Climate
Geo-engineering with ‘Carbon Negative’ Bioenergy
Climate saviour
or climate endgame?
Almuth Ernsting
and Deepak Rughani, Updated December 2008
This
is a critical analysis of proposals for 'carbon negative' bioenergy, including
biochar (agrichar) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, as a means of
reducing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and mitigating climate
change. It includes a wider discussion
about the impacts of large-scale bioenergy, and about alternative adequate
responses to the current crisis.
The
statements and conclusions contained in the report are the sole responsibility
of the authors.
It
may be downloaded as sections or as a full document:
Section 1. Introduction: Abrupt climate change and
the search for solutions
Section 2. Proposals for cooling the planet
Section 3. ‘Carbon negative’ bioenergy from vast
monocultures?
Section 4. Biochar: cooling the planet with charcoal?
Section 5. Five Hundred Million Hectares of
Plantations to Cool the Planet? (1.0 megabytes)
Section 6. BECS, Biochar and the converging
ecological and social crises
Section 7. Towards an adequate response to the
converging crises
Full document –
with pictures (2.0 megabytes)
Full document –
text only (0.4 megabytes)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Cooling the
Planet with Biomass?
“A strategy
combining biochar with biofuels could ultimately offset 9.5 billion tons of
carbon per year – an amount equal to the total current fossil fuel emissions!”,
Johannes
Lehmann, Cornell University. (http://biopact.com/2007/06/carbon-negative-biofuels-and-biochar.html)