{"id":67186,"date":"2020-09-24T14:15:40","date_gmt":"2020-09-24T14:15:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chinadialogue.net\/?post_type=explainer&p=67186"},"modified":"2024-06-07T15:56:46","modified_gmt":"2024-06-07T14:56:46","slug":"geoengineering-how-to-stop-global-warming-most-controversial-solutions-explained","status":"publish","type":"explainer","link":"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/geoengineering-how-to-stop-global-warming-most-controversial-solutions-explained\/","title":{"rendered":"How to stop global warming? The most controversial solutions explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Depending on who you ask, geoengineering is either a threat to serious climate action, a faraway back-up plan or a necessary part of today\u2019s climate policy. All would likely agree it is contentious.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geoengineering encompasses a broad spectrum of proposed large-scale, deliberate interventions to mitigate or even reverse temperature rise<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Read more<\/p>

Want the full picture? Explore our\u00a0geoengineering hub<\/a>\u00a0to read more about this topic.<\/p><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Many scientists<\/a> and activists are concerned<\/a> that climate interventions which rely on these \u201ctechnological fixes\u201d will divert attention<\/a> away from emissions cuts and disrupt a complex and poorly understood global climate system even further. \u201cIt would really be a dangerous experiment, and it’s impossible to really test before,\u201d says Linda Schneider, a climate policy expert at the Heinrich B\u00f6ll Foundation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, others think it increasingly likely that we\u2019ll need to deploy these measures, alongside rapid emissions reductions, in order to avoid dangerous levels of warming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Geoengineering tends to be separated into two main strands: techniques which aim to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the much more controversial proposals to reflect sunlight away from the Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here we take an in-depth look at the main proposed techniques in each category, their feasibility and concerns about the potential negative impacts they could bring with them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carbon dioxide removal <\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many researchers argue the use of carbon removal technologies are now all but essential since the world is so off track to cut emissions enough to avoid dangerous warming. \u201cBy the point we get to zero emissions, we\u2019re going to have unacceptable amounts of warming,\u201d says Douglas MacMartin, a researcher in mechanical and aerospace engineering at Cornell University who specialises in solar geoengineering. \u201cThe long-term solution to that is to pull the CO2 out of the atmosphere.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But others have warned against a reliance on unproven negative emissions technologies. \u201cIf we rely on these and they are not deployed or are unsuccessful at removing CO2 from the atmosphere at the levels assumed, society will be locked into a high-temperature pathway,\u201d climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Glen Peters argued<\/a> in 2016.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BECCS<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, often known by its shorthand BECCS, has come to be seen as one of the most viable negative emissions technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BECCS involves farming crops or trees, which sequester CO2 from the air as they grow, then burning them to create energy while also capturing the carbon emitted. The carbon would then be stored underground, preventing it from returning to the atmosphere, before the whole process is repeated. Over time, and at a large enough scale, the technique could in theory remove substantial amounts of carbon from the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"BECCS<\/div>
Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, or BECCS (Graphic: James Round<\/a> \/ China Dialogue)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

BECCS has become especially popular with climate modellers, and is now<\/a> included as a key part of most decarbonisation pathways compatible with the Paris Agreement. However, scientists have also developed deeper decarbonisation pathways<\/a>, that rely on lifestyle change and the rapid roll out of renewables. These would limit warming to 1.5C and, in theory, eliminate the need for BECCS. Meanwhile, some call<\/a> for a \u201cpost-growth\u201d economics that entails a deeper shift to smaller<\/a> or steady-state economies, a change not considered by these models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite its widespread use in climate models, BECCS has not yet been proven at scale, with just a handful<\/a> of plants operating around the world. The upfront costs of building carbon capture plants are also high, while the storage of carbon underground could cause earthquakes<\/a> or result in CO2 leaking back into the atmosphere<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout having done it at even a remote fraction of the scale that you need, I would be worried about being overconfident in our ability to scale anything up by three or four orders of magnitude,\u201d says MacMartin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"ADM<\/div>
The world’s only large-scale BECCS facility is the Archer Daniel Midland’s plant in the US city of Decatur in Illinois (Image: Google Earth)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another major concern with BECCS is the vast amounts of land that would be needed to grow the bioenergy in the first place, which could compete with food provision or lead to deforestation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One study<\/a> found the bioenergy crops needed to deliver the scale of CO2 removal included in pathways to limit warming to 2C could occupy up to 700 million hectares \u2013 equivalent to around half of the world\u2019s current cropland. Expanding bioenergy further to meet the 1.5C limit could cause overall losses in carbon from land, the study said, by replacing forests and other high-carbon ecosystems with crops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think whether or not we should scale BECCS is a bigger question because of land use issues, environmental justice issues,\u201d says Shuchi Talati, a fellow on solar geoengineering governance at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS). \u201cI don\u2019t think BECCS deserves the prominence it’s getting right now.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Direct air capture<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

This is the other main large-scale negative emissions technology being proposed. Direct air capture (DAC) involves machines removing carbon dioxide directly from the air, rather than from a point source, such as a thermal power station, as with BECCS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Direct<\/div>
Direct air capture (Graphic: James Round<\/a> \/ China Dialogue)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In order to be a negative emissions technology, the CO2 would then need to be stored in a way that stopped it returning to the atmosphere, similar to BECCS. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When compared to BECCS, direct air capture can look like an attractive option because it does not rely on huge changes in land use and avoids potential complications around deforestation. Theoretically, plants could also be more easily built close to storage and utilisations sites, reducing the need for long-distance CO2 transport, such as via pipelines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it comes with several caveats. It would likely require vast amounts of energy to run: a paper<\/a> published last year found it could require more than half of today\u2019s total electricity production by 2100. The paper also warned against the risks of assuming it can be deployed at scale then finding out this is not possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n
\n
\"direct<\/div>
The Climeworks direct air capture facility in Switzerland has 30 fans powered by energy from a waste incinerator. Each fan is capable of sucking up to 135 kg of CO2 out of the air every day. \u00a0(Image: Orjan Ellingvag\u00a0\/ Alamy)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n
\"direct<\/div>
Some of this captured CO2 is used in a nearby commercial greenhouse to increase crop yields. (Images: Orjan Ellingvag\u00a0\/ Alamy)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are also concerns<\/a> about what the captured CO2 may be used for. For example, a joint venture<\/a> between US start-up Carbon Engineering and fossil-fuel company Occidental Petroleum to develop the world\u2019s first large-scale DAC plant will use the captured CO2 to improve the efficiency of oil recovery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, enhanced oil recovery<\/a> is currently the biggest industrial use of CO2. It is the only large-scale carbon sequestration industry that exists, so offers a financial pathway to developing DAC and BECCS on a wider scale. However, using captured CO2 to extract more oil has obvious problems<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Captured CO2 could also be used in other applications, such as to produce fuels or building materials like cement \u2013 an industry known as carbon capture and utilisation (CCU)<\/a>. However, to be considered negative emissions<\/em>, the CO2 must be kept locked up long-term \u2013 if it is released into the atmosphere again, such as by burning fuel, the whole process becomes carbon neutral at best. There are currently<\/a> 15 small DAC plants operating worldwide, but not all the carbon they capture is being stored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other CO2 removal technologies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are a huge number of nature-based solutions<\/a> which could increase carbon sequestration, such as afforestation, reforestation, and the restoration of peatlands and coastal ecosystems. These are important but rarely considered to be part of the \u201cgeoengineering\u201d bracket.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Marine<\/div>
A marine scientist works on seagrass restoration in Turkey’s Kas-Kekova marine protected area. Seagrass meadows cover just 0.1% of the ocean floor, but contain 18% of all ocean carbon. (Image: Alamy)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But some geoengineering proposals aim to bolster natural processes. Enhanced mineral weathering, for example, aims to speed the natural absorption of CO2 by rocks. Ocean fertilisation<\/a>, another example of this, would add vast amounts of iron or other nutrients to the ocean to stimulate the growth of algal blooms that absorb CO2. However, according to Talati, ocean fertilisation is rarely now considered viable at scale, describing it as a research success story. \u201cWe did research into it and found that it really wasn’t a viable option, and people really stopped talking about it in the geoengineering space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biochar has also been suggested as a potential large-scale carbon removal solution. Here organic material such as biomass would be burnt to create charcoal then buried in soil to store the carbon. While several oil majors have pushed biochar<\/a> as a win-win climate solution it has yet to be proven at scale. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solar radiation management<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Also known as solar geoengineering, this group of proposed technologies would, in theory, reflect sunlight away from the Earth\u2019s surface before it has a chance to warm the atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Proponents of these controversial techniques argue they should be researched and understood in case the world overshoots the carbon budget for 1.5C or 2C of warming and carbon removal techniques have not yet reached an adequate scale to reduce emissions to safer levels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But solar geoengineering has serious limitations. All techniques would fail to address ocean acidification<\/a>, since they would not directly reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. They also run the risk of \u201ctermination shock\u201d \u2013 a rapid rise in warming should the method fail for some reason \u2013 and of changing local rainfall<\/a> patterns or temperatures in unexpected or undesirable ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stratospheric aerosol injection <\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Currently the most discussed approach to solar radiation management consists of sulphate particles or other aerosols being injected into the stratosphere from planes or high-altitude balloons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Stratospheric<\/div>
Stratospheric aerosol injection (Graphic: James Round<\/a> \/ China Dialogue)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Stratospheric aerosols are the only solar geoengineering techniques \u201cwe know work today\u201d, says Macmartin of Cornell University. \u201cWe see what happens after a large volcanic eruption like Mount Pinatubo<\/a>: put sulphate aerosols into the stratosphere and the planet cooled by about a half a degree.\u201d However, current aircraft could not bring enough to the stratosphere, he says \u2013 vehicles with this payload are \u201cat least five years\u201d away from development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a solar geoengineering system that is beneficial to most of the world is likely much further away than that, adds Talati. \u201cThere are just so many unanswered questions,\u201d she says. \u201cWe would need a robust governance system, we would need to know how successful solar geoengineering at a large scale really was, we would need a large-scale monitoring system in place. All of that is really costly. And so I think we\u2019re pretty far away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"mount<\/div>
The Raikoke\u00a0volcano of Russia\u2019s Kuril archipelago erupts in June 2019, spewing volcanic ash and gases high into the atmosphere (Image: NASA Earth Observatory<\/a>)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

A range of potential problems are already causing concern. Injected sulphate aerosols could deplete the ozone layer<\/a>. Sulphates would also eventually come down as acid rain, says MacMartin, a particular worry for the relatively pristine parts of the planet which have not previously experienced this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It could also pose a risk to geopolitical systems, says Talati. \u201cIf a country decides to deploy solar geoengineering unilaterally, that could completely disrupt weather systems for a particular country, which would then disrupt its agricultural systems, and its GDP, resulting in massive tensions<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several research programmes<\/a> continue to develop stratospheric aerosol injection today in a bid to better understand its risks and benefits, despite calls from some quarters for no testing or deployment to go forward before a credible global governance mechanism is in place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cloud brightening<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Another, less-researched solar radiation management proposal would see ships spray seawater into low-lying stratocumulus clouds. This would add salt particles around which more water vapour could condense and so, in theory, increase the reflectivity of the clouds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, scientists don’t yet know where and when it does and doesn\u2019t work, says MacMartin. \u201cUntil we can answer that question that makes it a little bit hard to make much in the way of global predictions,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Cloud<\/div>
Marine cloud brightening (Graphic: James Round<\/a> \/ China Dialogue)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Australia is already experimenting<\/a> with the technique on a local scale in the hope it could be used to provide protection for the Great Barrier Reef. But attempting to scale this up to cool the entire planet would introduce other problems, says MacMartin. The right type of clouds probably sit above about 10% of Earth\u2019s surface and \u201cthe effects don\u2019t stay right where you\u2019re putting in that forcing,\u201d he says. \u201cYou are going to probably get larger perturbations in precipitation patterns and things like that from marine cloud brightening than you would from stratospheric aerosols.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other solar geoengineering technologies<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are a host of other hypothetical techniques, largely with far less research interest than the above two methods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of the most outlandish is the space mirrors proposal, whereby a fleet of mirrors would be sent into orbit to deflect light away from Earth. While this could avoid concerns of chemical intervention in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, it could still<\/a> have negative consequences, such as drought. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also generally considered to be prohibitively expensive. \u201cI think one of the reasons solar geoengineering has the prominence it does is because it could be a cheaper way to limit harm while we scale up things like carbon removal and mitigation and adaptation,\u201d says Talati. \u201cIn that way, I feel like [space mirrors] wouldn\u2019t offer a lot of the benefits that make stratospheric aerosol injection attractive.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"arctic<\/div>
The Arctic Ice Project research site in\u00a0Utqia\u0121vik, Alaska, USA. Researchers are testing a method of protecting Arctic ice using hollow reflective glass beads to reflect more sunlight away from the Earth. (Image: Arctic Ice Project<\/a>)<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Another lesser-known proposal is cloud thinning<\/a>. While not technically reflecting sunlight, the aim here would be to disperse high altitude cirrus clouds by adding additional nuclei, allowing more heat to escape from the Earth. However, research has found that seeding the clouds could<\/a> accidentally lead to more warming, or impact other aspects of the climate system in unexpected ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More localised changes could also be made on the Earth\u2019s surface. From installing white roofs to genetically modifying crops to reflect more sunlight, changing the reflectivity of the ground could help to counteract warming \u2013 particularly<\/a> for hot extremes in densely populated and important agricultural regions. However, the smaller scale of these various proposals typically exclude them from being considered as solar geoengineering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>
Recommended<\/span><\/span><\/div><\/a>\n\n\n\n

Large-scale changes to the Earth\u2019s surface albedo have also been proposed, from covering deserts in plastic sheeting<\/a> to protecting Arctic ice using hollow reflective glass beads \u2013 a scheme that is now being tested<\/a>. Other suggestions would try to brighten the surface of oceans, such as by generating millions of tiny air bubbles or spreading microbeads across the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many argue geoengineering methods need more attention and research, at the very least to better understand their potential harmful effects and develop systems for how they should be governed. Meanwhile, scientists agree that to have a chance of keeping global warming within safe levels the focus should remain on rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An in-depth look at the various proposals to remove CO2 from the atmosphere or deflect sunlight away from the Earth<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":67236,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","categories":[761],"tags":[12580,513,548,597],"country":[],"class_list":["post-67186","explainer","type-explainer","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate","tag-carbon-dioxide-removal","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-geoengineering","tag-technology"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGeoengineering: the most controversial climate solutions, explained<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"An in-depth look at the various proposals to remove CO2 from the atmosphere or deflect sunlight away from the Earth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dialogue.earth\/en\/climate\/geoengineering-how-to-stop-global-warming-most-controversial-solutions-explained\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How to stop global warming? 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