Beyond Techno-Economics: Responsible Deployment in Carbon Management

Event Summary

The science is clear: to avoid the worst impacts of climate change we’ll need aggressive, economy-wide decarbonization in combination with atmospheric carbon removal at the billion-ton scale. These efforts will require unprecedented management of carbon dioxide through strategic technical deployment and infrastructure buildout.

But given the rapid pace and scale of deployment ahead, how can we identify responsible pathways that maximize benefits and minimize harms?

In this talk, Pete Psarras explores challenges and opportunities in carbon management, illustrating how various impact layers from the techno-economic, social, and environmental perspectives interact to form a new picture of deployment.

What role will energy-intensive options like direct air capture play and how will our decision-making today impact that role by mid-century? How does grid electrification and transmission buildout play into technology siting? What are the opportunities for community co-benefits? And alternatively, how do we assess tradeoffs that pit inevitable impacts against one another? Take a journey into the real-world case study of Nevada and its net-zero ambitions to help address these questions and set the stage for a challenging yet critical road ahead.