Maybe we don’t have to capture as much carbon, study suggests

New technologies and changes in consumer habits could limit the use of controversial carbon capture to combat climate change, new to look for show.

Efforts to capture carbon from polluting sources or to filter CO2 from the air have gained traction as a way for companies to meet their climate goals. But these strategies have not yet been proven on a large scale and may have other unintended consequences. Some environmental advocates also worry that focusing on cleaning up pollution after the fact could divert companies from transitioning to renewable energy to avoid emissions in the first place.

To halt climate change and meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions must reach net zero by 2050. There is no way to do this without resorting to cleaner energy. Certain industries, however, are considered difficult to decarbonize, meaning they cannot turn to renewable electricity as easily as other sectors to reduce carbon pollution. This includes agriculture, international transport by ship and plane, and heavy industry such as steel and cement manufacturing.

This is where carbon dioxide removal (CDR) should come in, as a way of eliminating pollution residues from sectors that are difficult to decarbonize. A paper published last week, however, encourages industry and policymakers to be more ambitious. There are ways to prevent the increase in this pollution by using emerging technological solutions or encouraging more sustainable consumption habits.

“There are no measures that can be taken that are sustainable, right? That’s the question,” says Wil Burns, co-director of the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University, who was not involved in the new research.

The authors of an article published in the magazine Nature Climate Change Last week, we combed past research to identify ways each of these hard-to-abate sectors could reduce their pollution. Lighter, more efficient aircraft would reduce pollution from international travel, as would efforts to develop cleaner-burning fuels. Increasing teleworking and using high-speed trains instead of short-haul flights would also reduce carbon pollution. When it comes to steelmaking, electric arc furnaces can replace traditional blast furnaces. They found that one of the biggest ways people could make an impact would be to reduce the amount of meat and dairy they consume.

The researchers analyzed scenarios in which people implement these strategies to reduce emissions from hard-to-decarbonize industries and compared the results with a baseline scenario for climate action without such measures. This showed them how much they could reduce their use of one of the most contested carbon removal strategies, called bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

The baseline scenario, which is based on a model typically used to inform climate action, prioritizes cost reduction. “In a way, it finds the cheapest options to reduce emissions,” says Oreane Edelenbosch, lead author of the research and assistant professor at Utrecht University. “BECCS is an attractive option from a cost perspective.”

BECCS involves the capture and storage of carbon dioxide from wood-fired thermal power plants. The plant burns fuel from trees that naturally absorb and store CO2. Burning these trees releases CO2, but you can replant trees to try and capture these emissions again. Ideally, this will become a carbon-neutral process for generating energy. The objective of BECCS, however, is negative emissions, which is achieved by installing devices to capture pollution from the plant. This carbon negativity is intended to offset the climate impact of hard-to-reduce emissions from heavy industry, transport and agriculture.

BECCS has not yet been widely implementedalthough this could change with interest from companies like Microsoft, which recently agreed to a business with energy company Stockholm Exergi to acquire 3.33 million metric tons of carbon removal from BECCS.

But BECCS can charge a toll in different ways. There are additional emissions from clearing forests and transporting wood to burn as fuel. With this in mind, some studies have found that BECCS is not necessarily carbon negative and can really worsen greenhouse gas pollution in the atmosphere. Burns highlights that there are human rights concerns with BECCSas well, as it uses a lot of land and water and can increase food prices for communities already facing food insecurity.

The authors of the new paper conclude that implementing technological solutions for hard-to-decarbonize sectors could drastically reduce the annual use of BECCS by 2060. The shift in consumer behavior has been especially powerful, particularly the shift to “healthy” diets that reduce consumption. of meat and agricultural products. emissions. Looking at these types of lifestyle changes alone, BECCS could only be used to extract up to 2.2 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, compared to a peak of 10.3 gigatons annually in a baseline scenario.

Of course, it’s easier to imagine this on paper than to implement all these strategies in the real world. “[In this study] we assume that they are implemented and adopted in almost a perfect world. We do not take into account political opinions or certain personal preferences,” says Edelenbosch. “It really shows more, in a way, what if?”