Reckless or righteous? Reviewing the sociotechnical benefits and risks of climate change geoengineering

[Benjamin Sovacool]

Dear fellow energy, climate, or sustainability colleagues,

 

Some of you may have heard recently about “geoengineering” options such as negative emissions technologies (NETs), greenhouse gas removal (GGR), or carbon dioxide removal (CDR). These options all seek to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it safely in biological or geological sinks.  Or, the National Academies in the United States just published a very recent report on other climate intervention techniques for reflecting sunlight back into space via solar radiation management (SRM), including stratospheric aerosol injection or artificially brightening clouds.

 

Despite concerns about these options, they are increasingly being discussed as crucial complements to traditional climate or energy policy. Others however routinely dismiss such options as a distraction from mitigation, or even as a potential moral hazard that induces complacency in reducing emissions. Given how controversial but also important this debate has become, it’s my pleasure to share with you a recent review looking at both sides.  It’s fully open access and was just published in Energy Strategy Reviews:

 

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2211467X21000420

 

This work is funded by a very new European Research Council (ERC) project called GENIE, which launched a few days ago.  My core partners are Prof. Jan Minx at MCC in Berlin and Keywan Riahi at IIASA in Austria, with support from Greg Nemet at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. We will be continuing to explore this topic for the next six years (see https://genie-erc.github.io for more).

 

Wishing everyone a fantastic week ahead,

 

Benjamin