CBE Seminar - Klaus Lackner

Director, Center for Negative Carbon Emissions Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment Ira A. Fulton Schools

All dates for this event occur in the past.

130 Koffolt Laboratories, CBEC
130 Koffolt Laboratories, CBEC
151 W. Woodruff Ave
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

Balancing the World’s Carbon Budget

 

Klaus S. Lackner

Director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions
Professor, School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering

Arizona State University

Abstract

The recent meeting in Paris on climate change ended with a challenge to all the countries of the world: do not settle for a global warming of 2°C, but aim for a much more ambitious goal of 1.5°C. Scenarios based on either target require taking carbon dioxide already emitted back from the environment and dispose of it safely and permanently in order to create net negative carbon dioxide emissions. This calls for technologies that can remove carbon dioxide from air and a storage capacity for spent fossil carbon that is sufficient to cope with an amount of carbon dioxide comparable to last century’s emissions. I will argue that negative emissions are technically feasible and outline approaches that have the potential for cost effective implementations and could operate at the scale necessary to significantly reduce carbon dioxide concentrations in the air and the ocean. If the good intentions of Paris are to be realized, the release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere must be outlawed, just like the dumping of raw sewage into rivers and lakes is outlawed in most nations.

Bio
Dr. Klaus Lackner is the Director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University. Lackner’s research interests include closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration, carbon foot-printing, innovative energy and infrastructure systems and their scaling properties, the role of automation, robotics and mass-manufacturing in downscaling infrastructure systems, and energy and environmental policy. Lackner’s scientific career started in the phenomenology of weakly interacting particles. Later searching for quarks, he and George Zweig developed the chemistry of atoms with fractional nuclear charge. After joining Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lackner became involved in hydrodynamic work and fusion related research. In recent years, he has published on the behavior of high explosives, novel approaches to inertial confinement fusion, and numerical algorithms. His interest in self-replicating machine systems has been recognized by Discover Magazine as one of seven ideas that could change the world. Trained as a theoretical physicist, he has made a number of contributions to the field of carbon capture and storage since 1995, including early work on the sequestration of carbon dioxide in silicate minerals and zero emission power plant design. In 1999, he was the first person to suggest the artificial capture of carbon dioxide from air in the context of carbon management. His recent work at Columbia University as Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy advanced innovative approaches to energy issues of the future and the pursuit of environmentally acceptable technologies for the use of fossil fuels.   

 

 

Category: Seminar