EN
Consider how many man-made disasters we’ve had to cope with in the last 50 years — Chernobyl is one of them. Now we’re dealing with a potentially more serious issue: climate change. The pace with which climate change is unfolding makes it more hazardous and devious than any previous disaster. Its consequences have been felt for decades, despite many academics having used predictive models to anticipate them. Its consequences are intensifying, speeding up, and eroding the foundation of our ecology. Now is the moment to act: If we do nothing, extreme weather will become the norm, wreaking havoc on our ecosystem and resulting in the extinction of entire species. Not only that, but a rise in sea levels will lead to population displacement, resulting in political instability.
Hassane El-Khoury, president and CEO of onsemi, noted in his opening during the PowerUP Expo the scientific aspects that demonstrate with data how evolution is increasingly worrying and important decisions that need to be made.
“Our responsibility as a technical community and as innovative engineers is to take action to do something,” said El-Khoury. “Oil, natural gas, and coal have been the largest contributors to CO2 emissions, making up about 83% of the global emissions problem. That is billions of metric tons emitted by these markets alone. But suppose you analyze the carbon footprint that these industries contribute to our environment. In that case, you find that if we maintain and do nothing, the budget — that is, this 1.5˚C that we all believe is the threshold to maintain — will be exceeded by 2030. And if you think 2030 is too far away, it is eight years from now — not even a design cycle for a car that we are familiar with. So in 2030, the actions we take today and the projects we are working on today are the projects that will help us maintain our competitiveness.”
Figure 1: The path to decarbonization requires us to transform energy sources and land-use systems from 2020 to 2050. (Source: onsemi)
Figure 2: Focusing on the shift in mobility from 2020 to 2050 (Source: onsemi)
“We are the solution,” said El-Khoury. “How can we implement this solution to serve the common good we focus on? We have a responsibility not only individually but also organizationally and of the companies we work for, in our home and in our personal lives, in the way we consume, and in the way we are responsible for the energy provided to us.”
Industry areas such as energy, mobility, and manufacturing are important to environmental success. Disruptions in various areas are required to decrease, control, and manage the emissions problem. We must expand our reliance on renewable energy and lower our dependency on oil, gas, and coal. “Not just because it is the ethical thing to do, but also because renewable energy is abundant and has no negative environmental impact,” said El-Khoury. “However, it is a step in the right direction in terms of CO2 reduction.”
The introduction of electric cars will aid in the reduction of emissions, but the infrastructure from which the energy is obtained, as well as the entire process of creating electric vehicles, must be considered in terms of environmental effect. The lack of a widespread charging infrastructure will stymie electric-car adoption. The grid will be unable to handle the massive charging network of EVs if we do not create renewable energy.
