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Table of Contents
Introduction
Introduction
12:42 minute video highlights the 4 main sectors we can work on to win the fight against climate change.
Sectors & Practices that Sequester Carbon
Sectors & Practices that Sequester Carbon
These are currently listed alphabetically, but will be reorganized by (potential) impact.
Agriculture Practices
Agriculture Practices
Plant-Based Dietary Changes
Plant-Based Dietary Changes
"Animal agriculture is a significant source of greenhouse gas emissions. Favoring plant-based foods reduces demand, thereby reducing land clearing, fertilizer use, and greenhouse gas emissions." - Drawdown: Plant-Rich Diets
"Using country-level data from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, we estimated the growth in global food consumption by 2050, assuming that people in lower-income countries will consume more food and higher quantities of meat as economies grow. If 50–75 percent of people adopt a healthy diet of an average 2,300 calories per day and reduce meat consumption overall, we estimate at least 54.19–78.48 gigatons of emissions could be avoided from dietary change alone. Since agriculture, particularly for cattle and animal feed production, is the leading driver of tropical deforestation, reducing meat consumption can avoid additional forest loss and associated greenhouse gas emissions." - Drawdown: Plant-Rich Diets
Seaweed Farming
Seaweed Farming
"Seaweed farming is one of the most sustainable types of aquaculture. Expanding seaweed farming enhances carbon sequestration and boosts production of biomass that can be used for biofuel, bioplastic, livestock feed, and human consumption." - Drawdown: Seaweed Farming
More Space is Ideal for this Solution than would be Needed to Succeed
More Space is Ideal for this Solution than would be Needed to Succeed
"Out of a total ocean area available for the solution of 240 million hectares, the solution adoption in 2018 was 0.19 million hectares (0.08 percent). The total ocean area available for this solution was modeled using the 5 percent of global area suitable for macroalgae growth considering nutrients and temperature constraints. Globally, nearly 4.8 billion hectares are suitable for macroalgae growth based on Froehlich et al. (2019). However, we considered only 5 percent of this as the total ocean area for this solution to keep our estimates conservative." - Drawdown: Seaweed Farming
Sequestration Potential
"Seaweed farms occupied only 0.19 million hectares in 2018. Expanding sustainable seaweed farming to 13.39–25.14 million hectares by 2050 could sequester an additional 2.50–4.72 gigatons of carbon dioxide and create additional feedstock for other solutions at a net lifetime cost of US$4.97–9.40 trillion for 2020–2050." - Drawdown: Seaweed Farming
""Macroalgae are fast-growing marine plants that absorb high amounts of carbon dioxide. They are among the most productive organisms on Earth. Recent findings have quantified the long-term carbon sequestration potential of macroalgae at 0.17 gigatons of carbon per year, exceeding the carbon buried in coastal environments such as mangroves, saltmarshes, and seagrass beds." - Drawdown: Seaweed Farming
"Project Drawdown defines its Seaweed Farming solution as the culturing and cultivation of macroalgae in the ocean for long-term carbon sequestration in the form of excess unharvested biomass that is exported to the deep sea and/or ocean shelves and buried in ocean sediments. We assume this solution will be deployed in ocean areas that do not have alternative uses.
Macroalgae aquaculture comprises 27 percent of total marine aquaculture production and is valued at 5 percent of the total value of aquaculture crops. In 2005, global farmed macroalgae production was estimated at 13.5 million metric tons. By 2016, global yields more than doubled, reaching 31.2 million metric tons. The sharp increase in macroalgae farming between 2005 and 2016 is likely to continue with the leading producing nations focusing on ensuring the sector’s long-term sustainability." - Drawdown: Seaweed Farming
Total Ocean Hectares - Global:
Suitable Sites for Seaweed Farming:
Space Needed to Sequester 2.50–4.72 Gt of C02:
Hectares Currently Farmed (2018):
361,000,000,000 h
4,800,000,000 h
240,000,000 h
190,000 h
Conservation & Restoration
Conservation & Restoration
Conservation Grazing
Conservation Grazing
"Rewilding and carbon mitigation go hand in hand, and the largest potential biome for rewilding is the world’s grasslands, which cover 25% of the planet’s land surface. Horses are considered mesograzers, which are classified as species with the highest per capita potential to shape climate change drivers. Wild horse herds affect ecosystem nutrient transportation, landscape fire regimes, and vegetation mosaics, while emitting far less methane than cattle and sheep due to their classification as hind-gut fermenters rather than ruminants. Many rewilding programs in Europe use feral horses as part of their rewilding practices. The introduction of horses in rewilding projects has been found to increase biodiversity and maintain or preserve natural grassland mosaics, increasing their suitability for other species." - Rewilding Institute: Rewilding with Wild Horses
Infrastructure
Infrastructure
Roofing
Roofing
Transportation
Transportation
Public Transit
Public Transit
"If public transit is used for 29 to 34 percent of all urban passenger trips, this solution can save 9.42–15.42 gigatons of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions from cars. Consumers would save US$2.81–4.59 trillion in mobility costs. [Project Drawdown's] analysis includes diverse public transit options (bus, metro, tram, and commuter rail) and examines the costs that travelers pay (car purchase and use compared with buying transit tickets)." - Drawdown: Public Transit
Waste Management
Waste Management
Composting
Composting
Ineffective Methods
Ineffective Methods
Carbon Capture Technology
Carbon Capture Technology
"For more than 40 years, oil companies have been funding research at prestigious universities into climate change “solutions” that would not require the public to stop using oil and gas. Among their favored fixes is carbon capture and storage.
An investigation by ProPublica and Drilled has found that boosters of CCS have ignored evidence of the technology’s limitations, or overstated its potential, and convinced the world it could be effective.
They’ve promoted this idea despite the fact that for CCS to work at the scale now envisioned, the world would need to devote almost unimaginable resources. Even if that were done, it might still prove impossible to trap so much carbon dioxide inside the earth."
"In 2008, the International Energy Agency projected that to stave off dangerous levels of warming, we would have to be burying around 1.6 billion tons, or 1,600 megatons, of CO2 per year by 2025. "
"Right now, globally, we’re permanently burying less CO2 than a single large power plant can emit in a year.
Some experts point to the CO2 that gets pumped into the ground to help extract oil as proof CCS works. But that process, called enhanced oil recovery, isn’t designed to function the same way and isn’t monitored as stringently." - https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/
"To make CCS work, we would need to capture CO2 pollution in four ways:
Trap it from smoke stacks.
Absorb it from the air with fast-growing grasses or trees, then capture it from those plants when they are burned for fuel.
Scrub it from the air, often using giant fans.
Then we would pump all of it into porous rock deep beneath the earth’s surface." - https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/
"We would need to add equipment to capture the CO2 from each facility, in some cases doubling its land footprint. And we would need to devote about 768,000 square miles of land worldwide to growing those carbon-absorbing plants.
That would cover an area roughly the size of Mexico — and compete for valuable land used to grow food or sustain forests. If all of this works, and the CO2 is successfully captured, it must then be moved to a place where it can be buried.
In the U.S. alone, this could require building more than 68,000 miles of new pipelines in a little more than two decades. That’s more than double the distance to fly around the earth. And longer than the country’s entire interstate highway system. In the U.S. alone, this could require building more than 68,000 miles of new pipelines in a little more than two decades. That’s more than double the distance to fly around the earth. And longer than the country’s entire interstate highway system. Globally, pipelines could tally in the hundreds of thousands of miles.
To cross the oceans, we would need at least 85 specially built tankers to move the high-pressured gas. As of April, there were only three ships in the world equipped to do that.
Then, there is the challenge of finding a place to put 6 billion tons of CO2 a year.
Today, just 12 large-scale geologic reservoirs have attempted to permanently store CO2 pollution — but we would need more than 2,000 reservoirs of that size for CCS to work, each requiring years of study and engineering before it could be used.
That means we would need to open a brand new geological waste site somewhere on the planet every four days for the next 25 years.
Every site would need constant monitoring for decades to ensure the CO2 doesn’t leak." - https://projects.propublica.org/why-carbon-capture-cant-solve-climate-change/
Around the world Carbon Capture Tech has failed over and over, from explosions and leaks, to giant craters in the ground releasing all the "stored" carbon.
Resources & Guides
Resources & Guides
Land Management
Land Management
Conservation Grazing
Conservation Grazing
Organizations
Organizations
International
International
Project Drawdown "is the world’s leading resource for climate solutions." "Project Drawdown’s world-class network of scientists, researchers, and fellows has characterized a set of 93 technologies and practices that together can dramatically reduce concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere."
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