Our panel of decarbonization faculty will be facilitated by professor and ERI Associate Director, Andres Clarens. His research is focused broadly on anthropogenic carbon flows and the ways that CO2 is manipulated, reused, and sequestered in engineered systems.
In early 2020, ERI launched interdisciplinary research called the Climate Restoration Initiative to bridge negative emissions research and practice. We have built a team that will study the challenge from the full and necessary range of perspectives, including the technological, biophysical, and societal. The team will focus their efforts in two research areas where UVa has established expertise and is gaining momentum as a global leader.
ERI scholars are working to develop integrative models on regional to global scales. These models will be capable of better understanding the interactions between negative emissions strategies and various environmental policy objectives, including but not limited to water quality, water availability, ecosystem health, and renewable energy generation.
ERI scholars are also working to understand how a portfolio of negative emissions strategies can be integrated across the landscapes of Virginia and the eastern United States more broadly. The viability of negative emissions technologies will be impacted by decisions made at the regional level (e.g., land use in forestry, agriculture; habitat conservation and restoration; building codes; water management; social acceptance and support). Tools are being developed to better understand choices in negative emissions and carbon mitigation, and how those impact human activities and communities.