Integrating renewable energy solutions for climate mitigation: Challenges and opportunities

Climate change is currently one of the most important issues facing humanity. Combustion of fossil fuel has been believed to be the main cause of global warming and its aftereffects. This calls for the necessity of shifting to renewable sources of energy so as to reduce the impacts of climate change. This broad approach aims at studying many facets of renewable energy sources and their contribution to halting climate change. Aside from preventing climate change, adaptation-comprehending the identification and implementation of pragmatic approaches to deal with the adverse consequences of climate change-is increasingly a high priority as past and present greenhouse gas emissions start to exact their inevitable impact on the climate. Increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere due to human activities. Combustion of fossil fuel, including coal, oil, and natural gas, is the major source of greenhouse gases. These gases are responsible for inducing the greenhouse effect by trapping the Earth's atmosphere with heat energy. Besides agriculture, industrial production, and deserts, human activities result in the release of greenhouse gases. These might be subjected to future environmental change, however. We quantify this effect here for key renewables using integrated assessment and climate modeling. We estimate the future potentials and associated costs of eight technologies-utility-scale and rooftop photovoltaic, concentrated solar power, onshore and offshore wind energy, first generation and lignocellulosic bioenergy, hydropower-under two warming scenarios.