Carbon dioxide removal

My name is Dr Andrew Lenton.

I lead CSIRO's Permanent Carbon Locking Future Science Platform.

We're focused on developing engineered negative emissions technologies

required to support the transition to net zero and beyond.

I have more than two decades experience in looking at climate science,

looking at past, present and future changes in the carbon cycle,

and also looking at what the implications of those

is on the marine environment.

The Permanent Carbon Locking Future Science Platform is really focused

on the permanent removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

And this really builds upon a lot of great work

that was done in the nature-based solutions space.

That is growing trees, agricultural management, seaweeds and other kind of work.

But in reality, the challenge of these nature-based

solutions is they're not often permanent

and they're very vulnerable to things such as heatwaves, floods, fire

and a lot of the extremes that Australia is experiencing more and more regularly.

At its heart, our work is really about enhancing the natural carbon cycle.

So we're looking at how can we enhance photosynthesis

and also chemistry to capture carbon dioxide?

How can we store carbon dioxide in the ocean,

which it already does, but how can we accelerate that?

And how can we use geology, the rocks we have,

to react with the carbon dioxide, to make new rocks and therefore lock it away?
How do we integrate this capture and this storage to permanently remove
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?

It's the intersection of all of these, how they come together,

that's going to ultimately determine how do we realise

the potential for negative emissions in Australia.

While our focus is on reaching net zero emissions by the middle of this century,

in reality, under the Paris Agreement, we've signed on to a net negative world,

meaning actually we take more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere permanently

than we actually emit.

So that's going to be a huge challenge, meaning we're not just talking about

what happens at the end of the century.

We're talking about much, much longer timescales.

That's why this is so important.

We're going to need to be developing technologies

and deploying these at unprecedented scales.

The really big challenge is how do we do that responsibly, in a way

that maintains our stewardship of the ecosystems that are around us?

And also, ultimately, our ability to survive on the Earth.

I'm leading a national program in negative emission technology that involves

industry and universities right across Australia.

We have three focuses of this program.

The first is really around driving radical innovation

at the nexus of biology and chemistry and engineering

to be able to develop those technologies.

The second is around developing the workforce of the future.

Essentially, those net zero professionals we're going to need in order to do this at the national scale.

And the third piece is really around positioning Australia and CSIRO to be at the forefront of what is essentially

new industries and also helping Australia pivot existing industries

so that we can make the most of this opportunity.

One of the most exciting things about this is we're not just taking notes here

as the ship sinks, if you will.

We're actually actively and proactively developing new science, new ideas,

bringing new people into the fold here,

really trying to develop solutions

that will guide us to net zero

and ultimately on to net negative emissions.