Solarpunk Presents

Conquering climate change for our survival and that of much of the rest of the biosphere calls for more than attaining net zero emissions of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere. We also need to actively remove much of the 140 extra parts per million of carbon dioxide currently up there in the atmosphere thanks to our burning of fossil fuels and destruction of so much of Earth’s biosphere. Both attaining net zero and going beyond it will take carbon capture and storage. This means capturing carbon dioxide from power plants and other point sources and from our agricultural activities before it gets into the atmosphere, as well as capturing carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere. Then, we need to store that carbon somewhere safely away from the atmosphere for at least a few thousand years. 

Join us for this episode of Solarpunk Presents, in which Christina talks to Dr. Mike Bickle, professor emeritus at the Earth Sciences Department at the University of Cambridge. We’ll be discussing what methods for carbon capture and storage are the most promising (and the most likely for us to engage in), what some of the dangers are, what it would take to deploy carbon capture and storage at the scale required, and how long it might take us to bring an end to the global warming we’ve created.

Links:

• Overview of carbon capture and storage from the International Energy Agency
• European legal framework for carbon capture and storage
• Fact sheet for the Sleipner gas field carbon capture and storage project (last updated 2016)
• Scientific paper on 20 years of carbon storage in the Sleipner gas field. 
• The effects of a carbon dioxide pipeline leak in Mississippi
• A moving, informative article on the Lake Nyos disaster

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