Advanced BioFuels USA

by Donavyn Coffey (Live Science) … Sabine Fuss has been looking for these answers for the last two years. An economist in Berlin, Fuss leads a research group at the Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and was part of the original Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — established by the United Nations to assess the science, risks and impacts of global warming. After the panel’s 2018 report and the new Paris Agreement goal to keep global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) or less, Fuss was tasked with finding out which carbon removal strategies were most promising and feasible. 

Afforestation and reforestation — planting or replanting of forests, respectively — are well known natural carbon sinks.

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Agriculture land management is another natural carbon removal approach that’s relatively low risk and already being tested out, according to Jane Zelikova, terrestrial ecologist and chief scientist at Carbon180, a nonprofit that advocates for carbon removal strategies in the U.S. 

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But nature-based carbon removal, like planting and replanting forests, can conflict with other policy goals, like food production, Fuss said. Scaled up, these strategies require a lot of land, oftentimes land that’s already in use.

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This is why more tech-based approaches to carbon removal are crucial, they say. With direct air capture and carbon storage, for instance, a chemical process takes carbon dioxide out of the air and binds it to filters. When the filter is heated, the CO2 can be captured and then injected underground.

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There’s also bioenergy with carbon capture. 

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Another carbon capture trick involves mineralization; ….

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However, none of these technologies have been implemented on a large scale. They’re extremely expensive, with estimates as high as $400 per ton of CO2 removed, and each still requires a lot of research and support before being deployed.

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Ultimately, every country will have to put together its own unique portfolio of CO2 removal strategies because no single intervention will be successful on its own. “If we scaled up any of them exclusively, it would be a disaster,” Fuss said. “It would use a lot of land or be prohibitively expensive.” Her research has shown that afforestation and reforestation will be most productive in tropical regions, whereas solar radiation differences in the more northern latitudes with more albedo (reflection of light back into space) mean those countries will likely have better luck investing in the more technological interventions, such as carbon capture and biomass extraction.

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The reality, however, is these approaches are not ready and there’s not a consensus on how to pay for them.  READ MORE

The Weekly Planet: A Start-Up’s Unusual Plan to Suck Carbon Out of the Sky: An online-payments company may fund more carbon removal than anyone else. (The Atlantic)

Carbon Removal Advocates Face Opportunity and Challenge: Public Support, If Not Understanding (Morning Consult)

Heliae, WinField United Canada Collaborate to Bring Regenerative Agriculture Technology, Profitability for Farmers on World Soil Health Day (Heliae)

FutureMetrics: BECCS can achieve negative carbon emissions (Biomass Magazine)

2021 Outlook – “BECCS is critical to achieve net zero” (Bioenergy Insight)

Excerpt from Morning Consult: 

• 39% of U.S. adults said they haven’t seen, read or heard much about carbon removal practices and technologies, while another 34% have consumed nothing at all on the topic.
• Planting new forests is the carbon removal practice with the highest level of public support at 86%; speeding up natural reactions between carbon and rock formations to store carbon is lowest at 43%.
• Large shares of the public incorrectly identify recycling (68%), installing solar panels (65%) and geothermal energy production (50%) as carbon removal practices and technologies.  READ MORE

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