January 31, 2018

Negative emission technologies: What role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?

Roundup comments accompanied this briefing.

Climate scenarios which keep global warming within Paris Agreement limits rely on large-scale application of Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) – things designed to remove carbon dioxide from the air on a huge scale.

NETs are considered necessary to compensate for the inadequacy of the currently planned mitigation measures and avoid dangerous levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

How much should we rely on such technologies?  How effective are they and what real chance have we got of deploying them in time – and on a sufficient scale – to remove enough CO2?

The European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC) provides advice to policy-makers and is made up of the EU national science academies (including the Royal Society).  EASAC’s new report examines the future of NETs and whether they can really help us tackle climate change.

Speakers will include:

Prof. John Shepherd FRS, Emeritus Professor of Ocean and Earth Sciences at the University of Southampton and member of the expert group

Prof. Michael Norton, EASAC Environment Programme Director and member of the expert group

Prof. Gideon Henderson FRS, Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford and reviewer of the report