Monat: August 2022

Global CCS Institute opens first regional headquarters in Masdar City (United Arab Emirates)

by Fareed Rahman on thenationalnews.com

„The Global Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Institute, an international think tank focused on carbon capture and storage technology, opened its first Middle East headquarters in Masdar City. […] The UAE became the first country in the Middle East and North Africa region last year to adopt a strategy to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. As part of its net-zero strategy, the UAE plans to invest Dh600bn ($163.37bn) in clean and renewable energy projects over the next three decades.“

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„This Startup Is Enhancing the Ocean’s Ability to Store Carbon, Reversing Acidification“

by Scarlett Buckley on sustainablebrands.com

„Ebb Carbon’s pioneering carbon-removal technology combines with electrochemistry to accelerate the ocean’s natural process of carbon removal, safely storing it for 10,000+ years, whilst simultaneously reducing ocean acidity […] The electrochemical process works by intercepting the saltwater that saltwater-treating facilities deposit back into the ocean and adjusting the electricity of its molecules — the salt and water molecules in saltwater are rearranged to produce acid and slightly alkaline saltwater solutions. When this alkaline saltwater returns to the ocean, a natural chemical reaction occurs — and CO2 is pulled out of the air and stored as bicarbonate.“

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„Shell sees its future in negative emissions“- Opinion

by Ina Möller, NRC Handelsblad (Dutch daily newspaper), published on Aug 18

How do Shell and the IPCC envision reaching global climate targets while still using fossil fuels? The answer to this question lies in the term ‘negative emissions’. Who has a right to these so-called ‘negative emissions‘, asks Ina Möller in this recent NRC Opinion article, which is the English translation of “Shell rekent zich rijk met negatieve emissies“. […] There is currently no consensus about what or whose emissions are considered ‘hard-to-abate’, and who has a right to continue emitting. And as long as individual companies like Shell claim such residual emissions for themselves, the limited capacity available for absorbing CO2 (a number that is still highly unclear), will no doubt be exceeded. It is therefore imperative that both modelers and policy makers are crystal clear about what they mean by residual emissions, and who they think has a right to claim these. Without a common understanding of how the pie should be divided, large emitters can continue to delay emissions reductions, and no-one can hold them accountable for it.“

Schwinger et al. [Preprint]: Emit now, mitigate later? Earth system reversibility under overshoots of different magnitude and duration

Jörg Schwinger, Ali Asaadi, Norman Julius Steinert, Hanna Lee IN: Earth Syst. Dynam. Discuss. [preprint], https://doi.org/10.5194/esd-2022-39, in review, 2022

Reversibility is, next to socio-economic feasibility and sustainability, key for assessing if carbon dioxide removal (CDR) could be considered to return the Earth system to a less dangerous state after a period of temperature overshoot above a level that is considered safe. The authors use a state-of-the-art Earth system model that includes a representation of permafrost carbon to investigate the reversibility of the Earth system after overshoots of different duration and magnitude in idealized simulations. They find that atmospheric CO2 concentrations are slightly lower after an overshoot, compared to a reference simulation without overshoot, due to a near-perfect compensation of carbon losses from land by increased ocean carbon uptake during the overshoot periods.

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Bui & Dowell (2022): Greenhouse Gas Removal Technologies

Editors: Mai Bui & Niall Mac Dowell, 22 Aug 2022, Royal Society of Chemistry, Print ISBN 978-1-83916-199-5, 502 pp., https://doi.org/10.1039/9781839165245

„This book provides the most up-to-date information on GGR technologies that provide removal of atmosphere CO2, giving insight into their role and value in achieving climate change mitigation targets. Chapters discuss the issues associated with commercial development and deployment of GGRs, providing potential approaches to overcome these hurdles through a combination of political, economic and R&D strategies. With contributions from leaders in the field, this title is an indispensable resource for graduate students and researchers in academia and industry, working in chemical engineering, mechanical engineering and energy policy.“

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Deutschland bereit zur CO2-Verpressung – in Norwegen

von Bernd Freytag in Frankfurter Allgemeine online, 30.8.22

Wintershall und Equinor wollen deutsche Treibhausgase via Pipeline direkt nach Norwegen bringen. Das Projekt wäre ein Meilenstein der Energiewende. […] Im Energiewendeland Deutschland ist CCS allerdings bis auf Versuchsanlagen verboten. Angst vor Leckagen, vor Erdbewegungen oder dem Freisetzen von Schadstoffen im Untergrund haben mehrfach zu Bürgerprotesten und dem Stopp von Versuchsanlagen geführt. Dabei emittiert kein Land in Europa mehr Kohlendioxid als Deutschland. Aus diesem Dilemma versuchen nun der deutsche Energiekonzern Wintershall Dea und der norwegische Energieriese Equinor ein Geschäft zu beiderseitigem Nutzen zu machen. Die Vision: das Land mit dem größten Kohlendioxidausstoß mit dem potentiell größten Speicherland in Europa via Pipeline zu verbinden.“

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TotalEnergies: Northern Lights signs first deal to store CO2 in Norway

on Reuters.com

„TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA) on Monday unveiled a commercial agreement to transport and store CO2 captured from Yara Sluiskil, an ammonia and fertilizer plant in the Netherlands, in the Norwegian continental shelf. Under the agreement which TotalEnergies said was the first of its kind worldwide, some 800,000 tons of CO2 per year will be captured, compressed, and liquefied in the Netherlands and then transported to the Northern Lights site in Norway from 2025.“

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Deploy variety of carbon-removal methods to make Florida more resilient to climate change | Opinion

by Laura Stieghorst on miamiherald.com

„No single approach to removing carbon will be large enough. We must combine many carbon removal strategies and aggressively cut CO2 pollution to protect Florida against climate change. […] But in order to grab this opportunity with both hands, we need our lawmakers in Congress to step up. Bipartisan support for carbon removal already exists, and advocates for a healthy climate, such as U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz, can take it to the next level. We need increased funding for research, development and early deployment of CDR strategies across government agencies, including the Department of Energy, Department of Agriculture and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration….“

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