Monat: September 2021

Peer-reviewed Publications

Tamme, Eve; Beck, Larissa Lee (2021): European Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy: Current Status and Future Opportunities

Tamme, Eve; Beck, Larissa Lee (2021): European Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy: Current Status and Future Opportunities. In Front. Clim. 3, p. 2. DOI: 10.3389/fclim.2021.682882.

„Over the past two years, the European Union, Norway, Iceland, and the UK have increased climate ambition and aggressively pushed forward an agenda to pursue climate neutrality or net-zero emissions by mid-century. This increased ambition, partly the result of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s landmark findings on limiting global warming to 1.5°C, has also led to a renewed approach to and revitalized debate about the role of carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal. With increasing climate ambition, including a mid-century climate neutrality goal for the whole European Union, the potential role of technological carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is emerging as one of the critical points of debate among NGOs, policymakers, and the private sector. Policymakers are starting to discuss how to incentivize a CDR scale-up. What encompasses the current debate, and how does it relate to CDR technologies‘ expected role in reaching climate neutrality? This perspective will highlight that policy must fill two gaps: the accounting and the commercialization gap for the near-term development of a comprehensive CDR policy framework. It will shine a light on the current status of negative emission technologies and the role of carbon capture and storage in delivering negative emissions in Europe’s decarbonized future. It will also analyze the role of carbon markets, including voluntary markets, as potential incentives while exploring policy pathways for a near-term scale-up.“

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Clery, Diarmaid S.; et al. (2021): Bringing greenhouse gas removal down to earth: Stakeholder supply chain appraisals reveal complex challenges

Clery, Diarmaid S.; Vaughan, Naomi E.; Forster, Johanna; Lorenzoni, Irene; Gough, Clair A.; Chilvers, Jason (2021): Bringing greenhouse gas removal down to earth: Stakeholder supply chain appraisals reveal complex challenges. In Global Environmental Change 71 (6309), p. 102369. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2021.102369.

„Greenhouse gas removal (GGR) approaches are considered essential in several projections to meet the climate mitigation ambition of the Paris Agreement. Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and afforestation are included extensively in mitigation scenarios but there are concerns about the feasibility of these approaches. This was explored with stakeholders from industry, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and policy who were involved in interviews and a one-day participatory workshop. Multicriteria mapping (MCM) methodology was used to appraise the ‘real-world’ feasibility of four specific greenhouse gas removal supply chains at a granular level in the UK context.“

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Jobs

Job: Senior Program Officer, Nature Based Innovations (Verra)

No Deadline

„Verra is a global leader helping to tackle the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges. As a mission-driven non-profit organization, Verra is committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, improving livelihoods, and protecting natural resources across the private and public sectors. We support climate action and sustainable development with standards, tools, and programs that credibly, transparently, and robustly assess environmental and social impacts and enable funding for sustaining and scaling up projects that verifiably deliver these benefits. We work in any arena where we see a need for clear standards, a role for market-based mechanisms, and an opportunity to generate significant environmental and social value.[…] Verra’s Innovations Team is looking for a Senior Program Officer to support our work to cultivate climate impact and generate related environmental and social benefits through the VCS Program.“

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Jackson, Robert B.; et al. (2021): Atmospheric methane removal: a research agenda

Jackson, Robert B.; Abernethy, Sam; Canadell, Josep G.; Cargnello, Matteo; Davis, Steven J.; Féron, Sarah et al. (2021): Atmospheric methane removal: a research agenda. In Philos Trans A Math Phys Eng Sci 379 (2210), p. 20200454. DOI: 10.1098/rsta.2020.0454.

„Atmospheric methane removal (e.g. in situ methane oxidation to carbon dioxide) may be needed to offset continued methane release and limit the global warming contribution of this potent greenhouse gas. Because mitigating most anthropogenic emissions of methane is uncertain this century, and sudden methane releases from the Arctic or elsewhere cannot be excluded, technologies for methane removal or oxidation may be required. Carbon dioxide removal has an increasingly well-established research agenda and technological foundation. No similar framework exists for methane removal. We believe that a research agenda for negative methane emissions—‘removal‘ or atmospheric methane oxidation—is needed. We outline some considerations for such an agenda here, including a proposed Methane Removal Model Intercomparison Project (MR-MIP).“

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Calls

Call for Participation: IGES–FAO survey on estimation of carbon stock changes in mineral soils in national greenhouse gas (GHG) inventories

„Soils constitute the biggest carbon pool in terrestrial ecosystems and can have a significant contribution to climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. However, the estimation and reporting of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, especially from mineral soils, is very limited. Currently, countries face significant challenges in reporting carbon stock changes and associated CO2 emissions from mineral soils even when using the basic methodological level (tier 1). This is true for a wide range of countries, both developed and developing. Thus, it is worthwhile to understand the reasons behind the incomplete reporting by countries in order to have more targeted actions towards filling the gaps. For this reason, FAO and IGES are launching the survey on “Estimation of carbon stock changes in mineral soils in national greenhouse gas inventories. The survey focuses on understanding the existing technical capacity and the main challenges in estimating carbon stock changes (CSCs) and associated CO2 emissions/removals in mineral soils due to land use/management and their changes on managed land. In addition, the survey explores whether soil scientist/experts are collaborating in this process, as well as their awareness of the topic, data needs and methodologies. The survey refers to technical experts working on estimating CSCs in mineral soils due to land use, management/changes and CO2 emissions/removals from the carbon pool; and to soil scientist/experts working on producing data and knowledge on this topic. The survey requires 5 minutes and it will be available from 21 September to 8 October 2021.“

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Vella, Karen; et al. (2021): Challenges and opportunities for assisted regional ecosystem adaptation: International experience and implications for adaptation research

Vella, Karen; Baresi, Umberto; Lockie, Stewart; Taylor, Bruce (2021): Challenges and opportunities for assisted regional ecosystem adaptation: International experience and implications for adaptation research. In PloS one 16 (9), e0257868. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0257868.

„Maintaining the functional integrity of ecosystems as climate pressures exceed natural rates of adaptation requires new knowledge and new approaches to governance and management. However, research into management interventions to assist regional ecosystem adaptation has generated both scientific and ethical debate. This paper reviews experience to date in order to identify the challenges and opportunities for assisted regional ecosystem adaptation and reflect on the implications for ongoing adaptation research. The review was informed by a database and structured analysis of some 450 reports, peer-reviewed manuscripts and books on participation theory and experience with novel technology development and assisted ecosystem adaptation. We identified five classes of challenges to adaptation research: 1) scientific conflicts and debates over the “facts”, 2) social challenges, 3) governance challenges, 4) epistemic challenges, and 5) ontological conflicts. We argue that engagement strategies linked to the multiple objectives of adaptation research provide opportunities for ecosystem adaptation.“

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Peer-reviewed Publications

Kuswanto, Heri; et al. (2021): Impact of Solar Geoengineering on Temperatures over the Indonesian Maritime Continent

Kuswanto, Heri; Kravitz, Ben; Miftahurrohmah, Brina; Fauzi, Fatkhurokhman; Sopahaluwaken, Ardhasena; Moore, John (2021): Impact of Solar Geoengineering on Temperatures over the Indonesian Maritime Continent. In Int J Climatol. DOI: 10.1002/joc.7391.

„Climate change has been projected to increase the intensity and magnitude of extreme temperature in Indonesia. Solar radiation management (SRM) has been proposed as a strategy to temporarily combat global warming, buying time for negative emissions. Though the global impacts of SRM have been extensively studied in recent years, regional impacts, especially in the tropics, have received much less attention. This paper investigates the potential stratospheric sulfate aerosol injection (SAI) to modify mean and extreme temperature, as well as the relative humidity and wet bulb temperature (WBT) change over Indonesian Maritime Continent (IMC) based on simulations from three different earth system models. We applied a simple downscaling method and corrected the bias of model output to reproduce historical temperatures and relative humidity over IMC. We evaluated changes in Geoengineering Model Intercomparison Project (GeoMIP) experiment G4, an SAI experiment in 5 Tg of SO2 into the equatorial lower stratosphere between 2020 and 2069, concurrent with the RCP4.5 emissions scenario.“

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