Research teams across the UK will investigate the viability of five innovative methods of large-scale greenhouse gas removal to counter the impact of climate change
UK RESEARCH AND INNOVATION
Research teams across the UK will investigate the viability of five innovative methods of large-scale greenhouse gas removal from the atmosphere to help the UK reach its legislated Net Zero climate target by 2050.
The methods all have the potential to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – but their effectiveness, cost, and limitations need to be better understood and proven at scale.
UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) will invest £30 million in five interdisciplinary projects and a central Hub located at the University of Oxford, to conduct the research over 4.5 years. An additional £1.5 million will be invested in further studies in year 3 of the research.
The results will be used to shape longer-term Government decision-making on the most effective technologies to help the UK tackle climate change and reduce CO2 emissions.
These Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrator projects will investigate:
- Management of peatlands to maximise their greenhouse gas removal potential in farmland near Doncaster, and at upland sites in the South Pennines and in Pwllpeiran, west Wales.
- Enhanced rock weathering – crushing silicate rocks and spreading the particles at field trial sites on farmland in mid-Wales, Devon and Hertfordshire.
- Use of biochar, a charcoal-like substance, as a viable method of carbon sequestration. Testing will take place at arable and grassland sites in the Midlands and Wales, a sewage disposal site in Nottinghamshire, former mine sites and railway embankments.
- Large-scale tree planting, or afforestation, to assess the most effective species and locations for carbon sequestration at sites across the UK, including land owned by the Ministry of Defence, the National Trust and Network Rail.
- Rapid scale-up of perennial bioenergy crops such as grasses (Miscanthus) and short rotation coppice willow at locations in Lincolnshire and Lancashire.
Greenhouse gas removals describe a group of methods that directly remove CO2 from the atmosphere and are designed to complement efforts in emission reductions targeting those sectors which are difficult to decarbonise completely such as heavy industry, agriculture and aviation.
The £31.5 million programme is part of the second wave of the Government’s Strategic Priorities Fund (SPF), which invests in high quality multi and interdisciplinary research.
Professor Sir Duncan Wingham, Executive Chair of the Natural Environment Research Council, part of UKRI, said:
“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a priority for the UK, but it’s clear that alone that will not be enough to reduce CO2 and meet the UK’s net zero climate target by 2050.
“These projects will investigate how we can actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere using innovative technologies at the scale required to protect our planet. This investment by UKRI is especially significant as the UK prepares to host COP26 in Glasgow later this year.”
The Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrators programme will be supported by a central Directorate Hub to provide an overarching coordination role, with specific focus on environmental, economic, social, cultural, ethical, legal and governance issues.
The Hub will have a strong research function and will also actively engage with business communities, supporting innovation in GGR Demonstrator techniques and their progression to readiness for market.
Professor Cameron Hepburn, from the University of Oxford, is leading the Directorate Hub. He said:
“Greenhouse gas removal is essential to achieve net zero carbon emissions and stabilise the climate. Alongside the need for much faster emissions reductions now, we also need to start pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere.
“Greenhouse gas removal is not only essential, it also has the potential to become big business. As we rebuild societies and economies following Covid-19, we have an opportunity to orient ourselves towards the green jobs and industries of the future. I’m delighted that UKRI is supporting such a strategic programme.”
This work adds to UKRI’s long tradition of investing in cutting-edge research and innovation to understand, tackle and mitigate the effects of climate change. In the year the UK hosts the UN COP26 summit in November, UKRI will use its role as a steward of the research and innovation system to bring our communities together to create sustainable and resilient solutions and encourage new behaviours and new ways of living that enable the UK to reach net zero by 2050.
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Bravo Boris! As fast as CO2 could be removed from the atmosphere, nature will put it right back in.
https://youtu.be/b1cGqL9y548?t=2906
Brits’ taxes hard at work: The next Solyndra.
Climate change is the great demonstrator project era to nowhere.
“Greenhouse gas removal is essential”
– To what end? What is the goal here? How much CO2 do they want to remove?
Never an answer, is there?
Burning the money for its heat content would have been more productive.
They used to burn old bank notes at Battersea power station…
Not the weirdest thing to burn in a power station.
“Professor Cameron Hepburn, from the University of Oxford, is leading the Directorate Hub. He said:
“Greenhouse gas removal is essential to achieve net zero carbon emissions and stabilise the climate.”
************
Ah yes, one of climate alarmist narrative’s main articles of faith…the fact that the Earth’s climate is supposed to be stable and unchanging (or at least largely so). Must keep pushing that faith article so they can keep milking governments for things like this carbon sequestration project. One’s bank account can never be too healthy.
It is sadly obvious that the good professor apparently never heard of the Younger Dryas…
https://www.britannica.com/science/Younger-Dryas-climate-interval
“. The onset of the Younger Dryas took less than 100 years, and the period persisted for roughly 1,300 years. After the period ended, an interval of rapid global warming increased average temperatures to levels comparable to those of the present day.”
**********
The Climate Alarmist Board of Censors must continually keep things like the YD largely unknown in the general public. The public’s awareness of climate events like that would be far too damaging to “The Cause,” now wouldn’t it?
Addendum to my comment above (from the Britannica article)…
“A second abrupt climatic warming event, approximately 11,600 years ago, marked the end of the Younger Dryas and the beginning of the Holocene Epoch (11,700 years ago to the present) and Earth’s modern climate. In this second warming interval, average global temperatures increased by up to 10 °C (18 °F) in just a few decades.”
Many might not know that in addition to the money be wasted in this scheme planting trees, there are plenty of grants around to plant trees to save the world. In fact the money that used to go to the EU Common Agricultural Policy is now being directed to farmers to grow nature reserves instead of food which is less profitable. Still, if the cooling cycle has really started and food yields drop thereby increasing prices the farmers might go back to producing food again.
The photo on the home page is of euros. Clever Brits, suing other people’s money to do the job.
Better to think about compost earthworms, which are excellent at converting carbon in the soil.
There’s no place to hide from the climate changers-
Drax carbon-capture plan could cost British households £500 – study (msn.com)
I have a better idea. Just export everybody from the UK to somewhere else (ideally, poor countries where the GHG footprint is much smaller (it’s only 66 million people anyway). The UK can then return to its natural people-free state. I’m not sure the UK GHG emissions will be effectively zero, but realistically, it’s the best we can do.
The UK Govn’t wasted GBP37 BILLION on PPE equipment in the COVID-19 sc@mdemic. 30 million is chump change.
Global warming is a global issue that requires a globally coordinated plan to cut global emissions. There is no opportunity here for climate heroism of nation states.
Or so I thought.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2021/02/11/a-green-revolution/
If the crisis was real, we’d stop recycling all paper products and simply entomb them in modern landfills where the minimal waste gases are captured. And of course build more nuclear.
There’s a new X PRIZE, sponsored by Elon Musk, for any way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere economically, at large scale. The total prize is $100 million, though like most of the later X PRIZE purses, it’s not a winner take all. The first prize is $50 million, with graduated second and third place prizes.
I worked for the X PRIZE Foundation in 2005-2006, and regard Peter Diamandis as a great visionary, and a personal friend for whom I have the highest regard. I also know Elon Musk professionally, and like him quite a bit personally (history will regard him as a giant, and I feel blessed to have known him). AND I have an idea for a renewable energy infrastructure that could easily achieve Elon’s desire for removing >6 gigtonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere annually (it would actually remove >160 gigatonnes per year) on an economical basis.
The only problem is, I don’t think it’s a good idea to remove all of that CO2 from the atmosphere. I’m 67 years old, and $50 million would be a nice retirement nest egg. But I have a wife, two sons, and a granddaughter on the way. I want them to at least have enough food to sustain them, and reducing the CO2 content of the atmosphere does not work in that direction. And if CO2 were really the heavy-duty control knob on global temperature the elites think it is, I wouldn’t want to be the one to plunge my descendants into an ice age.
BTW, my two years with X PRIZE were the most fun years of my professional life. Just sayin’…
Well, it’s now being admitted – it’s impossible to achieve a zero carbon energy infrastructure alone. I wonder how much cost for CCS they factored into the long term budget? Oh silly me. They don’t have one.
Hello? what part of net zero didn’t you get?
“five innovative methods of large-scale greenhouse gas removal”.
All activities of which, involve fossil fuelled mechanical diggers & cars, – same as the other BS wind farm devs, so driving around the UK, fooling with bits of rural Wales (already an unemployment black spot, because hill farming following Brexit is bankrupt), while flowing concrete and imported wind farm bits into places of outstanding natural beauty.
I checked out Pwllpeiran.
It’s a total BS project not even new, going back to 1930.
It’s based in an area who’s main previous activities were extraction of lead, silver and other metals 100 years ago becoming non viable, because cheaper to mine elsewhere, same as imported coal.
Wales struggles to maintain financial viability, especially since the steel, coal and iron industry fiascos, so the “yet another subsidy” from Oxford based “ivory tower” numpties is going to create 1000s of “green jobs” huh!
wonderful!
the useful energy released by burning fossil fuels/any hydrocarbons will be less than the energy required to reduce CO2 to captured carbon