Editorial 1 : Can we capture carbon and store it: Efforts, challenges
Context:
- Climate change is one of the major issues in the current scenario. A key tool to stop climate change is costly and has for decades not worked as well as fossil fuel companies said it would.
- Experts say carbon capture and storage a way to grab a planet-heating gas and lock it underground. It is sorely needed to cut pollution in sectors where other clean technologies are farther behind.
What is carbon capture and storage?
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a way to catch carbon and trap it beneath the earth.
- It is different to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) where carbon is sucked out of the atmosphere although some of the technologies overlap.
- The key difference is that CDR brings down the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, cooling the planet while CCS in fossil fuel plants and factories prevents the gas from getting out in the first place.
CCS has to play significant role in factories
- In its latest review of scientific research, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) found both options will be needed for emissions that are hard to wipe out.
- For chemical processes that release carbon dioxide, there are few alternatives to capturing CO2 straight away or sucking it out of the air later.
- Scientists see a big role for CCS in factories that make cement and fertiliser, as well as in plants that burn rubbish.
- As they are split on whether it makes sense to use it to make steel and hydrogen, which have some greener alternatives.
Economic efficiency of CCS model:
- Most of their skepticism goes to capturing carbon when making electricity, because there are already cheaper alternatives that work better, like wind turbines and solar panels.
- In theory, it could play a role in gas plants as a back-up when the sun doesn’t shine and wind doesn’t blow particularly in countries that are still building fossil fuel plants today but it would have to quickly grow cheaper and more effective.
How well does CCS work?
- For decades, engineers have captured carbon from concentrated streams of gas pushing it into tanks, scrubbing it clean and using it in industry or storing it underground.
- Some bioethanol plants, where the gas stream is pure, already report capturing more than 95% of the carbon emissions.
- But capturing carbon from dirtier gas streams, like those from factories and power plants, CCS projects have repeatedly overpromised and underdelivered.
- AS there is need for a special type of chemical to capture Carbon. However such technology has been successfully demonstrated but it hasn’t been fully commercialised at scale
- While a handful of test facilities have managed to capture more than 90% of emissions from some dirty gas streams, commercial projects have been plagued with problems. Some have broken down or not been made to run all the time. Others have been designed to capture only a fraction of the total emissions.
- Still, experts see the failures of CCS more as an economic problem than a technical one as companies have little incentive to capture their pollution
Why is CCS controversial?
- Activists have called out energy companies for failing to capture much carbon while at the same time drilling for oil and lobbying against laws to cut fossil fuel production.
- Along with it, CCS also gives companies fighting to burn fossil fuels access to policymakers and a “social license to operate,”
- CCS is criticised as it is not used as carbon capture method for climate solution rather is being used in actually enhance extraction.
- There is need of hour that policymakers put more weight on societal shifts like cutting energy demand rather than placing their faith in shaky technologies.
- Scientists have also questioned how serious the industry is about its commitments. After decades of pushing the technology, there are only 30 working CCS facilities,
How can CCS work better? ( Way forward)
- Experts say momentum to capture carbon is starting to pick up.
- For e.g. In Norway, German industrial giant Heidelberg Materials is building the first facility to capture carbon from cement and store it underground. However, the company claims a capture rate of close to 100% is possible. Still, it only plans to capture half of the emissions from the site.
- According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), new companies are focusing on specific parts of the problem like transport and storage.
Conclusion:
- CCS is advanced state of art technology to capture and storage of carbon which will be a game changer method for climate solution.
- However, it requires large capital investment, therefore there is need to provide subsidy for industries in order to accelerate the development of CCS.
Editorial 2 : National Research Foundation: Emerging the sciences
Recent Context:
- Recently, A draft bill, to legislate the creation of a National Research Foundation (NRF), has been approved by the Union cabinet.
- When the NRF emerges after parliamentary approval, it will set out to catalyse and channel inter-disciplinary research for accelerating India’s ambitious development agenda, through impactful knowledge creation and translation.
About: National Research Foundation (NRF)
- NRF will ensure that the overall research ecosystem in the country is strengthened with focus on identified thrust areas relevant to our national priorities and towards basic science without duplication of effort and expenditure
- In order to that NRF will replace the Science and Engineering Research Board of India (SERB), established in 2009.
- And the board of NRF, will be presided by Prime Minister and will have the ministers for science, technology, and education as ex-officio vice-presidents.
- It will be registered as a society, the 18-member board will have eminent Indian and international scientists, senior government functionaries and industry leaders.
- It will consist of 10 major directorates, focusing on natural sciences, mathematical sciences, engineering, environmental and earth sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities, Indian languages and knowledge systems, health, agriculture, innovation and entrepreneurship.
- The NRF Board will oversee the work of these directorates, each of which will have an appointed chair, vice chair and secretariat.
- Therefore, The NRF is expected to galvanise the research enterprise in the country to bridge these gaps and raise Indian science to global peaks of excellence, while focusing on areas of high relevance to the country
NRF provides inter-disciplinary approach for better outcomes
- We live in an era where many complex adaptive systems are operating, whether in health, environment, food systems and nutrition, sustainable urban design or communication technologies.
- These systems often connect and coalesce to challenge society, as we are seeing in the current period of “pan-crisis” where health, environmental and financial crises are superimposed.
- Therefore, several disciplines have to work together to develop evidence informed, context relevant, resource optimising, culturally compatible and equity promoting solutions.
- For example, public health policy needs to be shaped by research that provides convincing evidence of scientific credibility, financial feasibility, operational steer-ability and political viability as the hallmarks of any proposed measure. That is indeed true of many other sectors.
- Many sections of society are also needed across different sectors to effectively implement those solutions after they are identified.
- As certain innovative technologies fail to cross the secondary translational barrier to reach the intended beneficiaries.
- Implementation needs to align social and behavioural sciences alongside biomedical sciences to achieve success.
- In such scenario, NRF aims to provide the unifying platform for such multi-disciplinary research and multi-sectoral implementation.
NRF seeks to minimise the duplication of work while promote multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative research:
- While promoting multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative research, NRF also seeks to minimise duplication.
- Several ministries and scientific agencies have their own research funding streams. NRF should go beyond those discipline-restricted channels to support inter-disciplinary research which is currently underfunded.
- In Health Sector:
- For example, transformation of primary health care calls for confluence of public health, social and behavioural sciences, management, digital technologies and health economics, apart from bio-medical sciences. Inter- and trans- disciplinary research needs a mandate matched by resources. NRF can provide both.
- During a period of rapid socio-demographic and economic transitions, child nutrition too calls for strategies that avoid all forms of malnutrition undernutrition, obesity and micro nutrient deficiencies.
- In sphere of Environment and climate change:
- Air pollution and climate change are environmental threats which call for science led solutions.
NRF aims to provide collaborative approach to Public and private institution:
- NRF calls for collaboration between different sections of the academia, government and industry.
- As private sector is viewed as a key partner, to infuse corporate and philanthropic funding that is expected to amplify the government’s own committed contribution and also to infuse new ideas and stimulate innovation.
- Therefore, Private sector contributions are expected both through untied funds to assist NRF’s initiatives as well as project specific funds through identified sponsorship.
- Engagement of state governments and state level institutions too will be vital if India’s capacity for conducting locally relevant scientific research is to be enhanced.
- Community too should be represented through civil society organisations.
- Such participation is essential, for identifying people relevant priorities for the research agenda, engaging in participatory research, monitoring and evaluating implementation and its impact as well as in supporting implementation through community mobilisation.
Conclusion:
- Therefore, while promoting multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional collaborative research, NRF also reduces duplication of work.
- Along with it, it aims to provide the unifying platform for such multi-disciplinary research and multi-sectoral implementation which will help in making scientific enterprise a “Jan andolans” or people’s movement.