Climate Solutions at the University of Calgary

“All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 Gt CO₂ over the 21st century.” (IPCC, 2018)

With the PEACH technology, the Calgary Climate Solutions team is using electrochemistry to manipulate seawater alkalinity and capture CO2 on a global scale. The team has diverse skills and origins but is committed to “research, develop, and if appropriate, test and deploy socially desirable solutions for large scale carbon dioxide removal”, especially ones that safely amplify natural geochemical processes of carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Such projects are not merely technical in nature but crucially also have to be acceptable to society, so policy and governance and finance are as critical a part of design and construction as science and engineering.

The AVECS (Alternative Vectors for Carbon Storage) project is focused on providing new routes to geological sequestration of carbon, in reservoirs unsuitable for conventional supercritical CO₂ storage. Our target is carbon contained in organic matter, such as biomass and biomass residues, wastewater and bio-solids, food waste, and other residual pools of organic carbon, that quickly decompose back to CO₂ and other GHGs (e.g., methane) if left unattended. For example, approximately 140 Gt of biomass waste is generated every year – diverting even 10% of that waste from rapid degradation to GHGs would mean a significant net reduction of carbon emissions.

Solid Carbon is developing an offshore negative emissions technology that aims to turn carbon dioxide (CO₂) into rock. Ocean Networks Canada is leading an international team of researchers committed to advancing technology to draw CO₂ from the air and inject it below the seafloor into ocean basalt. There, it reacts with the basalt and mineralizes into rock, providing a durable and vast reservoir for removal of CO₂ emissions. This ambitious project follows a globally scalable systems approach that is urgently required to meet planetary climate targets. UCalgary researchers Benjamin Tutolo and Rachel Lauer are involved in Solid Carbon.

Climate Solutions at the University of Calgary

Combining the tools of chemistry, geology, engineering, and law to achieve climate change solutions.

Why we need large scale carbon (geo)engineering?

“All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 Gt CO₂ over the 21st century.” (IPCC, 2018)

Climate Solutions at the University of Calgary

Combining the tools of chemistry, geology, engineering, and law to achieve climate change solutions.

Why we need large scale carbon (geo)engineering?

“All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 Gt CO2 over the 21st century.” (IPCC, 2018)

“All pathways that limit global warming to 1.5 °C with limited or no overshoot project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 Gt CO₂ over the 21st century.” (IPCC, 2018)