本文转自《World Resources Institute》发布的题为“Wanted: $325 Million for Federal R&D to Jumpstart Carbon Removal”的报道。

日期：2018-12-13

作者： James Mulligan, Giana Amador and Noah Deich

原文链接：https://www.wri.org/blog/2018/12/wanted-325-million-federal-rd-jumpstart-carbon-removal?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=worldresources&utm_campaign=socialmedia

Steep reductions in carbon emissions will be critical to avoid the most dangerous impacts of climate change, but that won’t be enough. Leading climate scientists at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Academies of Sciences have both made it clear that we also need to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

逐步减少碳排放对于避免气候变化的危险影响是至关重要的，但这还不够。 政府间气候变化专门委员会（IPCC）和国家科学院的主要气候科学家都明确指出，我们还需要从大气中去除二氧化碳。

Last month, the National Academies outlined the need for billions in research over the next decade and beyond to develop the knowledge and technology we’ll need for large-scale carbon removal. The report lays out an ambitious plan, but it begs the question: Where do we start? Based on our prior analysis and conversations with experts, we’ve narrowed the Academies’ long list of priorities to six key areas that we think are most promising, urgent, foundational and potentially tractable in the next Congress:

上个月，国家科学院概述了未来十年及以后数十亿的研究需求，以开发我们大规模除碳所需的知识和技术。 该报告提出了一项雄心勃勃的计划，但它提出了一个问题：我们从哪里开始？ 根据我们之前的分析和与专家的对话，我们将学院的长期优先事项列表缩小到了我们认为最有希望，最紧迫，最基础且可能在下届大会中易于处理的六个关键领域：

$10-15 million per year for a national on-farm soil monitoring system and an experimental soil carbon field network

每年1000万至1500万美元用于国家农场土壤监测系统和实验土壤碳田网络

We know that there are a number of ways to build carbon in agricultural soils while also improving soil health and boosting farm profits, through measures such as planting cover crops in the winter. The carbon benefits of some of these practices are well-understood. For others, considerable uncertainty remains as to the amount and permanence of carbon storage across geographies and agricultural operations, which could impede efforts to scale up soil-based sequestration. Accordingly, the Academies proposed establishing a national on-farm soil monitoring system through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) existing National Resource Inventory network. The monitoring system would provide the ongoing data necessary to reduce uncertainty around carbon storage in soil types and agricultural operations over time. The Academies also proposed an experimental field network to enhance methods for building carbon in agricultural soils, to be operated by USDA and land-grant universities. Together these efforts could help unlock hundreds of millions of tons of carbon sequestration potential in croplands and rangeland in the United States.

$40-50 million per year to breed plants that store more carbon

每年4000万至5000万美元用于培育储存更多碳的植物

Crops have been selectively bred for desired attributes for centuries, and we can harness this experience to help fight climate change. Agricultural scientists believe that crops can be bred to allocate more biomass to their roots without sacrificing yield, but we haven’t prioritized this attribute. One way to do this would be to breed varieties with deeper roots or “perennialize” grains and oilseeds such as corn, wheat, soybeans and sunflower by creating hybrids or domesticating wild varieties. This would allow them to store more biomass (and carbon) underground and may provide helpful spillover benefits in the form of drought resilience. The Academies proposed to quadruple current federally funded research in this area to $40-50 million per year. The research could be led by USDA, the National Science Foundation or the U.S. Department of Energy, which is spearheading crop breeding efforts through the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy. If successful, new seed varieties could enhance carbon sequestration in croplands while providing significant benefits to farmers and potentially without requiring shifts in management practices.

$25 million per year to tackle economic, social and environmental questions surrounding the use of biomass for energy

每年2500万美元用于解决围绕使用生物质能源的经济，社会和环境问题

The impacts of biomass can vary considerably. For example, directing waste biomass to productive uses could sequester carbon that would otherwise decompose and return to the atmosphere. These uses include creating long-lived building materials and fueling power/industrial facilities with carbon capture and storage. However, some sources of biomass can negatively impact natural ecosystems or land used for food production. To ensure productive, safe and prudent utilization of our biomass resources, the National Academies recommends agencies like DOE’s Bioenergy Technology Office and Fossil Energy group collaborate with the USDA to improve capabilities for assessing the full lifecycle climate and environmental impact of different biomass types as well as the logistical constraints facing the most climate-beneficial sources of biomass.

$75 million per year for research, development and demonstration to drive down the cost of scrubbing carbon directly from the air

每年7500万美元用于研究，开发和示范，以降低直接从空气中清除碳的成本

Direct air capture and storage technologies hold immense promise for capturing CO2 directly from the atmosphere. Captured carbon can be used in industrial products such as building materials, or carbon can be stored underground in geologic formations. High costs for initial prototypes have hindered these technologies from gaining a foothold in the marketplace. However, the Academies demonstrates how costs could be reduced considerably with further innovation. This would help ensure that these technologies are ready for cost-effective deployment in the coming years and could even put them into the competitive range of a few existing markets for CO2 (such as the California Low Carbon Fuel Standard). Over time, this could unlock hundreds of millions of tons of carbon removal opportunities in the U.S. each year. To get there, the Academies recommends that DOE invest across a portfolio of stages of R&D, including basic and applied research and development for novel materials and system designs. This would likely occur as a collaboration across DOE’s Offices of Science, Fossil Energy, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, pilot-scale demonstrations, and the creation of a national direct air capture test center to independently evaluate results.

$35 million per year to advance scientific understanding of using rocks to turn carbon pollution into... more rocks

每年3500万美元用于推动科学理解使用岩石将碳污染转化为更多岩石

When certain types of rocks are exposed to air, they undergo a chemical reaction that transforms CO2 into a stable, carbon-based rock, in a process called CO2 mineralization. This process happens naturally, but because many of these minerals are located deep below the Earth’s surface, they only sequester a tiny fraction of the CO2 emitted from burning fossil fuels. With some clever and low-tech engineering, however, it could be possible to speed up the natural CO2 mineralization process substantially. It is too early to say what the technical potential for this option would be in the United States, but some early studies suggest it could be as high as hundreds of millions of tons per year, if a number of technical hurdles can be overcome. This research is in its early stages, and the Academies suggests more basic science. Specifically, they call for the U.S. Geological Survey and the DOE Office of Science to study kinetics and rock mechanics, map sites with CO2-reactive rocks, and analyze broader environmental impacts and social acceptance for CO2 mineralization.

$125 million per year to shore up capabilities for storing captured carbon underground, safely and effectively

每年1.25亿美元用于支持将捕获的碳储存在地下，安全有效的能力

The United States is endowed with significant capacity for geological storage of captured CO2, and there are several carbon capture and storage projects already up and running. But in order to realize the nation’s full potential, the National Academies study recommends continued investments in R&D. This is critical both for unlocking important emissions reduction opportunities that rely on carbon capture and for major technology-based carbon removal options such as direct air capture that will rely on carbon storage in order to scale. The Academies outlines significant research efforts in this area, including developing new approaches to selecting appropriate sites for carbon storage and predicting performance, enhancing the effectiveness of underground storage methods and improving monitoring systems. These efforts would be best advanced through a collaboration between DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy, the U.S. Geological Survey and EPA’s Office of Research and Development.

The research endeavors outlined above must be the start of a longer-term and sustained enterprise to develop and refine the capabilities for carbon removal. Basic and applied science will lead to pilot demonstrations and technology standards followed by incentives for large-scale deployment. The National Academies provides a blueprint for this enterprise, well beyond the initial investments highlighted here. If we are to avoid dangerous levels of global warming, capturing and storing carbon already in the air must be part of our climate strategy in the United States and around the world—alongside rapid reductions in emissions across sectors. It’s time to begin investing across the portfolio of carbon-removal approaches — in research, development, demonstration, early-stage deployment and enabling conditions — so that they become viable options at the scale we need them in the coming decades.

上述研究工作必须是开发和完善碳去除能力的长期和持续企业的开端。 基础科学和应用科学将导致试点示范和技术标准，然后是大规模部署的激励措施。 国家学院为这个企业提供了蓝图，远远超出了这里强调的初始投资。 如果我们要避免危险的全球变暖水平，捕获和储存空气中的碳必须成为我们在美国和世界各地的气候战略的一部分 - 同时迅速减少各部门的排放量。 现在是时候开始投资碳排除方法 - 在研究，开发，示范，早期部署和扶持条件 - ，以便它们在未来几十年成为我们所需规模的可行选择。