The role of negative CO2 emissions for reaching 2 °C—insights from integrated assessment modelling

By D. P. Vuuren, Sebastiaan Deetman, J. Vliet, M. Berg, Bas J. van Ruijven, B. Koelbl. Climatic Change, 2013

185 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Limiting climate change to 2 °C with a high probability requires reducing cumulative emissions to about 1600 GtCO2 over the 2000–2100 period. This requires unprecedented rates of decarbonization even in the short-run. The availability of the option of net negative emissions, such as bio-energy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) or reforestation/afforestation, allows to delay some of these emission reductions. In the paper, we assess the demand and potential for negative emissions in particular from BECCS. Both stylized calculations and model runs show that without the possibility of negative emissions, pathways meeting the 2 °C target with high probability need almost immediate emission reductions or simply become infeasible. The potential for negative emissions is uncertain. We show that negative emissions from BECCS are probably limited to around 0 to 10 GtCO2/year in 2050 and 0 to 20 GtCO2/year in 2100. Estimates on the potential of afforestation options are in the order of 0–4 GtCO2/year. Given the importance and the uncertainty concerning BECCS, we stress the importance of near-term assessments of its availability as today’s decisions has important consequences for climate change mitigation in the long run.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Environmental Engineering, Mechanical Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f58d52c2a3bad25d58947fe1ed456d0021acd7f8

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Robbie M. Andrew
2. G. P. Peters
3. J. Minx
4. Volker Krey
5. D. P. Vuuren
6. Pete Smith
7. D. V. van Vuuren
8. David McCollum

In Environmental Engineering

1. Robbie M. Andrew
2. G. P. Peters
3. J. Minx
4. Volker Krey
5. Felix Creutzig
6. Pete Smith
7. David McCollum
8. T. Wiedmann

In Mechanical Engineering

1. Sabine Fuss
2. J. Minx
3. Pete Smith
4. Robbie M. Andrew
5. G. P. Peters
6. Jason Hickel

Citations in the corpus

• Carbon‐Neutral Pathways for the United States (2021, result): “We found that the most economic form of BECCS was not in power plants, in contrast to many integrated assessment modeling studies (Clarke et al., 2014; IPCC, 2014; Smith et al., 2016; Van Vuuren et al., 2013) but in biore fi neries.”
• Pyrogenic carbon capture and storage (2018, background): “…assessment models (IAMs) include the large‐scale deployment of so‐called negative emissions technologies (NETs) to achieve CDR (Fuss et al., 2014; Hansen et al., 2017; Riahi et al., 2015; Rogelj et al., 2015; Rogelj, McCollum, Reisinger, Meinshausen, & Riahi, 2013; Van Vuuren et al., 2013).”
• Expert assessment concludes negative emissions scenarios may not deliver (2016, background): “Land availability is highly interdependent upon future crop yields and focuses on the fraction (usually up to half) of bioenergy produced by dedicated energy crops; the remaining bioenergy is assumed to come from forestry and waste residues (Azar et al 2013, van Vuuren et al 2013).”
• Investigating afforestation and bioenergy CCS as climate change mitigation strategies (2014, background): “…studies focus on the standalone mitigation potential of bioenergy CCS (Azar et al 2010, Popp et al 2011, Klein et al 2014, Kriegler et al 2013, Vuuren et al 2013) and afforestation (Strengers et al 2008, Reilly et al 2012) or investigate both at the same time (Wise et al 2009, Calvin et al…”
• Exploring SSP land-use dynamics using the IMAGE model: Regional and gridded scenarios of land-use change and land-based climate change mitigation (2018, unknown): “The land system is also important in climate change mitigation policies as it provides the possibility to generate negative emissions through a ff orestation and bioe-nergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) that are crucial in ambitious mitigation scenarios (Van Vuuren et al., 2013).”
• Soil carbon sequestration and biochar as negative emission technologies (2016, background): “IAMs have so far focused primarily on BECCS (Azar et al., 2010; Kriegler et al., 2013; van Vuuren et al., 2013) and AR (Strengers et al., 2008; Wise et al., 2009; Reilly et al., 2012; Humpen€oder et al., 2014).”
• Biophysical and economic limits to negative CO2 emissions (2016, background): “com/natureclimatechange biologically (that is, by fertilizing nutrient-limited areas23,24) or chemically (that is, by enhancing alkalinity25); (6) altered agricultural practices, such as increased carbon storage in soils26–28; and (7) converting biomass to recalcitrant biochar, for use as a soil ame”