Brent, Kerryn; McGee, Jeffrey; McDonald, Jan; Rohling, Eelco J. (2018): International law poses problems for negative emissions research. In Nature Climate change 8 (6), pp. 451–453. DOI: 10.1038/s41558-018-0181-2.

"New international governance arrangements that manage environmental risk and potential conflicts of interests are needed to facilitate negative emissions research that is essential to achieving the large-scale CO₂ removal implied by the Paris Agreement targets."

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Carlin, Norman; James, Robert A. (2018): Geoengineering Research Under U.S. Law. In Pratt's Energy Law Report 18 (3), pp. 67–75.

"The authors first divide the techniques under consideration between solar radiation management (aerosols in the stratosphere, or greater white surfaces below) and carbon dioxide removal (ocean iron fertilization (OIF) and other forms of carbon capture and sequestration). They detail the analysis required for an environmental impact statement (EIS) under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), and a variety of other U.S. statutes and common-law doctrines. "

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"A new book coming out April 21 points out the major holes in national and international geoengineering regulation, and lays out a framework for improvement. The book, titled Climate Engineering and the Law, was co-edited by Michael Gerrard from Columbia's Sabin Center for Climate Change Law and Tracy Hester, a graduate of Columbia Law School who now teaches at the University of Houston Law Center. Gerrard is also chair of the faculty of the Earth Institute."

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Reynolds, Jesse L.; Contreras, Jorge L.; Sarnoff, Joshua D. (2018): Intellectual property policies for solar geoengineering. In WIREs Clim Change 9 (2), e512. DOI: 10.1002/wcc.512.

"We consider some possible approaches, and recommend a bottom-up, primarily nonstate, voluntary “research commons” for patents and data that are related to solar geoengineering. This would facilitate information sharing and limit data fragmentation and trade secrecy. It would also provide an incentive for commons members to pledge to limit some forms of intellectual property acquisition and to assure access on reasonable terms, thereby limiting the need for enforcement. This should help reduce downstream barriers to innovation and to encourage the potential development of technologies at reasonable cost. Such a research commons might also catalyze the adoption of best practices in research and development."

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