General information
The objective of the Paris Agreement is to limit global warming to well below 2ºC, and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5ºC. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report quantified the global “carbon budget”, that is the amount of carbon dioxide that we can emit while still having a likely chance of limiting global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.
The exact size of the carbon budget cannot be specified with high confidence since it depends on many uncertain factors, including emission pathways for non-CO2 climate forcers. This said, the remaining budgets for the 1.5ºC and 2ºC targets have been estimated at about 200 and 800 Gt of CO2 . With unchanged present emissions at about 40 Gt CO2/year these budgets would be exhausted in as few as 5 and 20 years, respectively. Consequently, most of the IPCC emission scenarios able to meet the global two-degree target require overshooting the carbon budget at first and then remove the excess carbon with large negative emissions, typically on the order of 400‑800 Gt CO2 up to 2100.
At the same time as negative emissions appear to be indispensable to meet climate targets decided, the large future negative emissions assumed in climate models have been questioned and warnings have been raised about relying on very large and uncertain negative emissions in the future. With the future climate at stake, a deeper and fuller understanding of the various aspects of negative emissions is needed.
The purpose of the conference is to bring together a wide range of scientists, experts and stakeholders, in order to engage in various aspects of research relating to negative CO2 emissions. This will include various negative emission technologies, climate modelling, climate policies and incentives.
We hope to see you in Gothenburg, Sweden, May 22-24, 2018!