A leading environmental scientist has claimed that technology solutions needed to tackle climate change already exist, but they are being hampered by a lack of ambition and investment.

Dr Andreas Busch at Heriot-Watt University says the world already has the engineering solutions to manage climate change, including converting heat below the earth’s surface into electricity. More investment is needed in those solutions though to make sure we have a chance of turning things around, he claims.

Dr Busch said:

Geothermal energy can provide decentralised, affordable and continuous energy to heat homes or produce electricity. While this energy is right below our feet, progress in implementation is slow and installed capacity less than 1% of the global electricity consumption.

The climate scientist has also called on government, business and society at large to work together and take urgent action on the issue. At the moment he claims that while progress being made around the world is encouraging, it is only ‘baby steps’ in the grand scheme of the climate and ecological crisis we face.

The Scottish academic also claims that we still need a major shift in the way we live our lives, pointing to his own industry which requires him to fly regularly for research purposes. Something he said could be transformed through further digitising the way research is done and building more high-speed train tracks.

The news follows recent claims that the climate emergency may have passed a tipping point, as a result of global emissions reaching record levels. A group of scientists in Nature Magazine claimed that climate change could soon result in a domino effect, with one shift amplifying another.

Image by Heriot-Watt University