Tag: negative emissions

Some nations want to remove more pollution than they produce. That will take giving nature a boost

by David Keyton on apnews.com, December 11, 2023

“As countries at the COP28 climate talks are wrangling over ways to lower their greenhouse gas emissions, a Danish-led group of countries has decided to set the ultimate goal: to remove more carbon dioxide, the main source of global warming, from the atmosphere than they emit. The Group of Negative Emitters was launched Sunday in Dubai by Denmark, Finland and Panama, and aims to reach that goal by slashing emissions, protecting and expanding forests, and investing in new technologies. Panama has already reached the goal with its vast forests that act as a huge carbon sink. Finland and Denmark hope to achieve this by 2035 and 2045, respectively.”

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Nature – Lei et al. (2023): Global iron and steel plant CO2 emissions and carbon-neutrality pathways

Tianyang Lei, Daoping Wang, Shijun Ma, Weichen Zhao, Can Cui, Jing Meng, Xiang Yu, Qiang Zhang, Shu Tao, Dabo Guan IN: Nature; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06486-7

The highly energy-intensive iron and steel industry contributed about 25% of global industrial CO2 emissions in 2019 and is therefore critical for climate-change mitigation. Here the authors develop a CO2 emissions inventory of 4,883 individual iron and steel plants along with their technical characteristics, including processing routes and operating details (status, age, operation-years etc.). They identify and match appropriate emission-removal or zero-emission technologies to specific possessing routes, or what the authors define thereafter as a techno-specific decarbonization road map for every plant.

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Almaraz et al. (2023): Model-based scenarios for achieving net negative emissions in the food system

Maya Almaraz, Benjamin Z. Houlton , Michael Clark, Iris Holzer, Yanqiu Zhou, Laura Rasmussen, Emily Moberg, Erin Manaigo, Benjamin S. Halpern, Courtney Scarborough, Xin Gen Lei, Melissa Ho, Edward Allison, Lindiwe Sibanda, Andrew Salter IN: PLOS Climate, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pclm.0000181

Consumers, technology innovation, industry, and agricultural practices offer various degrees of opportunity to reduce emissions and remove CO2. However, a question remains as to whether food system transformation can achieve net negative emissions (i.e., where GHG sinks exceed sources sector wide) and what the capacity of the different levers may be. The authors use a global food system model to explore the influence of consumer choice, climate-smart agro-industrial technologies, and food waste reductions for achieving net negative emissions for the year 2050. 

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Städtebau soll klimafreundlich werden

sueddeutsche.de, 12. September, 18:28 Uhr

“Nairobi (dpa) – Der Bausektor könnte einem Bericht zufolge bis 2050 weltweit klimaneutral werden. Möglich sei dies, wenn Material gespart, Baustoffe wie Beton und Stahl klimafreundlicher hergestellt und zudem mehr nachwachsende Rohstoffe genutzt würden. Das betont ein am Dienstag veröffentlichter Bericht des UN-Umweltprogramms (UNEP) und des Zentrums für Ökosysteme und Architektur (CEA) der US-Universität Yale.”

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Chimuka et al. (2023): Quantifying land carbon cycle feedbacks under negative CO2 emissions

V. Rachel Chimuka, Claude-Michel Nzotungicimpaye, Kirsten Zickfeld IN: Biogeosciences, 20, 12, https://doi.org/10.5194/bg-20-2283-2023

This study investigates land carbon cycle feedbacks under positive and negative CO2 emissions using an Earth system model of intermediate complexity (EMIC) driven with an idealized scenario of symmetric atmospheric CO2 concentration increase (ramp-up) and decrease (ramp-down), run in three modes. The results show that the magnitudes of carbon cycle feedbacks are generally smaller in the atmospheric CO2 ramp-down phase than in the ramp-up phase, except for the ocean climate–carbon feedback, which is larger in the ramp-down phase.

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PhD-thesis: Action Levers towards Sustainable Wellbeing: Re-Thinking Negative Emissions, Sufficiency, Deliberative Democracy

Sascha Nick, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), https://doi.org/10.5075/epfl-thesis-10487

This thesis explores how some of our most pressing issues, especially climate, biodiversity, or inequality, could be effectively solved using “action levers”, coordinated action on multiple leverage points, like mindset (#2), system goal (#3), power to change system structure (#4), or rules (#5). Three action levers are identified, explored and partly tested: Negative Emissions, Sufficiency, Deliberative Democracy. If suitably governed, Negative Emissions could reverse their current effect of extending the fossil era and its power relations and, while limited to perhaps 10% of current emissions, significantly accelerate decarbonization – a beneficial case of the “tail wagging the dog”. 

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This is CDR: Residual Emissions and the Climate Role of CDR

Tuesday, July 25 · 6 – 7pm CEST

This Is CDR is an online event series that explores the wide range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions currently being researched, developed, and deployed, and discusses them in the context of CDR policies OpenAir seeks to formulate and advance at every level of government in the U.S., as well as in national and subnational jurisdictions globally. This week Dr. Holly Jean Buck will discuss her recent paper (with colleagues) “Why Residual Emissions Matter Right Now,” and the implications of this work on the climate role of CDR.

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Greco-Coppi et al. (2023): Negative CO2 emissions in the lime production using an indirectly heated carbonate looping process

Martin Greco-Coppi,  Carina Hofmann,  Diethelm Walter,  Jochen Ströhle, Bernd Epple  IN: Mitig Adapt Strateg Glob Change 28, 30, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11027-023-10064-7

To address the problem of unavoidable process CO2 emissions associated with the production of lime, efficient capture technologies need to be developed and implemented. The indirectly heated carbonate looping (IHCaL) process is an efficient candidate for this application because it utilizes lime as the sorbent for the CO2 capture. In this work, a retrofit configuration of this process is presented and analyzed for net negative CO2 emissions. This is done considering different fuels that provide the heat required for the regeneration of the sorbent.

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