Science, Technology, and Public Policy

This brief examines the national challenges related to deploying and scaling infrastructure to transport CO₂ from capture sites to storage or utilization sites at a scale consistent with achieving net-zero by 2050.

If the world is serious about addressing climate change, we should welcome forward momentum on this critical technology. Getting on track for net zero emissions by 2050 will require swiftly and massively ramping up carbon capture deployment.

Legal scholar Andrey Todorov, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Arctic Initiative, reflects on the recent agreement reached by United Nations delegates to protect biodiversity in international waters and its implications for the Arctic. 

Carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) is very likely to be a key technology for achieving the Biden administration's goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. But absent regulation requiring its use, CCUS needs to become more economical in order for deployment in the United States to expand significantly.

How can China make good on its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2060? In Foundations for a Low-Carbon Energy System in China, a team of experts from China and the United States explains how China's near-term climate and energy policies can affect long-term decarbonization pathways beyond 2030, building the foundations for a smoother and less costly national energy transformation.

What was accomplished? COP26 created pressure for some countries to produce revised  Nationally Determined Contributions, helped catalyze new pledges to reduce emissions (including from India), led to the approval of the rules to govern international cooperation and carbon markets (the Paris Rulebook) addressing the issue of double counting, and served as the Launchpad for some novel initiatives that could play a useful role. Among the announcements that were made, was one that recognizes the importance of strategic investment and government action to lower the cost of technologies to reach carbon neutrality.

Kelly Sims Gallagher asserts that politicians' pledges of dramatic long-term reductions should not let them off the hook for their failure to achieve more modest progress in the short term.

Joel Clement characterizes the growing greenhouse-gas emissions from the commercial shipping industry as well as the efforts of the United Nations body, the International Maritime Organization, to reduce these emissions as unacceptable.

Joel Clement outlines why he is vexed by global negligence with regards to investments in the fossil fuel industry.

There is an urgent need to incorporate the latest science on carbon emissions from permafrost thaw and northern wildfires into international consideration of how much more aggressively societal emissions must be reduced to address the global climate crisis.