Pitch
Develop basic, cheap technologies to clean up emissions from rapidly expanding coal-fueled power generation in the third world.
Description
Summary
The fastest growth in global pollution is the coal-based generation of electricity in the emerging third world. The environmental effects are legion and dreadful - and recent photo of Beijing shows severe air pollution.
The west can have a huge impact on such emissions at very small cost by developing basic mitigation technology for coal pollution in those locales. The impact could be considerable, as it could suppress the traditional pollutants like NOx, SOx, particulates and residual volatiles.
The idea is not to have emissions meet the standards of the developed world but to make significant pollutant reductions and create awareness and support for environmental stewardship. There is ample reason for the developed world even to pay for manufacture and installation of such facilities.
A complementary effort would be to update existing combustion facilities and designs to accommodate future improvements that reach for western standards.
A third direction is to use the same strategy is to develop low cost technology for anticipating both building and retrofitting supercritical and ultra-supercritical coal burning, which have considerably reduced levels of carbon emissions.
The approach in all cases would be to start developing something limited but, crucially, realistic for implementation and which anticipates a next phase. This could be something as basic as modular construction for inexpensive disassembly of units designed to be retasked or as advanced as partial installation of the next generation). The real point is to reduce future costs to enhance the probability that upgrades will continue.
What actions do you propose?
Immediate jobs suitable to MIT would be to fund development activity for an inexpensive means of partial mitigation of coal pollutants as they exist now in the third world. This alone, if deployed, could have more effect than all the western schemes for carbon reduction combined.
Funding could also be found to start work on the longer term development, particularly searching for ways to create the next generation of inexpensive technology with a goal of anticipating, technically and financially, the next generation of implementing higher standards of cleanliness.
Finally, perhaps some of the people in political science could look into the problem of what would actually be required of the world's political systems to achieve worldwide deployment.
That's all, folks. Low cost, partially effective coal cleaning technology would make such a difference that it should, imho, be up at the top of all environmental policy goals.
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