Joint report calls for immediate action to remove greenhouse gases

THE Royal Society and the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng) have released a joint report outlining a plan of action which could help the UK lead the way in deploying technologies to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.

The report, released yesterday, sets out a list of recommendations that would allow the UK to achieve its target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. This goal, whilst achievable according to the report, will require immediate action.

To achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 the UK needs to remove an estimated 130m t of CO₂/y. Reaching this goal requires the UK to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to deploy greenhouse gas removal (GGR) technologies which will play a role in counteracting emissions from aviation and agriculture, where complete removal of emissions is not possible.

The report identifies and assesses technologies available that might allow emissions removal goals to be reached. It considers not only the UK, but the global picture and how these technologies might be deployed alongside each other to achieve global carbon removal by 2100 as per the Paris Agreement.  

Technologies discussed include ready-to-deploy methods as well as more speculative methods. Ready-to-deploy, land-based methods such as forestation, habitat restoration, and soil carbon sequestration could be quickly applied, but unfortunately these will become saturated within the century. Furthermore, these approaches alone will only allow the UK to achieve around one quarter of the target GGR required to reach net-zero emissions.

Development of speculative methods, such as direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and low-carbon concrete, is vital if sufficient GGR is to be achieved.

IChemE Fellow Adisa Azapagic, report contributor and professor of sustainable chemical engineering at the University of Manchester said: “While some greenhouse gas technologies are already in use today, others are yet to be proven at scale. Furthermore, when considered at the scale required, none of the technologies has been evaluated fully across their life cycle and their environmental, economic and social impacts are unknown.

“Therefore, as chemical and process engineers, we can play a crucial role in the development of these emerging technologies, from design of demonstration plants, through ramping-up to full deployment. We should also ensure that they are sustainable in the longer term and that climate change is not mitigated at the expense of other sustainability issues.”

The technologies identified in the report are assessed based on the readiness for deployment, potential scalability, the scale time required, the carbon removal potential, social and environmental impacts, and cost.

Recommendations

Eight international actions are listed as recommendations:

1: Global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emission should be continued and increased. GGR is not a substitute for reducing emissions, and both must be employed if global emissions goals are to be achieved.

2: Implement a global suite of GGR technologies. This should include ready-to-deploy, land-based methods, as well as more speculative methods.

3: Build CCS infrastructure. CCS is highlighted by the report as being important to CO₂ removal goals, and it is required for several GGR methods. Scenario building indicated that substantial permanent storage is required for goals to be reached, and this has so far only been demonstrated in geological reservoirs.

Earlier this year IChemE’s Energy Centre launched a green paper outlining a chemical engineering perspective on CCS, and what the discipline can do to accelerate the deployment of the technology. Another recent development in CCS was the release of a report by the carbon capture usage and storage (CCUS) cost challenge taskforce. The report set out recommendations for the UK government, and called for policy framework to be released early next year.

4: Incentivise demonstrators and early stage deployment. This will enable further development of GGR methods and allow assessment of the real potential of such methods. This will also allow assessment of social and environmental impacts and enable cost discovery and reduction.

5: Incentivise the removal of greenhouse gases. Doing this through use of carbon pricing, and other mechanisms will encourage development in spite of associated costs.

6: Establish a framework to govern the sustainability of GGR deployment. Rigorous lifecycle assessments and environmental monitoring should be conducted to assess use of methods individually, as well as together.

7: Build GGR into regulatory frameworks and carbon trading systems. For example, in the UK, active support for GGR implementation, such as forestation and habitat restoration, should be built into new UK agricultural or land management subsidies.

8: Establish international science-based standards for monitoring, reporting and verifying GGR methods. This should be of both carbon sequestration and environmental impacts. Currently, there are standards for biomass and CCS, but not GGR methods at large.

Report lessons

Though the published report acknowledges that GGR at the required scale is very challenging and costly, it also surmises that this goal is achievable given sufficient effort. Substantial effort has to be put towards deploying currently available methods at the scale required, as well as into the development of speculative methods.

Azapagic commented: “The key lesson for chemical and process engineers from this report is that we need to pursue aggressively a range of measures for climate change mitigation. A portfolio of greenhouse gas technologies will be needed, including bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air capture (DAC) and carbon capture and storage (CCS). We should capitalise on our fundamental and practical knowledge of these technologies and lead in their development – the sooner they are available at scale, the better chance we have of succeeding in mitigating climate change.”