Reality Check: Demystifying the Need for Carbon Dioxide Removal. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not a substitute for emissions reduction, but science says we’ll need it too, to protect a livable planet. To ready these crucial tools, here’s what we must do.Oct17,2023 Daniel Pike,  Matt Kirley The myth- Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not needed because emissions reductions alone will be sufficient to achieve the world’s climate goals........                                                    The reality-  Based on the best available science, the pathway to a 1.5°C-aligned future that avoids catastrophic climate change will require massive amounts of CDR to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and durably store it. While we must do all we can to minimize the need for CDR by accelerating emissions reductions, the world will need billions of tons of CDR annually by 2050. This is a matter of consensus among major climate-focused groups — from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Achieving this scale will require the development, testing, and substantial deployment of CDR solutions in the next decade so that they can be built cost-effectively, sustainably, and equitably when needed. CDR is not a substitute for other climate action, and emissions reductions still comprise the majority of activity needed to keep global warming within target levels.  The emissions budget is shrinking rapidly-  The IPCC’s latest research makes clear that we have a limited budget for new greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, the world is on track to use up that budget in the next 12 years.As a result, rapid and drastic reductions as well as CDR at the multi-billion-ton per year scale will be needed to stabilize the climate. For comparison, only a few industries in the world move physical mass at this scale, including coal, steel, concrete, liquid fuels, water, and food. It is also likely that — even with a successful and complete transition of the energy system away from fossil fuels and the deep decarbonization of industry — residual emissions will continue beyond 2050 in some sectors, such as agriculture and aviation. It is also possible that emissions from forest fires, permafrost melts, and other events that occur outside of human industrial activity will increase, because of dynamics already unleashed.           https://rmi.org/reality-check-demystifying-the-need-for-carbon-dioxide-removal/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=spark&utm_content=spark&utm_campaign=2023_10_26&utm_term=title-2      

  Reality Check: Demystifying the Need for Carbon Dioxide Removal. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not a substitute for emissions reduction, but science says we’ll need it too, to protect a livable planet. To ready these crucial tools, here’s what we must do.Oct17,2023 Daniel Pike,  Matt Kirley The myth- Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not needed because emissions reductions alone will be sufficient to achieve the world’s climate goals........                                                    The reality-  Based on the best available science, the pathway to a 1.5°C-aligned future that avoids catastrophic climate change will require massive amounts of CDR to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and durably store it. While we must do all we can to minimize the need for CDR by accelerating emissions reductions, the world will need billions of tons of CDR annually by 2050. This is a matter of consensus among major climate-focused groups — from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NAS) to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Achieving this scale will require the development, testing, and substantial deployment of CDR solutions in the next decade so that they can be built cost-effectively, sustainably, and equitably when needed. CDR is not a substitute for other climate action, and emissions reductions still comprise the majority of activity needed to keep global warming within target levels.  The emissions budget is shrinking rapidly-  The IPCC’s latest research makes clear that we have a limited budget for new greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Unfortunately, the world is on track to use up that budget in the next 12 years.As a result, rapid and drastic reductions as well as CDR at the multi-billion-ton per year scale will be needed to stabilize the climate. For comparison, only a few industries in the world move physical mass at this scale, including coal, steel, concrete, liquid fuels, water, and food. It is also likely that — even with a successful and complete transition of the energy system away from fossil fuels and the deep decarbonization of industry — residual emissions will continue beyond 2050 in some sectors, such as agriculture and aviation. It is also possible that emissions from forest fires, permafrost melts, and other events that occur outside of human industrial activity will increase, because of dynamics already unleashed.           https://rmi.org/reality-check-demystifying-the-need-for-carbon-dioxide-removal/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=spark&utm_content=spark&utm_campaign=2023_10_26&utm_term=title-2      

“So you want to pack a lot of these little beads” into the capillary tubes for the seawater to flow over so that there’s “a ton of points of contact,” Horbonstel said. “More CO2” will pass through and diffuse “from one to the other capsule because basically it wants to react with the liquid inside of the capsules.” Horbostel said having a high surface area for the seawater is significant, because it allows for diluted carbon dioxide to be removed from the water faster. “Mass transfer scales directly with surface area, so if you double the surface area of a membrane, it will double the rate that carbon dioxide crosses it,” she said.  Seawater “has high concentrations of bound CO2 … that can potentially be accessed” through direct ocean capture technology, the paper says. “Additionally, seawater is 1,000 times denser than air, which could result in a smaller system size.” Direct ocean capture, the paper says, “could also potentially be performed offshore” on an abandoned oil platform, for example, to avoid using land space, and be co-located with offshore wind and/or offshore storage” of captured CO2 gas.    Ensuring the technology works at a larger scale in the ocean at an affordable cost is challenging but not impossible, Hornbostel said. She and the team will examine ways to increase the pH of  ocean water, which enables the release of more carbon dioxide. Although still in the planning stages, the model can be placed offshore in a region recognized to have a high concentration of carbon dioxide in the ocean, Hornbostel said.  “As the largest part of Earth’s natural carbon cycle, the ocean has an enormous potential to contribute to carbon dioxide removal at the gigaton-scale required,” David Koweek, chief scientist at nonprofit OceanVisions and expert on Hornbostel’s work, said. “Yet much of this potential remains unrealized because of low levels of research and development into ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technologies.”                   https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02092023/direct-ocean-carbon-capture-breakthrough/

Solar power cells have passed the key milestone of 30% energy efficiency, after innovations by multiple research groups around the world. The feat makes this a “revolutionary” year, according to one expert, and could accelerate the rollout of solar power. Today’s solar panels use silicon-based cells but are rapidly approaching their maximum conversion of sunlight to electricity of 29%. At the same time, the installation rate of solar power needs to increase tenfold in order to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists. The breakthrough is adding a layer of perovskite, another semiconductor, on top of the silicon layer. This captures blue light from the visible spectrum, while the silicon captures red light, boosting the total light captured overall. With more energy absorbed per cell, the cost of solar electricity is even cheaper, and deployment can proceed faster to help keep global heating under control. The perovskite-silicon “tandem” cells have been under research for about a decade, but recent technical improvements have now pushed them past the 30% milestone. Experts said that if the scaling-up of production of the tandem cells proceeds smoothly, they could be commercially available within five years, about the same time silicon-only cells reach their maximum efficiency. Two groups published the details of their efficiency breakthroughs in the journal Science on Thursday, and at least two others are known to have pushed well beyond 30%.  he current efficiency record for silicon-only solar cells is 24.5% in commercial cells and 27% in the laboratory. The latter may well be as close the cells can practically get to the theoretical maximum of 29%.But one group, led by Prof Steve Albrecht at the Helmholtz Center Berlin for Materials and Energy in Germany, has now published information about how they achieved efficiencies of up to 32.5% for silicon-perovskite cells. The other group, led by Dr Xin Yu Chin at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, Switzerland, demonstrated an efficiency of 31.25% and said tandem cells had the “potential for both high efficiency and low manufacturing costs”. “What these two  groups have shown are really milestones,” said De Wolf. His own group achieved 33.7% efficiency with a tandem cell in June, but has yet to publish the results in a journal. All the efficiency measurements were independently verified. “Overcoming the 30% threshold provides confidence that high performance, low-cost PVs can be brought to the market,” said De Wolf. Global solar power capacity reached 1.2 terawatts (TW) in 2022. “Yet to avert the catastrophic scenarios associated with global warming, the total capacity needs to increase to about 75TW by 2050,” he said.....read on         https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jul/06/revolutionary-solar-power-cell-innovations-break-key-energy-threshold?utm_source=cbnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=2023-07-08&utm_campaign=Daily+Briefing+07+07+2023