In response to the rapidly expanding scientific literature, a team of researchers at the Tyndall Centre...
Reaching Zero Emissions
Reaching zero emissions. The Paris Agreement commitments, without overshoot, demand a halving of emissions in the next seven years as a first step to stabilise global warming at 1.5°C by the end of this century.
Our theme continues to inform and learn from our stakeholders, policy-makers, the private sector, academia, publics and civil society. Mitigating climate change is a colossal challenge for all sectors and their supply chains, including but not limited to electricity, heating and cooling, fossil fuel production, transport, construction, manufacturing, agriculture and food systems. While much of our focus is on emissions reduction, to achieve net zero emissions, the ability to actively remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere will also be required and could be delivered in substantially different ways.
We quantify and assess mitigation actions to halve emissions by the end of the decade. Our work assesses the roles of policies, methodologies, technologies, incentives, behaviours, and societal changes needed to transition to achieve a cost-effective and low emissions economy. Our focus is on a set of sub-themes that address cross-cutting issues from zero emissions, circular economy, natural resources, and greenhouse gas reductions across different sectors, such as aviation, shipping, heavy goods vehicles, industry, manufacturing, agriculture and food systems.
Current Projects
Beyond Cost and Carbon
Dr Naomi Vaughan and Dr Aimie Hope work on Beyond Cost and Carbon – a Leverhulme funded project...
EnergyREV
“Power transmission lines” by Oran Viriyincy via Flickr licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 The EnergyREV Consortium’s purpose is...
Intelligent Community Energy
Photo: INTERREG VA France (Channel) England A partnership between UEA and eight research and business support organisations in...
CONTAIN: The impaCt of hydrOcarbon depletioN on the Treatment of cAprocks within performance assessment for CO2 InjectioN schemes
CCS and depletion sites The UK is committed to meeting stringent carbon dioxide (CO2) emission targets over the...
ADJUST1.5: When will 1.5°C of warming occur, and what will the consequences be?
Overview The 2015 Paris Agreement aims ‘to limit the temperature increase [due to climate change] to 1.5°C above...
The implications of global warming of 1.5°C and 2°C
Our short programme of interdisciplinary policy-relevant research is our contribution to the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C that...
Feasibility of Afforestation and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) for Greenhouse Gas Removal (FAB-GGR)
Photo by Naitian（Tony） Wang on Unsplash FAB-GGR is a new four-year, £2 million multi-institute consortium project that aims...
One Bin to Rule Them All (GOTW – Grants on the Web (nerc.ac.uk))
RiseUp: Resilience of the UK seafood system to COVID-19 disruption (RiseUp — Scottish Association for Marine Science, Oban UK (sams.ac.uk))
Feasibility of Afforestation and Biomass Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage for Greenhouse Gas Removal FAB-GGR
UK Carbon Capture and Storage Research Centre UKCCS
The Energy Revolution Consortium (EnergyREV https://www.energyrev.org.uk/)
Past Highlights
Life cycle assessment of ammonia production from biomass gasification compared to natural gas
Use life cycle assessment (LCA) tools to determine the environmental benefits and feasibility of producing ammonia fertiliser from biomass gasification, compared to using natural gas.
RESPONSES: European responses to climate change
Overview RESPONSES – European responses to climate change deep emissions reductions and mainstreaming of mitigation and adaptation. The FP7 RESPONSES project investigated EU policy action
Models & methods for informing UK climate mitigation policy
The overall project aim is to understand what are the most appropriate tools and methods to support/ inform the UK transition to a low carbon
Russia’s Greenhouse Gas Emissions
In Annex-1 nations, despite Kyoto commitments, the levels of emissions continue to be well in excess of those required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change.’ Compounding this
High Seas Project: Assessing the technical and operational scope for rapid carbon emission reduction from global shipping
Building on the IPCC’s 2007 report, the 2009 Copenhagen scientific conference on climate change made clear both the urgency and radical scale of reductions in
IAGP: Integrated Assessment of Geoengineering Proposals
Funded through a joint initiative with EPSRC and NERC this project aims to provide evidence and tools which will enable society to explore and evaluate
eBRIDGE: Empowering electric fleets in European cities
“Divergent thought will not be tolerated” by Paulo Valdivieso via Flickr is licensed under CC BY SA 2.0 This project looks at the potential of introducing electric vehicles
SUPERGEN Biomass and Bioenergy
Overview Bioenergy provides a significant proportion of the UK’s low carbon energy supply for heat, transport fuel and electricity. There is scope for bioenergy to
RACER: Rapid Acceleration of Car Emission Reductions
This project is led by Tyndall Manchester, working with the Institute for Transport Studies at the University of Leeds. Aims The project has three main
EU Calculator: Trade-offs and pathways towards sustainable and low-carbon European Societies (EUCalc)
The EUCalc project has the goal of delineating emission and sustainable transformation pathways on the European and member state scale. The project will develop a novel and
Our Aviation and Shipping Research
Our Radical Carbon Reduction Conference
And informing discussion Six key policy challenges to achieving ‘negative emissions’ with BECCS
Some Key Publications
Heidrich, O., et al. (2021). Will climate mitigation ambitions lead to carbon neutrality? An analysis of the local-level plans of 327 cities in the EU. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Heidrich, O., et al. (2021). Climate mitigation in the Mediterranean Europe: An assessment of regional and city-level plans. Journal of Environmental Management.
Braunholtz-Speight, T., McLachlan, C., Mander, S., Hannon, M., Hardy, J., Cairns, I., Sharmina, M., Manderson, E. (2021). The long term future for community energy in Great Britain: A co-created vision of a thriving sector and steps towards realising it. Energy Research and Social Science.
Fletcher, C.A., St Clair, R., Sharmina, M. (2021). Seafood businesses’ resilience can benefit from circular economy principles. Nature Food.
González, F., Webb, J., Sharmina, M., Hannon, M., Pappas, D., Tingey, M. (2021) Characterising a local energy business sector in the United Kingdom: Participants, revenue sources, and estimates of localism and smartness. Energy.
Sharmina, M., Edelenbosch, O. Y., Wilson, C., Freeman, R., Gernaat, D. E. H. J., Gilbert, P., Larkin, A., Littleton, E. W., Traut, M., Van Vuuren, D. P., Vaughan, N., Wood, F. R., Le Quéré. (2021). Decarbonising the critical sectors of aviation, shipping, road freight and industry to limit warming to 1.5–2°C. Climate Policy.
Waller, L., Rayner, T., Chilvers, J., Gough, C., Lorenzoni, I., Jordan, A., Vaughan, N. (2020). Contested framings of greenhouse gas removal and it’s feasibility: Social and political dimensions. Wiley Online Library.
Heidrich, O., et al. (2020). Circular economy strategies for electric vehicle batteries reduce reliance on raw materials. Nature Sustainability.
Heidrich, O., et al. (2020). Advances and challenges in assessing urban sustainability: an advanced bibliometric review. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews.
Forster, J., Vaughan, N., Gough, C., Lorenzoni, I., Chilvers, J. Mapping feasibilities of greenhouse gas removal: Key issues, gaps and opening up assessments. Global Environmental Change, Vol 63.
Braunholtz-Speight, T., Sharmina, M., Manderson, E., McLachlan, C., Hannon, M., Hardy, J., & Mander, S. (2020). Business Models and Financial Characteristics of Community Energy in the UK. Nature Energy, 5, 169-177.
Gallego Schmid, A., Chen, H-M., Sharmina, M., & Fernandez Mendoza, J. M. (2020). Links between circular economy and climate change mitigation in the built environment. Journal of Cleaner Production, 260, 121115.
Sharmina, M., Abi Ghanem, D., Browne, A., Hall, S., Mylan, J., Petrova, S., & Wood, F. (2019). Envisioning surprises: How social sciences could help models represent ‘deep uncertainty’ in future energy and water demand. Energy Research & Social Science, 50, 18-28.
Forster, J., Vaughan, N., Gough, C., Lorenzoni, I. & Chilvers, J. Mapping feasibilities of Greenhouse Gas Removal: Key issues, gaps and opening up assessments. Global Environmental Change, 25 Mar 2020 in press.
Vaughan, N.E., Gough, C., Mander, S., Littleton, E.W., Welfle, A., Gernaat, D.E.H.J. & van Vuuren, D.P. (2018) Evaluating the use of biomass energy with carbon capture and storage in low emission scenarios. Environmental Research Letters 13:044014 doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aaaa02
Gough, C., Garcia-Freites, S., Jones, C., Mander, S., Moore, B., Pereira, C., Röder, M., Vaughan, N.E. & Welfle, A. (2018) Challenges to the use of BECCS as a keystone technology in pursuit of 1.5°C. Global Sustainability 1:e5 doi:10.1017/sus.2018.3
