October was a busy month for EFI, and included the publication of the organization’s 16th report: “An Action Plan for Carbon Capture and Storage in California: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions.”
The study, conducted over the course of more than six months, was a joint effort by EFI and Stanford University’s Precourt Institute for Energy, provides policy makers with options for near-term actions to deploy carbon capture and storage (CCS) to meet the state’s ambitious climate goal of reaching net zero emissions by mid-century by adopting it for a number of hard-to-decarbonize industries. EFI and Stanford’s pre-launch strategy included high-level briefings to key stakeholders, including environmental NGOs, California state policymakers, and senior congressional staff.
The report was introduced in a virtual webinar briefing led by Ernest Moniz, the former US Secretary of Energy and the founder of EFI. The report’s co-leads, EFI’s Melanie Kenderdine and Sally Benson, Professor at the Department of Energy Resources Engineering at Stanford University joined him.
“In the last five years since the Paris agreement, science has told us that we need to be much more aggressive in our decarbonization targets,” said Ernest J. Moniz. “We need every option that we can generate for a low carbon future and that means a very broad portfolio of innovative technologies.”
The event concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Franklin Orr, Keleen, and Carlton Beal Professor Emeritus in Petroleum Engineering. Panelists included Kate Gordon, Director of the California Office of Planning and Research; Jane Long, Kravis Senior Contributing Scientist, Environmental Defense Fund (EDF); Deepika Nagabhushan, Program Director, Decarbonized Fossil Energy, Clean Air Task Force; Keith Pronske, President and CEO, Clean Energy Systems (CES); and Trude Sundset, CEO, Gassnova.
More than 900 people tuned in for the live-streamed webinar, and the report attracted significant social media and press attention, which included media hits in Politico, S&P Global, E&E News, and Utility Dive.
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