Here’s a link to Kevin Bladon’s presentation from a few weeks ago. I thought the whole thing was interesting.
About 30 minutes in, there’s a discussion of some research on salvage logging and water quality/quantity and soils, with different studies finding different things. During the Q&A, I asked Bladon whether he had any ideas based on his experience in the field, of preferred salvage practices. He did and I encouraged him to publish some kind of “helpful summary for practitioners.” We (various folks on the Zoom) had a discussion as to whether if such a paper were produced by him through OSU Extension, would it make it to NEPA people and sale planners in the Forest Service? I wasn’t sure, so anyone who has an opinion, please chime in.
I’m not sure that this photo is of the planted forest, but part of the Bessey Ranger District on the Nebraska National Forest is from a 20,000-acre (80.9 km2) planting, the largest human-planted forest in the United States. It is greatly enjoyed by critters and people.
Arbor Day. It’s good thing, right? We can trust experts at Extension, NRCS, State Forestry and the Forest Service to help people plant trees where it’s a good idea, and not plant trees where it’s not, right? Well, thanks to climate change and the Satellite Gaze, some have gotten the opposite impression. Tree planting has become controversial through what I call “Satellite Ping-Pong.” It’s an infinite game of discussing different assumptions about enormous and global questions by volleying between specific places and concerns. But the people directly involved in making decisions, including landowners and communities, are never involved in the game. Others claim to speak for them with varying degrees of accuracy.
First, someone does a study on what tree planting might do around the world. This involves innumerable assumptions and pretty much no input from people as to whether they want trees or not. Or whether trees would live. Or get eaten by ungulates, livestock, insects, fall prey to disease, or get burned up, or any of the (to paraphrase Hamlet) “the thousand natural shocks that arboreal life is heir to.”
The restoration of trees remains among the most effective strategies for climate change mitigation. We mapped the global potential tree coverage to show that 4.4 billion hectares of canopy cover could exist under the current climate. Excluding existing trees and agricultural and urban areas, we found that there is room for an extra 0.9 billion hectares of canopy cover, which could store 205 gigatonnes of carbon in areas that would naturally support woodlands and forests. This highlights global tree restoration as one of the most effective carbon drawdown solutions to date. However, climate change will alter this potential tree coverage. We estimate that if we cannot deviate from the current trajectory, the global potential canopy cover may shrink by ~223 million hectares by 2050, with the vast majority of losses occurring in the tropics. Our results highlight the opportunity of climate change mitigation through global tree restoration but also the urgent need for action.
I have to give them credit, they did admit “we really don’t have a clue if trees will live or not due to climate change,” so at least one source of tree death was taken into account. They also say “one of the most effective,” not “let’s keep emitting fossil carbon.”
You might call this the “serve” in Satellite Ping Pong. Then there started a vast array of critiques. What fascinates me is the way that the stories talk about the real places I know, and who has the authority to speak. For example, this by the Yale 360 pub (well, it’s kind of Yale’s, but kind of separate).
Because of climate change, forests are increasingly vulnerable to destruction by drought, fire, insects, diseases, and storms, which releases carbon back into the atmosphere. Recent research shows that large areas of the American West may have permanently lost their forest cover. Droughts, wildfire, and insect and disease outbreaks are becoming more frequent, and forests are being replaced by grassy shrublands after these disturbances, mostly because it’s now too hot and dry for new generations of saplings to survive. A review paper published in Science last year shows that these threats, although significant and intensifying, aren’t always well understood and are difficult to compensate for. It’s hard to predict how many trees they’ll kill in the near future and how much carbon that will put into the atmosphere, but it’s likely to be considerable.
Not only might tree planting fail to reliably sequester carbon, trees can also heat the atmosphere more than many other habitat types. Kathleen Smart, a post-doctoral researcher at Rhodes University in South Africa, says that replacing surfaces like grasslands or deserts —which, being pale, reflect more solar radiation into outer space — with relatively dark-colored tree plantations can have a heating effect on a local level, and that regional-scale land-use changes have been shown to affect climate and rainfall patterns
As a veteran of efforts to reforest dry areas in the 80’s, I’m surprised that the solution to not getting trees back is now “give up, it must be climate change.” Before we thought “it’s a coincidence of not having a good seed year when the soil is still exposed.”
And I can only speak for the grasslands and deserts I know, but they are not likely to grow trees except along streams (why not replace dying cottonwoods if they aren’t reproducing themselves?) and for windbreaks. Windbreaks help reduce energy use, produce wildlife habitat, and so on. But not at any scale to help with climate change. And that’s OK.
Forrest Fleischman was quoted in this one:
To be clear, critics of the campaign are still fans of trees. They still think forests play a role in solving the climate crisis — their skepticism mostly centers around efforts to plant trees in places they weren’t before, or to plant large swaths of a single species to essentially create “tree plantations” instead of real forests. Another big concern surrounding the call for planting a trillion trees is that it could distract from other efforts to slow down climate change, like stopping fossil fuel pollution and deforestation in the first place.
“You don’t need to plant a tree to regenerate a forest,” Fleischman tells The Verge. Forests can heal on their own if they’re allowed to, he says, and these forests end up being more resilient and more helpful in the climate fight than newly planted plots of trees. He argues that the best way to ensure there are enough trees standing to trap the carbon dioxide heating up the planet is to secure the political rights of people who depend on forests — primarily indigenous peoples whose lands are frequently encroached upon by industry and governments.
There is research backing him up. The world’s leading authority on climate science, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has recognized that when local communities’ land rights are jeopardized, it poses risks to both people and the planet.
I disagree with Forrest on “forests can heal on their own”. If we take a place like the Hayman, where the nearest seed sources are far away, I think it’s better to have tree cover sooner- not just for climate, but for wildlife, watershed (holding soils) and so on. Sidenote: there are exactly the same “local people” arguments questioning another international initiative, 30 x 30.
And I guess the argument that planting trees (as described in the Ping Pong discourse) distracts from stopping fossil fuel pollution is strange. You could say that about any non-energy interventions. So let’s just let the land-use types bow out… including the anti-pastoralist crowd, 30 x 30 and so on. We’ll just work on resilience, thank you. Whoops, I guess we need to plant some trees for that..
I was trying to help some groups with their comments on this USDA request, and perhaps someone more familiar with Regulations.gov can help. I was trying to find other comments of interest to round up ideas, both for my own comments and also for future TSW posts. What an opportunity for people from all over the country and working in all different areas to weigh in!
However, I ran into a couple of problems. First, they don’t separate out form letters, and you have to download any that are letters to read them. So it’s really not designed for reading comments. I also looked at posted comments to a scoping notice for a tiny Forest Service project, and it was easier to read them! The other thing I thought is that it would be interesting for something like this, which doesn’t have legal requirements, for some analysis group to pick out ideas (say, change EQIP to do ….) and then have people vote on them, in another “round” of comment.
I also had a flashback to when I worked at CSREES, now NIFA. Most of the form letters were about National Forests and how the best thing for climate was to not do anything. I’ve attached the two most common I found USDA-2021-0003-0381_attachment_1 2. It’s no wonder the rest of USDA can get tired of the FS. There they go doing all kinds of good and non-controversial work, and then there’s the FS.
Scientists recognize that forests sequester more carbon when they are protected than when forests are logged. For public land, the USDA can have a direct, positive impact by supporting proforestation in our national forests. “Proforestation” means purposefully growing the public’s existing forests intact for maximal carbon storage and sequestration. On the ground, proforestation means protecting older, larger trees and drastically reducing logging national forests.
Science suggests that we need the largest trees now because they sequester more carbon than seedlings. We don’t have much old growth, ancient trees, mature trees, and roadless areas remaining on our public forests. These areas provide the trees that can most efficiently sequester carbon now. They also provide refuge for animals and plants in this warming climate, so they serve both as areas of climate refugia and biodiversity. Please protect these areas from all tree cutting and road work. That will protect larger trees, more intact ecosystems, and consequently sequester more carbon.
Reduce logging. Activities such as reconstructing roads or building new ones (even temporary) to access trees, cutting those trees down and hauling them off public land are all activities that burn fossil fuels. Hammering ecosystems with logging and roadbuilding does not create resiliency to climate change—such activities exacerbate carbon emissions.
I did like this idea letter state conservation agencies which argued against a tendency to initiate new programs every time a problem shows up.. kind of “more programs, more administration and less money to do work.”
An increased focus on climate and resiliency issues is admirable, but USDA should avoid attempting to “reshuffle” its program delivery in the name of change. USDA already has a number of climate-smart conservation programs that are not only effective but over-subscribed. Several examples are the Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP), the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), the Conservation Stewardship Program (CSP), the Agricultural Management Assistance (AMA) Program, and the Small Watershed Program. During past administrations, there has been an unwritten rule that authorizing additional funding to any of these programs can only come at the expense of other USDA conservation programs. We are optimistic that this administration, with a supportive Congress, can move beyond this antiquated thinking and fund conservation programs at the levels needed by our country’s landowners and cooperators. Conversely, developing new programs in the name of climate will certainly slow our progress toward climate goals by increasing administrative requirements to get these programs up and running. There is no need to recreate this wheel, but there is an immediate need to better fund the programs that our delivery system can effectively use without delay.
Comments are due tonight, but we can still discuss ideas after they close, so please link to your organization’s letter in the comments below. And if you have an easier way to read comments on regulations.gov, please let me know.
Here’s some news on three cases that we have followed recently:
Tahoe e-bikes:Backcountry Horsemen of America v. U. S. Forest Service (E.D. Cal.)
This is the case where the Tahoe National Forest attempted to allow e-bikes on trails designated as open only to non-motorized uses (see the litigation summary here). In response to the lawsuit, the Forest rescinded the decision. They have now completed a new decision, the East Zone Connectivity Project, with the result that (according to this article in “Singletracks”) “35-miles of existing non-motorized trail will be open to class 1 e-bikes.” The Forest website reiterates that, “E-bike use is currently not allowed on NFS roads and trails unless they are designated for motor vehicle use.” (The only administrative objections to the new decision were later withdrawn.)
This was the case where the Ninth Circuit previously held that under no reasonable interpretation of the language of 36 C.F.R. § 220.6(d)(4) did the Ranch Fire Roadside Hazard Tree Project on the Mendocino National Forest come within the categorical exclusion for “repair and maintenance” of roads. After receiving a preliminary injunction (see the litigation summary here), the Forest Service agreed to abandon six commercial timber sales, but the settlement would allow them to remove hazard trees in the project area “for non-sawtimber primarily non-commercial purposes,” following specific hazard tree guidelines. (The article includes a link to the settlement agreement.) The Forest Service also agreed to pay $191,000 in attorney fees.
This is the case where the Ninth Circuit previously held that “condition-based NEPA,” which didn’t identify site-specific locations or effects, was invalid for the Prince Wales timber sale on the Tongass National Forest. (See our prior discussion of the case here.) This settlement dealt solely with attorney fees; the Forest Service agreed to pay $210,000 of the $301,000 in fees allegedly incurred by the plaintiffs.
(Blogger’s note: I see a pattern here. I wonder if it might make a difference, when an official is about to make a legally suspect decision, if their risk analysis would be different if this money came out their operating budget instead of a separate fund.)
Many thanks to Bill Gabbert of Wildfire Today for this one:
“Investing to increase the capacity of the federal workforce to plan for and respond to wildfire:
Riva Duncan, now retired from the Fire Staff Officer position on the Umpqua National Forest in Oregon, is scheduled to testify before Congress Thursday April 29.
The House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands, led by Chair Joe Neguse (D-Colo.), will host an oversight hearing titled Wildfire in a Warming World: Opportunities to Improve Community Collaboration, Climate Resilience, and Workforce Capacity.
The Subcommittee describes one of the topics of the hearing:
Congress and the Biden administration have an opportunity to better incorporate climate change into federal land and wildfire policies by protecting naturally resilient landscapes, prioritizing funding for community collaboration and protection, and investing to increase the capacity of the federal workforce to plan for and respond to wildfire.
Courtney Schultz, Associate Professor of Forest & Natural Resource Policy, Director of the Public Lands Policy Group at CSU, Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship, Colorado State University.
Beverly Law, Professor Emeritus, Global Change Biology & Terrestrial Systems Science, Oregon State University
Minority witness to be announced
When:
1 p.m. EDT, Thursday April 29
Written testimony:
Written testimony from the witnesses will be posted at the Committee’s website shortly before the hearing begins. Ms. Duncan’s is 13 pages long.
How to watch live:
You can watch it right here. When the hearing begins, click on the Play button on the YouTube screen below.
After the hearing is over, it should be possible to replay it above, or on YouTube.
*************************************************
There are many people we could consider experts on the topic of wildfire under climate change and what to do on workforce issues. I like that Neguse picked Schultz who is a social scientist; it would be interesting if more social scientists were included in, say, other hearings on science issues, say climate, for example, IMHO. Of course, they are both from Colorado, so does that have anything to do with it? Also two Oregonians. Which seems a bit odd considering all the work they do on this, and all the experts, in California. And of course, there is nothing like a retired Fed to be an expert.
This is interesting to me from a political science perspective- since I’ve always found the machinations of politics difficult to understand (yes, even when I worked on Capitol Hill). For one thing, the USDA has a comment period open until Friday on climate-smart forestry and agriculture which includes dealing with wildfire. So..is this to help with that? Are they separate efforts? Are they coordinating between legislative and executive branches? As it says, “Congress and the Biden administration have an opportunity to better incorporate climate change into federal land and wildfire policies.”
Also who would you pick, if you were the minority, to round out the panel, and why? It might already be decided, but I’m interested in what you all think and why.
The U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities has announced an “Innovative Finance for National Forests (IFNF) grant program supports the development and implementation of innovative finance models that leverage private and public capital other than US Forest Service (USFS) appropriations to support the resilience of the National Forest System (NFS). ”
IFNF grants could, but are not limited to, support of innovative finance models that:
Enable debt or equity financing from public or private sources to pay for the upfront costs of a project that will be paid back over time by project beneficiaries (payors);
Access new or existing markets for environmental goods or services;
Access user-based fees or contributions;
Increase pace and scale of implementation by blending multiple sources of funding;
Employ any combination of the approaches listed above.
The IFNF grant program is funded by the USDA Forest Service (USFS) National Partnership Office (NPO) and U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities (Endowment). Additional administrative and technical support is provided by the National Forest Foundation (NFF).
Thanks to Jon for posting this piece all for participating in the discussion on fishers and fuel treatments, and especially for Rene Voss being here to discuss his point of view. I’d like to further explore options for common ground.
“the agencies ignored a deep body of scientific evidence concluding that commercial thinning, post-fire logging, and other logging activities conducted under the rubric of ‘fuel reduction’ more often tend to increase, not decrease, fire severity (citing several sources, emphasis in original).
Having been on the other side (writing statements on “how the Forest Service considered those studies”, I tend to think that five or ten pages of explanation of how these studies were considered, is probably not what plaintiffs are ultimately after.
The view that “fuel treatments more often tend to increase fire severity” is not widely held by scientists, nor fire and fuels practitioners.
So we can only wonder what the plaintiffs are really after. Perhaps the problem is “commercial”? So in areas in which thinning is not “commercial” it can be helpful? But “commercial” is not a biological parameter. So, I guess my question is whether it’s possible for folks like Rene to articulate the parameters of what kinds of treatments would be OK with them. It seems to me that would save time and effort for everyone concerned.
The Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL FIRE) and other state entities will expand its fuels management crews, grant programs, and partnerships to scale up fuel treatments to 500,000 acres annually by 2025;
» California state agencies will lead by example by expanding forest management on state-owned lands to improve resilience against wildfires and other impacts of climate change; and
» The USFS will double its current forest treatment levels from 250,000 acres to 500,000 acres annually by 2025.
Governor Newsome asked for this funding in his budget.
In addition to electric vehicles, Newsom’s team actively highlighted the $1 billion investment it was making in wildfire management. That money would go to support firefighting, including 30 new fire crews and additional aircraft, as well as proactive fire management, ranging from tribal engagement on fire issues to creating markets for wood products sourced from forest thinning.
Natural Resources Secretary Wade Crowfoot said this budget signified a “paradigm shift” in how the state approaches fire management.
The administration realized, he said, that it needs to be more proactive in landscape-level fire management, an effort that would come from moving toward melding modern fire science with traditional Native American practices of prescribed burns.
It seems to me that the State feels that fuel treatments are effective and worthy of megabuck investment. I wonder whether that scientific discussion has occurred with the State. What’s most interesting to me are the processes by which scientific arguments and discussions take place (or don’t) and why, peculiarly, they have a role in the courts that is different from everyday policy development. The courts, as we’ve found out, are not the place for scientific discussions, and also not conducive to finding common ground and where agreements might occur…except in individual settlements, which don’t really help public understanding.
If Governor Newsome wants to “be more proactive in landscape-level fire management”, when 58% of California’s forests are federally managed, and lawsuits can delay these federal projects, we have to ask “how could we get (currently litigating) environmental groups to not only support efforts, but actually to help row the landscape-level fire management boat?” I’m using the analogy of Michael Webber, in this interview on decarbonization).
What policy changes, or changes in project design, might work?
This recently filed case (the complaint is at the end of the article) hasn’t generated a lot of news coverage, but it directly raises some of the questions we have discussed at length about the effects of fuel reduction activities.
On March 26, 2021, three California conservation groups filed a complaint for declaratory judgment and injunctive relief against the Forest Service and Fish and Wildlife Service in the federal district court for the Eastern District of California (Unite the Parks v. U. S. Forest Service). They are challenging, “the failure … to adequately evaluate, protect, and conserve the critically endangered Southern Sierra Nevada Pacific fisher … on the Sierra, Sequoia, and Stanislaus National Forests …” after a substantial reduction in habitat since 2011 resulting from a multi-year draught, significant wildfires and Forest Service vegetation management. Many of the variables considered in a prior 2011 analysis have been adversely affected by these changes. The plaintiffs implicate 45 individual Forest Service projects.
This fisher population was listed as an endangered species on May 15, 2020, and the agencies conducted “programmatic” consultation at that time on 40 already-approved projects. The agencies reinitiated consultation because of the 2020 wildfires, but did not modify any of the projects. The purported rationale is that the short-term effects of the vegetation management projects are outweighed by long-term benefits, but plaintiffs assert, “There is no evidence-based science to support this theory…,” and “the agencies ignored a deep body of scientific evidence concluding that commercial thinning, post-fire logging, and other logging activities conducted under the rubric of ‘fuel reduction’ more often tend to increase, not decrease, fire severity (citing several sources, emphasis in original). The complaint challenges the adequacy of the ESA consultation on these projects, and the failure to “prepare landscape-level supplemental environmental review of the cumulative impacts to the SSN fisher…” as required by NEPA.
Not mentioned in the lawsuit is the status or relevance of forest plans for these national forests, two of which (Sierra and Sequoia) are nearing completion of plan revision. However, the linked article refers to an earlier explanation by the Forest Service that they would not be making any changes in the revised plans based on the 2020 fires because they had already considered such fires likely to happen and had accounted for them. ESA consultation will also be required on the revised forest plans, and should be expected to address the same scientific questions, arguably at a more appropriate scale. Reinitiation of consultation on the existing plans based on the changed conditions should have also occurred under ESA. (This is another area where legislation has been proposed to excuse the Forest Service from reinitiating consultation on forest plans, similar to the “Cottonwood” legislation that removed that requirement for new listings or critical habitat designation.)
(And in relation to another topic that is popular on this blog, Unite the Parks also supports the establishment of the Range of Light National Monument in the affected area.)
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Representatives Kim Schrier, M.D. (WA-08), Mike Simpson (ID-02), and Derek Kilmer (WA-06) introduced a bill to re-establish the Forest Service Legacy Roads and Trails Remediation Program. Recognizing the need to improve national forest lands and waters to be more resilient to impacts from climate change, the legislation addresses the impacts from the Forest Service’s massive and deteriorating road and trail infrastructure. U.S. Representatives Joe Neguse (CO-02) and Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) are original co-sponsors of the Act.
The U.S. Forest Service manages twice as many road miles as the national highway system with only a small fraction of the budget. More than 370,000 miles of roads, built half a century ago, require over $3.2 billion in unfulfilled maintenance needs. Hundreds of thousands of culverts, more than 13,000 bridges and 159,000 miles of trails are all components of the agency’s dilapidated infrastructure that keep road engineers awake at night with worry.
The implications of decaying and abandoned infrastructure are severe. Crumbling roads bleed sediment into rivers, creeks, and wetlands, endangering fish and other aquatic wildlife. Failing and undersized culverts block fish like salmon and trout from migrating to spawning grounds or reaching cold water refugia. Habitat sliced into small pieces by roads harms wildlife like grizzly bear and elk. And as more and more of the American public seek outdoor retreats, they often find roads are closed due to storm damage and safety concerns.
“The Representatives’ Legacy Roads and Trails bill addresses the past by healing the harm from so many miles and miles of worsening roads,” said Marlies Wierenga, Pacific Northwest Conservation Manager for WildEarth Guardians. “But the bill also looks to the future by strategically reconnecting habitat for migrating wildlife and fish, protecting clean water for communities, and ensuring access in a changing climate.”
The Legacy Roads and Trails program (established in 2008 and subsequently defunded in 2018) proved to be an effective, no-waste program with demonstrated results. For a decade, the program supported projects such as fixing roads and trails to withstand more intense storms, and decommissioning obsolete roads. It also funded projects to remove or expand culverts under roads to allow fish passage. The program has a proven track record of saving taxpayer money, improving habitat, creating jobs, and guaranteeing safer access for all.
“Legacy Roads and Trails works. The Forest Service found that sediment entering streams decreased by 60-80% after its roads were storm-proofed or decommissioned,” said Chris Krupp, Public Lands Guardian for WildEarth Guardians. “This is a huge benefit to downstream drinking water providers and the 66 million Americans who rely on our National Forests for clean drinking water.”
Increased funding to address severely damaged fish and wildlife habitat in national forests and grasslands will provide jobs to rural communities. Most of the funding in the program goes directly to on-the-ground work for local contractors and specialists. Heavy-equipment operators are particularly well-poised to benefit from the program.
“We are grateful and excited for Representative Schrier’s leadership with this important legislation,” said Marla Fox, Interim Wild Places Program Director for WildEarth Guardians. “Legacy Roads and Trails is uniquely positioned to shape a more resilient and adaptive landscape for wildlife, fish and waterways across the nation in the face of the current climate and biodiversity crises.”
Additional Resources
A 10-year accomplishments report on the Legacy Roads and Trails Program can be found here.
A Forest Service story map on Legacy Roads and Trails-funded work to replace 1000 culverts to reconnect fish migration corridors can be found here. Embedded are several informative videos including a 4-minute video available here and a 16-minute video available here.
The Climeworks direct air capture plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, binds carbon dioxide to water and pumps it far underground.(Climeworks)
Matthew commented yesterday and included this quote from Jeremy Nichols: that he’s “incredibly skeptical” that the project will ever be built due to costs and “the commercially unproven nature of carbon capture and sequestration.”
I was about to go through the points that despite being currently unproven (economically, at scale), many people, including scientists, say we need it to stay below desired climate targets. Conveniently, Evan Halper of the LA Times had a nice summary as part of a recent article on “what California is doing about CCS.” I’ve bolded the parts that might be of interest to federal lands and forest watchers.
It is no small undertaking. Installing sci-fi-type machinery to pull carbon from the air — or divert it from refineries, power plants and industrial operations — and bottle it up deep underground is a monumentally expensive and logistically daunting challenge. It is one climate leaders now have no choice but to try to meet as they race to keep global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, the central commitment of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, which aims to avert cataclysmic effects.
“To have any chance of holding warming below that level, you can’t do it simply by limiting emissions,” said Ken Alex, a senior policy advisor to former California Gov. Jerry Brown who now directs Project Climate at the UC Berkeley School of Law. “You have to sequester significant amounts of carbon.”
The recognition has pushed state regulators to start drafting blueprints for what could be one of the larger infrastructure undertakings in California history. Millions of tons of carbon dioxide would need to be captured and compressed into liquid form, at which point it would be either buried throughout the state or converted into materials for industrial uses such as manufacturing plastic and cement.
The state is essentially starting from zero. There are no large-scale carbon-removal projects operating in California.
…
Carbon Engineering is promising that oil extraction is not in its long-term future. The oil revenues, the company says, make it possible to get early plants built. The hope is the costs of the plants will get much cheaper as the technology is put to widespread use, making it economical to just bury the carbon dioxide in the ground.
The European company Climeworks has taken a different route, using modular units to build smaller operations across the continent. Its biggest, in Iceland, will go online soon, collecting 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. That would be dwarfed by what Carbon Engineering is projecting in Texas. But there is no fossil fuel component to the Climeworks projects.
“This is scalable,” said Christoph Beuttler, a manager at Climeworks. “We can get the costs down. Just imagine we were talking about solar panels in the 1990s and how far the prices have dropped. We think the same thing can be achieved here. “
California officials say direct-air-capture developers are eyeing where in the state they can build. Some are looking toward remote areas in Northern California where they could tap into geothermal energy, as Climeworks will do to power its Icelandic plant. Others are more focused on the deep underground basins of the Central Valley, suitable for storing billions of tons of carbon dioxide.
The vacuums are just one of many technologies California and other states are investigating in their sprint toward carbon removal. Back in Washington, there is a bipartisan push to allocate billions of dollars to the construction of pipelines and storage facilities for all the carbon dioxide lawmakers envision will be diverted underground in the coming years.
One of the first projects moving forward in California targets agriculture and wood waste that would otherwise be burned, resulting in greenhouse gas emissions. It aims to convert the waste into zero emissions power using a pioneering gasification process. The emissions created during production would be trapped and buried underground.
Other efforts are focused on the potential to trap greenhouse gases at factories for such things as cement and steel. Their production is emissions intensive due to the high heat temperatures needed and chemical reactions involved, and the only option for canceling out those emissions is diverting and burying the carbon dioxide.
“Some of these facilities cannot or will not be shut down, replaced or switched to carbon-free fuels quickly enough … to contain climate change at manageable levels,” said a recent report from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory urging California to become a carbon removal leader.
The race to bring carbon removal technologies to market is getting a boost from billionaire Elon Musk. On Thursday, Earth Day, his XPrize will launch a $100-million contest aimed at inspiring teams of innovators to develop carbon removal projects capable of being scaled “massively to gigaton levels, locking away CO2 permanently in an environmentally benign way.”
Groups of scientists have meanwhile been drafting blueprints for California’s transition into the new technologies. An exhaustive study by Stanford and the Energy Futures Initiative identified 76 existing factories, power plants and other facilities in the state where carbon capture technology could be used to remove 59 million metric tons of greenhouse gas annually by 2030.
