Completed
Carbon dioxide is the largest driver of climate change and the greenhouse gas most intimately integrated into the U.S. economy and way of life. This workshop summarized the status of technologies, policies, and societal factors needed for decarbonization and recommend research and policy needs, focused on the near and midterm (5-20 years). Specific topics addressed include the following: sectoral interactions and systems impacts; technology research, development, and deployment at scale; social, institutional, and behavioral dimensions, particularly equity; and policy coordination and sequencing at local, state, and federal levels.
Featured publication
Workshop
ยท2019
While progress has been made in the development of decarbonization technologies, much work remains in scale-up and deployment. For decarbonization technologies to reach meaningful scale, real-world constraints, societal, economic, and political, must be considered. To identify the primary challenges...
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Description
The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine will appoint an expert committee of 4-6 members to plan and execute a workshop exploring the challenges and opportunities for deploying and scaling up technologies involved in deep decarbonization of the U.S. energy sector. Deep decarbonization in this context is reaching 80% or greater reduction in carbon emissions by mid-century. The workshop goal is to provide an understanding of how model assumptions and inputs for low emissions technologies represent real world conditions. Workshop participants will review several prominent published pathways for deep decarbonization and explore the technology development and deployment assumptions that underlie the modeled results. Workshop sessions will address specific classes of energy sector technologies, for example low carbon transportation, with the goal of understanding deployment and practical barriers faced in translating model assumptions to the real-world. The workshop will engage experts in modeling and development of decarbonization pathways with energy sector professionals with direct experience planning and managing energy technologies.
Contributors
Sponsors
Internal Funding
Private: Non Profit
Staff
John Holmes
Lead
Michaela Kerxhalli-Kleinfield
Elizabeth Zeitler
Major units and sub-units
Division on Engineering and Physical Sciences
Lead
Board on Energy and Environmental Systems
Lead