California has enacted ambitious climate goals, including statewide carbon neutrality by 2045.
By Ethan Elkind
While much of the required greenhouse gas reductions will come from clean technology and emission reduction programs, meeting these targets will necessitate new methods of actively removing carbon from the atmosphere and capturing difficult-to-mitigate industrial facility emissions, including the use of technologies broadly known as engineered carbon removal. These processes include:
- Carbon capture and sequestration of industrial facility emissions,
- Biomass energy production with carbon capture, and
- Direct air capture of atmospheric carbon.
The processes can complement traditional emission reduction and nature-based solutions, but they mostly are still in the early development stages. Proponents face significant questions about carbon removal capacity, duration of sequestration, optimal locations, support infrastructure, and long-term financing.
A report sponsored by Bank of America, UC Berkeley Law and the UCLA School of Law, Capturing Opportunity: Law and Policy Solutions to Accelerate Engineered Carbon Removal in California, offers a suite of policy innovations and proposals to address these challenges, including:
- Establishing a statewide single point of contact for engineered carbon removal project incentives, permitting, and oversight.
- Identifying project and infrastructure corridors best suited for new development to conduct pre-permitting environmental, land use, and community review.
- Developing environmental review guidelines specific to carbon removal projects.
- Considering extension of and adjustment to the state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard‘s carbon capture protocol to support project financing.
To discuss the report’s findings and next steps for engineered carbon removal in California, the sponsors of the report will host a free webinar on Wednesday, January 27th from 10-11am Pacific Time with an expert pane:
- Uduak-Joe Ntuk, California State Oil and Gas Supervisor, California Geologic Energy Management Division (CalGEM)
- Anne Canavati, Research Analyst, Energy Futures Initiative
- Keith Pronske, President and Chief Executive Officer, Clean Energy Systems
Download the report here.
Thank you, Ethan. We should do whatever we can to clean up our mess and reduce further degradation, but we shouldn’t get too attached to the outcome of our well-intentioned efforts. Time is short. (Please see my December 27, 2020, editorial in these pages, “Climate Change is Accelerating.”) Mother Earth needs all the help she can get, even if it doesn’t save us. We owe her. Keep up the good work.