Scaling up carbon removal: insights from analogous innovations
Meeting national net zero goals and Paris Agreement targets could require the deployment of billions of tons of carbon removal capacity by mid-century. Because the typical duration for new technological systems to reach scale is multiple decades and because current removal capacity is on the order of millions of tons per year, there is tremendous urgency to designing policies to accelerate the processes of learning, adoption, and scale up of a portfolio of carbon removal technologies. This presentation highlights recent work using both qualitative and quantitative empirical data to assess promising mechanisms for accelerating innovation processes in carbon removal.

About Gregory
Gregory Nemet is a Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs. His research focuses on understanding the process of technological change and the ways in which public policy can affect it. He teaches courses in energy systems analysis, policy analysis, and international environmental policy.
Professor Nemet’s research analyzes the process of technological change in energy and its interactions with public policy. These projects fall in two areas: (1) empirical analysis identifying the influences on past technological change and (2) modeling of the effects of policy instruments on future technological outcomes. The first includes assessment of public policy, research and development, learning by doing, and knowledge spillovers. An example of the second is work informing allocation between research and development and demand-side policy instruments to address climate change.
Nemet’s first book, How Solar Became Cheap: A Model for Low-Carbon Innovation, was published in June 2019 by Routledge. In the book, he makes the case that by understanding the drivers behind solar energy’s success, other low-carbon technologies with similar properties can benefit.
From 2013-18 he chaired the Energy Analysis and Policy Certificate program. In 2015, he received the H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, which honors outstanding University of Wisconsin-Madison faculty members for their research contributions. He was named an Andrew Carnegie Fellow in 2017. He was awarded the inaugural World Citizen Prize in Environmental Performance by APPAM in 2019. He is currently a Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment Report He received his doctorate in energy and resources from the University of California, Berkeley. His A.B. is in geography and economics from Dartmouth College.

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Date: 27 October 2022, 16:15
Venue: Venue to be announced
Speaker: Professor Gregory Nemet (University of Wisconsin-Madison)
Organising department: School of Geography and the Environment
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: netzero@ouce.ox.ac.uk
Cost: Free
Audience: Members of the University only
Editors: Chris White, Donna Palfreman