May 8, 2023 - Your Scoop in CDR!
Carbon Business Council’s Policy Brief -
The 2023 Farm Bill represents a unique and pressing opportunity to beneficially incorporate carbon management and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) into our food, farm, and forestry systems. We outline several examples of how CDR and the Farm Bill intersect to illustrate the many opportunities ahead.
Carbon Dioxide Removal Program DOE NETL Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a crosscutting research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) area for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM), the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), the Office of Science, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) have existing efforts in CDR. These coordinated efforts contribute to Carbon Negative Shot, the third target within DOE’s Energy Earthshots Initiative, which requires multiple CDR approaches be enabled at scale to achieve the net-zero emissions in the United States by 2050.
The Energy Transition in Five Charts and Not Too Many NumbersThe energy transition is driven by the exponential growth of renewables, and the key changes will happen by 2030. (Rocky Mountain Institute)
1. The energy transition is a technology revolution.
At the heart of the energy transition lies the fact that renewable technologies are far superior to fossil fuels. The energy transition is a shift from a concentrated, expensive, polluting commodity-based system with no learning curve, to an efficient, manufactured, technology-driven system that offers continuously falling costs and is available everywhere.
2, The renewables revolution is exponential, not linear.
When it comes to the renewables revolution, linear is the default perception, but exponential is the default reality.
3. The renewables revolution is led by China.(Look to China)
4. This is the decade of change. The 2020s are the disruption decade, where renewable technology sales race up the S-curve. Heat pumps, electric vehicles, solar, and wind will all be near the top of their sales S-curves.
5. By 2030, renewables will dominate the sales of energy-producing and consuming technologies. The green prize will be evident. Cheap renewables will be even cheaper. Fossil fuel demand will be off the current plateau and in clear decline. The negative externalities of fossil fuels will be increasingly weaponized. Climate impacts will be more visible. In 2023, it is hard to imagine what this will look like, let alone model it in any detail.
This means we must do as much as we can to narrow our time horizons and focus on speeding up the deployment of key renewables. Four technologies (solar, wind, electric vehicles, and heat pumps), in four markets (China, the United States, the European Union, and India), over the next four years, set the direction. Meanwhile it is vital for other locations and technologies to get onto a similar path.