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Negative emission technologies: What role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?

When

Monday, February 26, 2018, 08:45 - 10:30

Where

Academy House, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Tickets

RSVP to policy@ria.ie

Join us for a breakfast briefing with Professor Mike Jones, MRIA on the latest EASAC report.

Science at the Academy

At the Royal Irish Academy, we champion research and promote awareness of how science enriches our lives and benefits society. As we believe that good research needs to be promoted, sustained and communicated, we bring academia, government and industry together to address issues of mutual interest, and in doing so, we contribute to public debate and policy formation. As a Member of the European Academies Science Advisory Council (EASAC), the Royal Irish Academy will be hosting a breakfast briefing on the latest EASAC report: Negative emission technologies:  What role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?.

Negative emission technologies:  What role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?

The report found that negative emission technologies (NETs) have ‘limited realistic potential’ to halt increases in the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at the scale envisioned in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios, and suggests that rather than assuming that future technologies will be able to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air, the focus should instead be on strengthening mitigation measures. The report therefore recommends that parties concentrate on rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, better controlling deforestation and soil degradation, and developing viable business models for carbon capture and storage implantation.

This report is significant to Ireland’s stated ambitions to become a competitive, low-carbon, climate-resilient and environmentally sustainable economy by 2050. Ireland is a party to both the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, and supports initiatives within the framework of both the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Ireland’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions is reflected in the National Policy Position on Climate Action and Low Carbon Development (2014), the Climate Action and Low Carbon Development Act, 2015, and more recently, in Ireland’s first statutory National Mitigation Plan, and National Adaptation Framework, published in July 2017 and January 2018 respectively. As envisaged by Ireland’s National Policy Position, the evolution of climate policy in Ireland will be a dynamic, iterative process, based on the adoption of a series of national mitigation plans and national adaptation frameworks over the period to 2050, and the new findings of the European Academies Science Advisory Council are subsequently worthy of Ireland’s attention and consideration.

About the speaker

Professor Mike Jones, MRIA is a plant ecophysiologist and is Emeritus Professor in Trinity College Dublin where he formerly held the University Chair of Botany (1711) from 1996 until 2011. He was elected Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2003 and is the Academy’s nominee to the EASAC Environmental Steering Panel. His main research interest is in the study of climate-plant interactions and since the 1980’s he has been studying the effects of changing climate, and the direct effects of rising CO2 on a range of ecosystems including agricultural and natural grasslands and tropical wetlands. He has coordinated several EU Framework Programme Projects and is currently joint coordinator of an EPA funded project on the 'Potential for Negative Emissions Technology in Ireland'.

Tabhair tacaíocht do thodhchaí an léinn in Éirinn

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