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LLNL report lays out technology pathways for California to become carbon-neutral and then -negative by 2045; 3 pillars of negative emissions

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) scientists have identified a suite of technologies to help California to become carbon-neutral—and ultimately carbon-negative —by 2045. To achieve the goal of carbon-neutrality, California will likely have to remove on the order of 125 million tons per year of CO2 from the atmosphere.

In the report, “Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions in California,” funded by the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF) with grant support from the ClimateWorks Foundation, LLNL focused on three specific pillars of negative emissions: natural and working lands; carbon capture from biomass conversion to fuels; and direct air capture.

G2n1

The three main pathways to negative emissions (removing CO2 from the atmosphere) for California are restoring natural ecosystems, converting waste biomass to fuels while capturing the CO2 generating during processing, and direct air capture machines. Source: “Getting to Neutral”


The team identified a portfolio of approaches for achieving greater than 125 million metric tons per year of negative emissions for California by 2045 and evaluated the scope of state and private investment to best achieve the goal.

Of the three, the authors concluded that converting the state’s waste biomass (about 56 million bone dry tons per year) into fuels with simultaneous capture of the process CO2 emissions holds the greatest potential for negative emissions in the State—some 84 million metric tons per year. More specifically, gasifying biomass to make hydrogen fuel and CO2 has the largest promise for CO2 removal at the lowest cost and aligns with the state’s goals on renewable hydrogen.

This study intentionally avoids any discussion of policies and does not include current incentives; it provides a range of options, tradeoffs and costs that can be used to inform future policies. The key finding of this report is that carbon neutrality is achievable.

—“Getting to Neutral”

The study was conducted as part of LLNL’s energy programs work and the Laboratory’s Carbon Initiative. The goal of the initiative is to identify solutions to enable global-scale CO2 removal from the atmosphere and hit global temperature targets.

The report assesses the advanced carbon reduction technologies now available, their costs, as well as the tradeoffs necessary to reach the state’s decarbonization goal. The report codifies a number of significant conclusions by researchers at eight institutions. It serves as a resource for policymakers, government, academia and industry.

California can achieve this level of negative emissions at modest cost, using resources and jobs within the State, and with technology that is already demonstrated or mature. This is our conclusion after a comprehensive, first-of-its-kind, quantitative analysis of natural carbon removal strategies, negative emissions technologies, and biomass and geologic resources in the State, using methods that are transparently detailed in this report. We also find that realizing this goal will require concerted efforts to implement underground carbon storage at scale, build new CO2 pipelines, expand collection and processing of waste biomass, and accelerate learning on important technologies, like direct air capture.

—“Getting to Neutral”

Background. California executive order B-55-18 mandates that the state achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 and maintain net negative emissions thereafter. Carbon neutrality refers to achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by balancing any remaining atmospheric emissions with removal of carbon dioxide from the air, or simply by eliminating carbon emissions altogether. It applies to everything that generates greenhouse gases.

Achieving this goal would complete a chain of other ambitious statewide targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The LLNL study finds that not only is carbon neutrality possible, but that California can be a global climate leader by demonstrating how to remove significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere.

Without CO2 removal, reaching our carbon neutrality goal will be slower, more difficult and costly. While there are no silver bullets, we have evaluated strategies that rely on many existing technologies and resources, creating a CO2 removal blueprint that can be replicated.

—LLNL chemist Sarah Baker, lead author of the report

Comments

Engineer-Poet
the authors concluded that converting the state’s waste biomass (about 56 million bone dry tons per year) into fuels with simultaneous capture of the process CO2 emissions holds the greatest potential for negative emissions in the State

In other words, BECCS.  BECCS is estimated to cost as much as $250/ton of CO2 captured.  This is unaffordable.  Meanwhile, California is forcing the closure of Diablo Canyon, which generates 2300 MW at over 90% capacity factor.  Even replacing OCGTs at 550 gCO2/kWh rather than coal, that is a savings of about 10 million metric tons per year at NO COST WHATSOEVER.

The people running California know this.  They chose this totally wrong course of action anyway.  These are crimes against humanity.  They must be held responsible, meaning nooses and firing squads.

yoatmon

If I understood the article correctly, Cal will undertake efforts to remove a certain tonnage of CO² from the atmosphere (step 1).
Then they intend to produce synthesized fuel with the extracted CO² to achieve carbon neutrality (step 2).
When the synthetic fuel is combusted, the once extracted emissions are re-emitted into the atmosphere (step 3).
Subsequently, the status-quo of the the lopsided climate balance is warranted. What is really won? Nothing! The steady increase of pollutants is stopped! The screwed-up climatic conditions remain. A lot of hustle for what? Remove the pollutants from the atmosphere, lock them up in Pandoras-Box and keep them secured and out of the atmosphere!

Davemart

Mike and GCC:

Using a mac and Chrome with Typepad your 'about' and 'contact' pages return a 404 page not found error.

The original problem was posts being truncated then deleted.

If anyone is able to use the contact pages, please inform Mike about the glishe.

Cheers.

Engineer-Poet

I just tagged him by e-mail.

Davemart

EP

Cheers

I used to have his email, but couldn't easily locate the address.
Dunno where that has got to either!

Davemart

{https://www.greencarcongress.com/about3.html#contact}
HTTP ERROR 404

Davemart

Had to add the {} to get it to post at all.

mmillikin

Sorry about that, I'll have to dig in and see what's going on.

mmillikin

Ok, the Contact and About pages are fixed. Rather, replaced. Don't know what happened to the originals...

Davemart, could you please email me and explain the problem to me?

Thanks

Davemart

Test post to try to locate a posting issue.

What would you say if I sung out of tune?

Probably and very cruelly, typical of you!

I have the voice of an angel, or an angle grinder.

I however get buy with a little help from my friends.

Or when the sales are on, I get buy with a little credit from my friends,

But I have no regrets, I am a little sparrow

flitting fittingly about

Gasbag

“California is forcing the closure of Diablo Canyon”

DC’s owner, PG&E, opted to close down DC early to save money. What SB1090 requires is that DC be replaced by carbon free or carbon neutral sources when it closes.

PG&E’s power mix has included 0% coal for years and NG dropped from 20% in 2017 to 15% in 2018. Fossil fuels may soon be relegated to miscellaneous other as far as electricity generation goes.

A couple things that nuclear power proponents rarely mention are the time and financial costs of NP. GA approved the application for Vogtle 3&4 back in 2003. It has been almost 20 years and neither unit is on line and they won’t be online this year or next. If you’re talking SMR in the US then your time frame is 2040. NuScale is probably the best hope for NP. They should be able to avoid the 3-5x cost overruns ala Vogtle and Hinkley C.

Engineer-Poet
DC’s owner, PG&E, opted to close down DC early to save money.
You forgot the ridiculous seawater-cooling rule, which counts deaths of insignificant eggs and fry with minuscule odds of survival to adulthood as "wildlife deaths" and is also forcing all the seawater-cooled combined-cycle plants to close too.  They will all be replaced by open-cycle plants at far lower efficiency, burning more gas (that Jerry Brown's daughter's company sells).
What SB1090 requires is that DC be replaced by carbon free or carbon neutral sources when it closes.
The critique I read at the time said only a fraction would be so replaced, and you can't replace 24/7 power with unreliables anyway.  They are incommensurable.
PG&E’s power mix has included 0% coal for years
PG&E buys power from the utility which operates the Four Corners coal plant.  Claiming that none of the purchased power came from coal was more of that bookkeeping ledgerdemain I keep telling you about.  Despite the collapse of the price of gas, Four Corners continues to operate.  Much of that power goes to California regardless of what the paperwork says.
A couple things that nuclear power proponents rarely mention are the time and financial costs of NP. GA approved the application for Vogtle 3&4 back in 2003. It has been almost 20 years and neither unit is on line and they won’t be online this year or next.
An enormous amount of that is the hostile regulatory environment, which began with anti-nuclear activist Gregory Jaczko imposing the brand-new aircraft impact rule on the just-designed plants despite contracts already having been signed.  That required redesign literally from the ground up, because heavier buildings needed deeper foundations.

There are FOUR AP1000 plants operating already.  They are all in China, where the likes of Jaczko would be a forced organ donor rather than a government official.

Gasbag

The CEO of PG&E when that call was made was formerly the chairman of the Nuclear Energy Institute so he wasn’t someone who was squeamish about NP or someone who necessarily cared about fish and frogs. He cared about $$ as he is required by US law. They conservatively estimated they would save a billion+ $$ and subsequently have managed to have reduced the estimated closure costs by another billion. I be been around long enough to know that two billion dollars was a bigger.

While it is true they are replacing a fraction of production that fraction is 20/23. They are comfortable doing that because their demand is decreasing. Moreover they have committed to reducing demand further by financing efficiency improvements well in excess of the net delta.

You claimed CA couldn’t use more than 35% renewables without raising carbon footprint but PG&E has blown by 40% and eliminated coal and reduced NG by about half. How do you reconcile that with prior assertions?

Would that four corners plant be Arizona’s Navajo Generating Station? If so it shutdown last year and doesn’t provide coal power to anyone anymore. When it did provide coal power to CA it went to SCE. SCE is coal free now also.

We’re you thinking of Utah’s InterMountainnplant? It provides a fraction of one percent of CA electricity but it supplies that to LADWP.

We’re you thinking of New Mexico’s San Juan Generating Station? It will stop supplying electricity to CA next year but it only has a CA contract with SDG&E not PG&E.

That is it. There are only two coal plants remaining that supply CA and neither supplies PG&E.

Gasbag

Obviously we’re =were. I’m not sure why auto incorrect felt compelled to intervene.

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