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California’s carbon neutrality goal requires that, by 2045, any carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted must be balanced by actions that remove the same amount of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere. To achieve this goal, in addition to adopting cleaner energy technologies and curbing emissions, robust CO2 removal (CDR) methods must be developed and demonstrated to remove CO2 that has already been emitted. Laboratory-led reports, Getting to Neutral (2020) and Roads to Removal (2023), have examined the capacity and costs for mature CDR methods available to California and the United States, respectively. Thinning forests to reduce wildfire risk, cover cropping, cultivating perennials, and other forest management and agricultural approaches can increase CDR via ecological storage of carbon in California’s natural and working lands and can be implemented in the near term. Biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and direct air capture (DAC) with geologic storage collect the CO2 from plant biomass and filter carbon out of the atmosphere, respectively, with subsequent storage in new materials or deep underground.
These CDR technologies are especially relevant in California’s Central Valley, a region in the Laboratory’s backyard. “While BiCRS, DAC, and geologic carbon storage will take some time to scale, California is poised to immediately begin removing carbon from the atmosphere using both mature and novel ‘carbon farming’ practices,” says Jennifer Pett-Ridge, principal investigator for the Roads to Removal report, Lawrence Livermore’s Carbon Initiative, and Department of Energy (DOE) Terraforming Soil Energy Earthshot Research Center.
Despite disproportionate harms that California residents could experience from climate change, carbon removal technologies have not yet been adopted in many Central Valley communities, in part due to skepticism about the safety of underground carbon storage, mistrust or lack of information about new industrial technologies—largely due to past and ongoing air and water pollution from regional industries—and language barriers in some Spanish-speaking communities. To jumpstart engagement and interest in CDR across the state, Lawrence Livermore is partnering with California communities disproportionately affected by climate change impacts such as wildfires and associated smoke pollution, extreme heatwaves, flooding, and droughts, as well as shifts away from traditional energy sources that support local economies. The partnerships aim to bridge gaps to adoption and help California reach its goals for net carbon neutrality.
Educational Partners
Working with communities to address knowledge gaps is essential to facilitate the implementation of CDR and other climate technologies, according to Kimberley Mayfield, staff scientist in the Laboratory’s Energy and Carbon Management group and pillar lead in the Carbon Initiative. “Providing technical assistance to communities and answering their questions about different CDR and storage methods makes it more feasible for projects to get off the ground,” says Mayfield. One way to provide this assistance is by partnering with educational institutions—who often serve as key centers for amplifying community voices—to engage local students, a critical part of a future carbon-neutral workforce and economy, in CDR and other climate change-addressing technologies.
In 2020, the Livermore Lab Foundation (LLF), the Laboratory’s key philanthropic partner, set its sights on Kern County, highlighted in Getting to Neutral as a hotspot for geologic carbon storage due to its ideal geology and detailed underground datasets from its extensive history of oil and gas exploration. The county is also disproportionately burdened by declines in agriculture, amid water scarcity and oil and gas production, due to a shift toward cleaner energies.
To gauge community awareness and needs, LLF surveyed residents and key stakeholders to identify how the Laboratory, the scientific principles of CDR, and the Getting to Neutral report might make a difference. LLF worked with high school teachers to develop Climate in the Classroom, 29 hours of experiential, Next Generation Science Standard-affiliated lessons around climate change, CDR, job opportunities, and the importance of community involvement based on Laboratory science and reporting. To date, more than 50 teachers have been trained and have implemented the lessons, and 3,000 students have participated. The lessons have been well received, and the open education resource platform, California Educators Together, now offers the units statewide. The team is updating content to include Roads to Removal insights.
The Laboratory’s ongoing collaborations with Kern County are evidenced by two recent memoranda of understanding (MOU) with educational leaders in the county. In 2023, the Laboratory and LLF signed an MOU with California State University at Bakersfield (CSUB) to collaborate on clean energy technologies, community partnerships, and research opportunities in support of the region’s position as a California clean energy and decarbonization pioneer. Planned collaborations include internships, joint publications, fellowships, lectures, grants, and research initiatives. In August 2024, the Foundation secured an MOU partnership with Kern Community College District (KCCD) and the California Renewable Energy Laboratory for Livermore to work with the partners and develop the state’s first BiCRS and DAC demonstrations for student education and training. This unique opportunity will provide critical hands-on training for community college students to augment the STEM workforce pipeline and build general community education and awareness. “As our relationships in Kern County have developed, it has become clear that both CSUB and KCCD, as academic institutions, play critical roles as carbon management leaders in the Central Valley. We want to help them any way we can,” says Sarah Baker, Carbon Management associate program leader for the Laboratory’s Carbon Initiative.
Farther north, the Laboratory is involved in the San Joaquin Climate Resiliency Center with the University of California (UC) at Merced and local nonprofits in Stockton, California. Through the program, Karis McFarlane, Lawrence Livermore earth scientist, Minerva Uribe-Robles, energy scientist, Caspar Donnison, economist, and Mayfield mentor undergraduate and graduate students on internship projects focused on climate impacts and resiliency efforts in the San Joaquin Valley—projects that evaluate public sentiment about CDR, predict census tracts that would benefit greatest from urban greening projects, and fingerprint aerosol pollution sources using chemistry.
The Climate Entrepreneurs Fellowship Program (CEFP), a University of California Office of the President (UCOP)-funded grant led by LLF and the Laboratory, encourages interns’ early involvement in the carbon economy, aiming to accelerate scale-up of climate technologies to meet California’s carbon neutrality goals. “This workforce development program exposes students to the skills and knowledge base necessary to work in a future carbon-zero economy,” says materials scientist and advisor for Livermore’s Carbon Initiative Tracie Owens. The CEFP idea emerged from a Laboratory Directed Research and Development project, led by Sarah Baker and Eric Duoss, seeking to scale up and deploy solutions to Livermore’s mission challenges, ultimately leading to the UCOP grant.
Community Involvement
Mayfield has seen firsthand that centering community voices and priorities is essential to clean energy and carbon removal technologies scale-up. For example, when local landowners in the California Central Valley saw the Getting to Neutral results highlighting that their land held potential for carbon storage, they reached out to the Laboratory to determine if and how they could profit from this new use of their land. Inspired by these inquiries, former Lawrence Livermore scientist George Peridas authored Sharing the Benefits, which analyzed economic opportunities and constraints for California landowners with geologic carbon storage capabilities to assess their profit potential. Emboldened by the results, several landowners have cooperatively paired local CO2 streams with their carbon storage sites, laying the foundation for grassroots companies to build community wealth from carbon capture and storage. “I feel fortunate to lead the Laboratory’s involvement with this project, which has been several years in the making and only possible through building expertise in geologic carbon storage over decades,” says Briana Schmidt, Energy and Carbon Management group leader. Adds Mayfield, “This project is the prime example of what I would like to see carbon management look like in California: local ownership and stewardship.”
To further empower communities, the Laboratory is taking steps to ensure carbon management decisions and projects are informed by local needs. Uribe-Robles leads ongoing and bilingual engagement with California communities—listening to their input and local knowledge about carbon removal methods and what might hinder their adoption or scale-up. She and Aidee Guzman, a collaborating scientist and former postdoctoral researcher on the Farming Carbon Strategic Initiative project, seek to lower barriers to engagement with local farmers by partaking in a variety of bilingual educational and collaborative workshops, with the intent to hear feedback and encourage communication between farmers, technology developers, and companies. “The workshops are really exciting; we can hear from community members and farmers—the end users—first, before advancing a lot of our research,” says Guzman.
Community engagement is also necessary to enable the scale-up and widespread implementation of new climate technologies. Under the UCOP/CEFP grant, Owens and LLF are working with the Chabot/Las Positas College District, I-GATE/Daybreak Labs, and Innovation Tri Valley to survey the climate technology workforce in the Tri Valley region and determine what skills and programs are needed to best meet California’s 2045 climate goals. “One of the key aspects of technology scale-up and development is not just focusing on the technology, but also getting people involved,” says Owens. “This means understanding the workforce that will apply the technology, and then understanding the environmental and social impact that scale-up may have on the surrounding community.”
National Efforts
On a larger scale, Lawrence Livermore is involved in DOE’s Communities Local Energy Action Program (Communities LEAP) within California. This nationwide effort supports low-income communities that spend a high percentage of household income on energy costs and experience economic impacts due to the shift away from historical fossil fuel usage. “Communities LEAP is a nationwide program tailored to community needs,” says Uribe-Robles. “Communities decide what technical assistance is needed based on their challenges. We guide that process and assist however we can.” For example, Uribe-Robles is leading a Communities LEAP project in Stockton, modeling the environmental impacts should pressurized CO2 stored underground leak, return to the surface, and interact with California Delta waters. She is also leading a Communities LEAP project in West Fresno that seeks to address the community’s language barrier and identify suitable technology assistance to build capacity for introducing climate and carbon technologies.
The Laboratory and LLF also contributed to a Communities LEAP with the Kern County Planning and Natural Resources Department to create an interactive website exploring how a variety of CDR industries could transform the county into a carbon storage and energy leader in the state. LLF served on a community advisory board adding to the web of partnerships the Laboratory has fostered in the Kern County area. “Communities LEAP offers DOE funding for technical assistance to communities and serves to maintain lasting relationships,” says Mayfield.
The Roads to Removal report, a DOE-funded, national-scale report analyzing CDR to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas economy in the United States by 2050, is setting the stage for additional community engagement by factoring in environmental and socioeconomic implications. For this report, data scientist Alex Stanley and engineer Zaid Ammar built a first-of-its-kind, interactive, county-level resolution dashboard for users to assess both opportunities and impacts from CDR across the country as efforts to develop technologies gain traction.
LLF further brings Roads to Removal to life with a strategy for national dissemination and engagement, supported by a $1 million grant from the ClimateWorks Foundation, Breakthrough Energy, and Grantham Foundation for the Protection of the Environment. LLF has organized free symposia at six locations around the nation for community stakeholders—politicians, industry members, farmers, ranchers, and others—to learn and participate in a dialogue regarding CDR technologies most appropriate for their areas with Laboratory scientists and Roads to Removal authors. “The nation is on a journey to implement CDR technologies,” says Susan Houghton, LLF’s Climate Portfolio manager. “We have to help local communities understand not only the science and nomenclature but what the economic and community benefit opportunities might mean for their region.” Adds Uribe-Robles, “Communities have many questions that science can answer—these answers just haven’t been communicated to them yet. I’m optimistic about the Laboratory’s contributions to lowering these barriers.”
—Lilly Ackerman
For further information contact Kimberley Mayfield (925) 422-8629 (mayfield8 [at] llnl.gov (mayfield8[at]llnl[dot]gov)) or Jennifer Pett-Ridge (925) 337-7618 (pettridge2 [at] llnl.gov (pettridge2[at]llnl[dot]gov)).
