06.08.2018

# Media

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Newcastle Herald: Negative emissions technology and global warming

"To avoid 2 degrees average global warming before 2100, widespread negative emissions technologies that remove CO2 from the air need to start by 2030 – in 11 years – ramping up to global net negative emissions by 2070."

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04.08.2018

# New Publications

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Werner, C.; et al. (2018): Biogeochemical potential of biomass pyrolysis systems for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C

Werner, C.; Schmidt, H-P; Gerten, D.; Lucht, W.; Kammann, C. (2018): Biogeochemical potential of biomass pyrolysis systems for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C. In: Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (4), S. 44036. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aabb0e.

"Our results show that meeting the 1.5 °C goal through mitigation strategies including large-scale NE with plantation-based PyCCS may require conversion of natural vegetation to biomass plantations in the order of 133–3280 Mha globally, depending on the applied technology and the NE demand. Advancing towards additional bio-oil sequestration reduces land demand considerably by potentially up to 60%, while the benefits from yield increases account for another 3%–38% reduction (equalling 82–362 Mha). However, when mitigation commitments are increased by high balancing claims, even the most advanced PyCCS technologies and biochar-mediated co-benefits cannot compensate for delayed action towards phasing-out fossil fuels."

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30.07.2018

# New Publications

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Beck, Silke; et al. (2018): The politics of anticipation. The IPCC and the negative emissions technologies experience

Beck, Silke; Mahony, Martin (2018): The politics of anticipation. The IPCC and the negative emissions technologies experience. In: Glob. Sustain. 1, S. 979. DOI: 10.1017/sus.2018.7.

"In the post-Paris political landscape, the relationship between science and politics is changing. We discuss what this means for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using recent controversies over negative emissions technologies (NETs) as a window into the fraught politics of producing policy-relevant pathways and scenarios. We suggest that pathways and scenarios have a ‘world-making’ power, potentially shaping the world in their own image and creating new political realities. Assessment bodies like the IPCC need to reflect on this power, and the implications of changing political contexts, in new ways."

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23.07.2018

# New Publications

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Lenzi, Dominic (2018): The ethics of negative emissions

Lenzi, Dominic (2018): The ethics of negative emissions. In: Glob. Sustain. 1, S. 1455. DOI: 10.1017/sus.2018.5.

"Limiting dangerous climate change is widely believed to require negative emissions. This prospect has sparked concerns about whether negative emissions could be scaled up quickly enough, along with concerns about their likely ethical costs. Building upon scenario modelling, this paper examines ethical concerns with negative emissions via the comparison of three alternate climate futures. This paper shows that the severity of concerns depends upon implementation conditions, and especially the extent of deferred mitigation. Negative emissions can be a valuable means of limiting dangerous climate change, or an unjust gamble against the future."

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16.07.2018

# Media

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Nature Energy: NET gains

"Negative emissions technologies face numerous challenges, from techno-economic hurdles to public acceptance concerns, but progress in research, collaboration and regulation provide indications that they may yet form part of future energy systems."

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08.05.2018

# New Publications

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Reynolds, Jesse (2018): Governing Experimental Responses. Negative Emissions Technologies and Solar Climate Engineering

Reynolds, Jesse (2018): Governing Experimental Responses. Negative Emissions Technologies and Solar Climate Engineering. In Andrew Jordan, Dave Huitema, Harro van Asselt (Eds.): Governing Climate Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 285-302.

"This chapter places the governance of climate engineering in a polycentric governance conceptual framework. Following an introduction to climate engineering proposals and their governance needs, I discuss existing climate engineering governance. The chapter then explores the extent to which climate engineering governance is polycentric, prospects for its future polycentricity and what – if anything – this implies for climate governance more generally."

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27.04.2018

# New Publications

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Davies, Philip A.; et al. (2018): Desalination as a Negative Emissions Technology

Davies, Philip A.; Yuan, Qingchun; Richter, Renaud Charles de (2018): Desalination as a Negative Emissions Technology. In Environ. Sci.: Water Res. Technol. DOI: 10.1039/C7EW00502D.

"In this study, we propose treating desalination reject brine by electrolysis to form Mg(OH)2 and thus absorb CO2 via the oceans. The energy and water penalties associated with the electrolysis are calculated as 1.8 GJ/tCO2 and 13.7 m3/tCO2 respectively, making it an interesting option in comparison with some other types of NET. However, NET-modification more than doubles the specific energy consumption of a reverse-osmosis desalination plant. It is concluded that NET-desalination has potential to contribute to CDR in arid countries (especially if solar energy is used) thus helping to meet Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) following the COP21 summit."

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24.04.2018

# Media

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phys.org: Carbon capture could be a financial opportunity for US biofuels

"There's really no scenario that meets the world's climate goals without negative emissions," said Katharine Mach, a senior research scientist at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences. "But most technologies for carbon removal are immature, largely unavailable or expensive."

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05.04.2018

# New Publications

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Vaughan, Naomi E.; et al. (2018): Evaluating the use of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage in low emission scenarios

Vaughan, Naomi E.; Gough, Clair; Mander, Sarah; Littleton, Emma W.; Welfle, Andrew; Gernaat, David E. H. J.; van Vuuren, Detlef P. (2018): Evaluating the use of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage in low emission scenarios. In Environ. Res. Lett. 13 (4), p. 44014. DOI: 10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa02.

"Here, we explore the use of BECCS technologies in a reference scenario and three low emission scenarios generated by an integrated assessment model (IMAGE). Using these scenarios we investigate the feasibility of key implicit and explicit assumptions about these BECCS technologies, including biomass resource, land use, CO2 storage capacity and carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment rate. In these scenarios, we find that half of all global CO2 storage required by 2100 occurs in USA, Western Europe, China and India, which is compatible with current estimates of regional CO2 storage capacity."

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14.03.2018

# Media

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E&E News: Models assume we'll cover Earth in trees. That's a problem

"The farmland of central Illinois might rarely be at the forefront of controversial climate action — but its moment arrived last spring when a Decatur-based ethanol plant became one of the first of its kind to launch an ambitious strategy to combat global warming. It combines the production of biofuel with a special technology designed to capture the facility's carbon dioxide emissions. It's a fledgling version of a much bigger geoengineering strategy that some experts hope could reduce global emissions by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's known as "negative emissions.""

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