63 Degrees North

Earlier this year, tremendous floods in Pakistan forced 600,000 pregnant women to leave their homes for safer ground. It was among the latest in a series of nearly unthinkable happenings caused by climate change."Can you imagine if you are about to give birth to a child, and you have to leave your home and flee? These are very traumatic experiences that people have now in all continents, and increasing frequency," says NNTU Professor Edgar Hertwich. He says we all know now that climate change is no longer an abstraction — it's here, and humankind has to act.Hertwich — one of the top 100 climate researchers on the planet — is in a unique position to push the international agenda: he's one of just 15 members on the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change, which is advising the EU on implementing its new climate law. That matters because the EU is the largest political entity in the world to commit to such ambitious goals.The 27 nations in the EU have committed to cutting their carbon emissions by at least 55% in just 8 years — by 2030. By 2050, the EU law commits its member nations to a net-zero emissions balance — meaning that they will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as much as they can and find ways of compensating for the remaining and unavoidable emissions so that the net emissions are zero.This is an aggressive plan, Hertwich says, but it doesn't go nearly far enough. And he's been vocal in telling EU leaders just that. Listen to what he had to say to a recent EU Strategy Summit on Climate in Brussels, hosted by NTNU and SINTEF, Scandinavia's largest independent research institution.You can read a collection of popular science articles about Professor Hertwich's research here.Here's a selection of his recent academic publications:Berrill, Peter; Wilson, Eric J.H.; Janet L., Reyna; Antyony D., Fontanini; Hertwich, Edgar G.. (2022) Decarbonization pathways for the residential sector in the United States. Nature Climate Change. vol. 12.Carattini, Stefano; Hertwich, Edgar G.; Melkadze, Givi; Shrader, Jeffrey G.. (2022) Mandatory disclosure is key to address climate risks. Science. vol. 378 (6618)Huang, Yuqiao; Wolfram, Paul; Miller, Reed; Azarijafari, Hessam; Guo, Fengdi; An, Kangxin; Li, Jin; Hertwich, Edgar G.; Gregory, Jeremy; Wang, Can. (2022) Mitigating life cycle GHG emissions of roads to be built through 2030: Case study of a Chinese province. Journal of Environmental Management. vol. 319.

We all know that climate change is real and that we have to do something about it. In today's podcast extra episode, we go behind the scenes at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and talk to Anders Hammer Strømman, who was one of the lead authors for their latest report, released in April this year. Anders is a professor at NTNU's Industrial Ecology Programme where he has specialized in Life Cycle Assessment and Environmental input-output analysis, which are tools that enable us to understand the real environmental costs of the goods and materials we use in everyday life.We talk about why cutting carbon emissions quickly is a little like skiing up a big mountain, how battery companies need to come clean when it comes to how they make their products, why some version of a home office could be good for the planet, and why your individual choices can actually make a difference.  And we talk about why Anders is optimistic and thinks we can make this shift — even though the governments of the world have been slow to act. Anders encouraged me (and by extension, you, my listeners) to look at the entire report (nearly 3000 pages — not 3675 as I say in the podcast!) but that's probably more than most of us have time for. You can look at the chapter that Anders was lead author on, on Transport, here (the link will start a pdf download). You can read an even more condensed version of the WG III report and its major findings here. The bottom line is that we CAN make this happen! Thanks this week for help from Ole Marius Ringstad, who did the sound design for the episode. Stay tuned for an update about next season, coming in the autumn.

The secrets behind how Norwegian scientists and engineers harnessed the country’s wild waterfalls by developing super efficient turbines — and how advances in turbine technology being developed now may be the future in a zero-carbon world. They include an engineer who figured out how to take advantage of national fervour and build the 1900s equivalent of a super computer, a WWII resistance fighter who saw something special in tiny temperature differences, and researchers today, who are finding ways to cut environmental impacts from current hydropower plants and craft the designs we need to confront climate change.The guests on today's show were Ole Gunnar Dahlhaug, Vera Gütle and Johannes Kverno, with cameo appearances by Hans Otto Frøland and Svein Richard Brandtzæg.You can read an article written to accompany the podcast, with photographs from the lab here There's also an online photo gallery with a brief history of the Waterpower Laboratory here.You can read more about some of the research being done at the lab here:HydroFlex: The HydroFlex project is a four year long, € 5.4 million research project financed through EU’s Horizon 2020 programme, coordinated by Ole Gunnar Dahlhaug and based at NTNU’s Waterpower Laboratory. The aim of the project is to increase the value of hydro power through increased flexibility in operations.Stojkovski, Filip; Lazarevikj, Marija; Markov, Zoran; Iliev, Igor; Dahlhaug, Ole Gunnar. (2021) Constraints of Parametrically Defined Guide Vanes for a High-Head Francis Turbine. Energies. vol. 14 (9).Gütle, Vera. (2021) How to avoid gas supersaturation in the river downstream from a hydropower plant. MSc thesis.