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EESA Scientist Coauthors New Comprehensive Guide on Removing CO2 from the Atmosphere2 min read

by Julie Chao on January 18, 2021

Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division

photo of researcher working in agrulcultural field

Berkeley Lab researchers are working on ways to sequester more carbon in soil, including through agricultural practices. (Credit: Berkeley Lab)

Scientists say that any serious plan to address climate change should include carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies and policies, which makes the newly launched CDR Primer an especially vital resource, says Berkeley Lab scientist Margaret Torn, one of about three dozen scientists who contributed to this document.

“Atmospheric CO2 concentrations are already 50% over historic natural levels – 270 ppm (parts per million) in pre-industrial times vs 414 ppm today,” said Torn. “To slow climate change and avoid its worst impacts, climate scientists tell us that we need to restore atmospheric CO2 concentrations to about 350 ppm or less. To do that, we need CDR technologies and polices to remove excess CO2 from the atmosphere.”

Carbon dioxide removal, also often referred to as negative emissions technologies, encompasses a broad array of techniques and practices, such as geologic sequestration, direct air capture, bioenergy with carbon capture, and improved forest management. The lead editors of the CDR Primer are from the University of Pennsylvania and CarbonPlan.

“Because there are so many different negative emissions technologies, nobody is an expert in all of them,” said Torn, a senior scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. “There was a need for one comprehensive document to introduce students and practitioners to all of the different options. The strength of this document is that it comprehensive, in terms of how many different approaches are covered, and that it considers technological readiness, cost, and global potentials.”

Sequestering carbon in soil through improved agricultural practices could be an especially attractive and efficacious CDR technique, Torn said. Berkeley Lab scientists are working on how to quantify and manage root growth and how to understand and harness the soil microbiome for carbon sequestration. If it were implemented globally, it has the potential to sequester a large amount of carbon, plus it’s considered a “no regrets” strategy because increasing the amount of carbon in the soil is good for soil health anyway, she said.

The document, two years in the making, was supported by a number of foundations and other organizations and will be made available for free as a digital, open-source book.

News & Events

Study Sheds Light on Microbial Communities in Earth’s Subsurface2 min read

August 16, 2023

  From the tops of tree canopies to the bottom of groundwater reservoirs, a vast amount of living organisms interact with nonliving components such as rock, water, and soil to shape this area of Earth known as the “critical zone.” Over half of Earth’s microbes are located in the subsurface critical zone, which ranges from…

Carl Steefel Honored in Goldschmidt Session on Reactive Transport2 min read

August 2, 2023

The contributions of Carl Steefel to the reactive transport modeling scientific community were recognized in a session held in his honor at the recent Goldschmidt 2023 conference (Lyon, France). Goldschmidt is the foremost annual, international conference on geochemistry and related subjects, organized by the European Association of Geochemistry and the Geochemical Society. The session was…

DOE Funds Projects to Advance Forest Carbon Dioxide Removal Efforts and Agricultural Soil Carbon Conservation4 min read

August 1, 2023

The DOE Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) and Office of Technology Transitions (OTT) recently announced $5 million in funding for four projects–two from Berkeley Lab with EESA leadership. The projects selected offer “promising solutions” to the nation’s climate change challenges by helping to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and will “accelerate their deployment…

Quantifying the strength of the land carbon sink3 min read

July 26, 2023

This article first appeared at nature.berkeley.edu/news. The world’s forests, grasslands, and other terrestrial ecosystems have played a substantial role in offsetting human carbon emissions—a capability that UC Berkeley researchers say would be threatened by continued global change. The assessment, published today as a new review paper in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, presents a comprehensive analysis of…

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