Technical characteristics of a solar geoengineering deployment and implications for governance

Douglas G. MacMartin, Peter J. Irvine, Ben Kravitz and Joshua B. Horton

Climate Policy, 2019, vol. 19, issue 10, 1325-1339

Abstract: Consideration of solar geoengineering as a potential response to climate change will demand complex decisions. These include not only the choice of whether to deploy solar engineering, but decisions regarding how to deploy, and ongoing decision-making throughout deployment. Research on the governance of solar geoengineering to date has primarily engaged only with the question of whether to deploy. We examine the science of solar geoengineering in order to clarify the technical dimensions of decisions about deployment – both strategic and operational – and how these might influence governance considerations, while consciously refraining from making specific recommendations. The focus here is on a hypothetical deployment rather than governance of the research itself. We first consider the complexity surrounding the design of a deployment scheme, in particular the complicated and difficult decision of what its objective(s) would be, given that different choices for how to deploy will lead to different climate outcomes. Next, we discuss the on-going decisions across multiple timescales, from the sub-annual to the multi-decadal. For example, feedback approaches might effectively manage some uncertainties, but would require frequent adjustments to the solar geoengineering deployment in response to observations. Other decisions would be tied to the inherently slow process of detection and attribution of climate effects in the presence of natural variability. Both of these present challenges to decision-making. These considerations point toward particular governance requirements, including an important role for technical experts – with all the challenges that entails.Key policy insights Decisions about solar geoengineering deployment will be informed not only by political choices, but also by climate science and engineering.Design decisions will pertain to the spatial and temporal goals of a climate intervention and strategies for achieving those goals.Some uncertainty can be managed through feedback, but this would require frequent operational decisions.Some strategic decisions will depend on the detection and attribution of climatic effects from solar geoengineering, which may take decades.Governance for solar geoengineering deployment will likely need to incorporate technical expertise for making short-term adjustments to the deployment and conducting attribution analysis, while also slowing down decisions made in response to attribution analysis to avoid hasty choices.

Date: 2019
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DOI: 10.1080/14693062.2019.1668347

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