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The Climate Question: Are we too reliant on tech that’s not invented yet?

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24/01/2022 GMT

Are we too reliant on tech that’s not invented yet?

BBC World Service - The Climate Question, Are we too reliant on tech that’s not invented yet?

Do countries’ climate pledges rely too much upon technology that is in its infancy?

Written into many of the promises made by countries about how they intend to achieve their UN climate pledges to reduce emissions is an assumption that technology will help them make this happen. But this technology either does not currently exist or is in its infancy.

This includes schemes to take carbon out of the air via carbon capture and storage or direct air capture and to replace our dependency on fossil fuels with green hydrogen.  We visit the world’s largest direct air capture plant in Iceland and speak to the person in charge of Namibia’s grand plans to become the green hydrogen production hub of the world - can both really be scaled up in order to meet our current needs?

Presenters Kate Lamble and Jordan Dunbar are joined by:

Zeke Hausfather, Director of Climate and Energy at the Breakthrough Institute, 
Victoria Gill, BBC’s Science Correspondent, 
Christoph Beuttler, Head of Climate Policy at Climeworks, and 
Jane Olwoch, Executive Director of South African Science Service Centre for Climate Change and Adaptive Land Management (SASSCAL) 

Producer: Dearbhail Starr
Researcher: Tatyana Movshevich and Zoe Gelber 
Reporter: Magnús Geir Eyjólfsson 
Series Producer: Alex Lewis
Editor: Emma Rippon
Sound engineer: Tom Brignell

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Are we too reliant on tech that’s not invented yet?

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