Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) from the atmosphere is unavoidable if we are to meet the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, and almost certainly required to limit warming to 2°C. The ocean exchanges carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) with the atmosphere and is a large repository of carbon that could either be partially emptied to allow more CO 2 absorption or have its carbon storage capacity enhanced to allow it to remove additional CO 2 from the atmosphere. Early-stage techniques exist to utilise the ocean in atmospheric CO 2 removal, but typically, the atmospheric CO 2 removal these techniques stimulate happens downstream of their activity. Verifying the carbon removal associated with these techniques, while critical when evaluating the approaches and pricing the removal, is challenging. This study briefly reviews the challenges associated with verifying the carbon removal associated with non-biological (abiotic) engineered marine CDR approaches, specifically Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement and Direct Ocean Carbon Capture and Storage, and presents the findings from a workshop held with interested parties spanning industry to government, focused on their collective requirements for the Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) of carbon removal. We find that it is possible to agree on a common set of principles for abiotic marine MRV, but identify that delivering this MRV with today’s understanding and technology could be prohibitively expensive. We discuss focal areas to drive down marine MRV costs and highlight the importance of specification of MRV criteria by an ultimate regulator to stimulate investment into the required work. High-quality MRV is important to correctly price any CO 2 removal, but we identify that accessibility and transparency in MRV approaches are also key in realising the broader benefits of MRV to society.

The UK's fusion energy approach has developed over the past 5 years to include government policy initiatives and a range of public sector investments designed to be delivered in partnership with the private sector. These have aimed to create an environment that stimulates innovation and investment to deliver economic as well as scientific and environmental benefits throughout the lifetime of the public sector fusion energy programme. The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production acts as a focus and anchor for both public and private sector efforts to develop fusion energy, developing the supply chain and potential for Intellectual Property development and export opportunities well ahead of the anticipated STEP completion date of 2040. This is maximized by the UK's approach to a holistic research and innovation programme backed up by a regulatory and skills programme. This article is part of the theme issue 'Delivering Fusion Energy - The Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP)'.

• New survey data on trustworthiness and accountability in wood burner regulation. • Results suggest strengthening regulatory pressures on consumer compliance. • Results support enhancing collaboration across health/environment public agencies. • Results suggest need to empower national level expert delegated agencies in the UK.

Decarbonisation of domestic heating in the UK is expected to involve widespread replacement of gas boilers with heat pumps. This transition requires a reduction in heating system flow temperature for the heat pump to operate efficiently, which can necessitate costly radiator or fabric upgrades to provide sufficient heat. The requirements for existing dwelling and heating systems to have these upgrades therefore directly impacts the “heat pump readiness” of the UK stock. This paper applies a novel approach in using diagnostic data for approximately 4600 boilers to evaluate the viability of installing heat pumps with no changes made to the existing radiators or fabric. Results indicate that 31% of dwellings in the sample could operate with Low Temperature Heat Pumps (LTHPs) without upgrades to radiators or fabric, or up to two thirds with High Temperature Heat Pumps (HTHPs), whereas previous analysis using surveys has found that radiator upgrades are almost always needed. Therefore, the costs and disruption of heat pump roll out could be substantially lower than previously predicted, and the use of real heating system performance data could supplement survey-based assessments of heat pump readiness to help identify more accurately where upgrades are needed. Practical application Current design practices almost always lead to replacement of existing radiators when switching a gas boiler for a heat pump. However, analysis of diagnostic data from approximately 4600 boilers in the UK suggests this may not be entirely necessary. This measured heating system data indicates that up to two-thirds of UK dwellings could operate with High Temperature Heat Pumps (HTHPs) without upgrading existing radiators. Henceforth, development of data-driven testing procedures for the design of future heating systems has significant potential to facilitate rapid heat pump deployment at a national scale, a crucial step in decarbonising buildings in the UK.

Geological storage of CO 2 is anticipated to play a significant role in the management and reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Monitoring of CO₂ injection facilities is essential to provide reassurance of the containment of the injected CO 2 . Here, we report results over six years (2018–2023) for a hydrogeological and geochemical (gas compositions, δ 13 C CH4, δ 13 C CO2, δ 2 H CH4 and noble gas concentration and isotopes) monitoring program at a small-scale CO 2 injection facility located near Brooks, Alberta, Canada with injection ∼300 m below ground. The results provide a comprehensive record of the subsurface hydrological and geochemical conditions over the six-year period. Injected CO 2 was not detected in samples from the injection zone. There was also no indication of injected CO 2 in samples collected from surface casing vents of the three ∼300 m deep wells, nor was injected CO 2 observed in samples from the six shallow groundwater wells (<105 m deep). Various compositional and isotopic changes have been observed over time which are interpreted to either be indirectly related to CO 2 injection or completely unrelated indicating non-CO 2 injection related variability in the baseline conditions of the site. Additionally, a progressive reduction in hydraulic head has been observed in some shallow aquifers consistent with drought conditions in the region. Our study implies that complex subsurface changes may occur at CO 2 storage sites which may be unrelated to human activity, complicating the monitoring of CO 2 injection.

Deforestation impacts in the Congo Basin remain significantly understudied compared to other tropical regions. The main driver of Congo Basin deforestation is small-scale industrial agriculture, which leads to the formation of the rural complex; a mosaic patch of deforested land comprising small fields at different stages of regrowth being deforested repeatedly. Transition from primary forest to rural complex may induce lesser changes in albedo, Bowen ratio, and surface roughness than primary forest to cropland, suggesting the impacts of deforestation on temperatures in the Congo Basin will differ from those in other rainforest regions. The Basin's long-term warming trend and possible ongoing drying could exacerbate warming due to deforestation. It is therefore essential that we understand how the specific nature of deforestation in the Congo Basin influences temperatures, and how this is affected by changes in the large-scale conditions driven by global climate change.In this study, we used MODIS satellite data for LST and EVI, CHIRPS2 for rainfall, and the Global Forest Change dataset for deforestation analysis from 2000 to 2019 to assess how observed deforestation is affecting LST in the Congo Basin and how the deforestation-induced warming varies with climate anomalies, LST and rainfall (SPI), and &amp;#916; EVI (deforested EVI &amp;#8211; surrounding forest EVI). Due to limited data availability, caused by the prevalence of cloud cover throughout much of the year, our focus narrowed to the most data-consistent dry season (DJF), where land-atmosphere interactions are also likely to be strongest.We found a linear relationship between cumulative deforestation and warming over deforested land, which varied in intensity by month. A typical 1 km rural complex pixel within the region will warm by +0.33 &amp;#176;C in December, +0.85 &amp;#176;C in January, and +1.54 &amp;#176;C in February, relative to the surrounding forest. We then assessed the cause of the strong seasonal differences by looking at the deforestation-induced warming as a factor of the climate anomalies and &amp;#916; EVI. The amount of warming of a typical 1 km rural complex pixel did not show a relationship with the LST anomaly or SPI for the individual months. However, when considering all months collectively, a correlation emerged with the LST anomaly, suggesting a seasonal evolution where the LST anomaly acts as a proxy. We then found a link between the warming of a typical 1 km rural complex pixel and &amp;#916; EVI which is present for each month; this partially explains the interannual variability of the results, but it doesn&amp;#8217;t explain the seasonal evolution. Comprehensive and high-quality observations are needed over the Congo Basin to fully untangle these relationships. Accurate soil moisture data could be crucial in understanding the pronounced seasonal differences in warming. These findings suggest that even though the rural complex differs from cropland, and might be expected to have a smaller impact, the additional warming can still be substantial (+1.54 &amp;#176;C), although it has a strong seasonal dependency.

Abstract In light of the UK's 2024 general election and new government, UK policy on climate change is likely to see a shift in direction. This paper presents the proceedings of an event held at the UK Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (RGS‐IBG) in February 2024, exploring the path ahead for UK climate policy. Four expert panelists were asked to reflect on the achievements and shortcomings of climate policy over the past five years and to provide insights into the future of climate policy for the coming five years. Presenting the transactions of this panel, this dialogue paper aims to highlight the interrelationship between research and scholarship, media portrayals, and political discourse on climate change in the UK, demonstrating how preconceptions and dominant ideas in each sphere will shape action and policy in the coming years.

= 753. Despite this, the retained sample was comparable to the original U.S. study, allowing us to proceed with analysis. In this study, we replicate the primary impact analysis conducted by the original randomized controlled trial evaluators and extend it to examine whether the intervention had differential effects on children facing various challenges, including socioeconomic disadvantage, language barriers, special educational needs, or multiple overlapping risk factors. Our analysis found no significant improvements in reading-related skills or socioemotional outcomes nor any meaningful differences in response to the program based on these subgroups. The high level of attrition limited the study's power to detect effects, underscoring the need for further evaluation, which is currently underway.

Abstract The super-organismal view of ecosystems has largely been superseded by the individualistic view. One consequence of the dominance of the individualistic view is that many modern ecologists treat ecosystems as nothing more than vectors of relative abundances, ignoring the potentially important idea that an understanding of ecosystems should be based on dynamics rather than abundances or species identities. We develop a mathematical framework in which we compare dynamical properties of ecosystems with different sets of species, using ideas from functional analysis, metric spaces, and topology. We give two proof-of-principle applications of our framework to marine sessile communities and to a large database of ecosystem models. We show that under a set of biologically-motivated axioms designed to capture the properties of predator-prey systems, there is only one natural kind of ecosystem.

Tree height estimation is crucial for accurate biomass estimation and forest monitoring. Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) offers two products useful for tree height estimation: SLC (Single Look Complex) images and derived tomographic cubes. In this work, we present machine learning methods to predict forest height in two ways, directly from SLC images and from tomographic cubes, providing valuable context to the upcoming European Space Agency’s Biomass Satellite mission.