Greg, cc List and Dr. Fuss (Lead author)
1. I understand your unhappiness with Dr. Fuss’ “Betting on Negative
Emissions” article under discussion; there is a surprising emphasis on BECCS.
We are probably in agreement that there are too-few articles that compare the
many CDR (on this list, but in this article: “NET”) approaches.
2. But I read many favorable aspects in this article - which I see as
using BECCS mainly as an example of the problems that most (but not all)
CDR/NET approaches have. Here are some quotes to show that the article is not
only pushing BECCS:
a. “Importantly, some of the non-CO2 emissions (for example,
CH4 and N2O from agriculture) will be very difficult to mitigate completely, as
will some CO2 emissions from industry and transportation below which mitigation
will be economically and technically very difficult1 "
b. Concerning the capture and storage portion of the BECCS
chain, the International Energy Agency’s CCS roadmap clearly illustrates that
huge efforts would be needed to achieve the scale of CCS (both fossil fuel
emissions CCS and BECCS) foreseen in current stabilization scenarios, as
publicly supported demonstration programs are still struggling to deliver
actual large-scale projects13 "
c. "Policymakers will need a much more complete
picture of negative emissions than what is currently at hand. Issues of
governance and behavioural transformations need to be better understood. The
reliance of current scenarios on negative emissions, despite very limited
knowledge, calls for a major new transdisciplinary research agenda to (1)
examine consistent narratives for the potential of implementing and managing
negative emissions, (2) estimate uncertainties and feedbacks within the
socio-institutional, techno-economic and Earth system dimensions, and (3) offer
guidance on how to act under the remaining uncertainties. Similarly,
technological and institutional roadmaps, and rapid implementation of pilot
projects are needed to test feasibility and understand the barriers to
technological development. “
3. The final paragraph is not extolling BECCS:
“The development of consistent negative emissions narratives is
not a call for large- scale BECCS deployment, but a call to carefully and
quickly assess all dimensions of its use for climate stabilization. Determining
how safe it is to bet on negative emissions in the second half of this century
to avoid dangerous climate change should be among our top priorities. "
4. And there are positives for all CDR/NETs, including your and my
favorites:
“….the mitigation pathways to 2100 excluding negative emissions
technologies are all substantially more expensive than the pathways including
those technologies6,14,15
5. But this next shows they have not yet studied enough CDR/NET
approaches:
“Therefore, any CO2 removal strategy requires an
extraordinary global regulatory framework taking into account national economic
conditions. “
(I don’t believe will ever be true for biochar and
afforestation/reforestation, and is certainly not now true, which are
proceeding quite rapidly, gerally without even local regulatory frameworks.)
6. Also the article is helpful to all CDR/NET approaches by focussing
on the many modeling studies which have found a need for CDR.
7. So in sum, this seems a positive contribution, that only suffers
by extrapolating too much from considering a single CDR/NET approach: BECCS.
This is somewhat understandable, because of the huge resources that have gone
into the CCS area (with not much yet to show for the effort - as they point out
in my 2 b) with the word “struggling”.
8. The best place I have found for attempting to include all CDR/NET
approaches with a fair hand is the Noah Deich blog:
https://carbonremoval.wordpress.com/ which I recommend to others analyzing the
future of the CDR/NET option
Ron
On Dec 23, 2014, at 3:31 PM, Greg Rau <[email protected]> wrote:
> To quote the article:
> "Actions that could stabilize climate as
> desired include the deliberate removal
> of CO2 from the atmosphere by human
> intervention — called here ‘negative
> emissions’. Along with afforestation, the
> production of sustainable bioenergy with
> carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is
> explicitly being put forth as an important
> mitigation option by the majority of
> integrated assessment model (IAM)
> scenarios aimed at keeping warming
> below 2 °C in the IPCC’s fifth assessment
> report (AR5)6. Indeed, in these scenarios,
> IAMs often foresee absorption of CO2 via
> BECCS up to (and in some cases exceeding)
> 1,000 Gt CO2 over the course of the
> century7, effectively doubling the available
> carbon quota.
> BECCS is the negative emissions
> technology most widely selected by IAMs to
> meet the requirements of temperature limits
> of 2 °C and below. It is based on assumed
> carbon-neutral bioenergy (that is, the same
> amount of CO2 is sequestered at steady state
> by biomass feedstock growth as is released
> during energy generation), combined with
> capture of CO2 produced by combustion
> and its subsequent storage in geological or
> ocean repositories. In other words, BECCS is
> a net transfer of CO2 from the atmosphere,
> through the biosphere, into geological
> layers, providing in addition a non-fossil
> fuel source of energy...." etc.
>
> My comment: Great - let's again prematurely crown the winning technology and
> pin the success or failure of negative emissions entirely on BECCS, just as
> the singleminded pursuit of CCS has completely stalled point source CO2
> mitigation. If conventional CCS is too costly and too risky for existing
> power plants, it will be for BE as well. Expensively making supercritical CO2
> from dilute flue gas, putting it in the ground, and hoping it stays there is
> one of many ways to mitigate CO2, and in my opinion the least obvious. Given
> what is at stake, how about a broader and more inclusive initial advocacy of
> negative emissions technology? We can narrow down the focus as research
> identifies the highest capacity and most cost effective methods. For example
> why ask technologies that only work on <30% of the Earth surface area (and
> compete with existing food and fiber production) to do 100% of the CDR? Under
> the circumstances, do we really want to potentially bet the planet on BECCS
> (and CCS) to the exclusion of the (many) other ideas being discussed?
>
> Greg
>
>
> From: Andrew Lockley <[email protected]>
> To: geoengineering <[email protected]>
> Sent: Monday, December 22, 2014 3:56 PM
> Subject: [geo] Fuss, Sabine; et al. (2014): Betting on negative emissions
>
> Fuss, Sabine; et al. (2014): Betting on negative emissions
> Attached
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