Restoring the Carbon Budget – Policies and Financing Options from Security & Sustainability Forum on Vimeo.

Download the PDF of the Restoring the Carbon Balance – Webinar 2 presentation by clicking this link

Arizona State University’ Global Institute of Sustainability and the Security and Sustainability Forum in the second of a three part series on “Restoring the Carbon Budget” addressed the NETS technologies and the status of the research to develop and commercialize them.

In this recording of a conversation with Klaus Lackner, Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, discussed the topic of carbon accounting. Klaus has a talent for making complex science topics understandable. Want to understand more about the importance of a carbon accounting system to restoring the carbon balance? Listen in to the interview.

Moderator:

Joel Makower, chairman and executive editor of GreenBiz Group Inc., creator of GreenBiz.com as well as research reports and events on the corporate sustainability strategy and trends, will moderate the session. Joel hosts the annual GreenBiz Forums and VERGE conferences around the world and is author of the annual State of Green Business report.

Panelist:

Eric Hanson is a senior research faculty member with the Energy Systems Analysis Group at Princeton University’s Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment. His research interests include engineering, economic, and policy-related assessments of advanced clean-energy technologies and processes using carbonaceous fuels (biomass, coal, natural gas), especially for addressing energy-related problems in developing countries.

Klaus Lackner, Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University. Klaus’s research interests includes closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration and carbon foot-printing, among other areas.

Susan Hovorka, Economic Geology Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Her current research focuses on an assessment of the effectiveness of subsurface geologic sequestration of CO₂ as a mechanism for reducing atmospheric greenhouse gas emissions.

Summary – Webinar 3, on May 11, will examine policies, political approaches and funding options that can facilitate investment in RD&D needed to accelerate the pace of commercialization of carbon removal, storage and utilization technologies.

Moderator

Andy Revkin, senior reporter for climate and related issues at ProPublica. He joined the Independent public-interest newsroom in December 2016, after 21 years of writing for The New York Times. He has won most of the top awards in science journalism, along with a Guggenheim Fellowship, Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for sustained journalistic excellence and an Investigative Reporters & Editors Award.

Panelists

Klaus Lackner, Director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University. Klaus’s research interests includes closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration and carbon foot-printing, among other areas.

Noah Deich, Director of the Center for Carbon Removal will examine regulatory and policy barriers and opportunities to provide incentives for investment in carbon management technologies.

Fatima Ahmad, Solutions Fellow at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions who will discuss her recent work on financing opportunities and policy development for energy technologies, including carbon capture, use, and storage (CCUS).

Download the PDF of the webinar presentation by clicking this link

Building on decades of work across the globe by the public and private sectors, has a shared global climate ethos — a sense of collective commitment and common purpose — reached a tipping point?

• Are the Paris Agreement and the growing number of cities adopting carbon-based energy goals evidence of that? How durable are these actions?
• Is a sense of common purpose sustainable without US federal government coordination and leadership? What roles do sub-national and municipal governments play?
• How can business, security, religious, and civil society actors continue and even accelerate efforts to reduce emissions? Can they work together to avoid the worst climate impacts?
• Is the global commitment to climate solutions shallow or deep?
• How can moral, scientific and political imperatives find common ground?
• Does the global climate ethos include extracting, storing and reusing carbon already in the atmosphere?
• Where do opportunities for collaborative innovation exist?

Join Arizona State University and global governance, business, science, policy and faith leaders in a 90 minute webinar to explore the depth and breadth of a global climate ethos and the direction of plausible, innovative climate action emerging across sectors and among global societies.

This webinar will convene leaders in a public conversation that touches on these critical questions and that can inspire local conversations and ideas to advance cross-sectoral collaborations.

We’ll also share resources to support a climate ethos dialogue in your community.

Moderator

Elisabeth Graffy, Professor, Consortium for Science Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University

Panelists

Janos Pasztor, Senior Fellow and Executive Director, Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative C2G2

Alice C. Hill, Research Fellow, the Hoover Institution

Katharine Hayhoe, Scientist and Associate Professor, Texas Tech University

Download the PDF of the webinar presentation by clicking this link

Overview

The basic story of “electric power to combustible fuels” is that renewable energy technologies, especially at high penetration, will at times produce “low-value electrons” in the open market, creating the potential for arbitrage. Such “electrons” could be stored for use at a different time, stored in battery electric vehicles, or used to produce water (through, for example, reverse osmosis), or used to produce hydrogen, to name a few possibilities. Some of these conversations are happening, especially surrounding battery electric vehicles. However, other conversations are also important. For example, what if many of the electrons divert to the transportation sector, are we accelerating the combined transition or making it more challenging? Are we increasing economic efficiency? Would recycling waste CO₂, as a carbon source to produce fuels, facilitate a combined transition, or impede one or the other?

Numerous issues arise with a greater coupling among the sectors, hence situating electric power-to-fuels as a jumping-off point for the following types of more general questions:

• Do current policy and business frameworks encourage and harness or impede arbitrage possibilities? Is there a need for policy support or will normal market forces suffice?
• Could increasing communication and awareness at the interfaces among stakeholder groups lead to greater responsiveness of the combined sectors?
• Are there more business and technology innovations at the intersection of the stationary power and transportation sectors that might add economic efficiency and accelerate the transition? Does envisioned policy actions support or impede such innovations?

Moderator

Clark Miller, Senior Sustainability Scientist, Energy, Society and Policy Initiative at Arizona State University

Panelists

Robin Beavers, Senior Vice President and Founder, Station A Group at NRG Energy

Dawn Manley, Sandia National Laboratories

Marc Melaina, Senior Engineer, National Renewable Energy Laboratory

Levi Tillemann, Jeff Leonard Fellow, New America Foundation

Moderator

Download the PDF of the webinar presentation by clicking this link

Future of Sustainable Transportation Fuels – Challenges and Opportunities for Designing Good Metrics from Security & Sustainability Forum on Vimeo.

Overview

There is likely no disagreement that “objective and grounded” is a hard standard to meet when designing metrics to measure and characterize a complex socio-political-techno-economic enterprise, such as the future of transportation energy and fuels. Still, an objective, grounded approach that integrates diverse stakeholder viewpoints and facilitates coordination and responsiveness, begs for measures, even if at times they are qualitative rankings, such as low, medium, high, which all parties respect and understand, and yet may disagree on. Webinar #4 will sound out the participants on considerations and challenges for developing valuable frameworks and appropriately using metrics.

An important consideration to keep in mind is that different stakeholder groups typically have different values and beliefs deriving from different perspectives and needs or wants. It is also difficult, in designing metrics, not to subtly favor the results that we want, either from unconscious biases or by not separating the problem from the solution. A holistic systems view will underpin this discussion of metrics with an objective of surfacing where differing perspectives lead to conflicting metrics or conflicting use of the metrics.

Moderator

Director, Gary Dirks, Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability at Arizona State University and Director, ASU LightWorks®

Panelists

Cheryl Martin, Founder, Harwich Partners and previous Deputy Director for Commercialization of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E) at the US Department of Energy

Eric Miller, Program Manager, Hydrogen Production Delivery at the US Department of Energy

Andrew Maynard, Professor, in the School for Future of Innovation in Society at Arizona State University

Louise Vickery, Manager, Renewable Futures at the Australian Renewable Energy Agency

James Hinkley, Research Group Leader, CSIRO Energy Transformed Flagship at the Australian Renewable Energy Agency