The National Academy of Engineering will hold its annual meeting Oct. 2-4, with the theme of Engineering Responses to Climate Change. NAE President John Anderson sat down to talk about the contributions engineers — and NAE in particular — can make to mitigating and adapting to climate change.

Q: As you watch the types of extremes that are likely to increase as the climate changes — intense heat waves, for example, and electricity outages from hurricanes — how do you think about that? How worried are you?

Anderson: I’m a parent of two and have five grandchildren, and I’m worried about the future. As a scientist and as an engineer, I’m convinced — and have been for a number of years — that emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases have caused problems; the correlation between the CO2 composition of the atmosphere and what we’re seeing is just too strong, and there are compelling scientific explanations for why CO2 increases the mean temperature of the Earth.

We’ve all enjoyed improvement of quality of life and other benefits from burning fossil fuels, though. The question is what do we do about it? I think from an engineering point of view, we have to both mitigate climate change — reduce the rate of global temperature rise — and adapt to it.

Adaptation is going to be just as important, if not more important, than mitigation. Even if we put no more CO2 in the atmosphere now, we are still going to have problems. Human beings have been adapting over millennia, and we can do it better than our ancestors. I think the real issue is political will. There are engineering changes that can be made — for example, building houses that are more resilient to wind and rain — but the issue is political will.

Q: What are some concrete ways engineers can help communities and the nation adapt to climate change?

Anderson: One important way is to design infrastructure for resilience. Resilience is defined as the ability for a community to withstand and recover rapidly from disruptions, and to adapt to changing conditions. So when we build anything, we should build for resilience. But resilience means more financial investment up front. Will people do that? If the codes and zoning are strong enough, they will.

Protecting our water and electricity supplies is key. Every power line should be underground, but you still see wires all over the place. It’s also important not to rebuild residences on flood plains, or where wildfires are common. Research on smart grids to store and distribute electrical power from different sources will lead to promising technologies.

Q: This fall at the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26), dozens of nations will discuss how to reduce net carbon emissions to zero by 2050. What are some ways engineers can contribute to that net-zero goal?

Anderson: I think it’s going to take a whole bunch of things; every part of life is going to have to reduce energy usage.

We’ll need to replace some carbon fuels with renewables, which is slowly but surely happening. Solar was prohibitively expensive 30 years ago, and now it’s becoming very cost effective. One step engineers can take is using renewable energy generation in residences and high-rises; there’s a big effort to design high-rises with wind turbines and solar panels.

And we need to improve efficiency — making all of the things we use, like refrigerators and automobiles, more energy efficient. One important goal is to reduce energy use in manufacturing. Manufacturing accounts for almost 25% of energy consumption in the U.S., so we need to find more energy-efficient ways to manufacture finished metals, cement, and other products.

Another way engineers can help reduce CO2 emissions is to sequester it — capture and store the CO2 from power plants right when it’s emitted, so that it can’t get into the atmosphere. Studies are also looking at ways to make trees and other vegetation more efficient as natural carbon sinks.

Also, if we don’t do more with nuclear energy, there’s no way to get to net-zero by 2050. NAE has a study going on now on advanced nuclear reactors — smaller reactors that have the potential to be safer, less expensive to build, and better integrated with the modern grid.

We’re going to discuss some of these things at the NAE annual meeting.

Q: You’ve stressed the need for engineers to think about equity in their work on climate change. What are some examples of inequities in climate change impacts, and how might engineering decisions either exacerbate or lessen them?

Anderson: In general, people living in poverty live in areas that no one else wants to live in — in low-lying areas that flood a lot, for example, and in old buildings that need to be retrofitted. That’s where some inequity comes in.

One important action to minimize inequity is to protect against flooding and wind destruction, and to make sure that when we go back in to rebuild, we build back better — and not rebuild in dangerous places where you know it’s going to happen again. Protecting electrical power and potable water for all people is vital; that’s what we have to focus on as engineers and as citizens and political leaders. That means designing systems that protect those things.

Q: Do you think the higher education system is doing enough to prompt young engineers to think about equity as they do their work? Are there things engineering programs should be doing differently?

Anderson: Teaching ethics via lecture and project work has been introduced in most engineering colleges throughout the country and is required for accreditation. However, more can always be done.

I have argued that we should include more social science in engineering programs. It’s important if we want more ethical considerations in engineering practice. I don’t just mean checking a box that says, “I took a course in psychology or sociology.” I mean having social sciences and engineering instructors work together on courses, so that when engineers are designing something, they consider: What are the potential unintended consequences of this? Some unintended consequences are heavily weighted to promote inequities, especially based on poverty.

Q: What kind of work is NAE currently doing around climate change?

Anderson: We’re doing several things. For example, the NAE has established a business advisory committee — a group of current or former technical executives from industry who represent pharmaceutical, petrochemical, IT, transportation, and other industries. The committee has formed an energy working group that is collaborating with the National Academies to assess issues of energy production and usage in the context of mitigating climate change.

We’re also embarking — under the leadership of one of those technical leaders — on an effort around sustainability in commercial operations and residential living, which involves among other things reducing carbon footprints and using less materials for construction and daily living. Engineering for sustainability will be a theme we will focus on over the next several years.

Of course, many NAE members are involved in various National Academies studies related to climate change. In my discussions with our members, climate change is raised as one of the most important challenges that we must address — along with pandemics.

• NAE 2021 Annual Meeting website