From the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
CO2 removal can lower costs of climate protection
According to the analysis, carbon dioxide removal could be used under certain requirements to alleviate the most costly components of mitigation, but it would not replace the bulk of actual emissions reductions.
“Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere allows to separate emissions control from the time and location of the actual emissions. This flexibility can be important for climate protection,” says lead-author Elmar Kriegler. “You don’t have to prevent emissions in every factory or truck, but could for instance plant grasses that suck CO2 out of the air to grow – and later get processed in bioenergy plants where the CO2 gets stored underground.”
In economic terms, this flexibility allows to lower costs by compensating for emissions which would be most costly to eliminate. “This means that a phase-out of global emissions by the end of the century – that we would need to hold the 2 degree line adopted by the international community – does not necessarily require to eliminate each and every source of emissions,” says Kriegler. “Decisions whether and how to protect future generations from the risks of climate change have to be made today, but the burden of achieving these targets will increase over time. The costs for future generations can be substantially reduced if carbon dioxide removal technologies become available in the long run.”
Balancing the financial burden across generations
The study now published is the first to quantify this. If bioenergy plus CCS is available, aggregate mitigation costs over the 21st century might be halved. In the absence of such a carbon dioxide removal strategy, costs for future generations rise significantly, up to a quadrupling of mitigation costs in the period of 2070 to 2090. The calculation was carried out using a computer simulation of the economic system, energy markets, and climate, covering a range of scenarios.
Options for carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere include afforestation and chemical approaches like direct air capture of CO2 from the atmosphere or reactions of CO2 with minerals to form carbonates. But the use of biomass for energy generation combined with carbon capture and storage is less costly than chemical options, as long as sufficient biomass feedstock is available, the scientists point out.
Serious concerns about large-scale biomass use combined with CCS
“Of course, there are serious concerns about the sustainability of large-scale biomass use for energy,” says co-author Ottmar Edenhofer, chief-economist of PIK. “We therefore considered the bioenergy with CCS option only as an example of the role that carbon dioxide removal could play for climate change mitigation.” The exploitation of bioenergy can conflict with land-use for food production or ecosystem protection. To account for sustainability concerns, the study restricts the bioenergy production to a medium level, that may be realized mostly on abandoned agricultural land.
Still, global population growth and changing dietary habits, associated with an increased demand for land, as well as improvements of agricultural productivity, associated with a decreased demand for land, are important uncertainties here. Furthermore, CCS technology is not yet available for industrial-scale use and, due to environmental concerns, is controversial in countries like Germany. Yet in this study it is assumed that it will become available in the near future.
“CO2 removal from the atmosphere could enable humankind to keep the window of opportunity open for low-stabilization targets despite of a likely delay in international cooperation, but only under certain requirements,” says Edenhofer. “The risks of scaling up bioenergy use need to be better understood, and safety concerns about CCS have to be thoroughly investigated. Still, carbon dioxide removal technologies are no science fiction and need to be further explored.” In no way should they be seen as a pretext to neglect emissions reductions now, notes Edenhofer. “By far the biggest share of climate change mitigation has to come from a large effort to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions globally.”
Article: Kriegler, E., Edenhofer, O., Reuster, L., Luderer, G., Klein, D. (2013): Is atmospheric carbon dioxide removal a game changer for climate change mitigation? Climatic Change (online) [10.1007/s10584-012-0681-4]
Abstract
The ability to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere allows the decoupling of emissions and emissions control in space and time. We ask the question whether this unique feature of carbon dioxide removal technologies fundamentally alters the dynamics of climate mitigation pathways. The analysis is performed in the coupled energy-economy-climate model ReMIND using the bioenergy with CCS route as an application of CDR technology. BECCS is arguably the least cost CDR option if biomass availability is not a strongly limiting factor. We compare mitigation pathways with and without BECCS to explore the impact of CDR technologies on the mitigation portfolio. Effects are most pronounced for stringent climate policies where BECCS is a key technology for the effectiveness of carbon pricing policies. The decoupling of emissions and emissions control allows prolonging the use of fossil fuels in sectors that are difficult to decarbonize, particularly in the transport sector. It also balances the distribution of mitigation costs across future generations. CDR is not a silver bullet technology. The largest part of emissions reductions continues to be provided by direct mitigation measures at the emissions source. The value of CDR lies in its flexibility to alleviate the most costly constraints on mitigating emissions.
Weblink to the article: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0681-4
Open access to PDF here http://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10584-012-0681-4
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Some Australian states spent billions on desalination plants to prepare for a future of more drought. Then came the Biblical floods. The dams were full to overflowing and many plants were mothballed. These climate racketeers are wasting our resources that could be better spent tackling real problems.
Another example of modeling garbage. Nature will continue to sequester at a rate two or three orders of magnitude more CO2 than anthropogenic emissions, and that natural sink rate is always changing. When the Arctic ocean isn’t covered with ice, it will absorb every bit of CO2 that is delivered to it.
How’s this for an attack ad / billboard?
“CO2 limits—Brought to you by the people who gave you the 55 MPH speedlimit.”
Sorry, the case has not yet even been made for there being a need to sequester CO2
HOW are they going to do this? Drive to the nearest coal fired power station, or railroad that leads to one. Look at the length and number of cars of coal that is burnt. They will have from 3 to 5 trains like that a day. Get out your chemistry book. There will be TWICE the weight of CO2 produced by the burning of coal. That means two trains of DRY ICE would have to be hauled out of there for every train load of coal. One and one half trains of dry ice for the same size Natural Gas power plant. And that is dry ice. How expensive is it to make dry ice? How much energy does it take to make dry ice? OK, that is a bad Idea. Lets just compress it to a Liquefied gas. How many train cars of those like they haul LNG in would it take? How much would that cost? OK, bad idea again, lets just use a pipeline to the place where they do this sequestration. How much will this cost? THEN you still have to haul away something that is now twice the size/volume as the dry ice would have been? Are you getting the picture FOUR times the weight/volume of the original coal has to go somewhere and that is in the most compact form. The ides may work in a lab but it will never work in the real world. Any method they pick will double and possibly quadruple the expenditure of energy, i.e., fossil fuels, it is a loosing proposition.
Do the people that think this is a viable method have any gray matter in their head?
GO NUCLEAR = ZERO CO2
CORRECTION: 3 to 5 trains a WEEK not day. sorry.
I wrote (a bit upthread):
If Al Gore was a supporter of the 55 mph speed limit, his photo or name could be used in the ad.
I have an idea: Instead of burying all that grass, why don’t we just grow food and feed the poor with it. But burying it in the ground is dumb.
Mods;
Had a comment a while ago hr.+ that disappeared. I’m starting to think you guys don’t love me no mo’
petermue says:
“How many CO2 has been removed within the last 30 years of funding and research?
That’s a question I’d really like to have an answer!
Bet the answer is: None.”
Fact is that there are 24 facilities that dump annually 6-7 Million tons of CO2 in the sea bed or earth crust around the World. One Norwegian facility in Sleipner gas field has annually dumped one million tons of CO2 since 1996. So there are already a lot of experience and also cost data on this procedure.
Catastrophic runaway greenhouse warming caused by anthropogenic CO2 is conjecture and has been looking less likely (inverted hockey stick!) as time goes on. We’re still not back to the point where we can farm Greenland to the extent the Vikings did.
There’s money to be made in the ‘carbon’ business; coming , going, or talking about it. What’s one more shot at the honey pot?
I wish the pols would leave our CO2 alone, but there’s no power or profit in that.
There is a fantic invention for removing CO2 from the Air
It solar powered.
Works in most enviroments
Blends in nicely with the Landscape
Provide a nice Habitate for wildlife
Looks ashehtically pleasing
Provides a source of Building material
Can be used for outdoor landscaping
Provides a place for children to play on
Zero start up costs
Very old basic simple technology
No noise
No polution
No waste products except Oxygen
Low maintenance
Provides a source of Energy without creating extra CO2
This wonderfull invention is called a Tree.
These birdbrains urging a green bio-sequesteration program are a bit late and unknowledgeable. North America sports a public Park and Wilderness system, always expanding, in place since the time of Presidents Lincoln and Ulyses Grant, (Yellowstone National Park). The reserved bio-sequestration area is now more acreage than in the entire area of the original 13 colonies!. I live in a western State where almost 80% of the land has been ruled off-limits to humans and development, to serves other purposes, of which one, inadvertantly, is ALSO bio-Sequestration of CO2.
As a consequence the North America continent is the largest NET Carbon Sink in the World and emits not a gram of CO2 on Net annually. The only serious scintific study to measure CO2 atmospheric emission and sequestration of the air mass over North America, done by teams of scientists at Princeton University in the early 21st century, affirmed that fact.
The present way “official” CO2 emission figures are created, is to have the bureaucrats add up all the estimated emissions that citizens are required to file on CO2 estimated emissions forms. No one adds up all the bio-sequestration that occurs because, despite repeated urgings and threats, they can’t get the grasses, trees, plants and shrubs and the growing crops to file CO2 emission/sequestration forms. Nor can anyone tell wether variances upward or downward on their summaries is merely better or poorer reporting compliance; or genuine emission changes.
The entire Western Hemisphere is a net CO2 sink. With CO2 emission on net below ZERO, why are we concerned with CO2 emissions in the new world? Let Eurasians play games if they wish, as there is net CO2 emissions there, but that should be no concern of us. Besides, according to the government CO2 emission reports, we have reduced (human) CO2 emisions to below the targets set by the crazies such as Dr. Hansen, PhD Astronomy, and set by the now expired Kyoto Treaty compliance targets.
stan stendera says:
April 14, 2013 at 8:27 am
Boy, I agree it’s time and past time to go on the attack. Of course, the luke-warmist Mr. Manners types will deplore the incivility, but their counsel has had more than a fair shot. (How’s that working, so far? Received any notes of appreciation?)
BTW, if you do any more posts on the subject, you’ll sound more impressive if you don’t write “enviorment” for environment. I know that’s how lots of folks say it, but that’s just lazy.