CMI Annual Report 2022

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Ongoing Research Activities The world changed considerably in 2022 – the war in Ukraine demonstrated to everyone the vulnerabilities associated with reliance on fossil fuels. The United States passed two major climate bills, after discussion and debate significantly influenced by the CMI-led Net-Zero America project. An offshoot of Net-Zero America, the REPEAT project, provided specific and targeted analyses in real time to policymakers considering particular environmental legislation, and continues to do so today. Net-Zero Australia was developed using a similar modeling design, leading the way for more countries to develop their own versions of net-zero guidelines. CMI continues to conduct groundbreaking and foundational research in the areas of science, technology and policy. Research teams made progress on a number of ongoing initiatives: • The latest REPEAT project assesses U.S. progress on net-zero goals. It concludes that the spending and incentives included in the current climate legislation will not reduce emissions to the goal of 50% by 2030, but there are ways to close the gap. • Energy systems models identify the most critical barriers to successful implementation of current legislation, and focus attention on the pace of deployment in the electricity sector. • Clean fuels play a crucial role in the goal of reaching net-zero in 2050. Research explores how the Inflation Reduction Act impacts the economics of clean hydrogen and liquid fuel. • India needs large-scale carbon capture and storage to help it reach net-zero, but the Deccan Traps basalt province appears to be unsuitable for large-scale CO 2 injection. • Sustainable cements can help the concrete manufacturing industry decarbonize but there are questions about their long-term performance. Examining pore structure can help predict how they stand up over time. • Oceans have been losing oxygen in response to climate change. Using Earth System Models, observations and simulations, researchers can predict how oxygen minimum zones will respond to future pollution, climate change and natural variability. • Tropical cyclone intensity and frequency are impacted by large-scale events and changes. Researchers use modeling to determine how climate drives changes in tropical cyclones. • Hydrogen plays a crucial part of the transition to net-zero, but hydrogen in the atmosphere can increase greenhouse 3 Carbon Mitigation Initiative Twenty-second Year Report 2022
gases. Knowing how much hydrogen leakage can occur before its climate benefits are negated is crucial to scale up hydrogen use responsibly. • Wetlands are one of the largest natural sources of methane to the atmosphere. Research explored the responsible biochemical mechanisms and provided insights for mitigating wetlands emissions. • Land use changes designed to store more carbon could have beneficial or detrimental impacts on biodiversity. Research explores the connection between the two. • To understand the effectiveness of economic incentives for land-use change across the globe, researchers are using statistical models to analyze economic data on a national and global scale. • The latest climate models from CMI researchers and Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL) account for the impacts of extreme weather on land carbon uptake. Therefore, these models provide more accurate assessments of the future of the land carbon sink and humanity’s remaining carbon emissions budget. • Researchers examined the impacts of drought on carbon uptake and storage in Panamanian rainforests and the long-term effects of drought and fire in the Amazon. Annual Meeting 2022’s 21 st Annual Meeting marked its return to London after four years. CMI and bp enjoyed being together in person for the first time since the COVID pandemic imposed two years of virtual-only meetings. It also was the first fully hybrid meeting, where all sessions were both in-person and online. All attendees could participate in the lively discussions, with participants spanning the globe from China to California, Princeton and London. Ivanka Mamic, bp’s senior vice president for sustainability and relationship manager for CMI, opened the meeting by remarking, “What a privilege it is to hear about all the work being done for the entire energy transition and to engage in respectful conversations about research and policy. These conversations will help bp stay action-oriented and remain focused on our sustainability goals.” In an introductory overview of CMI, Stephen Pacala, the Frederick D. Petrie Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and the director of CMI, stated that while commitments to a net-zero transition were gaining ground in more and more places, the planet continued to sound alarms. Carbon Mitigation Initiative Twenty-second Year Report 2022 4
Page 1 and 2: Annual Report 2022
Page 3 and 4: Contents INTRODUCTION 1 RESEARCH -
Page 5: The Carbon Mitigation Initiative (C
Page 9 and 10: Best Paper Awards 2022 Since 2010,
Page 11 and 12: Research - At a Glance REPEAT Proje
Page 13 and 14: Understanding Drivers of Hurricane
Page 15 and 16: How the Orography-Aware Land Model
Page 17 and 18: Research Highlight The Biden Admini
Page 19 and 20: Figure 1.2. Difference in sectoral
Page 21 and 22: Figure 2.1. Stylized project invest
Page 23 and 24: IRA Impacts on Prospective Economic
Page 25 and 26: Figure 3.1a. Levelized cost of fuel
Page 27 and 28: Figure 3.2a. Levelized cost of fuel
Page 29 and 30: India’s Deccan Traps Appear to Ha
Page 31 and 32: Figure 4.1a-d. Mapping the Deccan T
Page 33 and 34: Pore Structure and Permeability of
Page 35 and 36: Projecting the Expansion and Impact
Page 37 and 38: References Busecke, J.J.M., J. Resp
Page 39 and 40: 2022, 2023). This work has enabled
Page 41 and 42: Hsieh, T. L., G.A. Vecchi, W. Yang,
Page 43 and 44: methane and hydrogen (Bertagni et a
Page 45 and 46: The CMI Wetland Project: Understand
Page 47 and 48: particularly pronounced during the
Page 49 and 50: Land Conversion to Store Carbon: Th
Page 51 and 52: Understanding How Economic Incentiv
Page 53 and 54: The second part of our project dive
Page 55 and 56: may begin to convert to savanna bef
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Ongoing Research at the Pacala Lab
Page 59 and 60:
Stanford Business School Dean Jon L
Page 61 and 62:
Cipolla, G., S. Calabrese, A. Porpo
Page 63 and 64:
Uden, S., and C. Greig, 2022. “Wh
Page 65 and 66:
The cover and text pages of this re
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