carbon capture, utilization, and storage are essential if greenhouse gasses are to be gradually eliminated as a threat to the atmosphere and the environment. But the crucial fourth R — removal — is the one where new technologies and innovative approaches are the most important and most challenging. There are already technologies available that can actually remove CO2 emissions directly from the air, but they are small in scale and costly. Making these technologies bigger scale and economically viable will require multibillion-dollar investment in research and development, but the end result will be well worth it. Despite what the radical environmentalists say, hydrocarbon fuel is the most efficient and powerful energy resource humanity has ever invented. It is responsible for all the