活动时间：Tuesday, 3 February 2026 from 4:30pm to 6:00pm
活动地点：Life and Mind Building, Lecture Theatre 1 & 2, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3EL
活动介绍：
Oxford Networks for the Environment (ONE) annual lecture followed by panel discussion and drinks reception - all welcome
Speaker: Professor Gideon Henderson, Professor of Earth Sciences, and former Defra Chief Scientific Advisor
Abstract: Even with stringent and rapid reductions in emission of greenhouse gases it is clear, and has been since the Paris agreement in 2015, that we will need to remove hundreds of billions of tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere to keep warming below 2oC. More than 200 companies are now pursuing this CO2 removal (CDR), using a wide range of approaches. More than $10bn has been invested in a voluntary CDR market which, by some projections, will grow to $100bn per year. Most approaches to CDR are novel, untested, and still at small scale. Whether they actually deliver the quantity of CDR claimed, and whether that removal is permanent and in addition to natural carbon uptake remain open questions. Accurate and robust measurement and verification of CDR also remains a significant challenge. And the consequences of CDR approaches to the wider environment are under-investigated.
CDR presents both a challenge and a dilemma to environmental scientists and regulators. We urgently need to develop approaches to CDR at large scale if we want to prevent dangerous climate change, but the precautionary principle guides us to pursue such major interventions with care. This challenge becomes more acute as countries build CDR into their future emission commitments and as compliance markets develop, requiring regulation that both promotes CDR innovation and protects the environment. This lecture will ask: what do we need to do, as the demand for CDR credits grows, to ensure that credits have real climate value and are not causing unintended environmental harm.
Biography: Gideon is an environmental scientist and advisor with particular expertise as a geochemist researching surface-earth processes related to climate, the carbon cycle and the oceans.
From 2019 to 2025 he working 80% as the Chief Scientific Advisor and Director General for Science and Analysis at the UK Government Department, Defra (Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). In addition to his work at Oxford, Gideon is Chair of the Met Office Science Advisory Committee, the Senior Independent Member of NERC Council, and a Member of the Advisory Board for the UN Decade of Ocean Science.
Programme
Welcome by Prof Heidi Johansen-Berg, Pro-Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives
Keynote by Prof Gideon Henderson
Panel discussion:
Dr Steve Smith, Arnell Associate Professor of Greenhouse Gas Removal
Dr Jessica Omukuti, Research Fellow on the Politics of Net Zero in the Global South
Chaired by Prof Rosalind Rickaby, Chair of Geology, Department of Earth Sciences
Update on the Oxford Networks for the Environment by Prof Jim Hall, Professor of Climate and Environmental Risks, and Chair of ONE Network, Environmental Change Institute
