Laying the foundations for negative emissions technologies: insights from a workshop

Pre-empting the worst consequences of climate change requires both mitigation of emissions from the global energy system and carbon dioxide removal through negative emissions technologies. Despite their nascence, negative emissions technologies are being incorporated into nationally determined contributions to achieve ambitious targets. It is therefore urgent to build a scaffolding that enables their expansion. Here, we report results from a workshop that brought together 34 prominent stakeholders, including scientists, engineers, energy system analysts, economists, experts in public policy, and policy makers. Participants discussed the likely cost and performance of these technologies; elucidated the opportunities and risks facing deployment; and envisioned how nations might build the necessary scaffolding for expansion. The majority narrative is that negative emissions technologies will have a bridging role in decarbonizing existing assets. Different models of deployment were proposed. Reaching the scale of deployment necessary to meet emissions targets is lengthy and expensive. Financial and regulatory risks are seen as greater barriers to deployment at scale than technological risk. Greater certainty regarding carbon pricing, production tax credits, and support for geological characterization and trunkline construction could reduce the former. Critical to expansion is a large-scale increase in low-carbon power production; the implementation of regulatory frameworks that remove uncertainty surrounding investment decisions; and prudent societal engagement.