Holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, the aspirational global target to stabilize the impact of warming on the planet, is simply not possible with only measures that reduce emissions. To protect our planet from disastrous climate change, we will need to actually remove global greenhouse gases from our atmosphere.
This strategy has been the subject of focus for many scientific institutions, including the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, which published the consensus study report, “Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda,” in 2019.
And there is growing interest within the DOE and other federal agencies to fund negative emissions technologies and research. For example, the Office of Science invested $5 million in FY20 (mostly direct air capture technologies). In FY21 the House Energy and Water bill includes the following negative emissions technologies budgets: at least $20 million from EERE, at least $50,000,000 from FE, and at least $25,000,000 from the Office of Science.
For the Lab, negative emissions has been an area of growing interest as a potential area of strategic growth. A group at the Lab named the Negative Emissions Exploratory Technologies (NEXT) Working Group has been thinking about the Lab’s role in this space.
Bill Collins, director of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area’s Climate & Ecosystem Sciences Division, describes the current efforts: “We are at the beginning stages of exploring negative emissions research as an area of focus at the Lab. This includes assessing the Lab’s current skill set and related research portfolio,” he explained.
Bill and the Negative Emissions Exploratory Technologies Working Group issued a multi-Area survey in August, seeking input from researchers at the Lab. One hundred researchers responded to the survey; many indicated that the Lab already conducted research in negative emissions technology. Some of these include new approaches for long term carbon sequestration in working and natural ecosystems and in deep geological reservoirs, securing geological confinement, adsorption via direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture and sequestration, and systems engineering for negative emissions technologies.
“We have some very distinctive plays in a number of research areas, which are either unique or particularly strong, “ said Bill. “And our computing power can take many of these areas to the next level.” In addition, the Lab’s close partnership with UC Berkeley, which has its own areas of strength related to negative emissions, brings additional collaborative opportunities.
The next step for the NEXT Working Group is to identify the key areas of strategic importance and to create working groups to build out these areas of expertise. The Laboratory-Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program is considering investments to support strategically important negative emissions work.
To participate in the conversation about the Lab’s negative emissions work, contact Bill Collins.
