At the Sustainability Group's first session in August, we discussed the findings of two recently released Australian government periodic reports which provide updates on issues we have previously discussed.  These are the CSIRO ‘mega-trends’ report, which was first published in 2012, and the Environment department's 2021 edition of its State of the Environment report (generally published every five years).  In the CSIRO's view there are two key new mega-trends that did not feature in its 2012 report; the need to adapt to the impacts of climate change and significant changes to the geo-political environment in the Indo-Pacific region.  With the state of the environment report there was a general trend downwards in almost all categories which include 12 issues such as Antarctica and air quality through to marine and urban environments.

At our second session we took a dive into options to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.  This is predicated on the expectation that achieving 'net zero' greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 only deals with emissions being produced today.  But if we want to return atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations to levels to that which existed around the beginning of the industrial revolution, then we need to come up with techniques that remove large volumes of carbon dioxide from the air.  We looked at a variety of nature-based and 'mechanical' means of removing carbon dioxide from the air and either turning the carbon component into long-lived products (such as concrete), burying the gas in stable geological structures or improving the environment (such as increasing soil carbon).
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John Lane

This Friday we have another Sustainability Group Session.

I thought that this week we could consider in more depth an issue that has briefly been part of previous discussions; carbon capture from the atmosphere.

We know that while the transition to renewable electrical power generation, together with the 'electrification of everything', is the main game, particularly in the short to medium term, there will be still some types of carbon emissions that won't be able to be 'electrified'. In addition, with the slower than needed reduction in emissions globally, removing carbon from the atmosphere is likely to be required in the medium to long term to eventually bring atmospheric carbon levels back to near pre-industrial times or some other satisfactory level. The need for carbon removal as part of the package of actions has been acknowledged in the recent IPCC working group 3 report.

Here's an information sheet on carbon capture generally for pre class reading, but at our session I'd like to discuss the pros and cons of the variety of carbon capture methods. These include:

• Agroforestry
• Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage
• Biochar
• Blue carbon
• Direct air capture
• Enhanced mineralisation
• Forestation
• Mass timber
• Ocean alkalinisation
• Soil carbon sequestration

Look forward to seeing you all on Friday.


John

Web reference:  https://www.american.edu/sis/centers/carbon-removal/fact-sheets.cfm

We have another sustainability session this Friday commencing at 10: am.

Two Australian government periodic reports have been released since we last met which update issues we have previously discussed. For this session I thought it might be of interest to look at changes since these reports were previously published. 

• CSIRO has updated its ‘mega-trends’ report last published in 2012 
• The Environment department has released the 2021 edition of its State of the Environment report (generally published every five years) 

 
These reports can be found at the following links:

• CSIRO Megatrends Report 2022: https://www.csiro.au/en/research/technology-space/data/Our-Future-World 
• Aust Govt SoE Report 2021: https://soe.dcceew.gov.au/ 

Also recommended -  recent articles which relate to topics we've covered:
ACF article - Matilda Bowra 'Nature is Everyone's Business'
Country News article - 'Quantifying Natural Capital' on farms  https://www.countrynews.com.au/livestock/quantifying-natural-capital/


John Lane

In our first July session, the Sustainability group began the preparation of an integrated sustainability index that attempts to integrate the social, environmental and economic elements of sustainability; a replacement for Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that is currently used in Australia which focuses only on economic indicators. The New Zealand government is preparing a draft Wellbeing Index. Our index is based on the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as the primary organising system. We had a go at drafting 'targets, measures, indexes and scores for these goals. We discovered it's not an easy task.

In our second session we looked at what was needed to achieve a net zero carbon energy system for Australia. We compared two approaches from advocates to 'electrify everything' on the understanding we will eventually achieve carbon-neutral electricity production. The first was a bottom up (household up) approach proposed by Rewiring Australia and the second was a top-down approach proposed by the Clean Energy Council. We then considered these pathways with the Federal government's policy it took to the last election. We found that the new government's policy generally matched the primary the steps each of the advocates propose.

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John Lane