@BPC_Bipartisan and EFI report about carbon removal

[Andrew Lockley]

Read the @BPC_Bipartisan and EFI report about carbon removal here: https://t.co/3ie1rFz8oE 

KEY FINDINGS

• Federal agencies have historically funded some carbon removal-related RD&D projects in all of the major categories 

recommended in the NASEM report; however, that funding has been scattered and piecemeal as the United States does 

not have a dedicated research program for carbon removal.

• Historical funding was concentrated by carbon removal category in carbon sequestration—approximately one-half 

(49 percent) of estimated federal funding for about 20 percent of the total projects identified in the bottom-up analysis.b

• Slightly more than half of the remaining historical funding—$1,879.5 million—was targeted to various forms of terrestrial 

and biological carbon capture.

• Very little funding was invested historically in other technologically enhanced forms of carbon removal—for example, 

$10.9 million total (spanning an 11-year period) for direct air capture and $24.7 million total (over a 17-year period) 

for research on carbon mineralization. 

For all categories of carbon removal-related RD&D, the historical baseline investments were significantly lower than the future 

funding levels recommended in the NASEM report. Figure 1 displays historical RD&D investment levels identified in the analysis 

along with the NASEM recommended future levels for each major category of carbon removal. Note that these two sets of data 

are not directly comparable. While the NASEM committee was generally aware of many of the historical carbon removal-related 

RD&D activities, it did not have detailed available data on historical investment levels, as shown in Figure 1. Consequently, the 

NASEM report identified recommended future funding levels for various elements of the carbon removal-related RD&D portfolio 

that are primarily in addition to existing levels, but it did not make any assumptions as to what a future baseline spending level 

might be in the absence of the report recommendations. Similarly, the fact that this analysis was able to identify in some detail 

the historical levels of investment in carbon removal-related RD&D should not be viewed as a future budget baseline funding level 

in the absence of affirmative congressional action on the fiscal year (FY) 2020 (and future) budgets. Nonetheless, comparing the 

historical levels of investment with recommended future funding levels does illustrate the scale of future funding challenges to 

the implementation of the NASEM report. The challenges are particularly acute for implementing the NASEM recommendations for 

RD&D on direct air capture, mineralization, and coastal and oceans carbon removal:

• NASEM-recommended future funding needs for direct air capture are 100 to 200 times the historical baseline level;

• NASEM-recommended future funding needs for carbon mineralization are nearly 30 times the historical baseline level;

• NASEM-recommended future funding needs for coastal and oceans carbon removal-related research are nearly 30 times 

the historical baseline level; and 

• Even in the categories of terrestrial and bioenergy and geologic sequestration, the future funding levels recommended in 

the NASEM report represent significantly higher future funding levels compared with the historical baseline estimates.

[Greg Rau]

Thanks Andrew. Interesting report and breakdown of US gov spending on CDR. E.g., can anyone explain why spending on CDR peaked in 2009, while interest in CDR has increased exponetially since then (I tried to prove this by looking at the historical frequency of "carbon dioxide removal" on Google Ngram, but they apparently stopped ingesting data sometime after 2010): 

Anyway, no wonder CDRers have turned to the private sector. 

There is also a bit of revisionist history. EFI claims that $44M has been spent on ocean and coastal  CDR and that NASEM recommended increasing funding rates on this topic by nearly 30X. In fact NASEM (or their funders) explicitly excluded ocean CDR from consideration, chosing to focus only on Blue Carbon - coastal macrophyte CDR, which as they and others have shown has relatively little CDR capacity. It was only in the more recent EFI CDR report that this was rectified, recommending $1.75B be invested in coastal and ocean CDR over the next 10 year, in contrast to NASEM's $1.2B/20yr exclusively for Blue Carbon. Why did EFI downplay their own budget recommendations in favor of NASEM's?

It is also curious that NOAA, presumably the primary agency for marine CDR, is completely absent in the historical spending record, but then is suddenly given as much as 14% of NASEM's total recommended CDR budget, exclusively for Blue Carbon. That's some seriously effective lobbying given the limited CDR potential offered.

Greg     

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