And these effects seem all but certain. Humans are on a path to generate so much carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases that it appears nearly impossible to cut emissions enough to avoid the worst.
Getting there will require policy changes such as carbon taxes or new economic drivers. A separate National Academies report, also released in late 2018, examined the possible use of CO2 or methane as a feedstock to make chemicals, fuels, or other products. It found potential markets in construction materials, chemicals, and fuels. However, at best the marketplace could use about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, the report concluded. And if CO2 is used to produce fuels, little is gained unless CO2 emissions are again captured when that fuel is burned.
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Combining energy production with carbon capture and sequestration could prove to be a powerful negative-emissions technology. So-called bioenergy systems use recently grown biomass as a feedstock to create energy in the forms of electricity and heat while permanently storing the resulting carbon dioxide underground, forever, explains Erica Belmont, a University of Wyoming mechanical engineering professor.
Mineralization takes advantage of rocks that geological processes have brought from deep within Earth up near or to the surface, where they are far from equilibrium and therefore reactive. Because mineralization uses this naturally available chemical energy, the approach may offer a low-cost means to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions. And because the CO2 is locked in solid carbonate minerals, storage is potentially permanent and nontoxic.
Tidal wetlands incorporating salt marshes, mangroves, and seagrass beds thrive in the soft sediment and shallow water of estuaries between high and mean sea level. These so-called coastal-blue-carbon areas also hold large amounts of carbon in their soils and vegetation and could contain more.
Similar carbon uptake can be achieved inland, through forest and soil amendments. In these areas, however, sequestration efforts quickly run into conflicts over land for food versus land for CO2 sequestration.
And there are other considerations. For forests, increasing sequestration means not only more trees but more trees that grow quickly and close together, to increase the amount of carbon uptake per unit area. Forests must be maintained over a long time, which necessitates the consideration of disease, fire, and harvesting operations, the National Academies report says.
Inland CO2 capture is inexpensive and can be deployed quickly, says Richard A. Birdsey, a forestry expert at Woods Hole Research Center and a National Academies panel member. However, expansion can be difficult. Birdsey notes there are 11 million US forest landowners, each with different objectives for their property. Some landowners want to raise more timber, some want land for hunting, and some just want to be left alone, he says. He estimates that maybe 10% of forest landowners would be willing to change their practices to promote carbon sequestration.
The National Academies report estimates that implementing inland carbon sequestration practices in a way that would not jeopardize food security and biodiversity globally would allow the capture of 2.5 billion to 3 billion t of CO2 annually from forests and agricultural soils combined.
The CO2-removal costs would be less than $50 per metric ton. If more aggressive land-management approaches prove to be practical and economical, rates of carbon removal for both forests and agricultural soils could double, the report says.
However, both inland and coastal-blue-carbon gains are reversible if the carbon-sequestering practices are not maintained. For example, forested land could be cleared again, and reverting agricultural soils to intensive farming practices could stir up and release captured carbon back to the atmosphere. And restored coastal wetland could be drained or simply dug up, ending any carbon benefit.
Currently, the best proposed way to remove carbon dioxide is through direct air capture, which involves pumping air through a system that liquefies and stores the carbon dioxide or converts it into a substance that is either inert or useful. Enterprising researchers have already developed systems that work by passing air through anion-exchange resins that contain hydroxide or carbonate groups that, when dry, absorb carbon dioxide and release it when moist. The extracted carbon dioxide can then be compressed, stored in liquid form and deposited underground using carbon capture and storage technologies.
The challenge is to bring the cost of this process to below US$40 per ton of carbon removed, since this is the estimated cost to the planet of our emissions. At the moment, most methods cost more than $100 per ton, but there are dramatic developments with great promise under way. Three companies have already opened pilot plants: Global Thermostat (United States), Carbon Engineering (Canada) and Climeworks (Switzerland). Carbon Engineering, operating in Squamish, British Columbia, employs a complex process that uses solar power to cause absorbed CO2 to react with hydrogen to produce a biofuel that can replace fossil fuel.
Effective carbon dioxide removal operations will need to be in place very soon. We need to immediately assess which direct air capture method offers the best chance of success, and check out other gentler methods that have been proposed, such as afforestation on a gigantic scale, or methods involving marine CO2 absorption on algal mats.
Across all the largest private conservation efforts in Belize, there is one constant that has enabled their success: each has generated a significant portion of the money required by selling carbon credits. For the Belize Maya Forest it was a single buyer that pledged to purchase 10 million carbon credits, once the project has its carbon accounting verified. Kay and the trust declined to disclose who the buyer is, other than to say it is not an oil company. That sale of carbon rights is expected to generate about $60 million, with $15 million going toward an endowment to fund operations and the rest paying off a loan from The Nature Conservancy, which facilitated the land purchase.
This reliance on carbon credits thrusts the Belize Maya Forest into an international debate about whether these types of projects can generate real climate benefits or whether they merely let polluters off the hook.
Other conservation projects across Belize have relied on carbon offsets, including the neighboring Rio Bravo Conservation Area, the site Kay visited as a teenager in the 1990s. Those credits have been sold to Delta Airlines, Delta customers and supporters of The Nature Conservancy, which facilitated that deal, too.
The Belizean government, which will receive a cut from the Belize Maya Forest carbon credit sale, has been trying to implement a national market to sell carbon internationally. For now, though, the projects are largely unregulated.
For decades, a large portion of this blue carbon, instead of coming to eternal rest on the ocean floor, has been released into the atmosphere as a result of people capturing excessive numbers of fish and whales.
The figure accounts for the capture of large-bodied fish, including tunas, mackerels, billfish and sharks, that typically sink when they die of natural causes. It does not, however, account for the biggest-bodied creatures in the sea and therefore the ones that store the most carbon: whales.
According to the Science Advances study, 43.5% of the blue carbon extracted by fisheries in international waters comes from areas that would not be profitable to fish in without governments subsidizing the fisheries that operate there.
The study provides more reasons to end subsidies for fishing that occurs far offshore. Doing so would curtail fishing in unprofitable areas, not only allowing depleted fish stocks to rebound but also reducing carbon dioxide emissions, according to the study.
Pershing, A. J., Christensen, L. B., Record, N. R., Sherwood, G. D., & Stetson, P. B. (2010). The impact of whaling on the ocean carbon cycle: Why bigger was better. PLOS ONE, 5(8), e12444. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0012444
Eligible projects include on- and off-road trail facilities for pedestrians, bicyclists and other nonmotorized forms of transportation and projects that support the deployment of alternative fuel vehicles. These types of projects, which are determined at the state and local level but could be supported with federal funding, include zero emission vehicles and facilities, projects that support congestion pricing and travel demand strategies; truck stop and port electrification systems to reduce the environmental impacts of freight movement and carbon dioxide emissions at port facilities; and public transportation projects such as the construction of bus rapid transit corridors or dedicated bus lanes. Micro-mobility and electric bike projects, including charging infrastructure, may also be eligible.
Alex: And the associated carbon footprint of each action, sort of like trying to winnow their footprint down. And another one of our listeners, this listener named Mark wrote, "Is there just one thing that would make a real impact? Maybe cutting out cheese or something?" Oh, Mark. [laughs]
Ayana: Dr. Katharine Wilkinson is my partner in all things feminist climate renaissance. She and I co-edited the anthology All We Can Save, we co-founded a new nonprofit, The All We Can Save Project, to support women leading on climate. And the reason Katharine is the perfect person to talk to about this topic is not because I adore her, it is because she was the lead author on a book called Drawdown, and that book looked at what are the biggest sources of carbon emissions, and what are the solutions out there to reduce those.
Ayana: And making cement in particular, is a surprisingly big part of this industry category. By some measures making cement is responsible for about eight percent of carbon dioxide emissions globally. 589ccfa754
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