The Role of Engineering to Address Climate Change - Executive Summary

More than 30 years have passed since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme to provide governments at all levels with scientific information they can use to address climate change. Although respected scientific bodies have produced dozens of reports in the ensuing years, few point to engineering-specific research directions and the critical role the engineering community can play in addressing climate change.Effectively mitigating the impact of climate change requires deliberate tools wielded by the engineering research community. Facilitated by significant and sustained investment, these tools can bring transformative change to the way society confronts the causes of and impacts of climate change. This is the key recommendation of a recent visioning event coordinated by the Engineering Research Visioning Alliance (ERVA) to identify the role of engineering in addressing climate change. From this event, three cross-cutting thrusts emerged:• Focus on critical materials in all engineered systems, especially in extraction, separation, recycling and upcycling, and energy conversion, as well as CO2 mitigation.• Invest in sensor, sensing, and communication capabilities to facilitate data compilation and analysis.• Enable and strategically exploit artificial intelligence (AI) modeling for forecasting and trend analyses.To accelerate solutions, it is imperative to focus on ways that engineering can lead foundational research efforts to address climate change, with full understanding that technical solutions cannot be separated from consideration of societal impact. The event’s Thematic Task Force, comprised of academic, corporate, and nonprofit experts, selected 10 discrete areas to consider. The convened scientists and engineers evaluated bold ideas, probed unexamined questions, and leveraged their combined expertise. The results were distilled into two overarching topics for this report: synergistic engineering research priorities to address climate change, and developing a comprehensive and inclusive vision for addressing climate change