Minx, JC orcid.org/0000-0002-2862-0178, Lamb, WF, Callaghan, MW et al. (16 more authors) (2018) Negative emissions—Part 1: Research landscape and synthesis. Environmental Research Letters, 13 (6). 063001. ISSN 1748-9326
Abstract
With the Paris Agreement's ambition of limiting climate change to well below 2 °C, negative emission technologies (NETs) have moved into the limelight of discussions in climate science and policy. Despite several assessments, the current knowledge on NETs is still diffuse and incomplete, but also growing fast. Here, we synthesize a comprehensive body of NETs literature, using scientometric tools and performing an in-depth assessment of the quantitative and qualitative evidence therein. We clarify the role of NETs in climate change mitigation scenarios, their ethical implications, as well as the challenges involved in bringing the various NETs to the market and scaling them up in time. There are six major findings arising from our assessment: first, keeping warming below 1.5 °C requires the large-scale deployment of NETs, but this dependency can still be kept to a minimum for the 2 °C warming limit. Second, accounting for economic and biophysical limits, we identify relevant potentials for all NETs except ocean fertilization. Third, any single NET is unlikely to sustainably achieve the large NETs deployment observed in many 1.5 °C and 2 °C mitigation scenarios. Yet, portfolios of multiple NETs, each deployed at modest scales, could be invaluable for reaching the climate goals. Fourth, a substantial gap exists between the upscaling and rapid diffusion of NETs implied in scenarios and progress in actual innovation and deployment. If NETs are required at the scales currently discussed, the resulting urgency of implementation is currently neither reflected in science nor policy. Fifth, NETs face severe barriers to implementation and are only weakly incentivized so far. Finally, we identify distinct ethical discourses relevant for NETs, but highlight the need to root them firmly in the available evidence in order to render such discussions relevant in practice.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Author(s). Published by 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; carbon dioxide removal (CDR); soil carbon sequestration and biochar; afforestation and reforestation; enhanced weathering; direct air capture; bioenergy combined with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) |
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 11:18 |
Last Modified: | 14 Jan 2019 11:18 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | IOP Publishing |
Identification Number: | 10.1088/1748-9326/aabf9b |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:140961 |