Assessment report from the GCEP workshop on energy supply with negative carbon emissions

Mar 2013

As part of its assessment towards energy technologies that reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, The Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP) held a workshop at Stanford University on June 15, 2012, on the topic of Energy Supply with Negative Carbon Emissions. The workshop addressed 4 main topics: Biomass Energy with Negative Emissions; Carbon Capture, Conversion and Storage; Addressing Other Contributions to Carbon Emissions; and System Modeling. This report summarizes the discussion and highlights research needs that were identified at the workshop by speakers and participants. The unparalleled ability of biological systems to capture and cycle carbon, and the potential to use these systems as part of an energy supply that leads to negative emissions, was brought to the forefront
at this workshop, as well as the need for integrated systems of supply, conversion and storage. Reaching net negative carbon emissions on a global scale could also be possible without the use of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, but the predicted costs of carbon in these energy technology scenarios would be extraordinarily high. Studies aimed at understanding and overcoming the limits to technologies for bioenergy with negative emissions, identification of integrated and optimized systems for negative emissions, and research towards novel carbon storage technologies would represent groundbreaking steps towards technologies that could achieve net negative carbon emissions in our energy supply.

By: J. L. Milne, C. B. Field

 
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