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Copyright © 2018 Environmental Law Institute®, Washington, DC. Reprinted with permission from ELR®, http://www.eli.org, 1-800-433-5120. 5-2018 NEWS & ANALYSIS 48 ELR 10421 The other concerns raised about BECCS center on its readiness for broad use. To date, only one demonstration BECCS plant is in operation in the United States,72 and several researchers have publicly warned against heavy reli- ance on such an unproven technology as a policy to reach the Paris Agreement’s 2°C goal.73 The economic side effects of broad cultivation of biomass for energy production may also produce unexpected market disruptions and distor- tions in biomass supply and demand. In sum, all of these NETs are still struggling to get out of the laboratory. Initial feasibility studies have yet to verify that these techniques can reliably and safely work at a bench scale, and researchers will then have to meet the much larger challenges of broad scalability before we can assess their potential for mass deployment and their economic efficiency. In addition, even if these techniques successfully withdraw CO2 from the ambient atmosphere, their ultimate effectiveness may be slowed by a “rebound effect” caused by off-gassing of CO2 contained in marine waters in response to the lowered atmospheric concentra- tions.74 Nonetheless, the general physical processes and likely technological pathways for each of these approaches seem well understood, and we can begin to forecast how current laws and environmental policies might aid, or impede, the development and deployment of NETs. III. Legal Reforms Needed to Maximize Use of NETs to Achieve Deep Decarbonization by 2050 The deployment of NETs on a scale large enough to sig- nificantly affect anthropogenic climate change will likely face numerous legal barriers and constraints. The exact nature of each challenge, however, will heavily depend on the specific aspects of the technology itself. The analysis offered below focuses more broadly on general aspects of NETs that each individual approach will share, but specific projects will likely require a closer examination to identify the unique and individual legal problems and options that each of them will create. Before detailing the potential legal hurdles for wide- scale implementation of NETs, it is important to note several important features that will likely make NETs less legally controversial than other forms of climate engineer- ing that do not rely on deep decarbonization or DAC (such as SRM or marine cloud brightening). First, the large- scale removal of CO2 from the atmosphere would result in a comparatively slow reduction in the current pace of 72. Anderson & Peters, supra note 5, at 183 (“[d]espite the prevalence of BECCS in emission scenarios at a level much higher than afforestation, only one large-scale demonstration plant exists today”). 73. See, e.g., id.; Boysen et al., supra note 68; Williamson, supra note 65; Field & Mach, supra note 66. 74. Vassiliki Manoussi et al., Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei, Working Paper No. 57.2017, Optimal Carbon Dioxide Removal in Face of Ocean Carbon Sink Feedback (2017), available at http://ageconsearch. umn.edu/record/266288. Some calculations predict that rebound effects could offset up to one-half of the CO2 that NETs and DAC might remove from the atmosphere. NAS Report, supra note 11, at 25. increases in ambient CO2 levels because a noticeable reduc- tion in the rise of global surface temperatures would theo- retically need the removal of enormous amounts of CO2.75 Even preliminary estimates predict that full-scale removal of CO2 using NETs would not result in measureable reduc- tions in expected surface temperatures or the predicted rate of warming for several decades, although such removals could play a key role in conjunction with GHG emissions reductions as part of a larger mitigation strategy.76 Second, the broad implementation of NETs is, at heart, a reversible process. If the use of NETs sparked significant concerns or objections, the termination of NETs would not result in immediate or accelerated climate change effects. By contrast, halting SRM could cause catastrophi- cally accelerated climate change impacts. Because SRM only offsets the warming effects of heightened CO2 levels without addressing their root cause, it could theoretically allow ambient GHG levels to rise if humanity continued to emit them at high rates while under a stratospheric (or even orbital) sunscreen. Like driving with one foot on the brake and another on the accelerator, suddenly lifting the brake—here, by halting SRM that had offset a period of untrammeled GHG emissions—would produce a jolt of climate change effects at a rate double or triple the current pace.77 If society commits to NETs and then suspends the effort, the effects of climate change would simply resume at their expected pace. Third, NETs would rely on reassuringly familiar physi- cal infrastructure and technologies for its deployment. This is in contrast to SRM, marine cloud brightening, or other novel technological options to offset climate change effects. For example, the installation of a DAC 75. The removal of one ppm by volume of CO2 from the ambient atmosphere would generate 2.13 Gt carbon, or 7.8 Gt CO2. See Carbon Dioxide In- formation Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Glos- sary: Carbon Dioxide and Climate (F.M. O’Hara Jr. ed., 3d ed. 1990) (ORNL/CDIAC-39). Removing enough CO2 to reduce ambient levels from 400 ppm to 350 ppm would therefore create approximately 390 Gt CO2 that would require either sequestration or reuse. By comparison, all anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2010 totaled 49 Gt CO2e (±4.5 Gt). See IPCC, , in Climate Change 2014: Mitiga- tion of Climate Change, Contribution of Working Group III to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6 (Ottmar Edenhofer et al. eds., Cambridge Univ. Press 2014). See also NAS Report, supra note 11, at 25: Reducing CO2 concentration by 1 ppm/yr would require re- moving and sequestering CO2 at a rate of about 18 GtCO2/yr; reducing CO2 concentration by 100 ppm would require remov- ing and sequestering a total of about 1800 GtCO2 or roughly the same amount of CO2 as was added to the atmosphere from 1750 to 2000. 76. Royal Society, supra note 28, at 21 (“[CDR technologies] have a slow effect on the climate system due to the long residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere and so do not present an option for rapid reduction of global temperatures”); NAS Report, supra note 11, at 3, 72-73 (“[CDR] may pro- duce only modest climate effects within decades.”). 77. By some accounts, such a halting of SRM could cause climate change effects to take place at double or triple the pace expected if GHG emissions remain unabated during the temporary use of SRM. For this (and many other) reason, the use of SRM poses fundamentally different policy and legal chal- lenges than the adoption of DAC. David Keith, A Case for Climate Engineering xx-xxi (2013) (“[t]his divergence of costs and risks means that the challenges solar geoengineering and carbon removal raise for policy and governance are almost wholly different”).PDF Image | NET Legal Pathways
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