Feasibility of Afforestation and Biomass energy with carbon capture storage for Greenhouse Gas Removal (FAB GGR)

GGR联盟：FAB GGR预测未来的气候变化将对人类社会的许多方面（如健康、粮食供应、海平面上升）和自然生态系统（如生物多样性的丧失）产生全面的负面影响。在2015年12月的巴黎，各国同意将全球平均气温的升幅限制在比工业化前高出2摄氏度以下，并努力将升温限制在1.5摄氏度以内。这是一个巨大的挑战，因为大多数允许的二氧化碳（CO2）排放量“预算”已经被消耗掉，而全球CO2排放量仍在增加。目前限制气候变化负面影响的努力集中在减少温室气体的数量，特别是我们排放到大气中的CO2，通过改变我们发电和使用电力的方式，我们如何为交通工具提供动力，以及我们如何为我们的房屋供暖或制冷。然而，要将全球气温升幅控制在比工业化前高出2摄氏度以下，还需要我们大规模地积极清除大气中的温室气体。科学家和经济学家建议我们可以通过两种方法来做到这一点：（1）种植森林以锁定碳;（2）使用能源作物或木材和农业工业的废物来发电，并捕获和储存发电时产生的二氧化碳。这两种方法都需要大面积的土地来种植能源作物或树木。本项目将调查依赖这些二氧化碳去除方法的现实程度，以及对气候、土地使用、生态系统、以及更广泛的社会和政治系统。我们的目标是更准确地确定这些方法能够从大气中去除的二氧化碳量的努力。许多因素影响了这一计算，其中一些因素具有高度不确定性。例如，碳循环将如何应对能源作物或森林土地使用的大规模转变。社会因素也很关键。这些重要技术的发展取决于对社会反应的理解以及刺激采用的正确政策。我们将使用定量模型和定性社会科学方法的跨学科组合来解决这些问题。这些模型代表了从农场到全球尺度的地球系统的相关方面，包括土地，土壤，植物和大气。一个关键目标是对所选技术对碳循环的影响进行全面的（称为“后果”）生命周期评估，从供应链的规模到特定的发电厂，到英国的国家规模，再到整个地球系统。我们的目标是超越这一点，并考虑技术对社会和政策，气候系统，土地使用和生态系统服务的更广泛的影响和权衡。这些影响包括对其他温室气体排放的影响、对气候系统的物理影响（例如改变地表对阳光的反射率）、对水循环和水质的影响、对生物多样性的影响以及对景观的娱乐价值的影响。与定量分析一起，我们将对与项目的两种选择GGR方法的真实的实施相关的社会、政策和治理相关的不确定性、影响和瓶颈进行全面评估。这借鉴了研究小组开发的最先进的社会科学方法，用于审查和分析公众和利益攸关方如何看待和应对新兴技术，包括二氧化碳清除技术。联盟团队将每六个月举行一次会议，交流想法，相互学习。在项目结束时，我们将向政策制定者展示我们最重要的发现，以便他们能够更好地理解依赖这些方法的现实性。

GGR Consortium: FAB GGRFuture climate change is projected to have overall negative impacts on many aspects of human society (e.g. health, availability of food, rising sea levels) and on natural ecosystems (e.g. loss of biodiversity). In Paris in December 2015, countries agreed to limit the increase in global mean temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 degrees C. This poses a phenomenal challenge because most of the allowable 'budget' of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to stay within these temperature targets has already been spent, and global CO2 emissions are still increasing.Current efforts to limit the negative impacts of climate change focus on reducing the amount of greenhouse gases especially CO2 that we put into our atmosphere, by changing how we generate and use electricity, how we power our transport, and how we heat or cool our homes. However, keeping the increase in global temperature to well below 2 degrees C above pre-industrial will also require us to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere on a very large scale. Two ways that scientists and economists suggest we could do this are by (1) planting forests to lock up carbon and (2) using energy crops or waste from the timber and agricultural industries to generate electricity and capture and store underground the CO2 produced when the electricity is made. Both of these approaches require large areas of land on which to grow the energy crops or trees.This project will investigate how realistic it is to depend on these methods of CO2 removal, and what the consequences would be for the climate, land-use, ecosystems, and wider social and political systems.We aim to more accurately determine the amount of CO2 these methods are able to remove from the atmosphere for a given amount of effort. Many factors contribute to this calculation, some of which are highly uncertain. For example, how the carbon cycle will respond to a large shift in land use for energy crops or forests. Social factors are also critical. The development of these important technologies depends on understanding social reactions and the right policies being in place to stimulate uptake. We will use an interdisciplinary mix of quantitative models and qualitative social science methods to address these issues. The models represent relevant aspects of the Earth system from farm to global scales, including the land, soils, plants, and atmosphere. A key aim is to make a comprehensive (termed 'consequential') life cycle assessment of the effect of the chosen technologies on the carbon cycle, working from the scale of supply chains to particular power plants, to the UK national scale, to the whole Earth system. We aim to go beyond this and also consider the wider effects and trade-offs of the technologies on societies and policy, the climate system, land-use, and ecosystem services. These include impacts on the release of other greenhouse gases, physical effects on the climate system (for example changing the reflectivity of the land surface to sunlight), effects on the water cycle and water quality, on biodiversity, and on the recreational value of landscapes. Working together with the quantitative analysis we will conduct a comprehensive assessment of the societal, policy and governance-related uncertainties, implications and bottlenecks associated with the real world implementation of the project's two chosen GGR methods. This draws on state-of-the-art social science approaches developed by the research team for the review and analysis of how members of the public and stakeholders perceive and respond to emerging technologies, including those for CO2 removal. The consortium team will meet every six months to exchange ideas and learn from each other. At the end of the project we will present our most important findings to policy makers so they can better understand how realistic it is to depend on these methods.