http://www.technologyreview.com/news/544551/paris-climate-agreement-rests-on-shaky-technological-foundations/?utm_campaign=newsletters&utm_source=newsletter-weekly-energy&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20151221
"Simply put, the technology for separating carbon dioxide from power-plant emissions—not to mention the infrastructure to transport it and store it underground—is too expensive and too cumbersome for commercial deployment. While there is intriguing research going on, there is no prospect on the immediate horizon for making it economical. Equally fanciful are visions of “afforestation”<http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/14/climate-expert-calls-for-decarbonisation-tech-to-help-meet-paris-targets>—planting large forests to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere. The Australian climate scientist and author Tim Flannery has estimated that it would take a forest four times the size of the Australian continent<http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/cop21-the-global-warming-targets-agreed-in-paris-will-drive-a-carbon-capture-revolution-a6771136.html> to make even a small dent in atmospheric carbon. In its 2014 Emissions Gap Report<http://www.unep.org/publications/ebooks/emissionsgapreport2014/portals/50268/pdf/EGR2014_LOWRES.pdf>, the U.N.’s Environmental Panel came to a similar conclusion: “Theoretically, carbon uptake or net negative emissions could be achieved by extensive reforestation and forest growth, or by schemes that combine bioenergy use with carbon capture and storage. But the feasibility of such large-scale schemes is still uncertain.” That means any international climate scheme founded on these technologies is uncertain at best. It’s entirely reasonable to hope for rapid advances in energy storage and nuclear power over the next couple of decades. But if we rely on capturing carbon from power plants and removing it from the atmosphere to accomplish our climate goals, those hopes are likely to be dashed." True, the technologies required to stay below 2 deg C are currently uncertain, the most egregious of these being CCS. So isn't this a clarion call for a much broader solicitation and testing of additional carbon management ideas? At the end of the day there may be no cost-effective, safe and quickly deployable technological solutions, but this outcome will be guaranteed as long as CCS, afforestation and BECCS continue to be peddled as the only "winning" approaches worth pursuing. Greg -- 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 geoengineering+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to geoengineering@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/geoengineering. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
