4.2 Real world trials in CDR

Bioenergy and CCS are usually used separately in industry, rather than as a closed BECCS system like the Illinois Industrial CCS Project. Biomass is, of course, humanity’s original source of energy for cooking and heating – by direct combustion of fuel wood, charcoal and dried dung (Figure 9) – and still is for one-third of the world’s population (International Energy Agency, 2007).

Figure 9 (a) Indoor cooking with biomass stoves. (b) An improved biomass cookstove in India.

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Figure 9a is a photograph showing several women in a room cooking with two biomass stoves - one is an open fire in an open-topped box; the other is obscured by smoke or steam. Figure 9b is a photograph that shows a woman cooking with a pan on an improved biomass stove, which is directing an intense flame onto a pan; no smoke can be seen.

Figure 9 (a) Indoor cooking with biomass stoves. (b) An improved biomass cookstove in India.

Vegetable and animal oils can be used directly as biodiesel; fermentation of crops produces bioethanol (i.e. alcohol); and anaerobic decomposition of plants or animals produces methane and other biogases. Using this information, match the following biomass sources to the type of biofuel they provide.

Biofuels and waste were estimated to provide 12% of the world’s total fuel consumption in 2013, little changed from the 1973 estimate of 13% (International Energy Agency, 2015).

CCS, on the other hand, is still a relatively young technology. By 2019 there were 17 operating CCS projects around the world, and 31.5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year is being captured – 3.7 million tonnes of this is stored in geological formations. 

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Transcript: Video 2 What’s the latest on field experiments and real-world geoengineering?

TAMSIN EDWARDS:

It's difficult to know what kind of field experiments we're going to see for geoengineering over the next few years, because, of course, people are quite careful in planning them out in regulation and public opinion.

But the three that were described in most detail by Keith and others in 2014, first of all, were sulphate aerosol particle injection at 20 kilometres. So that plan was to see what effect the particles would have on the ozone layer. That proposed experiment is called SCoPEx -- for stratospheric controlled perturbation experiment.

The second is Marine Cloud Brightening. So putting salt particles into the air to see the effect on clouds. And people have proposed using a scaled up version of part of the E-PEACE experiment for that. And the third is reducing the lifetime and the thickness of cirrus clouds by injecting bismuth triiodide into the clouds to turn water into ice particles. And that reduces their lifetime and their thickness.

But, as I say, these are the most detailed proposals, but we don't know what kind of timeline they might be carried out - if at all - so I think watch this space.

End transcript: Video 2 What’s the latest on field experiments and real-world geoengineering?

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Video 2 What’s the latest on field experiments and real-world geoengineering?