The Carbon Containment Lab co-organized the Biomass Carbon Removal and Storage (BiCRS) Workshop in Washington, D.C. from November 15th to 17th. Managing Director, Justin Freiberg, worked with the Department of Energy’s Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Program (Rory Jacobson, Aaron Fuller, and Ian Rowe) and National Energy Technology Laboratory (Andrew Jones), University of Maryland (Ning Zeng), UC Berkeley (Dan Sanchez), OpenAir (Toby Bryce), the USDA’s Climate Hubs (Dave Hollinger), and the United States Energy Association (USEA) to put on the event.
The 2.5-day conference brought together scientists, policy makers, and practitioners to identify the most critical barriers to scaling BiCRS projects, with a particular focus on pathways involving wood harvesting & storage (WHS). Discussion focused around developing appropriate policy, permitting, and financing mechanisms; advancements in science, technology, and R&D; and cross-industry sharing around the challenges and paths to implementation.
Associate Director of Science, Sinead Crotty, presented on two key gaps currently limiting the scalability of WHS: (1) the need to develop more rigorous counterfactuals around the use of forestry residues, and (2) the need to clarify the mechanisms, risks, and MRV priorities to ensure safe, scaled deployment.
Sinead outlined pathways forward to address each of these gaps, calling for experts across fields to join in a collaboration to publish on the most up-to-date scientific knowledge and recommendations for best practices for MRV. We envision that this work will help advance understanding, highlight research needs around unknowns and risks, and guide safe deployment across the field [1].
Justin provided the Closing Remarks that summed up many of the conversations from the first two days of the conference. Some major takeaways included:
(1) There are scientific and logistical unknowns, but there is an opportunity to address many of them now as these ideas move to scaled implementation;
(2) Perception and public opinion matters, and there is a real need for active stakeholder engagement in the short-term; and
(3) There is an interesting tension on speed and certainty in this field. While there is a shared understanding that there are still unknowns, there is also a corresponding desire to move to scaled implementation in the near-term – and to learn and iterate.
We at the CC Lab look forward to helping address these highlighted focus areas along with the many partners and practitioners who have been working hard on these ideas to date.
[1] For more information about the presentation, see the slide deck available for download below. To sign up to participate in near-term peer-reviewed publications relating to the science of wood storage, please feel free to email Sinead Crotty at sinead.crotty@cclab.org.