Challenge prizes for negative emissions Sarah Holliday (Nesta Challenges), Scott Milne and Matthew Joss (Energy Systems Catapult) December 2020
To meet the UK’s climate targets, we need approaches to capture and remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere in addition to curbing emissions. Challenge prizes could help accelerate new solutions to achieve negative emissions at the scale and pace needed to meet our targets. • The UK has committed £800m to carbon capture and storage infrastructure, but most of these technologies only succeed in reducing future emissions. • To limit global heating to 1.5 °C, we need to go further by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere to achieve net-zero emissions. • Challenge prizes could help support innovators to develop new negative emissions technologies and techniques, helping to accelerate these solutions and make them economically viable.
Our vision To meet the UK’s net zero greenhouse gas emissions target by 2050, it is clear that reducing current and future emissions alone will not be enough. Even including efforts to capture CO2 emissions from power plants through carbon capture, usage and sequestration (CCUS), we still urgently need to invest in ways to remove carbon already in the atmosphere in order to meet our targets. Challenge prizes could support the rapid development of these negative emissions technologies (NET), as well as nature based solutions (NBS) and other approaches
Challenge prizes for negative emissions
to help us achieve net zero. In addition, prizes can catalyse innovative business models to make such technologies economically viable on a large scale, and able to tap into the estimated £400 billion future global market in greenhouse gas removal. The innovations developed through the prize could support the UK in its net zero ambition, whilst ensuring economic resilience through decarbonisation and contributing to the levelling up of the economy by developing this infrastructure across the UK.
The challenges and their context The carbon removal challenge is global and urgent. The IPCC have warned that global emissions of CO2 must be reduced by 45% relative to 2010 levels by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050, to offer any chance of limiting global heating to 1.5 °C.1 While emissions reduction strategies are the most important way to achieve this, it is also clear that these alone will not be enough. We already have dangerously high levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and it won’t be possible to completely eliminate emissions in some sectors. This means that, in order to reach net zero, we also urgently need to actively draw greenhouse gases from the atmosphere – on the order of 100-1000 gigatonnes by 2100. Current negative emissions technologies and techniques are varying in terms of cost, complexity and stage of development, and they include: • Direct air capture and sequestration (DACS), in which carbon is removed from the atmosphere using large fans and certain materials that extract the CO2, before storing it underground or through other means (e.g. by making plastics where the carbon is stored long-term). DACS technologies have great potential, but also challenges in the extra energy required to capture CO2 from the air, where it is much more diffuse than in power station flue gases.2 • Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), which involves growing biomass (absorbing CO2 in the process) and burning it to generate energy, capturing the emitted CO2 to be stored through sequestration or other means, as per above. BECCS features in many of the modelled pathways to 1.5 °C and has the advantage of simultaneously generating energy. However, the large areas of arable land that are required by current methods can have significant implications for food production.3 • Nature based solutions (NBS) including soil management, forest planting, microalgae and other natural ecosystems are among the most low-cost and reliable methods of carbon removal, offering benefits for climate change adaptation, biodiversity, soil health and food security as well as a route to negative emissions.4 It has been estimated that nature based solutions in total could absorb about 28 gigatonnes CO2 per year by 2030.5 However, smarter and more evidence-driven approaches are needed in order to achieve the scale of carbon removal required. • Enhanced weathering is the exploitation and acceleration of a natural process in which CO2 and water react with silicate rocks, producing stable bicarbonate materials. As well as contributing to negative emissions, this technique has potential co-benefits including improved food security and soil health, and reduced ocean acidification.6 However, this approach may also have implications for arable land availability and the geochemical cycle, meaning that smarter approaches to deployment are needed.
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Challenge prizes for negative emissions
The UK needs negative emissions strategies to meet its climate targets. In line with the UK government’s commitment to be carbon neutral by 2050, £800m has been pledged towards carbon capture and storage infrastructure as part of the 2020 budget.7 As part of this CCUS deployment pathway and action plan,8 £24 million was already made available through the CCUS Innovation programme and £20 million made available through the Carbon Capture & Utilisation Demonstration Programme (CCUD). While this scale of funding is welcome, only 2 of the 10 projects funded thus far actually lead to negative emissions.9 Meanwhile, the £31.5 million Strategic Priority Fund Greenhouse Gas Removal Demonstrators programme launched last year will fund five demonstrator sites for greenhouse gas removal projects in the UK, enabling UK companies to tap into the estimated £400 billion future global market in greenhouse gas removal.10 With the scale of carbon removal required, it is important that this investment is distributed across a multitude of different technologies and innovative approaches to help the UK reach its climate targets. In addition, support is needed for innovators to develop competitive business models that enable these solutions to reach the scale needed.
The role of innovation This funding environment leaves significant opportunity to increase the level of support for negative emissions technologies as part of the UK government’s Green Recovery strategy. The government is already aware of the importance of these approaches, with a call for evidence on greenhouse gas removal technologies and carbon pricing expected later this year.11 This presents an ideal time to take a proactive, ambitious approach to innovation in this area. The relative immaturity of DACS technologies, along with their potential for modularity and flexible approaches, suggests that there is significant scope for innovation and future cost reduction e.g. through using waste heat or renewable energy to power the extractor technology.12 US funders are recognising this, with the The 2007 $25 million Virgin Earth Prize calling for a technology capable of removing one billion tonnes CO2 equivalents/yr over ten years,13 and former US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz last year calling for a $10.7 billion dollar CO2 removal programme.14 To realise this potential in the UK, we need funding and incentives not only for the research, but for the technology transfer involved in developing compelling business models. The UK is already home to three of the world-leading innovators in carbon utilisation – Econic Technologies, Carbon Systems, and CCm Technologies, while US based initiatives like the Carbon XPrize15 and the Circular Carbon Network16 are helping to incentivise new use cases for CO2. However, there is potential to go much further in supporting UK innovators to find new ways of utilising the carbon that is captured in ways that are compatible with negative emissions, for example in plastics and other products with a long lifetime. With BECCS and nature based solutions, there is also a great opportunity for developing smarter, data-driven approaches and innovative enabling technologies. Researchers are already working to bring together state of the art measurement, monitoring and technology to help landowners store more carbon in their soil in a financially sustainable way, while the University of Oxford Nature Based Solutions Initiative has developed a
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Challenge prizes for negative emissions
comprehensive Evidence Platform to enable a data-driven approach to designing nature based interventions.17 Here also, there is a great opportunity for smarter business models to help make NBS economically viable whilst still being carbon negative, for example through production of biochar as fertilisers,18 or restaurant surcharge schemes that support soil based carbon sequestration in agriculture.19 This creates an exciting opportunity to bring together farmers, data scientists and other stakeholders in building collaborative solutions. Challenge-driven innovation can help deliver these outcomes, as well as impacts that extend far beyond the technologies themselves. Our research and past challenge prizes demonstrate that this type of funding can help to: • Galvanise action around a shared vision: by setting strategic objectives for carbon capture and removal in the UK, they could help focus attention on particular gaps or opportunities around emissions reductions as well; • Give credibility and visibility to teams working on them: by signalling government support and independent validation, they could help attract publicity and investment to teams taking part; • Demonstrate the benefits of technologies developed: by providing access to facilities such as lab testing and industry ‘testbed’ opportunities, prizes could help demonstrate and drive adoption of the innovations created; • Create new, sustainable jobs in the decarbonisation sector, whilst contributing to the levelling up agenda through developing these initiatives across the UK.
Opportunities for challenge prizes 1. Cost effective DACS prize: Create an innovative technology that can capture CO2 from the air to achieve a carbon-negative offset at <£100/tonne CO2 (target prize to be determined) Capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere is the most promising mode of carbon capture in terms of overall emissions reductions, but it is also highly energy intensive because of the diffuse concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, making this approach expensive. This prize would incentivise new technologies and techniques to direct air capture that are more energy efficient and lower cost, enabling negative emissions at a much larger scale. 2. Sustainable BECCS prize: Develop new approaches and tools for growing biomass for carbon capture and storage that minimises impact on land food production Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage offers the potential for energy generation at the same time as creating negative emissions, but it currently relies on large areas of arable land with consequences for food production. This prize would incentivise innovative approaches and technologies to enable the maximum carbon capture whilst optimising land use. These could include data-driven tools to identify land suitable for biofuel crops or help farmers more efficiently produce biofuel crops, or biotech based approaches to growing more biofuel in less area or in more suitable locations.
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Challenge prizes for negative emissions
3. Smart deployment of Nature Based Solutions (NBS) prize: Develop a data-driven approach to deploying nature based solutions effectively and scaleably, maximising carbon removal potential whilst creating green jobs Nature based solutions are among the sophisticated and effective approaches we have to removing CO2 from the atmosphere, but selecting the right methods for the right environment is not a trivial task. This prize would incentivise new, data-driven approaches to deploying nature based solutions, developed in collaboration with farmers and other land specialists. Solutions could utilise advanced technologies such as LiDAR for remote sensing, or other tools to enable NBS deployment at scale in order to maximise on the carbon removal potential per unit area whilst creating sustainable employment opportunities in the Green Economy.
Endnotes 1.
IPCC, Special Report: Global Warming of 1.5°C, 2018.
2.
A. Ghambir et al., Cell Primer, Direct Air Carbon Capture and Sequestration: How it works and how it could contribute to climate change mitigation, 2019.
3.
S. Hanssen et al., Nature Climate Change, The climate change mitigation potential of bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, 2020.
4.
N. Seddon et al. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B., Understanding the value and limits of nature-based solutions to climate change and other global challenges, 2020.
5.
B. Griscom et al., PNAS, Nature Climate Solutions, 2017.
6.
D. Beerling et al. Nature, Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands, 2020.
7.
Carbon Brief, Budget 2020: Key climate and energy announcements, 2020.
8.
BEIS, The UK carbon capture usage and storage deployment pathway: an action plan, 2018.
9.
BEIS, CCUS Innovation Programme: selected projects, 2018; Carbon Capture and Utilisation, Demonstration: selected projects phase 2 and 3a, 2019.
10.
More information at: https://nerc.ukri.org/research/funded/programmes/ggrd
11.
BEIS, Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage: A Government Response on potential business models for Carbon Capture, Usage and Storage, Aug 2020.
12.
A. Ghambir et al., Cell Primer, Direct Air Carbon Capture and Sequestration: How it works and how it could contribute to climate change mitigation, 2019.
13.
More information at: https://www.virgin.com/about-virgin/virgin-group/news/virgin-earth-challenge
14.
Bloomberg Law, Moniz Group Calls for $10.7 Billion Carbon-Removal Program, 2019.
15.
More information at: https://carbon.xprize.org/prizes/carbon
16.
More information at: https://circularcarbon.org
17.
More information at: https://www.naturebasedsolutionsevidence.info
18.
G. Haider et al., Scientific Reports, Mineral nitrogen captured in field-aged biochar is plant-available Aug 2020.
19.
More information at: https://www.zerofoodprint.org/about
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Challenge prizes for negative emissions
Further information Nesta Challenges Nesta Challenges exists to design and run challenge prizes that help solve pressing problems that lack solutions. We shine a spotlight where it matters and incentivise people to solve these issues. We are independent supporters of change to help communities thrive and inspire the best placed, most diverse groups of people around the world to take action. We support the boldest and bravest ideas to become real, and seed long term change to advance society and build a better future for everyone. We are part of the innovation foundation, Nesta. A full list of our current challenge prizes is available on our website at www.challenges.org Energy Systems Catapult Energy Systems Catapult was set up to accelerate the transformation of the UKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s energy system and ensure UK businesses and consumers capture the opportunities of clean growth. The Catapult is an independent, not-for-profit centre of excellence that bridges the gap between industry, government, academia and research. We take a whole-systems view of the energy sector, helping us to identify and address innovation priorities and market barriers, in order to decarbonise the energy system at the lowest cost.
To discuss the content of this challenge brief, contact: Dr Sarah Holliday, Researcher at Nesta Challenges sarah.holliday@nesta.org.uk
58 Victoria Embankment, London EC4Y 0DS +44 (0)20 7438 2500 challenges@nesta.org.uk @NestaChallenges www.challenges.org Nesta is a registered charity in England and Wales with company number 7706036 and charity number 1144091. Registered as a charity in Scotland number SCO42833. Registered office: 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS.
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