Climate Connection May 9

Priorities for Climate Solutions

The rise in global temperature is happening faster than scientists predicted. Fossil fuel use is increasing, along with their emissions. It is time to set priorities for what solutions are most important. We have a tool that can do just that – Climate Interactive is a free program developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that allows anyone to see what various solutions yield in terms of lowering global temperatures and their consequences, both individually and in combination with other solutions. Recently, the program has examined the impacts of the six methods of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). The fossil fuel industry argues that CDR allows continued use of fossil fuels, although no methods have been feasible at scale.  In fact, the industry is injecting captured CO2 into wells to increase fossil fuel production. 

The 6 methods of carbon dioxide removal are afforestation (planting trees), bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, biochar (a form of charcoal) and agricultural soil carbon sequestration, enhanced mineralization, and direct air capture. However, using all of these methods together would only lower global temperature by 0.1 degrees by 2050. They cannot compensate for continued CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels. Direct air capture is energy-intensive and would require all of the solar and wind energy in the United States to capture the CO2 being generated. This is estimated at 5-40 gigatons/year. Direct air capture is complex and customized, so the price is unlikely to come down, unlike what has happened with wind, solar, and now batteries. Also, the cost continues every year indefinitely, analogous to paying for garbage collection.

Only avoiding CO2 generation from burning fossil fuels makes sense. CO2 removal from changes in land use, such as afforestation, bioenergy, and spreading powdered rock on land, have equity and food security challenges because so much land would be required. Carbon capture from burning biomass from waste, biofuels, and wood chips is not carbon-neutral, and its expense prohibits it from capturing and storing the many gigatons/year that would be required. Perhaps it is just as well that the federal administration is considering canceling the subsidies offered in the Inflation Reduction Act to the fossil fuel industry to pilot the technological approaches to carbon capture and storage, whether from direct air capture or capture in burning plumes of fossil fuels or of biomass. 

We need to concentrate on higher priority solutions to climate change. These are renewables, eliminating subsidies for fossil fuel production, increasing efficiency, cutting deforestation, instituting carbon pricing to discourage fossil fuel use, and decreasing methane emissions from waste and liquified natural gas used for electricity generation. Until we stop generating CO2 and methane from fossil fuels, carbon dioxide removal methods should have no priority. In Sitka, we need to do our part to eliminate needs for fossil fuels by electrifying heat and transport, supporting efficiency, safeguarding our old growth Tongass forest, and instituting community composting. 

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Kay Kreiss, Transition Sitka