Institution responds to new climate engineering research

The Institution's Dr Tim Fox welcomes new research into climate engineering, and says that while climate engineering approaches, including air capture, may prove useful, they cannot be relied on as a 'silver bullet'.

Dr Tim Fox, Head of Energy and Environment at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, said in response to new research on climate engineering published in Nature Communications today:

“The findings of this new paper are a welcome contribution to our understanding of the potential for climate engineering. In particular they highlight the uncertainties inherent in those interventions that focus on managing incoming solar radiation or the manipulation of ecosystems. While potentially reducing CO2 levels or temperatures or both to some degree, when deployed at the scale necessary to compensate for global 'business-as-usual' man-made greenhouse gas emissions these approaches are likely to have damaging ecological or environmental side-effects and in some cases prove difficult to control.

“Geoengineering methods that use technology in air capture machines that remove CO2 directly from the atmosphere may prove to be more viable as a climate engineering component of our response to global warming. The air capture approach tackles the root problem without ecosystem intervention and involves controlled capturing of CO2 from the atmosphere. Once captured the gas can either be buried underground or used as a feedstock for industrial processes that effectively recycle the carbon in a closed loop.

“The paper does however highlight clearly the urgent need to action approaches to climate change that increase mitigation and adaptation efforts, while simultaneously performing rigorous studies of proposed climate engineering methods. Although some climate engineering approaches, including air capture, may prove useful, they cannot be relied on as a 'silver bullet' and need to be set in a wider policy framework that puts substantial effort into reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to the future climate change we already anticipate. The flooding and widespread infrastructure failures caused by the UK storms of the past few weeks have emphasised the urgent need to increase our preparedness and resilience to the types of changes we anticipate in the coming decades."

To read the full research: Potential climate engineering effectiveness and side effects during a high carbon dioxide-emission scenario