Enlightening Lunch with Klaus Lackner

Title:

The Role of Negative Emissions in Stabilizing the Climate

Abstract:

Carbon dioxide is the most important greenhouse gas driving climate change. It is mainly produced in the combustion of fossil fuels, which provide more than 80 percent of the world’s energy demand. Carbon dioxide is a waste product of power generation and cannot be allowed to accumulate in the atmosphere. Unfortunately, roughly half of all emissions will stay in the atmosphere for centuries. The excess carbon human activities add to the mobile carbon pool (which consists of atmosphere, biosphere and hydrosphere) will remain there until geochemical processes remove it over the course of tens of thousands of years. Consequently, the amount of waste that is allowed to pile up in the atmosphere is limited. The carbon dioxide emissions budget is finite and independent of the time trajectory of the emissions. At present, we have exceeded or are close to exceeding this budget. Crossing this boundary will fundamentally change the options available for managing climate change. In this presentation I will look at technological options to balance the carbon budget and even draw down excess carbon affordably and at the scale that likely will be needed.

Short Bio:

Dr. Klaus Lackner is the director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University. Lackner’s research interests include closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration, carbon foot-printing, innovative energy and infrastructure systems and their scaling properties, the role of automation, robotics and mass-manufacturing in downscaling infrastructure systems, and energy and environmental policy.

Trained as a theoretical physicist, he has made a number of contributions to the field of carbon capture and storage since 1995, including early work on the sequestration of carbon dioxide in silicate minerals and zero emission power plant design. In 1999, he was the first person to suggest the artificial capture of carbon dioxide from air in the context of carbon management.