SPEAKERS |
SALLY M. BENSON
Sally M. Benson joined Stanford University in 2007 and is the Co-Director at the Precourt Institute for Energy. She holds three appointments at Stanford: professor of energy resources engineering in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences; co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, the campus-wide hub of energy research and education; and director of the Global Climate and Energy Project. An internationally recognized scientist, Benson is responsible for fostering cross-campus collaborations on energy and guiding the growth and development of a diverse research portfolio. Formerly, Benson was at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she held a variety of key positions, including Associate Director for Energy Sciences and director of the Earth Sciences Division. A groundwater hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson is regarded as a leading authority on carbon capture and storage. She also uses energy systems analysis to help guide decisions about the most promising pathways for clean energy development.
Abstract: Prospects for CO2 Capture, Storage, Utilization and Negative Emissions
Carbon dioxide capture and storage is an essential technology for deep decarbonization of the global energy system. In the near to mid-term, it can be used to achieve over 85% reduction in emissions from fossil fuel power plants and industrial facilities. By the middle of the century, CCS combined with bioenergy can provide needed negative emissions that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. In spite of the compelling need for and benefits of CCS, it has been slow to be adopted. There are many reasons for this, but chief among them are the costs of capture and concerns about the safety and long-term security of stored CO2. This talk will address these issues and discuss what is needed to accelerate adoption of this technology.
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DANIEL M. KAMMEN
Daniel M. Kammen is a Professor of Energy at the University of California, Berkeley, with parallel appointments in the Energy and Resources Group, the Goldman School of Public Policy, and the department of Nuclear Engineering. He was appointed by then Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in April 2010 as the first energy fellow of the new Environment and Climate Partnership for the Americas (ECPA) initiative. In 2016 he began service as the Science Envoy for U. S. Secretary of State John Kerry. Kammen is the founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory (RAEL; http://rael.berkeley.edu), and was Director of the Transportation Sustainability Research Center from 2007 - 2015. has served the State of California and US federal government in expert and advisory capacities, including time at the US Environmental Protection Agency, US Department of Energy, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy Dr. Kammen was educated in physics at Cornell (BA 1984) and Harvard (MA 1986; PhD 1988), and held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Harvard. He was an Assistant Professor and Chair of the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Program at the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University before moving to the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Kammen has served as a contributing or coordinating lead author on various reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since 1999. The IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Kammen helped found over 10 companies, including Enphase that went public in 2012, Renewable Funding (Renew Financial) a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) implementing company that went public in 2014, and Lion Energy, a startup launched with funds form the venture capital community and ARPA-e. Several of Kammen’s students are currently working at ARPA-e directing the energy storage as well as the rare-earth elements efforts. Kammen played a central role in developing the successful bid for the $500 million energy biosciences institute funded by BP. During 2010-2011 Kammen served as the World Bank Group’s first Chief Technical Specialist for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency. While there Kammen worked on the Kenya-Ethiopia “green corridor” transmission project, Morocco’s green transformation, the 10-year energy strategy for the World Bank, and on investing in household energy and gender equity. He was appointed to this newly-created position in October 2010, in which he provided strategic leadership on policy, technical, and operational fronts. The aim is to enhance the operational impact of the Bank’s renewable energy and energy efficiency activities while expanding the institution’s role as an enabler of global dialogue on moving energy development to a cleaner and more sustainable pathway. Kammen’s work at the World Bank included funding electrified personal and municipal vehicles in China, and the $1.24 billion transmission project linking renewable energy assets in Kenya and Ethiopia. He has authored or co-authored 12 books, written more than 300 peer-reviewed journal publications, and has testified more than 40 times to U.S. state and federal congressional briefings, and has provided various governments with more than 50 technical reports. For details see http;//rael.berkeley.edu/publications. Dr. Kammen also served for many years on the Technical Review Board of the Global Environment Facility. He is the Specialty Chief Editor for Understanding Earth and Its Resources for Frontiers for Young Minds. Kammen is a frequent contributor to or commentator in international news media, including Newsweek, Time, The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Financial Times. Kammen has appeared on ‘60 Minutes’ (twice), NOVA, Frontline, and hosted the six-part Discovery Channel series Ecopolis. Dr. Kammen is a Permanent Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and the American Physical Society. In the US, has served on several National Academy of Sciences boards and panels. Abstract: The Transition to Sustainable Energy in an Era of Upheaval
From the optimism of the Paris Climate Accords to the current attacks on science, energy and climate sustainability have been on a roller coaster. What progress has been made, and what is under threat? In this talk we examine the science and policy basis of the movement to clean energy, and the impacts this can have in terms of job creation and social and economic equity in the US, and in emerging economies worldwide. Through a range of analytic projects and practical programs worldwide, we find that the 'under 2 degree C pathway' will require dramatic changes in our valuation of natural and human resources, but is entirely achievable. The principal barriers are not scientific or technical, but exist in the form of outmoded economic, policy, and social institutions.
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KLAUS LACKNER
Klaus Lackner is the Director of Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and Professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University. Lackner’s research interests include closing the carbon cycle by capturing carbon dioxide from the air, carbon sequestration, carbon foot-printing, innovative energy and infrastructure systems and their scaling properties, the role of automation, robotics and mass-manufacturing in downscaling infrastructure systems, and energy and environmental policy.
Lackner’s scientific career started in the phenomenology of weakly interacting particles. Later searching for quarks, he and George Zweig developed the chemistry of atoms with fractional nuclear charge. After joining Los Alamos National Laboratory, Lackner became involved in hydrodynamic work and fusion related research. In recent years, he has published on the behavior of high explosives, novel approaches to inertial confinement fusion, and numerical algorithms. His interest in self-replicating machine systems has been recognized by Discover Magazine as one of seven ideas that could change the world. Trained as a theoretical physicist, he has made a number of contributions to the field of carbon capture and storage since 1995, including early work on the sequestration of carbon dioxide in silicate minerals and zero emission power plant design. In 1999, he was the first person to suggest the artificial capture of carbon dioxide from air in the context of carbon management. His recent work at Columbia University as Director of the Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy advanced innovative approaches to energy issues of the future and the pursuit of environmentally acceptable technologies for the use of fossil fuels. Abstract: Direct Air Capture as a Tool for Carbon Management
The targets set by the climate summit in Paris can only be met if negative emissions become a reality. Direct air capture is a scalable technology that can reverse emissions and make it possible to rethink carbon management not as pollution but waste management. A disposal requirement adds value to efforts that reduce CO2 emissions, reuse it as useful material, or recycle it into synthetic fuels charged with renewable energy. Air capture provides a means of mining carbon from the air for practical uses. Compared to other clean energy technologies like photovoltaics, direct capture of carbon dioxide from air is still very new and thus viewed with skepticism. I will review the technical, economic and policy related challenges of direct air capture and conclude that the potential societal benefits of direct air capture far outweigh the costs of developing this new technology.
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KENNETH G. MILLER
Kenneth G. Miller is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. He received an A.B. from Rutgers College (1978) and a Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Joint Program in Oceanography (1982). He was an Associate Research Scientist at Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory from 1983-1988. A veteran of 8 scientific cruises, he has integrated offshore seismic and drilling activities with onshore drilling: since 1993, he has been Chief Scientist of the New Jersey Coastal Plain Drilling Project (Ocean Drilling Program Legs 150X and 174AX) that continuously cored sixteen sites. Author of over 100 peer-reviewed scientific papers, his most significant publications include widely cited synthesis of Cenozoic oxygen isotopes (Miller et al., 1987) and syntheses of global sea-level change (Miller et al., 1998, 2005, 2011, 2013). He was awarded the 2003 Rosenstiel Award from the University of Miami, is a two-time JOI/USSAC Distinguished Lecturer (1995, 2006) and an AAPG Distinguished Lecturer (2014-2015) and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America. A resident of Pennington, NJ, Ken grew up in Medford, NJ in the heart of the pine barrens and just sold his house in Waretown, NJ, the home of the sounds of the NJ pines, where he used to watch the inexorable rise in sea level from his deck 15 ft above Barnegat Bay.
Abstract: Geology (and policy) Matters: The Case for Carbon Storage on the U.S. Mid-Atlantic Margin
Kenneth G. Miller, J.V. Browning, R.E Kopp, & Y. Fan, Department of Earth & Planetary Science, REI, and EOAS, Rutgers University, and Members of the Mid-Atlantic U.S. Offshore Carbon Storage Resource Assessment Project.
Carbon capture and storage (CCS) in geologic reservoirs is an important strategy for reducing anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) into the atmosphere. Geological CCS assumes storage in a subsurface reservoir as a supercritical fluid, with initial structural trapping potentially transitioning to mineralization over centennial to millennial time scales. Storage of supercritical CO2 in structural traps requires both a reservoir and a cap rock that provides an impermeable seal. The Mid-Atlantic U.S. Continental Margin provides an excellent case study for evaluating reservoir continuity and confinements and volume storage estimates. We apply principles of sequence stratigraphy to thick (>500 m) mid-Cretaceous sand/sandstones confined by thick clay/shale to predict reservoir characteristics and seals. For the onshore mid-Atlantic Coastal Plain, storage estimates of 8.4-33.5 Gt CO2 (2.3-9.1 Gt C) are sufficient for storage of CO2 emissions from numerous medium-sized (~500 megawatt) power plants. Our studies of the offshore region show that the Logan Canyon Sand is a world-class target for storage; they are porous (~30%), highly permeable, and interconnected sandstone reservoirs capped by shale seal. Pumping supercritical fluids into the depths of the Logan Canyon should not exceed lithostatic pressures and cause fracturing and earthquakes. Preliminary estimates of offshore storage range from ~22-87 Gt CO2 (6.0-23.7 Gt C). Despite the suitability and readiness of this target, public concerns and economic policy currently limit its deployment. Experience with the now cancelled PurGen One plant in Linden, NJ illustrates the political and economic challenges of carbon storage in the mid-Atlantic region. In contrast to PureGen One, CCS has been deployed successfully in some locations including at Sleipner, North Sea, Parrish, TX, Boundary Dam, Saskatchewan, and several CO2-Enhanced Oil Recovery Projects. This work was supported by seed money from REI and subsequently by DOE under Award Numbers DE-FE0026087 (Mid-Atlantic U.S. Offshore Carbon Storage Resource Assessment Project) and DE-FC26-0NT42589 (Midwest Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership Program) managed by Battelle. |