[MCN] Greta Thunberg not alone in seeing carbon capture technology as a fairy tale

[Lance Olsen]

Nature Communications Published: 16 April 2019 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#article-info>
On the financial viability of negative emissions

Johannes Bednar <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#auth-1>, Michael Obersteiner <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#auth-2> & Fabian Wagner <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#auth-3> 
Summary: Climate mitigation will have significant impacts on government spending necessary to finance large-scale deployment of Negative Emission Technologies (NETs). The required expenditure might consume up to a third of general government expenditure in advanced economies.

Open access https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x>

Opening paragraphs
The Paris Agreement aims to limit global temperature increase to 2 °C above preindustrial levels and to balance GHG sources and sinks in the second half of this century. The technical feasibility of these targets has broadly been demonstrated by the 5th Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Recent publications, however, raise concerns about the broader political and economic feasibility of compatible emission trajectories, which typically rely on large-scale deployment of Negative Emission Technologies (NETs)—a type of pilot backstop technology that is often associated with enormous amounts of natural land loss, stranded assets by 2100, a potentially dangerous emission overshoot level and resulting fundamental ethical issues of intergenerational equity1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR1>,2 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR2>,3 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR3>,4 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR4>.
Here, we argue that the financial viability of late-century NETs has thus far not been adequately addressed and show that NETs enter IPCC scenarios for the wrong (discounting), not for the right reason (hedging uncertainties).

NETs will require public subsidies

Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) foresee large-scale late-century NETs in most AR5 2 °C scenarios5 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR5>, while being silent about potential sources of funding for an atmospheric GHG restoration Manhattan Project. In 2060 CO2 emissions will have declined to 30% of present levels and BECCS will have scaled up to 50% of maximum deployment (see SI D <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#MOESM1>). These numbers are 13% and 85%, respectively, for the schematic intensive economy pathway of the IPCC’s Special Report, making the fossil sector an inadequate source of funding in line with a contemporary Polluter Pays Principle, e.g., through ear-marked tax recycling to negative emissions, already by 2060. By then cumulative emissions will have overshot the carbon budget, so that NETs remain the only option for returning to the Paris targets. In the absence of private incentives for atmospheric carbon removal, large-scale deployment of NETs will have to be publicly subsidized. A first-order estimate of the scale of government expenditures can be derived from the carbon price and net CO2 emissions reported for most AR5 scenarios: volume times price gives revenues, however, a tax on negative emissions turns into a government expenditure item.

Carbon prices increasing at rates above economic growth lead to small near-term revenues compared to future expenditures for NETs – even when expressed as shares of GDP – as demonstrated in Fig. 1 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#Fig1> . At zero transaction costs of a uniform globally applicable carbon pricing mechanism, median income reaches a maximum of 1.8% of global GDP in 2040. In 2070, it turns into a subsidy peaking in 2100 at 3.9% of GDP—higher than the US’ current expenditure share for defense. Similar trends hold for the RCP2.6 SSP6 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR6> and 400–1000 GtCO2 CD-LINKS7 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR7> scenarios, peaking at 1.6% and 4.1% of GDP in 2100, respectively. Cost allocation following considerations of intra- and intergenerational effort sharing in line with the Brazilian Proposal8 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#ref-CR8> would lead to public spending peaking at 15% of GDP in Annex I countries (UNFCCC) as depicted in Fig. 2 <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#Fig2>, rendering the implementation of this mechanism extremely difficult (see SI B <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#MOESM1>). The US’ incomplete participation in global mitigation efforts (see SI C <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x#MOESM1>) could result in a subsidy of 13% by 2100 for the rest of the world. However, such scenarios would likely be characterized by alternative sets of optimal solutions with even higher mitigation costs.

Open access https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x <https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-09782-x>
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“I just want it to be clear that the mainstream environmental movement has been asking very little of people for decades,” said Bea Ruiz, also an organizer with the U.S. national [ Extinction Rebellion ] team. “There’s no element of, ‘We are in an emergency. We all need to do more than what we’re doing.”


Extinction Rebellion’s radical philosophy
July 22 2019
https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/ <https://thinkprogress.org/the-radical-philosophy-of-extinction-rebellion-5857d3955b57/>

   ========++++++.  Food: Heat has consequences +++++=======
 
“We used observational data and output from 23 global climate models to show a high probability 
(>90%) that growing season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics by the end of the 21st 
century will exceed the most extreme seasonal temperatures recorded from 1900 to 2006. 

"In temperate regions, the hottest seasons on record will represent the future norm in many locations.
 
“Coping with the short-run challenge of food price volatility is daunting. But the longer-term 
challenge of avoiding a perpetual food crisis under conditions of global warming is far more 
serious. “
 
David. S. Battisti  and Rosamond L. Naylor.
Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat. 
SCIENCE 9 JANUARY 2009
 

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