Minx, JC orcid.org/0000-0002-2862-0178, Lamb, WF, Callaghan, MW et al. (2 more authors) (2017) Fast growing research on negative emissions. Environmental Research Letters, 12 (3). 035007. ISSN 1748-9326
Abstract
Generating negative emissions by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is a key requirement for limiting global warming to well below 2 °C, or even 1.5 °C, and therefore for achieving the long-term climate goals of the recent Paris Agreement. Despite being a relatively young topic, negative emission technologies (NETs) have attracted growing attention in climate change research over the last decade. A sizeable body of evidence on NETs has accumulated across different fields that is by today too large and too diverse to be comprehensively tracked by individuals. Yet, understanding the size, composition and thematic structure of this literature corpus is a crucial pre-condition for effective scientific assessments of NETs as, for example, required for the new special report on the 1.5 °C by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). In this paper we use scientometric methods and topic modelling to identify and characterize the available evidence on NETs as recorded in the Web of Science. We find that the development of the literature on NETs has started later than for climate change as a whole, but proceeds more quickly by now. A total number of about 2900 studies have accumulated between 1991 and 2016 with almost 500 new publications in 2016. The discourse on NETs takes place in distinct communities around energy systems, forests as well as biochar and other soil carbon options. Integrated analysis of NET portfolios—though crucial for understanding how much NETs are possible at what costs and risks—are still in their infancy and do not feature as a theme across the literature corpus. Overall, our analysis suggests that NETs research is relatively marginal in the wider climate change discourse despite its importance for global climate policy.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2017 IOP Publishing Ltd. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/. |
Keywords: | negative emissions technologies; scientometrics; topic modelling; carbon dioxide removal technologies; IPCC; Paris agreement |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 14 Jan 2019 11:23 |
Last Modified: | 14 Jan 2019 11:23 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | IOP Publishing |
Identification Number: | 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5ee5 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:140955 |