Negative emissions: potentials and challenges”

- Robert McLean

“Academic”, “inadequate” and “familiarity” were the thoughts that came to mind listening yesterday to a public lecture about “Negative emissions: potentials and challenges”.

The former was to be expected as the lecture at the University of Melbourne’s Climate and Energy College; the second, “inadequate” was a personal issue as I am insufficiently skilled or knowledgeable to grasp the complexity or implications of what was being said; and “familiarity” was sensed as the lecture was populated by about 40 people with some knowledge of the topic. 

That said, it was an excellent session and the organisers (the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute) and speakers deserve applause.

 The trio of speakers addressed land-based negative emissions technologies: 

Ecosystem restoration: looking at the social, environmental and climate benefits of forest restoration; 

Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) investigating the sustainability of different BECCS options; and,

Soil carbon as mitigation: also addressing the difficulties in achieving net negative greenhouse balances with soil carbon accumulation and the impacts of climate change on carbon stocks.

Pro. Richard Eckard.

A preamble to the lecture said: “Most proposals to limit global temperature rises to well below 2°C rely on ‘negative emissions’ – the removal of carbon from the atmosphere. Scenario analyses suggest that negative emissions technologies (NETs) are necessary to limit dangerous warming”.

Chairing the events was a professor and director of the Primary Industries Climate Challenges Centre, a joint research initiative between the University of Melbourne and Agriculture Victoria,  Professor Richard Eckard.

And the speakers were:

Kate Dooley.

Nasim Pour.

Kate Dooley is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Melbourne, researching the environmental integrity of terrestrial carbon accounting, and the equity implications of land-based climate mitigation, including the use of 'negative emissions'. Previously Kate has worked in Europe and Africa on forest governance reforms and illegal logging, and has followed negotiations on forests in the UN climate talks since 2009;

Rachelle Meyer.

Nasim Pour who is completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her research investigates the sustainability of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as a carbon removal technology. In her research, Nasim applies environmental and techno-economic analyses to assess the feasibility and sustainability of different BECCS options.  Her project focuses on potentials and challenges for using organic wastes as resource for BECCS; and,

Rachelle Meyer's research interests include adaptation and mitigation in the land sector. For her recently submitted PhD thesis, she used a whole-farm system modelling approach to quantify the agro-ecosystem benefits and mitigation implications of soil carbon in grazing systems of western Victoria. This included calculating net greenhouse gas balances and investigating the impact of climate change on the potential of soil carbon as a mitigation option.