ESD Ideas: Photoelectrochemical carbon removal as negative emission technology
<p>The pace of the transition to a low-carbon economy – especially in the fuels sector – is not high enough to achieve the 2 °C target limit for global warming by only cutting emissions. Most political roadmaps to tackle global warming implicitly rely on the timely availability o...
| Main Authors: | , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Copernicus Publications
2019-01-01
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| Series: | Earth System Dynamics |
| Online Access: | https://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/10/1/2019/esd-10-1-2019.pdf |
| Summary: | <p>The pace of the transition to a low-carbon economy – especially in the fuels
sector – is not high enough to achieve the 2 °C target limit for
global warming by only cutting emissions. Most political roadmaps to tackle
global warming implicitly rely on the timely availability of mature negative
emission technologies, which actively invest energy to remove CO<sub>2</sub> from the
atmosphere and store it permanently. The models used as a basis for
decarbonization policies typically assume an implementation of such
large-scale negative emission technologies starting around the year 2030,
ramped up to cause net negative emissions in the second half of the century
and balancing earlier CO<sub>2</sub> release. On average, a contribution of
−10 Gt CO<sub>2</sub> yr<sup>−1</sup> is expected by 2050
(Anderson and Peters, 2016). A viable approach for
negative emissions should (i) rely on a scalable and sustainable
source of energy (solar), (ii) result in a safely storable product,
(iii) be highly efficient in terms of water and energy use, to
reduce the required land area and competition with water and food demands of
a growing world population, and (iv) feature large-scale feasibility and affordability.</p> |
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| ISSN: | 2190-4979 2190-4987 |