Governance of Solar Radiation Management

1. We find Table S.1 from the National Research Council 2015 (pg. 4) useful to understand some of the differences between CDR and SRM (the National Research Council refers to SRM as ‘albedo modification’):

Royal Society 2009 pg. ix: “Geoengineering methods can usefully be divided into two basic ‘classes’:

• Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) techniques which remove CO2 from the atmosphere;
• Solar Radiation Management (SRM) techniques that reflect a small percentage of the sun’s light and heat back into space. Royal Society 2009 pg. ix: “Geoengineering methods can usefully be divided into two basic ‘classes’:
  Both Carbon Dioxide Removal and Solar Radiation Management methods have the ultimate aim of reducing global temperatures, but there are major differences in their modes of action, the timescales over which they are effective, temperature effects, and other consequences so that they are generally best considered separately.
  Carbon dioxide removal techniques address the root cause of climate change by removing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
  Solar radiation management techniques attempt to offset effects of increased greenhouse gas concentrations by causing the Earth to absorb less solar radiation.”

2. Royal Society 2009 pg. x: “Solar Radiation Management techniques directly modify the Earth’s radiation balance, and would take only a few years to have an effect on climate once they had been deployed. They do not treat the root cause of climate change (increased levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere) but because they act quickly, they could be useful in an emergency, for example to avoid reaching a climate ‘tipping point’. Methods considered in this study include:

• Increasing the surface reflectivity of the planet, by brightening human structures (eg by painting them white), planting of crops with a high reflectivity, or covering deserts with reflective material;
• Enhancement of marine cloud reflectivity;
• Mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions by injecting sulphate aerosols into the lower stratosphere;
• Placing shields or deflectors in space to reduce the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth.”

National Research Council 2015 pg. 43: “Rather than discuss every potential means of modifying Earth’s albedo that has been proposed, this report will focus on the two strategies that have received the most attention and which may most feasibly have a substantial climate impact: stratospheric aerosol injection and marine cloud brightening. The stratospheric aerosol and marine boundary layer cloud schemes are the ones that have been most extensively studied so far, and are also the ones that are the closest to being deployable in the limited sense of technical ability to inject sufficient material into the atmosphere to cause a significant (if not necessarily well controlled) modification to Earth’s albedo.”

3.National Research Council 2015:

“The observed cooling following large eruptions provided much of the initial stimulus for the idea that albedo modification could help offset effects of warming due to anthropogenic CO2 increase, and attempts to model the observed effects of volcanic eruptions can provide some insight into the complexity of the processes and some of the unknowns that still need to be addressed. The climate effects of a single pulse of aerosols such as is produced by volcanoes would differ in important ways from the effects of a sustained effort to maintain a persistent aerosol layer (Box 3.3). Nonetheless, volcanoes provide an excellent opportunity to test and improve our understanding of relevant physical processes.” pg. 59

“There is ample evidence that cloud albedo is strongly affected by aerosol particles, and that mankind is able to influence the albedo of clouds. Figure 3.16 shows an example of “ship tracks,” bright areas of clouds produced by aerosol particles in the exhaust emissions of commercial cargo ships which act as CCN [cloud-condensation nuclei] in the marine boundary layer off the coast of California. Ship tracks were first reported in satellite observations by Conover (1966). These plumes are emitted by large, mostly commercial ships motoring at speeds of 20-30 kts and emitting particles at rates of 10^19 particles/s with ambient windspeeds of 5 to 15 m/s (Hobbs et al., 2000).” pg. 105

4. “Feasibility studies (based on models, as yet untested in the field) suggest that it may be possible to introduce aerosols into the stratosphere that can produce significant reduction in incoming sunlight (1 W/m^2 or more) with few if any major technological innovations required. Direct costs of deployment of a stratospheric aerosol layer of sufficient magnitude to offset global mean radiative forcing of CO2 have been estimated to be at least an order of magnitude less than the cost of decarbonizing the world’s economy. Although these cost estimates do not include an appropriate monitoring system or indemnification for damages from albedo modification actions, they are small enough that decisions are likely to be based primarily on considerations of potential benefits and risks, and not primarily on the basis of direct cost.” National Research Council 2015 pg. 7

5. Three major reports on SRM (from the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, the Bipartisan Policy Center, and the National Research Council) all make clear statements to this effect early on:

• “The safest and most predictable method of moderating climate change is to take early and effective action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases. No geoengineering method can provide an easy or readily acceptable alternative solution to the problem of climate change.” Royal Society 2009 pg. ix
• “This task force strongly believes that climate remediation technologies are no substitute for controlling risk through climate mitigation (i.e. reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases) and climate adaptation (i.e. enhancing the resilience of man-made and natural systems to climate changes).” Bipartisan Policy Center 2011 pg. 3
• “Recommendation 1: Efforts to address climate change should continue to focus most heavily on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions in combination with adapting to the impacts of climate change because these approaches do not present poorly defined and poorly quantified risks and are at a greater state of technological readiness.” National Research Council 2015 pg. 3

6. “The Royal Society 2009 report Geoengineering the climate: science, governance and uncertainty concluded that solar radiation management (SRM) does not present an alternative to GHG reductions (see Box 1.1 for more details). However, it may one day be a useful way to augment mitigation and adaptation responses, and it may be the only option for reducing global temperatures quickly in the event of a climate emergency.” SRMGI 2011 pg. 11

“Geoengineering methods could however potentially be useful in future to augment continuing efforts to mitigate climate change by reducing emissions, and so should be subject to more detailed research and analysis.” Royal Society 2009 pg. ix

“Although there are ongoing efforts at climate adaptation in many communities, both humans and ecosystems face substantial challenges in adapting to the varied impacts of climate change over the coming century. For that reason, it may be prudent to examine additional options for limiting the risks from climate change (namely CDR and albedo modification), which could contribute to a broader portfolio of responses, even as mitigation and adaptation remain the primary emphasis. The Committee evaluated CDR and albedo modification within this broader portfolio of climate response.” National Research Council 2015 pg. ix (‘albedo modification’ is used in this report to refer to SRM)

7. Two examples of technologies which were (or are) subject to some kind of governance while under development, and which we have seen compared to SRM:

Recombinant DNA (rDNA): In the 1970s, scientists researching rDNA imposed guidelines on themselves to restrict certain types of research. We have heard both that this is and is not a good precedent for how SRM governance could work:

On the one hand, this is an example of successful self-governance from within a scientific field. Jane Long brought our attention to it as a possible precedent for SRM; see GiveWell’s non-verbatim summary of a conversation with Jane C.S. Long, June 1, 2012.

On the other hand, Schäfer et al. 2013 points out that the potential problems with rDNA were primarily technical, while much of the concern directed towards SRM has to do with public perceptions and political ramifications, and argues that self-governance will not adequately address these issues.

Ocean fertilization: This is a method of geoengineering that falls into the category of carbon dioxide removal (CDR), discussed above. Ocean fertilization has been the subject of international agreements to restrict research, in the form of resolutions by the Convention on Biological Diversity, the London Convention (LC) and the London Protocol (LP). The LC and LP have also adopted an Ocean Fertilization Assessment Framework, used to determine whether proposed experiments should be considered ‘legitimate scientific research’ or not, and are considering becoming involved in the regulation of marine geoengineering activities. These agreements are not legally binding. This form of governance provides an example of the process by which an international body develops guidelines for a controversial research area. SRMGI 2011 (pgs. 33-35) discusses the international mechanisms around ocean fertilization, and how they relate to SRM governance, in some depth.

8. Table S.1 from the National Research Council 2015 (pg. 4) describes some differences between SRM (which the report calls ‘albedo modification’) and carbon dioxide removal, another type of geoengineering:

9. “Because air, land, and the upper ocean respond quickly to changes in radiative forcing, an abrupt termination of albedo modification would result in rapid warming, with global mean temperatures rising within a decade or two to levels close to what would have been experienced without albedo modification (Jones et al., 2013; Matthews and Caldeira, 2007). The possibility of rapid warming is a novel and potentially severe risk not present in the unmodified high-CO2 state, in which temperature increases more slowly over time. As a result, the choice of a climate future in which a high CO2 concentration is compensated by a high degree of albedo modification risks putting Earth’s climate in a precarious state. Phasing albedo modification in or out over many decades, such as might be done to give human and natural systems a chance to better adapt to the resulting temperature change (MacMartin et al., 2014; Wigley, 2006), would reduce the time span over which Earth was subject to termination risk, but an abrupt termination risk will always be present if albedo modification is being used to counter a substantial fraction of the CO2 forcing.” National Research Council 2015 pg. 63

10. “Albedo modification can in principle reduce the annually averaged global mean temperature to a given target level, but the resulting climate will be different in a number of important ways from the low-CO2 climate with natural albedo. There is potential for substantial consequences to other aspects of the climate system, including precipitation; regional temperature; atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns; stratospheric temperature, chemistry, and dynamics; and the amount and characteristics of sunlight reaching the surface (see sections in Chapter 3 on Modeling and Environmental Consequences).” National Research Council 2015 pg. 40

“3. Ozone depletion. Aerosol particles in the stratosphere serve as surfaces for chemical reactions that destroy ozone in the same way that water and nitric acid aerosols in polar stratospheric clouds produce the seasonal Antarctic ozone hole. For the next four decades or so, when the concentration of anthropogenic ozone-depleting substances will still be large enough in the stratosphere to produce this effect, additional aerosols from geoengineering would destroy even more ozone and increase damaging ultraviolet flux to Earth’s surface.” Robock 2008 pg. 15

11. “Because air, land, and the upper ocean respond quickly to changes in radiative forcing, an abrupt termination of albedo modification would result in rapid warming, with global mean temperatures rising within a decade or two to levels close to what would have been experienced without albedo modification (Jones et al., 2013; Matthews and Caldeira, 2007). The possibility of rapid warming is a novel and potentially severe risk not present in the unmodified high-CO2 state, in which temperature increases more slowly over time. As a result, the choice of a climate future in which a high CO2 concentration is compensated by a high degree of albedo modification risks putting Earth’s climate in a precarious state. Phasing albedo modification in or out over many decades, such as might be done to give human and natural systems a chance to better adapt to the resulting temperature change (MacMartin et al., 2014; Wigley, 2006), would reduce the time span over which Earth was subject to termination risk, but an abrupt termination risk will always be present if albedo modification is being used to counter a substantial fraction of the CO2 forcing.” National Research Council 2015 pg. 63

12. “Research may generate its own momentum and create a constituency in favour of large-scale research and even deployment. On the other hand, ignorance about SRM technology may not diminish the likelihood of its use, and in fact might increase it.” SRMGI 2011 pg. 9

“The climate science community has been aware of the possibility of performing SRM for decades. However, most researchers have shied away from working in this area, in part because of a concern that the more that is known, the greater the chance that someone will try to do it. Although such concerns may have been valid in the past, we believe that the world has now passed a tipping point. In our view, the risks today of not knowing whether and how SRM might work are greater than any risks associated with performing such research.” Morgan, Nordhaus and Gottlieb 2013 pgs. 40-41

13. SRMGI 2011 goes into some detail about possibilities for the development of governance mechanisms. “Chapter 4: Governance of Research and Other Sociopolitical Considerations” in National Research Council 2015 contains a useful summary of the main governance discussions (including papers, workshops and other reports) to date.

There are two issues on which we have seen widespread agreement:

• Transparency and openness. Public suspicion or hostility towards SRM research is considered a significant problem. Ensuring that the public is aware of what research is being undertaken and why, as well as making experimental results publicly available, are seen as important steps to reduce this kind of suspicion, while also allowing scientists and governments to keep track of what research is being done by whom.
• Ensuring that research is directed towards producing beneficial outcomes. Research should aim to improve society’s understanding of the impacts and potential risks of SRM, with the end goal to protect the collective interests of humanity, broadly construed (not the interests of, for example, a certain research lab, nation or private interest).

Other important questions about how to govern research remain open:

• What exactly counts as SRM research? Much of the research that contributes to scientific understanding of SRM also contributes to other scientific fields (for example, atmospheric science or general climate change research). Applying regulations or restrictions to studies based on whether or not their stated purpose is geoengineering may cause researchers to hide their intentions in order to avoid these restrictions. A different way to define which research is subject to governance would be to base it on the activities being carried out (e.g., restricting field tests which involve injecting particles into the atmosphere, but leaving computer modeling studies largely unrestricted).
• What kind of SRM research should be subject to governance? Governance could involve restricting certain types of research, but need not only relate to restrictions; a governance scheme could also serve the purpose of increasing transparency, or steering which research is undertaken. There is a clear case that experiments that pose direct physical risks via unintended side effects on the climate should be subject to some form of restriction. It is less obvious that other types of research (such as indoor experiments or climate simulations) should be restricted in any way. Reasons given to place restrictions even on less risky research usually include ‘slippery slope’ arguments (discussed above) or concerns that more geoengineering research could erode the political will to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (the ‘risk-compensation’ or ‘moral hazard’ argument). It could also be argued that less risky experiments should be left out of governance arrangements entirely, on the grounds that compliance with such arrangements can be costly (which could result in lower output of potentially valuable research). An intermediate position is that all types of SRM research should be included in a governance scheme, but that certain types of ‘safe’ research should be allowed to continue unrestricted within this scheme as long as they comply with other aspects of the scheme (e.g. transparency requirements). In each case it is not straightforward to establish the boundary between ‘dangerous’ and ‘safe’ research.
  Two examples of attempts to classify types of research according to how much governance they need:
  • Table 3.1 in SRMGI 2011 (pg. 26) attempts to divide potential SRM activities according to whether they have “negligible direct risk” or “potentially direct risks”. It describes 5 types of SRM activities, and includes “non-hazardous studies”, “laboratory studies or passive observations of nature” and “small field trials” in the former category, with “medium and large-scale field trials” and “deployment” in the latter category. The table does not clarify the boundary between small and medium field trials.
  • Parson and Keith 2013 (pg. 1279) suggests setting two thresholds: a low threshold, below which research may proceed with minimal governance, and a high threshold, above which all research would be subject to a moratorium. There would remain a large “gray zone” between these two thresholds; Parson and Keith predict that experiments in this middle area would be unlikely to be pursued at this time even without an explicit ban.
• What form should governance take? Possible approaches to governance include:
  • Researcher-driven codes of conduct or community norms. This is essentially the process by which research in most scientific fields is governed. This kind of governance is unofficial and difficult to enforce, and thus may not be sufficient for SRM research.
  • National regulations. In states with well-developed legal systems, legislation to regulate research into SRM could be quickly implemented and effectively enforced. However, relying on this method of governance may result in states acting in their own self-interest, rather than according to global consensus.
  • International bodies, treaties, or agreements. Existing international bodies could take on the task of governing SRM research, or a new body could be created. International governance mechanisms are likely to be widely considered legitimate, but may be difficult to establish.

We do not have a strong view on how an appropriate governance scheme should be structured.

14. “It is important to give careful thought to the mechanisms for governing research on albedo modification, since they may later form part of the basis for a mechanism for governing sanctioned or unsanctioned deployment should a choice ever be made to proceed to that stage. Albedo modification will test international relationships in unprecedented ways. Although coordinated international efforts to deal with global scale threats have been successful in the past, such as the Montreal Protocol, no similar international effort has been undertaken to address the sort of deliberate global alteration that would be involved in albedo modification.
Questions that will likely need to be addressed in any future international agreement governing albedo modification include:

1. How is it decided when the benefit to albedo modification will outweigh the harm? What metric should be used?
2. What obligation do the acting parties have to compensate others for damages, anticipated or otherwise, caused by albedo modification? Who decides causality and how is it determined?
3. Who decides what is benefit versus harm, and on what time and space scales are such determinations made?”

National Research Council 2015 pgs. 149-150

15. The two projects ‘Climate Geoengineering Governance’ and ‘Global Governance of Climate Engineering’ explicitly focus on governance. After reading descriptions of the other projects (from their websites, in most cases), we determined that the following were also at least partially related to governance:

• European Transdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering (EuTRACE)
• Climate Engineering: Risks, Challenges, Opportunities?
• Integrated assessment of Geoengineering Programme (IAGP)
• Sustainable Interactions with the Atmosphere (SIWA)
• Aerosol intervention technologies to cool the climate: costs, benefits, side effects, and governance (COOL)
• The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management
• Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM)
• Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER)
• G360
• Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts

16. Four major reports have assisted our investigation:

• Royal Society 2009
• Bipartisan Policy Center 2011
• SRMGI 2011 (where SRMGI stands for the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative)
• National Research Council 2015

The Royal Society and the Bipartisan Policy Center each funded their respective reports. The other two reports were funded as follows:

• “The Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative is co-convened by the following organisations: Environmental Defense Fund… the Royal Society… TWAS [The World Academy of Sciences]… SRMGI was funded by the three convening organisations, and by contributions from: the Carbon War Room… Zennström Philanthropies… the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research”. SRMGI 2011 pg. 4
• “This study was supported by the National Academy of Sciences, the U.S. intelligence community, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Energy (the Statement of Task for the Committee can be found in Appendix A).” National Research Council 2015 pg. 1

17. The main private philanthropist we are aware of in this area is Bill Gates, who personally finances the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER). FICER supports projects across a range of areas, including some projects related to SRM and SRM governance. For example, FICER has provided financial support to the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI), which was created in 2010 following the Royal Society 2009 report on geoengineering.

FICER website 2015:

• “Grants for research are provided to Harvard University from gifts made by Mr. Bill Gates from his personal funds. The activities of the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research fall outside the scope of activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. FICER is not a Foundation project and has no relationship with it.”
• “The fund supports a wide range of projects such as:
  • climate related technology and policy analysis;
  • modeling the climate system;
  • developing technologies for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere;
  • researching approaches to reduce planetary absorption of solar radiation; and
  • holding international workshops to discuss governance for climate intervention technology.”

SRMGI 2011 pg. 7:

• “In September 2009, the Royal Society published a report that reviewed ideas for deliberately intervening in the climate to counteract global warming – techniques collectively described as ‘geoengineering’ (Royal Society 2009). The report recommended that the scientific and governance challenges posed by geoengineering should be explored in more detail, and that future work should take into account the significant differences between the two classes of methods: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM).
  As its own contribution to taking forward the 2009 report’s recommendations, in March 2010 the Royal Society entered into a partnership with the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) and TWAS, the academy of sciences for the developing world, to look in greater depth at the governance issues raised by research into SRM methods. This project is known as the Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI).”
• “SRMGI was funded by the three convening organisations, and by contributions from: the Carbon War Room… Zennström Philanthropies… the Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research.”

18.  As of this page’s publication, the spreadsheet of geoengineering projects displays a figure around $7 million in the “TOTAL: Current annualized funding” cell (not $11 million as stated on our geoengineering page). This figure updates automatically based on the dates of each project, so the change in total since the publication of our investigation into geoengineering implies that projects with approximately $4 million in funding have reached completion since then.

19. The two projects ‘Climate Geoengineering Governance’ and ‘Global Governance of Climate Engineering’ explicitly focus on governance. After reading descriptions of the other projects (from their websites, in most cases), we determined that the following were also at least partially related to governance:

• European Transdisciplinary Assessment of Climate Engineering (EuTRACE)
• Climate Engineering: Risks, Challenges, Opportunities?
• Integrated assessment of Geoengineering Programme (IAGP)
• Sustainable Interactions with the Atmosphere (SIWA)
• Aerosol intervention technologies to cool the climate: costs, benefits, side effects, and governance (COOL)
• The Ethics of Geoengineering: Investigating the Moral Challenges of Solar Radiation Management
• Sustainable Climate Risk Management (SCRiM)
• Fund for Innovative Climate and Energy Research (FICER)
• G360
• Geoengineering Climate: Technical Evaluation and Discussion of Impacts

Current annualized funding for these projects, according to our estimates from 2013, is around $6 million.

20. Royal Society 2009

21. Bipartisan Policy Center 2011

22. SRMGI 2011

23. National Research Council 2015