Reversing Climate Change: The Logistics of Carbon Sequestration

As efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions are falling well short of global targets, there is growing acceptance that they will need to be supplemented by the removal of GHGs already in the atmosphere.  It is predicted that this carbon sequestration process will have to be organised on a massive scale, possibly requiring, by 2050, an industry as large as today’s oil and sector to remove enough CO2 to achieve ‘net zero’ at a planetary level.  This research seminar will examine the nature and extent of the logistics operations that will be needed to capture, liquidise, transport and store billions of tonnes of sequestered CO2 over the next few decades.

Professor McKinnon was KLU’s first Dean of Programs and Head of Logistics.  Over an academic career spanning four decades he has conducted research on many different aspects of logistics and supply chain management.  Much of his work has focused on the environmental sustainability of logistical activities. He published his first journal paper on the impact of logistics on CO2 emissions in 1994 and since then has undertaken numerous studies on the measurement and mitigation of freight transport emissions, both in academic projects and for organisations such as the World Bank, the European Commission and the International Transport Forum.  He was a lead author of the transport chapter in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate  Change’s 5th Assessment report (2014) and in 2018  published a book on Decarbonising Logistics.