Re: [CDR] Re: "Silver bullet to suck CO2 from air and halt climate change ruled out"

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Greg Rau

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Feb 19, 2018, 6:02:21 PM2/19/18
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Via Andrew Lockley:  another take on the EASAC report:

"Not only do the NETs investigated in the report fail to reach the level of carbon removal predicted in some climate scenarios, the time taken between researching new technologies and successfully implementing them will take decades. If NETs are seen as a viable solution to climate change, they could influence policy makers to focus on these rather than to prioritise the more urgent need to curb emissions."

GR - It will certainly take more than decades (if ever) to research and implement CDR with this kind of ringing endorsement for technologies that the IPCC et al clearly view an essential complement (rather than a threat) to emissions reduction in stopping climate change. How/why do such policy disconnects happen?




From: Peter Eisenberger <peter.ei...@gmail.com>
To: Leon Di Marco <len...@gmail.com>
Cc: Carbon Dioxide Removal <CarbonDiox...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 6, 2018 6:21 PM
Subject: Re: [CDR] Re: "Silver bullet to suck CO2 from air and halt climate change ruled out"

Hi All,

I am no way saying that we should not do research on CDR -we should and the more the better - what I am saying similr to Leon  that we have at the moment only one CDR that has the capability to scale to level and low if non existent risks of unintended consequences with plausible claims it can even stimulate economc development and help the developing countries meet the needs of their people. So all I am saying is that work done by DAC companies and the great need and potential means we should move into the development phase of DAC with both public and private support. It makes no sense to me in the presence of a threat to wait for other option to emerge, When that happens I will be the first to support moving those to the development stage as well. The one I feel is the closest  is mineral sequestration but it's net cost impact will be greater if the DAC capability to sequester in valuable materials construction right where they are needed. So I would support increased research on that option which I note currently gets more pulic support than DAC because Dac gets zero. 

Peter  

On Tue, Feb 6, 2018 at 3:13 AM, Leon Di Marco <len...@gmail.com> wrote:
As part of his disclosure, Peter may be prepared to open his Columbia course tools to allow others to explore his analysis - that would be very beneficial not only for the CDR Study but also for the wider global R&D discussion, and could be in the form of a teaching paper

There should really not be an issue with DAC being the front runner as it will be the benchmark and pathfinder.   If other proposals are said to match DAC at scale or have other benefits then they will have to offer a similar level of disclosure and techno economic analysis.   There are other schemes around, as Greg has outlined, but they have been publicised and usually belong to the class of versions of a given technique  rather than being original.

Although R&D are usually lumped together,  both R and D cover a wide range, and, as with other technologies, the requirement for further R into  DAC etc is a separate issue to their need for D.    The program / study  should recognise that.
LDM


On Friday, February 2, 2018 at 4:05:03 AM UTC, Greg Rau wrote:



"“You can rule out a silver bullet,” said Prof John Shepherd, at the University of Southampton, UK, and an author of the report. “Negative emissions technologies are very interesting but they are not an alternative to deep and rapid emissions reductions. These remain the safest and most reliable option that we have.”
The new report is from the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), which advises the European Union and is comprised of the national science academies of the 28 member states. It warns that relying on NETs instead of emissions cuts could fail and result in severe global warming and “serious implications for future generations”.” 
"The report assesses the range of possible technologies, including “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS), on which the IPCC scenarios rely heavily. BECCS involves growing trees, which take CO2 from the atmosphere, and then burning them to produce electricity while capturing the emissions and burying them.
But Prof Michael Norton, EASAC’s programme director and another author of the report, said: “There are severe drawbacks.” These include the huge amount of land needed and the energy need to produce and deliver the fuel. Furthermore, it could worsen the enormous loss of wildlife – the sixth mass extinction – already occurring. “The biodiversity impact at the colossal scale envisaged would be severe,” Norton said.” 

GR- Few have suggested NETs are going to singlehandedly solve the climate problem, but then apparently neither will emissions reduction. So we need both to succeed; if NETs fails so does effective atmospheric (and ocean) C management (IPCC et al.). Under these dire circumstances it is time to more broadly and open-mindedly solicit and evaluate our options (e.g., geochemistry, marine, hybrid bio-geochem approaches, etc), instead of assuming that current favorites like BECCS are/will be the only game in town.  Relative to R&D investment, CCS has seriously failed to deliver it's share of emissions reduction. Why can we expect a different outcome when it’s applied to negative emissions?   


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Leon Di Marco

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Feb 19, 2018, 6:37:27 PM2/19/18
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I have just heard from John Shepherd that the EASAC NETs committee had no choice but to have regard to the prior APS report findings on DAC but it still isnt clear why the EASAC report wasnt more positive about the potential of NETs in general  - more later
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Leon Di Marco

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Feb 20, 2018, 12:58:43 PM2/20/18
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expert reaction to new report on Negative Emission Technologies

The European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) has published a new report that examines the future of negative emission technologies and whether they can really help us tackle climate change.

A briefing accompanied this roundup.

 

Prof. Andrew Watson FRS, Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Exeter, said:

“Their main conclusion is that while some of the technologies for removing CO2 from the atmosphere may have a role to play in reducing climate change, all have drawbacks that mean it will be difficult to use them at the very large scale that would be necessary to make a real difference. So our main focus and best hope for avoiding the worst effects of climate change still needs to be reducing our emissions.”

 

Prof. Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford, said:

“The report re-emphasises, with admirable thoroughness, what everyone knows: we won’t stop the world warming until we work out a way of disposing of carbon dioxide without dumping it in the atmosphere. The only alternative, banning the citizens of India of the 2080s from touching their coal reserves, is neither just nor practicable. Yet the press release picks up only on the “limited potential” of CO2 disposal, giving everyone an excuse to continue cling to the comfort-blanket of more conventional mitigation options. The report also ignores recent innovative policy ideas that might make large-scale CO2 disposal a reality. There is only one institution in the world with the capital, expertise and resources to dispose of CO2 on the necessary scale, and that is the fossil fuel industry. We have to work out how to give it the incentive to do so.”

 

Dr Phil Renforth, Lecturer in the School of Earth and Ocean Sciences at Cardiff University, said:

“Negative emission technologies only make sense in a world in which emissions are nose diving towards zero, so the EASAC’s call for a commitment to strong and rapid mitigation is reasonable. However, waiting until emissions reach zero before researching negative emissions is a dangerous gamble, one that may commit us to excess atmospheric CO2 without scalable methods to remove it.”

 

Dr Phil Williamson, Associate Fellow at the University of East Anglia, said:

“The EASAC report is scientifically sound and politically important.  Its main message is clear enough: don’t put off the clean-up for fifty years, as is currently the case in most emission-scenarios that avoid climate chaos.  Yet the report’s conclusions are also more nuanced, recognising that the complete cessation of greenhouse gas emissions from human activities is impossible, since many sources and gases are involved – not just CO2 from fossil fuels.  So some removal will be required.  The key issues are now of scale: the scaling-down of the unrealistic use of negative emissions in climate models, and the scaling-up of ambition to achieve net zero emissions, as rapidly as possible.”

 

* ‘Negative emission technologies: What role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?’ will be published by the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) on Wednesday 31 January. 

 

Declared interests

None received.


On Monday, February 19, 2018 at 11:02:21 PM UTC, Greg Rau wrote:
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