(533k) Understanding Integrated Carbon Negative Systems

With rising concerns associated with climate change, several technologies and approaches have been developed to limit the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The definite objective of these developments is to create carbon negativity as the previously released carbon dioxide must now also be dealt with in addition to the newly expected emissions created to mitigate the adverse effects of the global climate crisis. One such group of technologies that actively removes existing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is negative emissions technologies, or NETs. Some common examples of NETs include direct air capture, bioenergy carbon capture and storage, afforestation, and enhanced weathering. NETs remove atmospheric carbon dioxide through various biological, chemical, and physical mechanisms and transfer it typically to other environmental storage compartments. Though typically deployed individually, these technologies show potential synergistic interactions with themselves and other carbon capture storage and utilization or CCUS systems. Such exchanges can be facilitated by their mutual intent to collaborate and their spatial proximity, or in other words, through industrial symbiosis. Recently, there has been an influx of tools developed to create integrated systems that effectively integrate multiple resources and processes. They determine the optimum combination of these options that leads to sustainability. The options available to them combine a variety of carbon reduction pathways, such as NETs, CCUS, and renewable energy. While it is undoubtedly possible to achieve carbon negativity with systems that incorporate NETs, systems that integrate only CCUS and renewable energy options without any NETs can also be carbon-negative. One fundamental aspect that makes this possible is clustering, where related industries are set up together to closely manage their emissions through careful exchanges. This work aims to understand how systems that are overall carbon negative with and without NETs differ from one another and, further, the role of clustering in the context of creating carbon-negative systems.