This submit was co-written by Livia Duprez.
As we’ve beforehand written, carbon dioxide removing (CDR) is a key requirement for us to achieve the 1.5 diploma goal by 2050, with the IPCC claiming that each one roads result in CDR.
As we’ve seemed deeper into the CDR sector, we now have recognized the essential function of academia in spearheading catalytic analysis into the area – each when it comes to the theoretical underpinnings of assorted applied sciences, and when it comes to performing as an incubator for early-stage concepts.
Due to this fact, we thought it could be informative to supply a rating for universities which might be probably the most concerned in CDR. The goal is to assist numerous actors within the area higher perceive which educational establishments are on the vanguard of CDR analysis and improvement.
Earlier than delving deeper into the methodology, we wished to caveat the rankings by saying the methodology is a piece in progress, and because the trade develops, so will our methodology. In different phrases – suggestions may be very a lot welcome!
Collating the preliminary pool of universities to rank
The preliminary pool of universities that had been considered had been collated by means of a mix of two strategies, a prime down method and backside up method. The highest down method concerned desk analysis on what universities’ engagement with CDR has been, whereas the underside up method concerned quantifying the analysis outputs of assorted educational establishments.
Extra particularly, the prime down method concerned parsing by means of the highest 100 universities from the QS rankings and categorising whether or not they’re pursuing CDR analysis at scale by means of an initiative, division or analysis group.
The frequent development of universities was that they’ve three sorts of departmental association when creating CDR in universities:
- First is an unfocused analysis centre. Many power and setting departments, for instance, have some advert hoc analysis on Carbon Seize and Storage or power coverage and maybe a numerical mannequin on engineering of CDR applied sciences. That is the minimal requirement for a college to be on our CDR record.
- Second is CDR-specific college partnership comparable to CO2RE, an initiative that joins seven UK universities in funding and selling CDR analysis.
- Third is a CDR-focused, sole college division comparable to Georgia Tech’s DAC Heart or UCLA’s Institute for Carbon Administration.
Along with the above, we additionally examined how a lot cash university-linked firms had raised, as a gauge of the establishment’s observe document in serving to to nurture profitable CDR startups.
The backside up method concerned trying to find the highest hits of papers by CDR methodology on Google Scholar. Determine 1 exhibits what number of papers there are for every methodology googled. To begin with, we solely took the primary 10 papers per methodology.
Every paper had between one and eight authors, whom we linked to universities which might be engaged on CDR applied sciences.
We then merged the 2 databases collectively and created a listing of the highest 30 universities which might be engaged on CDR. Notice that we prioritized universities that analysis know-how on this area — some concentrate on different features of CDR, which we didn’t embody on this analysis. As an example, Columbia College’s CDRLaw, whereas very useful, was not included in these rankings.
Rating Methodology
The rank scoring was damaged down into 4 sections:
- Variety of researchers: 23%
2. Mixed weighted educational quotation efficiency: 30%
- All_citations
- Citations_since_2018
- H-index_all
- H-index_since_2018
- i10_index_all
- i10_index_since_2018
3. College firm influence: 20%
4. College program: 27%
- Unfocused division
- CDR-focused partnership
- CDR-focused division or initiative
Every college was then ranked primarily based on the scaled magnitude of those sub metrics above.
The outcomes from the college rating are as follows in Determine 2. The highest 5 universities are:
- Stanford
- Imperial Faculty London
- College of Zurich
- Australian Nationwide College
- College of Michigan
Every of the highest 5 universities has a lot of college members and devoted departments with a lot of citations — besides ETH Zurich. As an alternative, Zurich has been ranked very extremely as a consequence of its launch of Climeworks which is the main DAC firm on this planet with 108 patents, 10 vegetation and over 800 million USD invested into it which eclipses the remainder of the competitors.
College speciality has been weakly correlated with every of the colleges and has been related by looking at every of the web sites. It’s acknowledged that this isn’t essentially indicative of all of the analysis specialities inside every college and there could also be lacking information factors. The speciality tag is a primary try at attempting to map college specialities.
The taxonomy is as follows:
- BECCS — Bioenergy with Carbon Seize and Storage
- CCS — Carbon Seize and Storage
- DAC — Direct Air Seize
- UTL — Utilisation
- AFOLU — Agriculture, Forestry, and Different Land Use
- BLU — Blue Carbon
- OCN — Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement
- MIN — Mineralisation
- ERW — Enhanced Rock Weathering
For a extra in depth rationalization of CDR methodologies taxonomy, see right here.
AlliedOffsets offsets have developed a preliminary college rating system to tell stakeholders which universities are main in CDR analysis and exercise.
We stay up for suggestions from the market! For extra on our work in CDR, try our newest CDR report right here.