Getting Real About Net Zero

At COP21 in 2015, the world coalesced around what has come to be known as the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit global warming to well below 2C and pursue efforts towards 1.5C. In 2018, the IPCC published their special report on 1.5C, making it clear that a key milestone of achieving this aim is getting to “net zero”. By 2019, national pledges had started to come in. Starting with the UK, roughly 90 % of the planet is covered by a net zero pledge of one kind or another.

But what does net zero mean, exactly? Net zero CO2 emissions, or all greenhouse gases? Absolutely zero carbon (fossil or otherwise in the energy system)? Is nuclear permissible, or should we rely exclusively upon wind, water, and solar power? Once the net zero pledge had been made, the question arose: “Who should pay”? How long have we understood climate change's anthropogenic and dangerous nature? What, if anything, does this mean about culpability?

Recent publications by, among others, the IEA propose that fossil fuel use should imminently peak, and no further investment should follow–but how realistic is this, how can we reconcile this idea with that of addressing energy poverty, and to what extent is an apparent consensus on “phasing down” coal and phasing out fossil fuels compatible with broader questions of national sovereignty? Suppose we do start focusing on deploying renewable energy. How does intermittency impact the quantum of capacity required to replace or displace conventional thermal power generation? To what extent will EVs reduce oil demand? In all scenarios compatible with a Paris-aligned outcome, the deployment of carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies emerges as being indispensable–but this technology has consistently failed to overcome barriers to commercialization; how might this barrier be surmounted?

Niall Mac Dowell is a professor of energy systems engineering at Imperial College London. He is a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of both the IChemE and the Royal Society of Chemistry. His research is focused on understanding the transition to a low-carbon economy, and he has published more than 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers, technical reports, and books in this context.

Mac Dowell has more than a decade’s experience as a consultant to the public and private sectors. He has worked with a range of private sector organizations spanning the energy industry and financial sector and recently completed a two-year secondment to the UK Government Department BEIS (now DESNZ), where he acted as an expert policy advisor on CCUS and GGR.

Mac Dowell has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of TotalEnergies, the Norwegian CCS Research Centre (NCCS), and Joule. He was a member of the US National Petroleum Council (NPC) CCUS Roadmap Team, as well as the technical working group of the Zero Emissions Platform (ZEP), the Carbon Capture and Storage Association (CCSA), and acts as a science advisor to a number of venture capital, private equity funds, and global banks.

A multi-award-winning scientist, Mac Dowell was awarded the Qatar Petroleum medal for his research in 2010 and the IChemE’s Nicklin and Junior Moulton medals for his work on low carbon energy in 2015 and 2021, respectively.

Jennifer Wilcox is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, with a home at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. At Penn, she oversees the Clean Energy Conversions Lab.

Wilcox is also a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, where she leverages her expertise to help accelerate policy support and investments in research, development, and deployment of industrial decarbonization and carbon removal solutions in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

Most recently, Wilcox served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the Department of Energy. Before coming to Penn, she was the James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.

Wilcox’s research takes aim at the nexus of energy and the environment, developing both mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize negative climate impacts associated with society’s dependence on fossil fuels. This work carefully examines the role of carbon management and opportunities therein that could assist in preventing 2° C warming by 2100. Carbon management includes a mix of technologies spanning from the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to its capture from industrial, utility-scale exhaust streams, followed by utilization or reliable storage of carbon dioxide on a timescale and magnitude that will have a positive impact on our current climate change crisis.

Funding for her research is primarily sourced through the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and the private sector. She has served on a number of committees including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society to assess carbon capture methods and impacts on climate. She is currently a member of the Energy & Environmental Science Journal Editorial Board. She is the author of the first textbook on carbon capture and, most recently, the CDR Primer. In 2023, she was named one of the TIME 100 Climate.

Having grown up in rural Maine, Wilcox has a profound respect and appreciation of nature, which permeates her work as she focuses on minimizing negative impacts of humankind on our natural environment.

We look forward to welcoming guests to the Kleinman Center’s Energy Forum. In accordance with the University of Pennsylvania’s COVID-19 guidelines, masks are optional for all visitors. Boxed lunches will be available to go following the event!

Host or Publisher Kleinman Center for Energy Policy