Can California go carbon neutral?

That’s the focus of a special study underway at LLNL led by Dr. Roger Aines, chief scientist of the Lab’s Energy Program.  With LLF support, LLNL is exploring how California can implement negative emissions technologies and become carbon-neutral by 2045. Carbon-neutral means that across the state’s economy, there is no additional contribution  to the increase of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The challenge is that even after California’s anticipated conversion to renewable electricity over the next few decades, there will still be some residual greenhouse gas emissions from things like agriculture and airline transport. One option for the state is to deliberately remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by increasing soil carbon levels, taking advantage of the carbon in waste biomass like almond shells and trash, or by taking the major step of building machines to remove CO2 from the air.

This new LLF-LLNL initiative is considering the range of options available to the state and answering questions such as,  ‘how much biomass is there? Where would the removed CO2 be permanently stored? How much would these activities cost, and how could those costs be reduced over time?’

“This significant research and the resulting answers could be a game-changer for California,” noted Dona Crawford, President of LLF. “The Lab is well suited to provide this cutting edge information to our policy makers and technology developers and we’re proud to be a partner in that process.”

According to Aines, a final report is expected later this year and will identify the entire range of options for so called ‘negative emissions technologies’ in California. We look forward to sharing more about this timely and promising effort as it becomes available!