(Credit:
Royal Society)
Geoengineering is not a last resort, but the next necessary step to recalibrate the Earth's climate unless carbon emissions are significantly reduced in the near future, the Royal Society, the U.K.'s national academy of sciences, announced Tuesday.
"It is an unpalatable truth that unless we can succeed in greatly reducing CO2 emissions we are headed for a very uncomfortable and challenging climate future, and geoengineering will be the only option left to limit further temperature increases," John Shepherd, chair of the Royal Society's geoengineering study and a professor of Earth system science at the University of Southampton, said on behalf of the group.
The report "Geoengineering the climate: Science, governance and uncertainty" (PDF) urged carbon emissions reduction as the primary means of halting climate change. But it looked at geoengineering--engineering the environment on a large scale to purposely manipulate the world's climate--very seriously.
In past years, geoengineering has been thought of an as option of last resort, but the Royal Society asserted that some of the safer geoengineering techniques, like aggressively planting forests, could be implemented currently in conjunction with carbon reduction efforts.
Since geoengineering has the potential to affect people on a global scale, the group further recommended that an international organization like the U.N. Commission for Sustainable Development begin developing policies and a means for resolving anticipated geoengineering political conflicts.
"Assuming that acceptable standards for effectiveness, safety, public acceptance and cost were established, why should appropriate geoengineering options not be added to the portfolio of options that society will need and may wish to use to combat the challenges posed by climate change?" said the report.
With that in mind the group evaluated the safety, expense, effectiveness, and quickness of deployment for projects falling under two main classes of geoengineering: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar-radiation management (SRM).
CDR, efforts to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, included things like afforestation, encouraging plankton growth, and carbon capture and storage in the form of burying carbon-rich biomass or using biochar for fuel.
The SRM suggestions for manipulating the Earth so that it absorbs less solar radiation included more seemingly far-out options like painting all roofs white to reflect sunlight, placing thousands of space mirrors in near-Earth orbits to reflect sunlight, and spraying aerosols into the stratosphere.
The group said it generally favored CDR projects over SRM because they involved processes closer to natural occurrences, while the side effects of SRM projects are unknown and therefore more dangerous.
And depending on which process and which study you personally ascribe to, the answer on how "carbon clean" ethanol looks depends. In most debates centering on corn fermentation, for example, the studies cite a range from say, 20 to 30% less carbon intensive than gasoline, to 20 or 30% more. This begs one very big question in my mind, what's the difference? How does the same ethanol in my car have a possible carbon footprint range that wide?
The true answer lies in the ground we walk on. When I started to read a few of the studies and articles about them, an interesting fact emerges, the difference depends in large part on which land gets counted. Most of ethanol's carbon footprint falls into one of several categories, in roughly ascending order (depending on the source and process), the fuel used to make it, the fuel used to grow or transport the feedstock, the carbon content of the fuel itself, and the lost carbon not sequestered in the vegetation that would have been on the land used to grow the feedstock.
The last one, land use change, is the bugaboo. For example, if you assume that all the land used to produce the ethanol feedstock is already in production, you tend to find a carbon footprint at the low end of the range, since there is little net reduction in the carbon sink, and ethanol looks pretty good. If you assume that all the land used to produce the ethanol feedstock came from forests that had been chopped down, or marginal land that produces very low yields, you tend to find a carbon footprint at the high end of the range, and ethanol looks bad. Thought about another way, ethanol made from corn or sugar that displaces human or animal food production is likely to be relatively greenhouse gas friendly compared to ethanol made from corn or sugar that comes from new land put into production just for ethanol. The same logic applies to cellulosic ethanol sources, though not quite to the same degree. Interesting conundrum.
As usual, the devil's in the details, and people tend to use the case that best addresses their agenda, and apply it to all ethanol as a whole. Personally, I'm buying all my ethanol from land that is already in production, so my carbon footprint must be good. The rest of you can buy the OTHER ethanol with all the bad carbon footprint.
Neal Dikeman is a founding partner at Jane Capital Partners LLC, a boutique merchant bank advising strategic investors and startups in cleantech. He is founding contributor of Cleantech Blog, a Contributing Editor to Alt Energy Stocks, Chairman of Cleantech.org, and a blogger for CNET's Greentech blog.
Rising temperatures on the planet are killing off the equivalent of a mid-sized city every year.
The World Heath Organization attributes about 150,000 global deaths a year, according to the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, in a report released today. Malnutrition due to crop shortages is having an impact, but so is the spread of infectious diseases like malaria. Mosquitoes carrying malaria have now been found in traditionally cooler climates like South Korea. Increases in asthma can additionally be linked to warming.
Summer heat waves are also taking their toll and expect to see refugees increase in low-coastal nations like Bangladesh. In the 1990s, 600,000 people died from weather-related causes.
BP has proposed capturing carbon dioxide underground. A start-up in Texas called Skyonic says it can capture the gas and turn it into baking soda.
And now Carbon Sciences says it will turn carbon dioxide emissions from power plants and factories into calcium carbonate, otherwise known as limestone or chalk. The company combines the gas with fine calcium powders in a way that doesn't require a lot of heat and pressure, or that much calcium for that matter. For every ton of carbon dioxide, you only need three tons of raw materials, says CEO Derek McLeish.
The good news is that a lot of the raw materials exist as leftover tailings from mines, says McLeish. (Side note: McLeish also has set several land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats; it's a hobby.) So you are essentially taking environmental garbage, mixing it with pollution, and churning out a product that can then be sold to industrial manufacturers, who in turn won't have to ask miners to dig new holes in the ground to get calcium carbonate.
McLeish, in fact, showed us a prototype of how Carbon Sciences' system will work. It's in a van he drives around (See video). The chemical reaction that takes place in the van is powered by a solar panel on the roof.
Carbon sequestration will likely be inevitable--all three leading presidential candidates favor a cap-and-trade system, after all. The question now is how. Many believe that storing it underground will likely be the most practical way to do it, particularly when you think of the millions of tons of carbon dioxide that get produced. The gas will be liquefied before being inserted into the ground to increase storage. Some of the carbon dioxide can be pumped into oil fields to extract crude oil. However, a large percentage of the gas will just sit underground.
Converting carbon dioxide into solids does take raw materials and energy. McLeish (and Joe Jones of Skyonic), though, point out that the public isn't keen on storing a gas that can be hazardous to your health in large, underground caves. Still, carbon dioxide is a low-energy molecule. Converting it to other substances does require time, money, and energy. The efficiency of the processes will determine whether or not Skyonic or Carbon Sciences can become viable.
One sequestration technology you probably won't see, however, is using carbon dioxide to grow plankton in the ocean. , the people who had that idea, have run out of money.
Here's a novel twist on curbing greenhouse gases. Some scientists and companies are examining ways of using captured carbon dioxide to extract fossil fuels.
It works like this. Carbon dioxide from smokestacks would be captured and compressed, and then shuttled into pipelines to oil fields. The gas would then be forced into oil wells to extract more fossil fuels.
The scenario solves two major problems in the energy field. First, what do you do with all of the carbon dioxide? The leading idea is to store it underground in depleted mines or saline aquifers. By being forced into oil fields, the gas will at least perform an economic function. Second, it would help ameliorate one of the age-old problems facing the oil industry: oil companies only get about 30 percent or so of the oil out of a field. (iRobot is contemplating creating a robot that can help free up captured oil.)
Granted, some of the benefits of sequestration are lost by using it to extract fossil fuels, but conventional cars are going to be with us for a while. Better to use carbon dioxide for this than leave it in the atmosphere and burn oil. Getting permits to lay pipelines will also take quite a bit of time.
Duke Energy is currently building a power plant in Indiana that will come with a carbon sequestration facility. One of the ideas the utility is contemplating is using the gas for enhanced oil recovery, said CEO Jim Rogers at the Clean Tech Investor Summit, held this week in Indian Wells, Calif. Duke is working with Princeton University on sequestration research.
Oil giant BP is also examining a way to pipe carbon dioxide from a hydrogen power plant to oil fields. Hydrogen and BP? It created a hydrogen business last year and has launched experiments.
Steven Koonin, BP's chief scientists (and a former California Institute of Technology professor), noted that underground storage--whether used in oil recovery or not--seems to be the most viable for sequestration. Transforming carbon dioxide into baking soda, which has been proposed by some companies, or other solids, he noted, requires quite a bit of additional raw material and energy.
"There is a good reason CO2 is the end product of combustion. It is a low energy molecule," he said. " Getting rid of CO2 by burying it underground may be the best option."
Still, even there, scientists still don't know if room exists underground to store it all.
Some start-ups are trying to convert the gas into a fuel.
By 2010, Wal-Mart and its suppliers are going to be a lot more energy efficient.
The retailing giant has set a goal of getting suppliers to increase the energy efficiency of its products by 25 percent in three years. For some suppliers, the standards are a little more stringent. By 2010, the company will only sell Energy Star-rated air conditioners. Flat panel TVs will have to be 30 percent more energy efficient than they are now.
"If we achieved our 25 percent goal just in the U.S. we would save enough electricity to power 3 million homes per year or the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil," said CEO Lee Scott in a speech to employees earlier this week. "We do not know exactly how we will get there. We do not even now if our suppliers can make times like hair dryers that user 25 percent less energy. But we do know that our approach works--to partner with suppliers, to help customers make better decisions, and to use our business model to drive out waste."
The company might also start building charging stations (powered by solar panels) so that customers can charge up their plug-in hybrids or electric cars, Scott said. General Motors has been working with Wal-Mart to install ethanol pumps, which ordinary gas stations recoil from. Families in the U.S., he asserted, spend on average 17 percent of their income on energy.
Wal-Mart has been one of the leaders among large corporations to cut its carbon footprint. The company, for instance, has tested out solar lighting and electricity at certain stores and is swapping out conventional lights for LEDs in freezer cases. It saved a $1 million a year in power bills just by taking out the light bulbs in coke machines.
It has also encouraged suppliers to change their packaging and distribution techniques to cut energy consumption as well. Wal-Mart's mandates don't work. A few years ago it told suppliers to start using RFID tags or else, and only some have. Still, the company can have a big impact because of the sheer number of products that flow through its doors.
The company's also not shy about telling its suppliers about its goals. "We will favor--and in some cases even pay more--for suppliers that meet our standards and share our commitment to quality and sustainability," Scott said.
Wal-Mart, he further added, will also try to keep the price of energy-efficient cost-competitive with standard products. The company, for instance, cut the price of some 3M air filters by $2.
"Our goal is to double the sale of products that help make home more energy efficient," he said.
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