Astley Hastings reports from Göteborg.
This was a 4 day conference hosted by Chalmers University in Göteborg, Sweden. The conference covered all aspects of negative emissions technology, this included land-based NET’s such as afforestation, soil carbon and BECCS, along with ocean-based fertilization. It also included technology such as Direct Air Capture (DAC), CO2 scrubbing by different methods from flue gas, CO2 transportation and compression and geological storage. Papers were presented on empirical experiments, modelling, policy, public perception, finance, national strategies, regulation and integrated systems. Anita Shepherd and Astley Hastings (PBC4GGR team members from the University of Aberdeen) presented a paper which was based on the first round of GGR project FAB-GGR on “The contribution of Miscanthus x giganteus BECCS to IPCC climate requirements for global warming to remain below 2°C”. Astley Hastings and Pete Smith presented a paper related to the 1st round GGR projects and UKERC-4 entitled “Achieving Net Zero emissions: The oil and gas industry is a major component of the solution”.
There were 250 delegates from around the world representing academia, industry and governments and there were many round tables and 3 panel discussion sessions in addition to the 150 plenary and session presentations. It was useful for networking as was one of the first international meetings on the subject for 3 years due to COVID. I discussed at length the proposal for a modelling project that considered all land based GGR’s to be attached to the GGR phase 2 demonstrators with Steve Smith from the Hub, who was enthusiastic about the idea. The next conference on the subject will be hosted by Oxford University.
Astley Hastings, August 2022.