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Update on the Carbon Mitigation Initiative Robert Socolow Princeton University

Update on the Carbon Mitigation Initiative Robert Socolow Princeton University. St. James Square, London January 18, 2013. Goals of this talk. The goals of this talk are: to introduce CMI t o review the current program to describe the CMI research frontier

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Update on the Carbon Mitigation Initiative Robert Socolow Princeton University

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  1. Update on the Carbon Mitigation InitiativeRobert SocolowPrinceton University St. James Square, London January 18, 2013

  2. Goals of this talk • The goals of this talk are: • to introduce CMI • to review the current program • to describe the CMI research frontier • to explore areas of collaboration

  3. Introduction • BP-Princeton interaction • Princeton University considers CMI to be one of its most successful collaborations with industry. Princeton researchers have complete independence, while sustaining two-way communication with BP leadership in the U.K. and the U.S. • Current Roster • 87 people in CMI: • 19 professor-level investigators • 68 post-docs, graduate students, and support staff Carbon Mitigation Initiative Annual Report 2011

  4. CMI Mission Statement The mission of CMI is to lead the way to a compelling and sustainable solution of the carbon and climate change problem. By combining the unique and complementary strengths of the CMI parties – a premier academic institution and an influential global company – CMI participants seek to attain a novel synergy across fundamental science, technology development, and business principles that accelerates the pace from discovery, through proof of concept, to scalable solution. We are considering adding, at our next Annual Meeting: CMI’s mission is also to foster mutual learning that deepens the participants’ understanding of the climate science and technology frontier, business priorities, policy implications, and other critical climate-and-energy issues.

  5. CMI Structure Co-Directors: S. Pacala R. Socolow BP: D. Eyton D. Nagel G. Hill Research Groups: Science Low-carbon energy Fluids and energy Integration and policy Advisory Council: D. Burtraw, Resources for the Future D. Hawkins, Natural Resources Defense Council D. Keith, Harvard M. Levi, Council on Foreign Relations S. Benson/F. Orr, Stanford S.Long/C.Somerville, EBI, Berkeley CA Collaborators: GFDL, Princeton NJ Tsinghua University Politecnico di Milano University of Bergen Climate Central, Princeton

  6. Areas for Collaboration I hope we can discuss these three questions: Princeton researchers are path-breakers at the climate science frontier. How can the value this work to those who create BP’s medium-term policy be increased? BP conducts, internally, sophisticated evaluations of emerging technology (I assume). Those of us (at Princeton and elsewhere) who contribute to energy analysis in the public domain would benefit from understanding BP’s methodologies, inputs, and conclusions. Examples are gas-to-liquids, geothermal energy, and methane clathrates. Can confidentiality obstacles be reduced to enable real and deep exchanges of views? Princeton researchers (especially in the Engineering School) want to work on basic problems that have important applications. Princeton leaders in hydrology redirected a substantial portion of their work to address subsurface CO2 studies as CCS emerged. At present, leaders in fluids and molecular modeling are looking for insights into emerging areas. What kind of BP-Princeton dialog could be mutually productive?

  7. CMI leaders: Science Science Group: Left to right: Bender / Hedin / Medvigy / Morel / Pacala / Sarmiento Single highlight: Bender finds1.3 million year old ice near the surface in Mullins Valley, Antarctica, 0.5 million years older than the ice in the deepest ice cores. The atmospheric CO2 concentration may be inferable (see Annual Report, p. 51).

  8. Participation in the ESC Total cropland today (grey bar) and in 2050 based on increased demand for food energy, decomposed by the contributions (red and green bars) of population growth (pop), income (income), crop productivity improvements (yield), and variation in diet (to either North American (NA) or Asian (AS)). Red bars indicate an increase and green bars a decrease in the cropland required by mid-century.

  9. Ocean pH time series Slope: 0.2 pH/century (60% increase in H+ concentration) CO2 level in atmosphere at Mauna Loa; CO2 level and pH in nearby ocean at Station Aloha. Modified after R.A. Feely, Bulletin of the American Meteorological society, July 2008. Website: Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, NOAA, http://pmel.noaa.gov/co2/files/hitimeseries2.jpg

  10. Attribution of extreme events • Confidence in attribution is growing • Stronger statistical signals and larger data bases • Higher resolution models with better physics • aerosols delay monsoons (GFDL) • bi-stable systems can flip (e.g., ocean circulation) • Heat waves > Droughts > Hurricanes: descending order of confidence.

  11. RECORD 2011 SUMMER TEMPERATURES IN THE UNITED STATES June, July, and August, 2011 • 26,526 Record Warm Temperatures Were Set (Record Warm Nights or Record Warm Days) • 3,416 Record Cold Temperatures Were Set (Record Cold Nights or Record Cold Days) • Note That Many Weather Stations Set Multiple Records Source: S. Pacala, talk at Dartmouth, 2012

  12. Greenland: 7 meters.West Antarctica : 5 meters 1 meter 2 meters 8 meters 4 meters Devastation! (A falling sea level would also be disruptive.) Source: T. Knutson, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, NOAA. See: http://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/~tk/climate_dynamics/climate_impact_webpage.html#section4

  13. ARGO drifting and profiling instruments Profile upper 2000m every 10 days. 3325 deployed (8/23/10). 22 participating nations.

  14. 1.4 PgC y-1 4.1 PgC y-1 45% 3.0 PgC y-1 29% + 7.7 PgC y-1 26% 2.3 PgC y-1 Fate of Anthropogenic CO2 Emissions (2000-2008) Le Quéré et al. 2009, Nature Geoscience; Canadell et al. 2007, PNAS, updated Source: S. Pacala, talk at Dartmouth, 2012

  15. If the terrestrial CO2 fertilization sink fails: 850 • Deglaciation and Loss of Coastal Cities 800 CO2 from More than a Trillion Tons of Heated Peat Enters the Atmosphere 750 • Mass Extinction • Deep Sea Circulation Stops • Tropical Famine 550 ~2050 500 450 400 • Parts per million in the atmosphere 2012 350 1995 300 Source: S. Pacala, talk at Dartmouth, 2012

  16. Pacala and the Land Sink (new work) Bottom line: Fortunately, that part of the terrestrial sink due to carbon fertilization should retain its strength in a high-CO2 environment, providing negative feedback. In particular, neither N nor P scarcity will degrade the sink. The Pacala Group’s models incorporate the height-structured competition for light. In their models, as a nutrient (N, P) becomes scarce, trees store more carbon, rather than less (as conventional wisdom has maintained) . The tree’s most competitive strategy is to invest in making wood so as to grow taller. Wood has very high C:N and C:P ratios, compared to other plant tissue, so N and P scarcity promotes, rather than inhibits, the terrestrial carbon sink. Source: Drawn from S. Pacala, talk at Dartmouth, 2012, verbatim and paraphrasing.

  17. Research frontier: Science • Core areas (with GFDL) • Integration of land models with general circulation models of the atmosphere and ocean • Delineation of the present and future terrestrial CO2 sink • Forest dynamics , plant physiology, nitrogen and phosphorus • Food-fuel competition (within BP’s Energy Sustainability Challenge) • Ocean studies • Ocean CO2 uptake and the Southern Ocean • Princeton-led NSF Science and Technology Center ($50M, 10yr)? 3/03 decision • Ocean acidification and biogeochemistry • Extreme events and attribution (BP supplementary grant) • What will produce a resurgence of climate policy? • Hazards for infrastructure, biomass feedstocks • On the radar screen • Pasture wedges • Molecular simulation of droplet nucleation in clouds

  18. CMI leaders: Low-C energy Low-Carbon Energy Group (formerly, Capture Group): Left to right: Arnold / Kreutz / Larson / Socolow / Williams Single highlight: Williams’ Energy Systems Analysis Group (ESAG) continues to be a node in the research community that explores chemical energy conversion of biomass to fuels (torrefaction, gasification, Fischer-Tropsch synthesis), far outnumbered by those who are developing biological energy conversion (enzymes).

  19. Current and Planned CO2 Pipelines and CO2 EOR Projects in the U.S. At present 60 MtCO2 is used annually in 114 projects to provide, via 6000 km of pipelines, 380,000 b/d of crude oil (6% of total US crude oil production). Energy Secretary Chu requested that the NCC prepare a report for him on carbon capture and storage for coal energy systems, with emphasis on storage via CO2 EOR . The economic & technical potentials for CO2 storage in the US: 18 & 43 GtCO2, respectively. See: US DOE NETL (2011): Improving Domestic Energy Security and Lowering CO2 Emissions with “Next Generation” CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery (CO2-EOR), DOE/NETL-2011/1504 Activity 04001.420.02.03. Source: Robert Williams, Shenhua Meeting on New Initiatives for the World Coal Association, Beijing, 12 October 2012

  20. What Are Opportunities in China for Linking Coal Energy Conversion to CO2 EOR? Massive coal power fleet is relatively new, vs. relatively old in U.S. China is ahead of U.S. in deployment of both gasification and synthesis technologies. • Pins represent 400 chemical plants in China releasing concentrated CO2streams • These plants use both coal gasifiers and synthesis reactors to make chemicals • Green areas are sedimentary basins where suitable aquifer storage sites might be found • Source: Zheng, Z., Larson, E.D., Li, Z., Liu, G., and Williams, R.H., 2010: “Near-Term Mega-Scale CO2 Capture and Storage Demonstration Opportunities in China,” Energy and Environmental Science, 3: 1153-1169. Source: Robert Williams, Shenhua Meeting on New Initiatives for the World Coal Association, Beijing, 12 October 2012

  21. Consider China’s Oil Reservoirs CO2 pipelines needed to link sources of low-cost CO2 to CO2 EOR opportunities From: Wikipedia Source: Robert Williams, Shenhua Meeting on New Initiatives for the World Coal Association, Beijing, 12 October 2012

  22. Frontier: Low-C energy • Core areas • Fossil fuel concepts for a low-carbon world (with Tsinghua, Politecnico di Milano) • Polygeneration of fuels and power • Biomass co-firing • Biofuels via chemical energy conversion • CO2 use (enhanced oil recovery, CO2 feedstock for synfuels) • Physics of batteries • Coupling of mechanics and electrochemistry • Constraints on charge and discharge rates • On the radar screen • Joint studies of conceptual issues in cost estimation • First of a kind (FOAK) and Nth of a kind (NOAK)

  23. CMI leaders: Fluids Fluids and Energy Group (formerly, Storage Group): Left to right: Celia / Debenedetti / Panagiotopoulos / Prevost / Stone / Tromp Single highlight: Celia asks if the left hand knows what the right hand is doing, when a shale-gas production site is chosen without reference to whether the host shale doubles as CCS “caprock.” If so, production will shatter what otherwise could have been a seal against the upward migration of stored CO2 (see Annual Report, p. 29).

  24. Hot off the press! Jan M. Nordbotten and Michael Celia “We have focused the book on basic concepts needed to understand subsurface storage of CO2, with a focus on mathematical models used to describe storage operations.” (from the Preface) http://www.wiley-vch.de/publish/en/books/ISBN978-0-470-88946-6

  25. Pablo Debenedetti: Molecular modeling of hydrates Snapshot of hydrate melting simulation to study the stability of CO2 hydrate Sarupria & Debenedetti, J.Phys. Chem. A, 115, 6102 (2011) • Computational modeling of hydrate formation and stability • Investigation of mechanisms and rates of hydrate melting and formation • Comparison of relative stabilities (free energies) of different hydrates (CO2, CH4) • Investigation of hydrate formation and stability over broad ranges of salinity, T, P • Methods: Free energy calculation, path sampling, molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo

  26. Debenedetti: CO2-brine phase behavior CO2 Brine CO2 Concentration profile of the CO2-brine vapor-liquid interface at 150oC and NaClmolality = 1 Left: an equilibrium configuration (Na+ = blue; Cl- = yellow; C = green; H = white; O = red) Right: CO2 mole fraction as a function of position (middle portion gives equilibrium solubility) Liu, Lafitte, Panagiotopoulos, Debenedetti, AIChE Journal, in press (2013) • Computational modeling of CO2-brine phase behavior • Investigation of phase behavior and interfacial properties of CO2-H2O-NaCl mixtures • Conditions relevant to enhanced oil recovery, CO2 storage, CO2-based geothermal systems • Investigation of influence of salinity, T, P, presence of interfaces on phase behavior • Methods: Free energy calculation, molecular dynamics, Monte Carlo, interfacial simulations

  27. Desalination using clathrate hydrates Laboratory equipment for the investigation of clathrate-based desalination Left: glass reactor to study filtration aspects of the process, using cyclopentane hydrate Right: High-pressure reactor unit to study thermodynamics and kinetics of hydrate formation • Desalination via clathrate hydrate formation • Formation of hydrates from binary mixtures [former (l) + helper (g); e.g., cyclopentane+methane] • Helper stabilizes hydrate, increasing melting temperature and lowering formation pressure • Seek former+helper combination that stabilizes hydrate up to ca. 18oC • Form salt-free hydrate at deep sea-water conditions (4-10oC), avoiding refrigeration • Melt by heat exchange with warmer surface water (20-25oC), recovering salt-free water • Heterogeneous nucleation promoted by hydrate recycling reduces the need for cooling. Brian Pethica, SankaranSundaresan and Pablo Debenedetti

  28. Research frontier: Fluids • Core areas • CO2 storage • Modeling from pore scale to basin scale • Active brine management • Field studies of well-bore integrity (re-enter wells, with BP) • Technical back-up for regulations • e.g., EPA: “area of review,” “zone of endangering influence” • Table-top exploration of fundamentals (Hele-Shaw cells) • Molecular modeling of hydrates and CO2-hydrocarbon systems • Formation and melting of CO2-H2O-salt hydrate systems • Mixed-hydrate desalination • Physical chemistry of enhanced oil recovery • Methane hydrates: stability, CO2-for-CH4 storage/production • On the radar screen • Climate-change adaptation • Coupling SFDL storm-surge models to damage reduction

  29. CMI leaders: Integration Policy and Integration Group: Left to right: Glaser / Oppenheimer / Pacala / Socolow Single highlight: In “Wedges revisited,” published on-line with ten comments, Socolow suggests that reframing climate change as requiring “iterative risk assessment” might provide a Restart button for carbon policy formulation. The paper urges a rhetoric that features “unwelcome news,” “incomplete science,” and “fraught solutions.”

  30. Communicating uncertainty: How much hotter will summers be? Note: The uncertainty shown is due to alternative emissions paths, not alternative climate models. This graph probably shows how winters could feel too [to be verified]. Figure from James McCarthy, Harvard NECIA, 2007 (see: www.climatechoices.org/ne/)

  31. Non-linearities and bi-stable states abound: The thermohaline circulation (THC)

  32. Never have so many been asked to predict so much while knowing so little… • 100’s of operational decisions = 100’s of free parameters in global biosphere models. • If not for the crisis, I [Steve Pacala] wouldn’t be ready to build such a model for many decades or a century or more. • We must improve the fundamental biological basis of the models. Source: S. Pacala, talk at Dartmouth, 2012

  33. CMI will track nuclear power U.S. nuclear power plants Source: Alexander Glaser, “Nuclear Power in the United States: Large or Small?”Princeton University, November 12–13, 2012

  34. Research frontier: Integration • Core areas • Policy restart: getting real • A soft landing after “two degrees” • Communication of uncertainty • Pace: How fast can things change? • Carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere (with M. Desmond) • Monsters behind the door: Positive feedbacks (deglaciation, peat release) • Sea level rise assessment (IPCC input) • The future of nuclear power • Small nuclear reactors (weapons-coupling, safety) • DOE $450M (5 yrs) to B&W+Bechtel for 180 MW BWR (Nov. 2012) • Outreach • Making climate change vivid (with Climate Central); Wedges popularization • On the radar screen • Biocarbon when carbon is priced • Coupling science models with integrated assessment models (IAMs) • Adaptation -- a structured discussion

  35. CMI’s Carbon Commitment CMI will sustain its leadership in the integration of science, technology, and policy related to climate change. CMI will remain a “steward” of the climate change problem, so that when attention is refocused, the CMI partners will be ready.

  36. Areas for Collaboration I hope we can discuss these three questions: Princeton researchers are path-breakers at the climate science frontier. How can the value this work to those who create BP’s medium-term policy be increased? BP conducts, internally, sophisticated evaluations of emerging technology (I assume). Those of us (at Princeton and elsewhere) who contribute to energy analysis in the public domain would benefit from understanding BP’s methodologies, inputs, and conclusions. Examples are gas-to-liquids, geothermal energy, and methane clathrates. Can confidentiality obstacles be reduced to enable real and deep exchanges of views? Princeton researchers (especially in the Engineering School) want to work on basic problems that have important applications. Princeton leaders in hydrology redirected a substantial portion of their work to address subsurface CO2 studies as CCS emerged. At present, leaders in fluids and molecular modeling are looking for insights into emerging areas. What kind of BP-Princeton dialog could be mutually productive?

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