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Reality check on technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air

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Wednesday, November 20, 2024

In 2015, 195 nations plus the European Union signed the Paris Agreement and pledged to undertake plans designed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet in 2023, the world exceeded that target for most, if not all of, the year — calling into question the long-term feasibility of achieving that target.To do so, the world must reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and strategies for achieving levels that will “stabilize the climate” have been both proposed and adopted. Many of those strategies combine dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with the use of direct air capture (DAC), a technology that removes CO2 from the ambient air. As a reality check, a team of researchers in the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) examined those strategies, and what they found was alarming: The strategies rely on overly optimistic — indeed, unrealistic — assumptions about how much CO2 could be removed by DAC. As a result, the strategies won’t perform as predicted. Nevertheless, the MITEI team recommends that work to develop the DAC technology continue so that it’s ready to help with the energy transition — even if it’s not the silver bullet that solves the world’s decarbonization challenge.DAC: The promise and the realityIncluding DAC in plans to stabilize the climate makes sense. Much work is now under way to develop DAC systems, and the technology looks promising. While companies may never run their own DAC systems, they can already buy “carbon credits” based on DAC. Today, a multibillion-dollar market exists on which entities or individuals that face high costs or excessive disruptions to reduce their own carbon emissions can pay others to take emissions-reducing actions on their behalf. Those actions can involve undertaking new renewable energy projects or “carbon-removal” initiatives such as DAC or afforestation/reforestation (planting trees in areas that have never been forested or that were forested in the past). DAC-based credits are especially appealing for several reasons, explains Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at MITEI. With DAC, measuring and verifying the amount of carbon removed is straightforward; the removal is immediate, unlike with planting forests, which may take decades to have an impact; and when DAC is coupled with CO2 storage in geologic formations, the CO2 is kept out of the atmosphere essentially permanently — in contrast to, for example, sequestering it in trees, which may one day burn and release the stored CO2.Will current plans that rely on DAC be effective in stabilizing the climate in the coming years? To find out, Herzog and his colleagues Jennifer Morris and Angelo Gurgel, both MITEI principal research scientists, and Sergey Paltsev, a MITEI senior research scientist — all affiliated with the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy (CS3) — took a close look at the modeling studies on which those plans are based.Their investigation identified three unavoidable engineering challenges that together lead to a fourth challenge — high costs for removing a single ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. The details of their findings are reported in a paper published in the journal One Earth on Sept. 20.Challenge 1: Scaling upWhen it comes to removing CO2 from the air, nature presents “a major, non-negotiable challenge,” notes the MITEI team: The concentration of CO2 in the air is extremely low — just 420 parts per million, or roughly 0.04 percent. In contrast, the CO2 concentration in flue gases emitted by power plants and industrial processes ranges from 3 percent to 20 percent. Companies now use various carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to capture CO2 from their flue gases, but capturing CO2 from the air is much more difficult. To explain, the researchers offer the following analogy: “The difference is akin to needing to find 10 red marbles in a jar of 25,000 marbles of which 24,990 are blue [the task representing DAC] versus needing to find about 10 red marbles in a jar of 100 marbles of which 90 are blue [the task for CCS].”Given that low concentration, removing a single metric ton (tonne) of CO2 from air requires processing about 1.8 million cubic meters of air, which is roughly equivalent to the volume of 720 Olympic-sized swimming pools. And all that air must be moved across a CO2-capturing sorbent — a feat requiring large equipment. For example, one recently proposed design for capturing 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year would require an “air contactor” equivalent in size to a structure about three stories high and three miles long.Recent modeling studies project DAC deployment on the scale of 5 to 40 gigatonnes of CO2 removed per year. (A gigatonne equals 1 billion metric tonnes.) But in their paper, the researchers conclude that the likelihood of deploying DAC at the gigatonne scale is “highly uncertain.”Challenge 2: Energy requirementGiven the low concentration of CO2 in the air and the need to move large quantities of air to capture it, it’s no surprise that even the best DAC processes proposed today would consume large amounts of energy — energy that’s generally supplied by a combination of electricity and heat. Including the energy needed to compress the captured CO2 for transportation and storage, most proposed processes require an equivalent of at least 1.2 megawatt-hours of electricity for each tonne of CO2 removed.The source of that electricity is critical. For example, using coal-based electricity to drive an all-electric DAC process would generate 1.2 tonnes of CO2 for each tonne of CO2 captured. The result would be a net increase in emissions, defeating the whole purpose of the DAC. So clearly, the energy requirement must be satisfied using either low-carbon electricity or electricity generated using fossil fuels with CCS. All-electric DAC deployed at large scale — say, 10 gigatonnes of CO2 removed annually — would require 12,000 terawatt-hours of electricity, which is more than 40 percent of total global electricity generation today.Electricity consumption is expected to grow due to increasing overall electrification of the world economy, so low-carbon electricity will be in high demand for many competing uses — for example, in power generation, transportation, industry, and building operations. Using clean electricity for DAC instead of for reducing CO2 emissions in other critical areas raises concerns about the best uses of clean electricity.Many studies assume that a DAC unit could also get energy from “waste heat” generated by some industrial process or facility nearby. In the MITEI researchers’ opinion, “that may be more wishful thinking than reality.” The heat source would need to be within a few miles of the DAC plant for transporting the heat to be economical; given its high capital cost, the DAC plant would need to run nonstop, requiring constant heat delivery; and heat at the temperature required by the DAC plant would have competing uses, for example, for heating buildings. Finally, if DAC is deployed at the gigatonne per year scale, waste heat will likely be able to provide only a small fraction of the needed energy.Challenge 3: SitingSome analysts have asserted that, because air is everywhere, DAC units can be located anywhere. But in reality, siting a DAC plant involves many complex issues. As noted above, DAC plants require significant amounts of energy, so having access to enough low-carbon energy is critical. Likewise, having nearby options for storing the removed CO2 is also critical. If storage sites or pipelines to such sites don’t exist, major new infrastructure will need to be built, and building new infrastructure of any kind is expensive and complicated, involving issues related to permitting, environmental justice, and public acceptability — issues that are, in the words of the researchers, “commonly underestimated in the real world and neglected in models.”Two more siting needs must be considered. First, meteorological conditions must be acceptable. By definition, any DAC unit will be exposed to the elements, and factors like temperature and humidity will affect process performance and process availability. And second, a DAC plant will require some dedicated land — though how much is unclear, as the optimal spacing of units is as yet unresolved. Like wind turbines, DAC units need to be properly spaced to ensure maximum performance such that one unit is not sucking in CO2-depleted air from another unit.Challenge 4: CostConsidering the first three challenges, the final challenge is clear: the cost per tonne of CO2 removed is inevitably high. Recent modeling studies assume DAC costs as low as $100 to $200 per ton of CO2 removed. But the researchers found evidence suggesting far higher costs.To start, they cite typical costs for power plants and industrial sites that now use CCS to remove CO2 from their flue gases. The cost of CCS in such applications is estimated to be in the range of $50 to $150 per ton of CO2 removed. As explained above, the far lower concentration of CO2 in the air will lead to substantially higher costs.As explained under Challenge 1, the DAC units needed to capture the required amount of air are massive. The capital cost of building them will be high, given labor, materials, permitting costs, and so on. Some estimates in the literature exceed $5,000 per tonne captured per year.Then there are the ongoing costs of energy. As noted under Challenge 2, removing 1 tonne of CO2 requires the equivalent of 1.2 megawatt-hours of electricity. If that electricity costs $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, the cost of just the electricity needed to remove 1 tonne of CO2 is $120. The researchers point out that assuming such a low price is “questionable,” given the expected increase in electricity demand, future competition for clean energy, and higher costs on a system dominated by renewable — but intermittent — energy sources.Then there’s the cost of storage, which is ignored in many DAC cost estimates.Clearly, many considerations show that prices of $100 to $200 per tonne are unrealistic, and assuming such low prices will distort assessments of strategies, leading them to underperform going forward.The bottom lineIn their paper, the MITEI team calls DAC a “very seductive concept.” Using DAC to suck CO2 out of the air and generate high-quality carbon-removal credits can offset reduction requirements for industries that have hard-to-abate emissions. By doing so, DAC would minimize disruptions to key parts of the world’s economy, including air travel, certain carbon-intensive industries, and agriculture. However, the world would need to generate billions of tonnes of CO2 credits at an affordable price. That prospect doesn’t look likely. The largest DAC plant in operation today removes just 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, and the price to buy the company’s carbon-removal credits on the market today is $1,500 per tonne.The researchers recognize that there is room for energy efficiency improvements in the future, but DAC units will always be subject to higher work requirements than CCS applied to power plant or industrial flue gases, and there is not a clear pathway to reducing work requirements much below the levels of current DAC technologies.Nevertheless, the researchers recommend that work to develop DAC continue “because it may be needed for meeting net-zero emissions goals, especially given the current pace of emissions.” But their paper concludes with this warning: “Given the high stakes of climate change, it is foolhardy to rely on DAC to be the hero that comes to our rescue.”

Study finds many climate-stabilization plans are based on questionable assumptions about the future cost and deployment of “direct air capture” and therefore may not bring about promised reductions.

In 2015, 195 nations plus the European Union signed the Paris Agreement and pledged to undertake plans designed to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Yet in 2023, the world exceeded that target for most, if not all of, the year — calling into question the long-term feasibility of achieving that target.

To do so, the world must reduce the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and strategies for achieving levels that will “stabilize the climate” have been both proposed and adopted. Many of those strategies combine dramatic cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions with the use of direct air capture (DAC), a technology that removes CO2 from the ambient air. As a reality check, a team of researchers in the MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) examined those strategies, and what they found was alarming: The strategies rely on overly optimistic — indeed, unrealistic — assumptions about how much CO2 could be removed by DAC. As a result, the strategies won’t perform as predicted. Nevertheless, the MITEI team recommends that work to develop the DAC technology continue so that it’s ready to help with the energy transition — even if it’s not the silver bullet that solves the world’s decarbonization challenge.

DAC: The promise and the reality

Including DAC in plans to stabilize the climate makes sense. Much work is now under way to develop DAC systems, and the technology looks promising. While companies may never run their own DAC systems, they can already buy “carbon credits” based on DAC. Today, a multibillion-dollar market exists on which entities or individuals that face high costs or excessive disruptions to reduce their own carbon emissions can pay others to take emissions-reducing actions on their behalf. Those actions can involve undertaking new renewable energy projects or “carbon-removal” initiatives such as DAC or afforestation/reforestation (planting trees in areas that have never been forested or that were forested in the past). 

DAC-based credits are especially appealing for several reasons, explains Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at MITEI. With DAC, measuring and verifying the amount of carbon removed is straightforward; the removal is immediate, unlike with planting forests, which may take decades to have an impact; and when DAC is coupled with CO2 storage in geologic formations, the CO2 is kept out of the atmosphere essentially permanently — in contrast to, for example, sequestering it in trees, which may one day burn and release the stored CO2.

Will current plans that rely on DAC be effective in stabilizing the climate in the coming years? To find out, Herzog and his colleagues Jennifer Morris and Angelo Gurgel, both MITEI principal research scientists, and Sergey Paltsev, a MITEI senior research scientist — all affiliated with the MIT Center for Sustainability Science and Strategy (CS3) — took a close look at the modeling studies on which those plans are based.

Their investigation identified three unavoidable engineering challenges that together lead to a fourth challenge — high costs for removing a single ton of CO2 from the atmosphere. The details of their findings are reported in a paper published in the journal One Earth on Sept. 20.

Challenge 1: Scaling up

When it comes to removing CO2 from the air, nature presents “a major, non-negotiable challenge,” notes the MITEI team: The concentration of CO2 in the air is extremely low — just 420 parts per million, or roughly 0.04 percent. In contrast, the CO2 concentration in flue gases emitted by power plants and industrial processes ranges from 3 percent to 20 percent. Companies now use various carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technologies to capture CO2 from their flue gases, but capturing CO2 from the air is much more difficult. To explain, the researchers offer the following analogy: “The difference is akin to needing to find 10 red marbles in a jar of 25,000 marbles of which 24,990 are blue [the task representing DAC] versus needing to find about 10 red marbles in a jar of 100 marbles of which 90 are blue [the task for CCS].”

Given that low concentration, removing a single metric ton (tonne) of CO2 from air requires processing about 1.8 million cubic meters of air, which is roughly equivalent to the volume of 720 Olympic-sized swimming pools. And all that air must be moved across a CO2-capturing sorbent — a feat requiring large equipment. For example, one recently proposed design for capturing 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year would require an “air contactor” equivalent in size to a structure about three stories high and three miles long.

Recent modeling studies project DAC deployment on the scale of 5 to 40 gigatonnes of CO2 removed per year. (A gigatonne equals 1 billion metric tonnes.) But in their paper, the researchers conclude that the likelihood of deploying DAC at the gigatonne scale is “highly uncertain.”

Challenge 2: Energy requirement

Given the low concentration of CO2 in the air and the need to move large quantities of air to capture it, it’s no surprise that even the best DAC processes proposed today would consume large amounts of energy — energy that’s generally supplied by a combination of electricity and heat. Including the energy needed to compress the captured CO2 for transportation and storage, most proposed processes require an equivalent of at least 1.2 megawatt-hours of electricity for each tonne of CO2 removed.

The source of that electricity is critical. For example, using coal-based electricity to drive an all-electric DAC process would generate 1.2 tonnes of CO2 for each tonne of CO2 captured. The result would be a net increase in emissions, defeating the whole purpose of the DAC. So clearly, the energy requirement must be satisfied using either low-carbon electricity or electricity generated using fossil fuels with CCS. All-electric DAC deployed at large scale — say, 10 gigatonnes of CO2 removed annually — would require 12,000 terawatt-hours of electricity, which is more than 40 percent of total global electricity generation today.

Electricity consumption is expected to grow due to increasing overall electrification of the world economy, so low-carbon electricity will be in high demand for many competing uses — for example, in power generation, transportation, industry, and building operations. Using clean electricity for DAC instead of for reducing CO2 emissions in other critical areas raises concerns about the best uses of clean electricity.

Many studies assume that a DAC unit could also get energy from “waste heat” generated by some industrial process or facility nearby. In the MITEI researchers’ opinion, “that may be more wishful thinking than reality.” The heat source would need to be within a few miles of the DAC plant for transporting the heat to be economical; given its high capital cost, the DAC plant would need to run nonstop, requiring constant heat delivery; and heat at the temperature required by the DAC plant would have competing uses, for example, for heating buildings. Finally, if DAC is deployed at the gigatonne per year scale, waste heat will likely be able to provide only a small fraction of the needed energy.

Challenge 3: Siting

Some analysts have asserted that, because air is everywhere, DAC units can be located anywhere. But in reality, siting a DAC plant involves many complex issues. As noted above, DAC plants require significant amounts of energy, so having access to enough low-carbon energy is critical. Likewise, having nearby options for storing the removed CO2 is also critical. If storage sites or pipelines to such sites don’t exist, major new infrastructure will need to be built, and building new infrastructure of any kind is expensive and complicated, involving issues related to permitting, environmental justice, and public acceptability — issues that are, in the words of the researchers, “commonly underestimated in the real world and neglected in models.”

Two more siting needs must be considered. First, meteorological conditions must be acceptable. By definition, any DAC unit will be exposed to the elements, and factors like temperature and humidity will affect process performance and process availability. And second, a DAC plant will require some dedicated land — though how much is unclear, as the optimal spacing of units is as yet unresolved. Like wind turbines, DAC units need to be properly spaced to ensure maximum performance such that one unit is not sucking in CO2-depleted air from another unit.

Challenge 4: Cost

Considering the first three challenges, the final challenge is clear: the cost per tonne of CO2 removed is inevitably high. Recent modeling studies assume DAC costs as low as $100 to $200 per ton of CO2 removed. But the researchers found evidence suggesting far higher costs.

To start, they cite typical costs for power plants and industrial sites that now use CCS to remove CO2 from their flue gases. The cost of CCS in such applications is estimated to be in the range of $50 to $150 per ton of CO2 removed. As explained above, the far lower concentration of CO2 in the air will lead to substantially higher costs.

As explained under Challenge 1, the DAC units needed to capture the required amount of air are massive. The capital cost of building them will be high, given labor, materials, permitting costs, and so on. Some estimates in the literature exceed $5,000 per tonne captured per year.

Then there are the ongoing costs of energy. As noted under Challenge 2, removing 1 tonne of CO2 requires the equivalent of 1.2 megawatt-hours of electricity. If that electricity costs $0.10 per kilowatt-hour, the cost of just the electricity needed to remove 1 tonne of CO2 is $120. The researchers point out that assuming such a low price is “questionable,” given the expected increase in electricity demand, future competition for clean energy, and higher costs on a system dominated by renewable — but intermittent — energy sources.

Then there’s the cost of storage, which is ignored in many DAC cost estimates.

Clearly, many considerations show that prices of $100 to $200 per tonne are unrealistic, and assuming such low prices will distort assessments of strategies, leading them to underperform going forward.

The bottom line

In their paper, the MITEI team calls DAC a “very seductive concept.” Using DAC to suck CO2 out of the air and generate high-quality carbon-removal credits can offset reduction requirements for industries that have hard-to-abate emissions. By doing so, DAC would minimize disruptions to key parts of the world’s economy, including air travel, certain carbon-intensive industries, and agriculture. However, the world would need to generate billions of tonnes of CO2 credits at an affordable price. That prospect doesn’t look likely. The largest DAC plant in operation today removes just 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, and the price to buy the company’s carbon-removal credits on the market today is $1,500 per tonne.

The researchers recognize that there is room for energy efficiency improvements in the future, but DAC units will always be subject to higher work requirements than CCS applied to power plant or industrial flue gases, and there is not a clear pathway to reducing work requirements much below the levels of current DAC technologies.

Nevertheless, the researchers recommend that work to develop DAC continue “because it may be needed for meeting net-zero emissions goals, especially given the current pace of emissions.” But their paper concludes with this warning: “Given the high stakes of climate change, it is foolhardy to rely on DAC to be the hero that comes to our rescue.”

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

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Just Stop Oil says it will disband but does this mark an end to the chaos caused by its climate protests?

Has the UK's most loathed protest group really stopped throwing soup?Justin RowlattBBC News Climate EditorJSO HandoutThe climate action group Just Stop Oil has announced it is to disband at the end of April. Its activists have been derided as attention-seeking zealots and vandals and it is loathed by many for its disruptive direct action tactics. It says it has won because its demand that there should be no new oil and gas licences is now government policy. So, did they really win and does this mark an end to the chaos caused by its climate protests?Hayley Walsh's heart was racing as she sat in the audience at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane on 27 January this year. The 42 year-old lecturer and mother of three tried to calm her breathing. Hollywood star Sigourney Weaver was onstage in her West End debut production of Shakespeare's The Tempest. But Hayley, a Just Stop Oil activist, had her own drama planned.As Weaver's Prospero declaimed "Come forth, I say," Hayley sprang from her seat and rushed the stage with Richard Weir, a 60-year-old mechanical engineer from Tyneside. They launched a confetti cannon and unfurled a banner that read "Over 1.5 Degrees is a Global Shipwreck" - a reference to the news that 2024 was the first year to pass the symbolic 1.5C threshold in global average temperature rise, and a nod to the shipwreck theme in the play. It was a classic Just Stop Oil (JSO) action. The target was high profile and would guarantee publicity. The message was simple and presented in the group's signature fluorescent orange.The reaction of those affected was also a classic response to JSO. Amid the boos and whistles you can hear a shout of "idiots". "Drag them off the stage", one audience member can be heard shouting, "I hope you [expletive] get arrested," another says.JSO is a UK-based environmental activist group that aims to end fossil fuel extraction and uses direct action to draw attention to its cause. It has been called a "criminal cult" and its activists branded "eco-loons" by the Sun. The Daily Mail has described it as "deranged" and says its members have "unleashed misery on thousands of ordinary people though their selfish antics".JSO HandoutIt is the group's road protests that have probably caused the most disruption – and public anger.The group has thrown soup at a Van Gogh in the National Gallery, exploded a chalk dust bomb during the World Snooker Championship in Sheffield, smashed a cabinet containing a copy of the Magna Carta at the British Library, sprayed temporary paint on the stones of Stonehenge and even defaced Charles Darwin's grave.But it is the group's road protests that have probably caused the most disruption – and public anger. In November 2022, 45 JSO members climbed gantries around the M25 severely disrupting traffic for over four days. People missed flights, medical appointments and exams as thousands of drivers were delayed for hours. The cost to the Metropolitan Police was put at £1.1 million.Just Stop Oil was born out of Extinction Rebellion (XR). XR – founded in 2018 - brought thousands of people onto the streets in what were dubbed "festivals of resistance". They came to a peak in April 2019, when protestors brought parts of the capital to a halt for more than a week and plonked a large pink boat in the middle of Oxford Circus.The spectacle and disruption XR caused generated massive media attention, but the police were furious. Hundreds of officers were diverted from frontline duties and by the end of 2019 the bill for policing the protests had reached £37m.And behind the scenes XR was riven by furious debates about tactics. Many inside the movement said it should be less confrontational and disruptive but a hard core of activists argued it would be more effective to double down on direct action.It became clear that there was room for what Sarah Lunnon, one of the co-founders of Just Stop Oil, calls "a more radical flank". They decided a new, more focused operation was needed, modelled on earlier civil disobedience movements like the Suffragettes, Gandhi's civil disobedience campaigns and the civil rights movement in the US.The group was formally launched on Valentine's Day, 2022. It was a very different animal to XR. Instead of thousands of people taking part in street carnivals, JSO's actions involved a few committed activists. A small strategy group oversaw the campaign and meticulously planned its activities. A mobilisation team worked to recruit new members, and another team focused on supporting activists after they were arrested.Getty ImagesJust Stop Oil protesters invading a Rugby matchThe dozens of actions the group has carried out generated lots of publicity, but also massive public opposition. There were confrontations between members of the public and protestors and an outcry from politicians across all the main political parties.The police said they needed more powers to deal with this new form of protest and they got them. New offences were created including interfering with national infrastructure, "locking on" – chaining or gluing yourself to something – and tunnelling underground. Causing a public nuisance also became a potential crime – providing the police with a powerful new tool to use against protestors who block roads.In the four years since it was formed dozens of the group's supporters have been jailed. Five activists were handed multi-year sentences for their role in the M25 actions in 2022. Those were reduced on appeal earlier this month but are still the longest jail terms for non-violent civil disobedience ever issued.Senior JSO members deny the crackdown had anything to do with the group's decision to "hang up the hi-vis" – as its statement this week announcing the end of campaign put it.JSO's public position is that it has won its battle. "Just Stop Oil's initial demand to end new oil and gas is now government policy, making us one of the most successful civil resistance campaigns in recent history," the group claimed.The government has said it does not plan to issue any new licences for oil and gas production but strongly denies its policies have a link to JSO. Furthermore, the Prime Minister's official spokesperson told journalists: "We have been very clear when it comes to oil and gas that it has a future for decades to come in our energy mix."And the group's wider goal – to end the production of oil and gas – has manifestly not been achieved. The members of the group I spoke to for this article all agree the climate crisis has deepened.AFPA protest at the Aston Martin showroom in central LondonIn the face of stiffer sentences, some climate campaigners have said they will turn to more clandestine activities. One new group says it plans a campaign of sabotage against key infrastructure. In a manifesto published online it says it plans to "kickstart a new phase of the climate activist movement, aiming to shut down key actors of the fossil fuel economy."That's not a direction the JSO members I spoke to said they wanted to go. Sarah Lunnon said a key principle of JSO and the civil disobedience movement generally was that activists would take responsibility for their actions. One of the first questions new joiners were asked is whether they would be willing to be locked up."As corporations and billionaires corrupt political systems across the world, we need a different approach. "We are creating a new strategy, to face this reality and to carry our responsibilities at this time," the group says, suggesting they may be planning to form a new movement.JSO's most high-profile figure, Roger Hallam, is one of the five activists convicted for their role in the M25 protests. In a message from his prison cell he acknowledged that JSO has only had a "marginal impact". That is "not due to lack of trying," he said. The failure lay with the UK's "elites and our leaders" who had walked away from their responsibility to tackle the climate crisis, Hallam claimed. A hint perhaps that the group's new focus might be on the political system itself.JSO has said its last protest – to be held at the end of April – will mark "the end of soup on Van Goghs, cornstarch on Stonehenge and slow marching in the streets". But don't believe it. When pressed, the JSO members I spoke to said they may well turn back to disruptive tactics but under a new name and with a new and as yet unspecified objective.

Climate
Activism
Crisis

Amid Trump Cuts, Climate Researchers Wait for the Ax to Fall

Climate experts whose research is funded by federal grants hide, whisper and wait for their jobs to disappear

Climate Researchers Wait for the Ax to FallClimate experts whose research is funded by federal grants hide, whisper and wait for their jobs to disappearBy Ariel Wittenberg, Chelsea Harvey & E&E News The Trump administration has slashed jobs and funding at the National Institutes of Health. Mark Wilson/Newsmakers/Getty ImagesCLIMATEWIRE | The National Institutes of Health has canceled grants for research on diversity, Covid-19 and vaccines. Climate scientists are hoping their work won’t be next — but fear it could be.“We are holding our breaths because we know we are on their list of targets,” said Marsha Wills-Karp, chair of the Johns Hopkins University Department of Environmental Health and Engineering. “It feels like it’s been slash and burn. We are hopeful they won’t get to climate, but we know it’s not likely.”Researchers in her department have received NIH grants to study the effects of wildfire air pollution on preterm birth rates and how hotter weather is affecting the health of babies at birth, measured by their weight and potential complications. They’re also studying how climate change is affecting nutrition.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.At the University of Washington, Kristie Ebi is fearful that NIH could cut grants that fund studies about which populations are more vulnerable to extreme heat — a project that the team is planning to expand to include the dangers of wildfire smoke.“We’re working to provide information that departments of health, communities and individuals can use,” Ebi said. “The more you know, the more of those lives you can save.”None of those programs haven’t been cut yet. But there’s reason to think they could be, and soon.Earlier this week, ProPublica reported on an internal NIH memo that outlined how the agency will no longer fund research on the health effects of climate change. It followed a story in Mother Jones showing that NIH had ended three climate-related programs, including the Climate Change and Health Initiative. The program was created in 2022 and has had annual congressional appropriations of $40 million, according to a December NIH report that was taken offline by the agency earlier this year.“HHS is taking action to terminate research funding that is not aligned with NIH and HHS priorities,” said Emily Hilliard, a department spokesperson.“As we begin to Make America Healthy Again, it’s important to prioritize research that directly affects the health of Americans,” she added. “We will leave no stone unturned in identifying the root cause of the chronic disease epidemic as part of our mission to Make America Healthy Again.”She did not respond to questions about whether HHS believes that research into the health effects of heat and other types of extreme weather are aligned with agency priorities or whether HHS believes that heat waves affect the health of Americans. NIH did not respond to a request for comment.Heat is the No. 1 weather-related killer in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an agency within HHS. Heat caused or contributed to at least 2,300 deaths in 2023, CDC records show.In addition to turbocharging temperatures, climate change can affect people's health by increasing the prevalence of vector-borne diseases and the number of wildfires, whose smoke has been shown to increase asthma and cause cardiovascular problems.Those connections have long been studied with funding from the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences. Then in 2022, NIH broadened the scope of federal funding for climate health research, directing each of the agency’s 26 centers and institutes to study the dangers of climate change. At the time, the agency said “a mounting number of assessments and reports provide undeniable evidence that climate change is resulting in … direct and indirect consequences for human health and well-being.”Most of the climate researchers contacted by POLITICO's E&E News declined to talk publicly about their funding, citing concerns about their grants being rescinded if they spoke to the media.One researcher who was awarded federal funding said some experts in the climate and health field are pausing work related to their grants, like hiring.Others have turned down speaking requests because they're concerned about attracting attention from the Trump administration. Their work often focuses on how extreme weather has disproportional effects on the health of communities of color, according to several researchers who were granted anonymity for fear of retribution. One said that they declined a speaking invitation to avoid “accidentally us[ing] language we are not supposed to and then be told our language is not compliant with various executive orders” on diversity and equality.“We’ve been told we need to comply with those executive orders as federal grantees, but it’s hard to do if you are funded for something that the name is something you are not allowed to say,” the researcher said. “No one wants to do a social media post or a webinar or an event that might get them in trouble.”An annual conference hosted by NIH, Boston University and the Harvard School of Public Health was postponed earlier this month.Linda Birnbaum, who led the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences until 2017, said that during the first Trump administration, researchers were able to circumvent directives by wording grant applications as “climate and health” rather than “climate change.”“It worked then. I don’t think that will work anymore,” she said.Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2025. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.

Climate
Energy
Pollution

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