Lawrence Livermore Releases Landmark Report Highlighting Pathways to Achieve Carbon Neutrality in California by 2045

On January 30^th, 2020, Lawrence LivermoreNational Laboratory (LLNL) released a first-of-its-kind reportwhich identifies and quantifies the negative emissions opportunities that wouldenable California to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 or sooner.

“Negative emissions” refers to the physical removal ofcarbon dioxide from the atmosphere, such as through natural climate solutions(e.g. soil carbon sequestration) or technological solutions (e.g. carboncapture and storage). California’s current emissions reduction trajectoryestimates that by 2045 approximately 125 million metric tons of carbon dioxide(MMTCO₂e) emissions will remain in the economy, including inhard-to-decarbonize transportation, industrial and agricultural applications. Therefore,to reach carbon neutrality, an equal amount of negative emissions isneeded to compensate for this shortfall. The LLNL report identifies where wecan find these negative emissions in the state, their potential scale, cost, aswell as what it would mean for California to lead on negative emissions.

Key Strategies

The report identifies three major negative emissionsstrategies for California, which are outlined below. While these strategiescould be combined in various ways to achieve the 125 MMTCO₂e goal,we highlight the lowest cost pathway below, as identified by LLNL, whichincludes maximizing natural and waste biomass solutions first, before meetingremaining needs through Direct Air Capture technology.

• Natural solutions: Natural solutions encompass activities, including various Natural and Working Lands restoration, to increase carbon uptake in trees and soils. Natural solutions are the least expensive negative emissions strategy, averaging $11/ton of CO₂ removed from the atmosphere. However, natural solutions are  limited, capable of contributing maximum negative emissions of 25 MMTCO₂e/year (or 20% of the needed 125 MMTCO₂e goal) from 2045.

• Wastebiomass with carbon capture and storage (CCS): California generates56 million tons of waste biomass annually, including from fuels reductionforest management work, agricultural waste, municipal solid waste, and more(see Figure 1). This waste biomass is typically burned in piles, resulting inserious public health impacts, landfilled, or left to decay in fields and onthe forest floor. Converting this waste biomass to renewable biofuels with CCSposes the most significant negative emissions opportunity for the state. CapturedCO₂ would be transported and permanently stored deep underground insafe geologic storage sites, for which there is significant capacity inCalifornia. Waste biomass solutions range from $29-$64/ton of CO₂ removedfrom the atmosphere, and could contribute negative emissions of 84 MMTCO₂e/year(or 67% of the needed 125 MMTCO₂e goal) from 2045.

• DirectAir Capture (DAC): For remaining negative emissions, DAC technology can bedeployed. DAC is the most expensive option, but has nearly unlimited technicalcapacity, provided its energy needs can be met from a low-carbon source. SomeDAC will be required to achieve carbon neutrality in California. Currently, DACsolutions range from $193-201/ton of CO₂ removed from theatmosphere, and could generate negative emissions of 16+ MMTCO₂e/year(or 13% of the needed 125 MMTCO₂e goal) from 2045.

Figure 1: This Figure highlights the waste biomass available in California per county. Significant volumes of forest waste are available in Northern California, while the Central Valley provides a lot of agricultural waste, and Southern California provides substantial municipal solid waste.   Source: LLNL report (2020)

Figure 2: This Figure highlights the lowest cost pathway for California to achieve 125 MMTCO₂e/yr negative emissions and economywide carbon neutrality by 2045. The pathway includes the deployment of natural climate solutions (green), biomass waste with CCS (blue), and Direct Air Capture (orange).   Source: LLNL report (2020)

Key Takeaways

LLNL estimates that it would cost the state less than $10billion/year, or 0.4% of current GDP, to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045, andthat as the proposed solution focuses on achieving negative emissions in-state,the majority of this funding would be spent on local jobs and local industry. Moreover,by producing high-value end products like biofuels, it is anticipated that thiscould drive significant revenue streams into Natural and Working Landsrestoration, particularly to support fuels reduction work in the state’sforests. Finally, the use and scale of CCS technology could help facilitate ajust transition for the state’s oil and gas industry by creating new jobs inlow income Central Valley communities.

Achieving carbon neutrality by 2045 presents a substantiallymore challenging task for California compared to existing climate goals.However, LLNL’s groundbreaking report demonstrates that it’s possible. Byimplementing negative emissions strategies, California can once again lead thenation and the world in pioneering the solutions to fight global climatechange.

Conservation Strategy Group has been proud to support RogerAines and the LLNL team’s efforts to develop this report since it was conceivedover a year ago. CSG has since been working to determine the sets of policies whichwould unlock negative emissions opportunities in California, including how toscale the deployment of next generation waste biomass facilities and CCS. Formore information on this work or the LLNL report, please contact Sam Uden (sam@csgcalifornia.com), who through his capacity at the University of Queenslandwas a contributing author of the study.