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Why Solar: GHG mitigation must be seriously pursued

Negative emissions technologies incorporate the science of producing energy while reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases. These technologies are being scrutinized more extensively in response to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPC. A scientific body, under the auspices of the United Nations, its sole purpose is to provide an “objective and scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts”.
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Negative emissions technologies incorporate the science of producing energy while reducing atmospheric greenhouse gases. These technologies are being scrutinized more extensively in response to the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPC. A scientific body, under the auspices of the United Nations, its sole purpose is to provide an “objective and scientific view of climate change and its political and economic impacts”. The IPC has concluded that limiting global warming by 2 degrees Celsius would require an “energetic removal of carbon dioxide from the environment”.

“Unfavorable emissions applied sciences” has been one focus of the Institute of Marine Sciences at UC of Santa Cruz and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and, in particular, senior researcher Greg Rau. Using an electrogeochemical process which uses power from renewable sources to electrolyze sea water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, Rau’s team has developed several methods of sequestering carbon while generating a source of energy.

In the elemental process of splitting water into its constituents and then coupling it in reactions with common minerals, a solution is produced that absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. A secondary process converts the carbon dioxide into bicarbonate, a mineral, already abundant in seawater, and one which counters the acidification of the world oceans.

The U.S. Naval research Laboratory has developed an electrolytic–cation exchange module designed to produce hydrogen and remove carbon dioxide using the electrolysis of saltwater. Instead of combining it back into a fuel as in the recently discussed, Air to Fuel process, the process can be modified to transform the carbon dioxide into the acidity reducing “ocean bicarbonate”.

The effectiveness of using electrogeochemical methods is estimated to remove fifty times more carbon from the atmosphere than the current method presently employed. Biomass energy plus carbon capture and storage (BECCS), as it is known, involves the burning of trees and bioenergy crops in power plants, then recovering the emissions and removing the carbon for injection underground. BECCS produces electricity and is currently in use in a small number of facilities around the world.

The advantages of an electrogeochemical processes, versus BECCS, lies in the production of hydrogen, no organic matter such as trees and biomass is used as a fuel source, it is more efficient and cost effective at removing atmospheric CO2, and it contributes to mitigating ocean acidity.

Developed in the lab, these “multiple techniques” require more investigation in order to upscale to commercial viability. The science is sound, it works using common minerals and established methods and proves chemical solutions are available.

Little is to be gained by denying climate change, while estimates for catastrophic effects vary, some researchers postulate the tipping point to be as close as 2021; GHG mitigation must be seriously pursued. Science has established that nature possesses many modes of exterminating almost all life on this planet; it has occurred in the past and could very likely occur again in the “sixth mass extinction”. Homo sapiens, is Latin for “wise man”, history will record if this species can live up to its name.

Lorne Oja can be reached at lorne@solartechnical.ca