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Topic: BECCS

[Episode #176] – Climate Scenarios vs. Reality

Why do so many decarbonization scenarios rely on carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to play a major role in the world's energy transition portfolio when it really doesn’t even exist as a commercial technology? Why does the IPCC's climate mitigation strategy model countries as if they would implement the same policy for carbon pricing across all sectors, when we know that’s just not how the world operates? Why do models dodge attempts to reflect the fragmented, irrational, and irregular way that the world actually works, when we know for a fact that the transition is going to be a bumpy ride into a hazy future?

If globally coordinated carbon pricing never materializes, and CCS never has a real market opportunity as our integrated assessment models assume, where will that leave us in developing meaningful policies and taking action on climate change? And why aren’t other people asking this vital question?

In this episode, Dr. Ida Sognnaes, a Senior Researcher at the CICERO Center for International Climate Research, explains how the integrated assessment models (IAMs) used in IPCC reports are constructed, what assumptions modelers make, and how the very design of IAMs can bias them toward certain outcomes—including the role of CCS as a climate mitigation strategy. She also offers further evidence that the world is currently on a trajectory for between 2 and 3 degrees of warming by the end of the century, and shares her perspective on why the climate modeling community has been so reluctant to just say that plainly.

Geek rating: 8

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[Episode #173] – IPCC AR6 Part 2

In this second part of our IPCC Sixth Assessment report (“AR6”) Working Group III coverage, we welcome back our friend and AR6 contributing author Glen Peters of the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. Longtime listeners will remember Glen from his explanation of the ‘carbon budget’ in Episode #57, and on the various scenarios for global warming, what they mean, and the current trajectory for climate change in Episode #112.

Glen was a lead author of AR6 Chapter 3, titled “Mitigation pathways compatible with long-term goals,” so in this episode, we discuss the latest figures for the remaining carbon budget; explore the probabilities for limiting warming to 1.5 and 2°C, and we consider the changing views on the role of direct carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) as parts of the climate toolkit. Glen also gives us a very helpful explanation of some of the new terms and metrics used in AR6, such as the Illustrative Mitigation Pathways (IMPs), the warming Classification levels (C1-C8) and the other policy scenarios.

This is super-geeky but essential-to-understand stuff for anyone working on climate policy!

Geek rating: 8

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[Episode #131] – Decarbonizing the US by 2050

Is it possible to decarbonize the economy of the United States, and get to net-zero emissions by 2050? A team of researchers from 15 countries who are part of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project think so, based on their deep modeling of the US economy as part of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN). We introduced this work at a high level in Episode #129, during our conversation with Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, the Director of the SDSN. In this episode, we take a deep dive into the modeling itself with one of the modelers involved in the project. We’ll look at the specific energy technologies, devices, and grid management strategies that will make decarbonization by 2050 possible, and see why they think that decarbonizing the US is not only achievable by 2050, but practical, and very, very affordable.

Geek rating: 9

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[Episode #57] – Climate Science Part 7 – Carbon Budget

In this seventh episode of our mini-series on climate change, we explore what carbon budgets really mean, and what they indicate about the pathways that might allow us to keep global warming below two degrees C.

Amid all the unavoidable uncertainty in modeling warming and the effects of our actions, what do we really know about how much warming we might see in the future? If it turned out that our carbon budget is larger than we used to think it was, would that change our policy direction? And which policy paths should we advocate?

Our guest in this episode, Dr. Glen Peters, is a veteran researcher on climate change whose current research focuses on the causes of recent changes in carbon dioxide emission trends at the global and country level, and how these changes link to future emission pathways consistent with global climate objectives. And after listening to this nearly two-hour conversation, as well as our previous six episodes on climate science, you will have a much better idea of how much warming we may yet expect!

Geek rating: 8

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