Mark and list:
I am sympathetic to the “M” idea, but guess we have to rely on the US
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to somehow try to bring agencies together
for “multi-issue” activities. (Apologies to non-US list members for sticking
here at first with ways that the US can take on its research program from its
global-leading heritage carbon.)
ARPA-E has done well as a relatively new part of our Department of
Energy (DoE) and could be a model for an ARPA-C. But it is modeled after
DARPA, where the “D” stands for “Defense” - as in DoD. I know of no-one who
has been critical of DARPA.
But which agency would be in charge of an ARPA-C? My experience is
that our DoE has very limited capability to do it. EPA is out for the new
Congress. Biochar is nominally under USDA - but really little happening there.
And biochar is a poster-child for needing multi-issues (food being one example
- that is dominant over carbon removal in biochar publications, though in zero
conflict.)
So, I suggest we also consider pushing DARPA-C, not ARPA-C. That is,
the US has no “Carbon” agency - and none seems likely with our new Congress.
But we do have one agency that has made VERY serious statements about carbon
and climate - DoD.
Our 2015 projected DoD budget is very close to $1/2 trillion. I
believe it would be hard for the next Congress to fight against a DoD request
to divert 0.2% ($1 billion - 10 times the $100 million below) to a new DARPA-C
program.
Re other countries: There seem to be plenty of cooperative efforts
between many militaries - and they all probably know lots about the R&D
programs of potential threat countries. So maybe we can stretch the recent
US-China climate agreements into preparedness “joint C exercises” and
hard-fought competitions. And soon bring in the Russians? I guess that a
good many militaries besides that of the US have been thinking about global
warming.
Ron (Not really expecting this to happen - but stressing here the US lack of
a coordinated C-bureaucracy - and that our military seems to already have an
interest, budget, and political capabilities to pull a C-coup off. I can
probably agree with a critique that there would be a little waste as well.)
On Nov 18, 2014, at 8:24 PM, <[email protected]>
<[email protected]> wrote:
> Humanity needs an ARPA-M (for multi-issue) more than humanity needs an ARPA-C.
>
> Humans have a powerful tendency to compartmentalize issues, problems, and
> solutions. Compartmentalizing is working against us for a big slow (by human
> time) issue like Climate Change. When humans do something on a big scale,
> like emitting 30 billion tons of fossil CO2 in a year, or increasing their
> number toward 10 billion, the causes and effects cover many issues: water,
> energy, food, the economy, ocean chemistry, sea level, ...
>
> The U.S. DOE and the ARPA's follow the human tendency to carefully organize
> research to avoid overlap and focus each Funding Opportunity Announcement
> (FOA) in a very narrow way. Proposals which address the issue in ways too
> novel for the DOE project team, or with a new approach in a "forbidden zone"
> or addressing more issues than mentioned in the FOA are typically
> "non-responsive" or "out of scope."
>
> This isn't just U.S. DOE. Look at the fragmentation of "contests" in MIT's
> Climate CoLab. Or the way XPrize structures their contests.
>
> If you want a carbon removal process which can scale to a few tens of
> billions of tons of CO2 per year, you really want a managed ecosystem.
> Something humanity can sustain for a couple centuries on the scale of
> agriculture or the fossil fuel industry. There are so many competing needs
> at that scale the carbon removal system needs to address at least some of
> those other needs: water, energy, food, jobs, the economy, ...
>
> Mark
>
> Mark E. Capron, PE
> Ventura, California
> www.PODenergy.org
>
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: [geo] ARPA-C: How an Advanced Research Projects Agency for
> Carbon could Catalyze Development of the CDR Field | Everything and the
> Carbon Sink
> From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
> Date: Tue, November 18, 2014 2:46 pm
> To: geoengineering <[email protected]>
>
> http://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/2014/11/18/arpa-c-how-an-advanced-research-projects-agency-for-carbon-could-catalyze-development-of-the-cdr-field/
> Everything and the Carbon Sink
> Noah Deich's blog on all things Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
> ARPA-C: How an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Carbon could Catalyze
> Development of the CDR Field
> NOVEMBER 18, 2014
> It has recently become clear that “negative” emissions technologies will
> likely prove a critical component for preventing climate change. Take, for
> example, the following sentence from Chapter 6 of the IPCC’s Working Group 3
> latest Assessment Report on Climate Change:
> “The large majority of scenarios produced in the literature that reach
> roughly 450 ppm CO2eq by 2100 arecharacterized by concentration overshoot
> facilitated by the deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies.”
> The majority of the scenarios that keep the planet below 2 degrees C of
> warming (blue line) involve billion+ tonne scale deployments of negative
> emissions AND full decarbonization of the economy by the end of the century
> [source].
> While CDR technologies have been thrust into prominence in the climate change
> debate, a major problem remains: currently, no CDR technologies exist that
> are scientifically, technically, and economically proven at the billion+
> tonne scale required to prevent climate change.
> Lots of CDR approaches are under development, but none have clearly
> demonstrated the potential to provide negative emissions at the billion+
> tonne scale in a sustainable and economically viable way.
> What’s more, CDR technologies will require significant amounts of investment
> not just in R&D but also in markets to support these technologies once they
> mature. And government agencies, philanthropies, and private businesses alike
> are failing to make these necessary investments today.Above: Solar PV is just
> now beginning to be cost competitive with fossil energy — its development has
> taken decades of R&D for both technologies and markets. Source: Bloomberg New
> Energy Finance.So how might we remedy this market failure and kickstart the
> development of CDR technologies?
> One way would be to create an “ARPA-C”, or an Advanced Research Project
> Agency for Carbon. Right now, the private sector cannot find investment cases
> for CDR R&D, despite the fact that such investments would also generate
> immense social benefits — making the CDR field ideal for publicly-funded
> applied R&D. If an ARPA-C could fund CDR projects that result in technology
> cost reductions, advances in innovative business models, and better
> measurement and verification tools for would-be carbon removers, it could set
> the stage for follow-on investment by private sector companies to bring the
> CDR field to scale.A new ARPA-C would also be critical for giving the CDR
> field much needed boost in awareness. Right now existing ARPA agencies
> (including DARPA and ARPA-E) could fund a number of various CDR projects. But
> none of these existing agencies currently have the mandate to fund the full
> spectrum of CDR approaches that have been proposed (spanning the energy,
> agriculture, natural resources, manufacturing, and other sectors). Take
> ARPA-E’s mandate, for example:
> “The Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) advances
> high-potential, high-impact energytechnologies that are too early for
> private-sector investment…”
> Thinking about CDR beyond just the energy sector is critical for the field to
> develop effectively — and a dedicated ARPA-C would demonstrate the need to
> think about carbon removal in as systematic a manner as possible.An ARPA-C
> wouldn’t be without its challenges, however. Most importantly, ARPA-C would
> have to ensure that the goals it sets for itself are achievable. It is
> unlikely that many CDR approaches can develop into large-scale, commercially
> viable businesses within a few years — the commercialization pathway will
> likely take a long time. To help generate some quicker wins, a potential
> ARPA-C wouldn’t even necessarily have to fund technologies that are carbon
> negative today, as some of the companies with the greatest promise for
> negative emissions are only pursuing low-emissions (not negative-emissions)
> business models (like the direct air capture startup Climeworks, who has
> partnered with Audi to make carbon neutral synthetic diesel). If ARPA-C
> simply helps pave the pathway to a net negative carbon emitting economy, it
> would be a huge success in the fight against climate change.
> And even a small ARPA-C (with a budget in the $100MM range) could have
> massive positive impacts for the CDR field. At this early stage, small
> projects have the potential to generate large returns in helping the field
> prioritize where to focus short-term investments.So what is certain is that
> there is a great opportunity for an organization to kickstart the development
> of the CDR field today. And it’s not hard to imagine a new ARPA-C leading the
> way.
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "geoengineering" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to [email protected].
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>
> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
> "geoengineering" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an
> email to [email protected].
> To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
> Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"geoengineering" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
