Trees, plants and vegetation may have to settle for being robbed of their vital trace gas at a lower rate than climate worriers would like. The study says ‘projections should be updated to include limits from geology, geography, and rates of deployment.’ Its authors say the feasible total ‘reduces [from 16 GtCO2 yr] to 5 GtCO2 yr if projections are constrained by government roadmaps, mostly because this limits deployment in the USA to 1 GtCO2 yr’ – all well below the desired rate of removal. They call for more realism, not a concept recognized much by net zero advocates.
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Imperial College London research has found limits to how quickly we can scale up technology to store gigatonnes of carbon dioxide under Earth’s surface, says Phys.org.
Current international scenarios for limiting global warming to less than 1.5 degrees by the end of the century rely on technologies that remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from Earth’s atmosphere faster than humans release it. This means removing CO2 at a rate of 1–30 gigatonnes per year by 2050.
However, estimates for the speed at which these technologies can be deployed have been highly speculative.
Now, findings from a new study led by Imperial College London researchers show that existing projections are unlikely to be feasible at the current rate of growth.
The study found that it might be possible by 2050 to store up to 16 gigatonnes of CO2 underground each year. However, reaching this target would require a huge increase in storage capacity and scaling over the coming decades, which is not anticipated given the current pace of investment, development and deployment.
With the UK Government aiming to position Britain as a clean energy superpower and scale up and invest in carbon capture and storage, the study underscores the importance of aligning ambitious initiatives with realistic objectives for how quickly CO2 can be safely stored underground.
The results are published in Nature Communications [preprint].
Realistic goals
The team from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering created models showing how quickly carbon storage systems can be developed and deployed, accounting for the availability of suitable geology, and technical and economic limitations to growth.
While the results suggest it is possible to reduce CO2 emissions at a huge scale, they also suggest that the path to achieving this and the contribution from key regions might differ from what current models project, including those from Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports.
Lead author Yuting Zhang, from Imperial’s Department of Earth Science and Engineering, said, “There are many factors at play in these projections, including the speed at which reservoirs can be filled as well as other geological, geographical, economic, technological, and political issues. However, more accurate models like the ones we have developed will help us understand how uncertainty in storage capacity, variations in institutional capacity across regions, and limitations to development might affect climate plans and targets set by policymakers.”
Full article here.
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