Plastic Podcast Episode 20: The Future of Plastics and Climate Action
Future of Plastics: Can We Make Them Carbon Negative? In this episode of Plastic Podcast, host Clark Marchese interviews Dr. Vassilis Daioglou, a Senior Researcher at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency. They explore the potential pathways for reducing plastic's impact on climate change using integrated assessment models. Dr. Daioglou discusses three key strategies: pricing emissions from burning plastics, enhancing recycling efforts, and using bio-based materials. Learn how these models project a net negative carbon emission from plastics and what it means for our future. Dive into the complexities of the circular bioeconomy and discover how innovative approaches could turn plastics from a problem into a climate solution. Tune in for an insightful discussion on sustainability and climate action.
Episode Guests: Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Browse Dr. Daioglou’s publications on Google Scholar
More information about the episode and the Plastic Podcast
Episode Transcript and more information on the Pine Forest Media Website
Follow Pine Forest Media on Instagram @pineforestmedia
Hosted, produced, and edited by Clark Marchese
Cover art and PFM logo by Laurel Wong.
Theme music by Tadeo Cabellos
Transcript:
[00:00:09.680] - Clark
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of Plastic Podcast, the show that tells the science and the story of our relationship with plastic. Today, we are talking about the future of plastics, what we can do to reduce their impact on climate change, and whether or not we can even make them carbon negative. We're also going to learn what in the world as an integrated assessment model. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and let's get started. Now, there are a couple of things to make clear at the start of this episode. First, it is focused on the emissions contributing to climate change and the effectiveness of potential strategies and policies to help us reach climate goals. While this episode will touch on some of the political, social, and economic costs associated with plastic and associated with these strategies, we will not solve for them today. That is a job for policymakers. Today, we have Dr. Vassilis Daioglou, a Senior Researcher at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and a Guest Researcher at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development. Dr. Daioglou develops and uses integrated assessment models to investigate different possible pathways for meeting climate and other sustainability goals.
[00:01:27.580] - Clark
In this episode, we discuss how his research uses data-based models to show us a number of potential pathways forward. And today, we're talking about how he used this type of method to propose a couple of potential pathways forward in terms of the way we produce, use, and dispose of plastic. Now, one thing that Dr. Daioglou told me in our email exchange before the interview that really struck me was that the solutions that are proposed almost always go against current consumer behaviors and short term business and government interests. The point is that some of these solutions that are proposed will help us work towards meeting our climate goals. They are not exactly clean cut in the real world. The point is that we've already pumped enough greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere that major changes are inevitable. The balance between how many of those changes are intentional decisions made by humans and governments and how many of them are forced upon us by the Earth is yet to be determined. The purpose of Dr. Daioglou's work is to help us weigh our options and inform our decisions. Without further ado, let's get started. All right, Dr. Daioglou, welcome to the show.
[00:02:40.780] - Clark
Maybe I could have you start by just introducing yourself and telling us a bit about your research.
[00:02:45.390] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yeah. I'm Vassilis Daioglou. I'm a Senior Researcher at the PBL, Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, and a guest researcher at the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, based in Utrecht University, also in the Netherlands. I'm an integrated Integrated Assessment Modeler, I develop and use these types of models in order to assess and investigate different possible pathways for meeting climate and other sustainability goals.
[00:03:11.650] - Clark
Integrated Assessment Model, that might be a new vocab' word for some of us. Can you tell us what these are and how they can be used to address climate change and climate solutions?
[00:03:23.260] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
These models, they aim to represent the interaction between human and natural systems. I'll do How various human activities affect the natural environment, but also the feedbacks, how the changes in the natural environment may affect human activities. For instance, we model energy use, land use, food production and consumption, the production of energy resources, their trade around the world, how is energy used in our society? How is it used in our buildings and industry, in the transport sector? What material resources do our societies use? When it comes to the implications of the natural environment, land use, deforestation. These are very important things that we look into, but also emissions. Climate change is obviously a very big thing. One of our main goals is to investigate a route that can help mitigate climate change. Basically, how do we avoid climate change or how do we minimize it? We run a lot of scenarios where we see what strategies would help us meet the climate goals set out in the Paris Agreement, so a 1.5 global mean temperature increase compared to pre-industrial times. We run these models and we see at what rate do we have to adopt renewables.
[00:04:34.090] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
What role does the energy system play? What role does the land system play in meeting these climate goals in order to make sure we can meet all of these goals at the same time? Or what are the trade offs that we may face.
[00:04:46.580] - Clark
Okay, let me try and summarize that just to make sure I understand you correctly. Essentially, what I'm hearing is that we use models based off of the relationships that we have with our environment, and we predict how the relationship will affect things in the future. Then you can manipulate certain variables, which theoretically we have under our control, and see how those changes might make a positive impact compared to the original projection.
[00:05:10.490] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes. One quick comment. We generally really avoid using the word predict. We don't have a crystal ball. We do not say what the future will be. We tend to do something that's called scenario analysis. We just change these variables, as you mentioned, and we wrote lots of different scenarios, lots of different possible futures. Then by investigating these different futures, how they differ, and how we see the interactions between the human and the natural system in all of these different futures, we hopefully get a better understanding of what our options are, what the synergies, The trade offs are the bottlenecks, the enabling conditions, and thus, hopefully, give policy advice, but also generally communicate to the public to create a better understanding of the situation we're in. We do not make predictions. We do not say in 2030 or 2050 or 2100, the world's It's going to be like this. We answer what-if questions. If this, then that. If you want to go in this direction, these are the critical elements you have to keep in mind.
[00:06:10.760] - Clark
Okay, got it. Projection, not prediction. It seems that you could have an integrated assessment model analyzing really any environmental focus you wanted. But today we're talking about plastic. The one you've worked on looks at how we can change the way we interact with plastic to reduce its effects on the planet in the future. You worked on an article that recognizes that plastic does have a contribution to climate change, a contribution we have analyzed on the show in previous episodes. We are aware that our consumption of plastic is projected to increase. This article proposes three pathways forward to reduce the way that plastic impacts our environment. Maybe we can run through each of these three pathways.
[00:06:51.490] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes, but before starting, let me give credit to the first author of the paper because I'm the second author. The first author was a PhD student of mine at the time. Now, he's a PhD, Paul De Stegmann, the real credit for this work really goes to him. Let me first take this step and explain for plastics, what is their role when it comes to emissions. They contribute to emissions in two possible ways. One is energy use during the production of plastics. This is where you burn gas, oil, or use renewable energy, something like that, to produce heat and electricity needed in the production of plastics. That's energy use in plastic production. Then plastics themselves are a little bit of an interesting oddity in the energy world because currently, most plastics are made from oil. You pump up oil, and this carbon is then converted into A chemical that then eventually becomes a plastic. The carbon atom itself is never emitted. It doesn't enter the atmosphere and doesn't contribute to climate change. The carbon in the plastic itself is climate-neutral so far. It may contribute to climate change at the so-called end of life of the plastic.
[00:08:02.320] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
If you burn that packaging, then in principle, that carbon atom is emitted and it contributes to climate change. Or if it degrades over time, this carbon atom might be emitted and contribute to climate change. But as long as it remains part of the plastic, it doesn't contribute to climate change. It's a locked atom of carbon in the plastic, in the material. In this study that Hall did, we looked at different end-of-life life strategies for plastics, and what do those mean concerning climate change? Essentially, we ran three different scenarios. First, they started with just our baseline scenario where the model does whatever it wants. In that case, what the model actually really liked doing was at the end of life of various plastics, it really liked to burn them because then it could produce heat and electricity that it could sell on and get a benefit. Of course, that meant that the carbon in the plastics was emitted. In this baseline scenario, you'd actually found a lot of emissions and a contribution to climate change from plastics. Then we said, Okay, this isn't good. Let's try to avoid this. We put the so-called emission price on the burning of plastics.
[00:09:13.510] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
We actually added a cost to that. All of a sudden, you found what the model really liked. It basically tricked us. It said, Okay, if you do not want me to emit this carbon, what I'm going to do is I'm going to divert it all to landfill. All of a sudden, the model just took all of the plastics and it landfilled them. Basically, it dups in the real world. But in the model world, this basically means I'm taking the carbon that's in the plastic and I'm sequestering it long term in a landfill, and it doesn't contribute to the climate anymore, so the model is really happy. We weren't that happy with that because obviously landfilling isn't a great solution. It may be, from a climate perspective, in this case, reasonably okay. But from a broader sustainability perspective, landfilling isn't a very good option as many other our metal problems. For example, the plastics may escape the landfill and enter water streams, enter the ocean, and create problems over there. So landfill isn't good. We want to run a circularity scenario where we try to increase recycling and see what happens there. We were able to change some of the parameters in the model to force it to have circularity.
[00:10:21.470] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
There what you see is all of a sudden this carbon is actually recycled. This solves a little bit both the climate problem and the pollution problem from landfilling. Of course, it does have implications in order to recycle at very high rates, to recycle, well, not all the plastics, that's technically impossible, but to recycle, let's say, 60 or 70 or 80% of all plastic waste, it means massive changes in how we collect plastics, the waste disposal systems, but also it should be technological development because there's only so much you can recycle before the materials start getting downgraded and our quality simply gets really low. Then the final scenario that we ran, and this is where we wanted to see, what if we can use plastics to actually help in the fight against climate change? This is where this concept of bioenergy becomes important. Something that is discussed a lot in the climate research, then it is controversial, is using biomass to produce fuels in the form of ethanol or things like that, but also to produce plastics. Then essentially You see what happens. If the biomasse is growing sustainably, so you do not contribute to deforestation or conversion of natural ends and things like that.
[00:11:39.500] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
In principle, while producing biomasse, carbon dioxide, which is in the atmosphere, is used during the photosynthesis phase of biomasse, and you grow biomasse in the form of a tree or grasses or things like that. So carbon goes from the atmosphere into the biomasse. Then you take that biomasse, you harvest it, you convert it into ethanol, and then let's say, into a plastic. This carbon atom has gone from the atmosphere into a plant and then into a plastic. Essentially, what you've done, you have a flow of carbon from the atmosphere into a product. You're actually removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It's so-called carbon dioxide removal. It can actually really help with reducing our climate change impact. It is discussed a lot in the climate research world, and it's not It's all without controversy, just to be clear about that. We're in a third scenario. We said, Okay, let's take the circularity that I just talked about so I can really reduce the emissions from plastics and actually make it into something that can take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
[00:12:44.400] - Clark
Okay, so These three pathways are, firstly, putting a price on the burning of plastic waste. Second is really ramping up our recycling efforts. Then the third one is using biosources instead of fossil fuel to produce plastic in the first place. Correct?
[00:12:59.070] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes. Combined It's a bit of the circularity, yes.
[00:13:02.350] - Clark
Okay, so I have a couple of follow-up questions. The first is having to do with something you mentioned about the carbon inside of a plastic being neutral. I'm wondering, was there a consideration for the emissions that were involved in extracting fossil fuels from the ground? Did they enter the equation in any way? Then I'm also wondering if for the biosources like grasses or plants or anything used to make plastic, I assume a lot of them could be done through industrial agriculture, which is a high carbon emitter. I'm wondering if these pre-production emissions were included in the equation at all?
[00:13:35.210] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Broadly speaking, yes. As an integrated assessment model, our aim is to model all emission sources. Yes, the emissions from the extraction of fossil fuels, those are included. Losses in the extraction of methane, the natural gas, that has a lot of losses, so we include those. Yeah, we do cover all emission sources. Now, about the production of biomasse. As an integrated assessment model, We do include all land uses. For instance, emissions from the conversion of lands and things like that are included in our specific modeling. We do state this explicitly, we do assume that the biomasse is produced in a way that would try to limit harm. That is explicit. This is also where the big controversy when it comes to biomasse as a feedstock, not just for plastics, but for fuels, is very controversial because in principle, if it's done correctly, it can help a Some people would even say necessary to meet climate goals. But if it's done incorrectly, it can actually do a lot of harm, not just from a climate perspective, but also from a sustainable development perspective. The food versus fuel debate. If you produce biomasse, but it's done in very bad management practices in places where it isn't appropriate, it could actually lead to an increase in food prices.
[00:14:55.120] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
It could lead to massive insecurity there. It could also, if it's done through industrial agriculture, then obviously land tenure issues come into place, land grabbing, and things like that. Our goal is to see what is the potential, the technical potential. The social and political potential, that's a different matter. These are issues that we recognize, but we didn't look into that. We just wanted to see, is this a good idea from a technical perspective? Can it help? If it can help, then we have to start really dissecting what is the feasible potential. Okay.
[00:15:32.010] - Clark
Then this isn't exactly a question about the article itself, but as about the process or the experience you have as a researcher. When you're talking about a project like this, trying to put together this model, how do you go about thinking of every single detail like that? What is it like as a researcher?
[00:15:48.320] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yeah. I mean, just also to be clear, I don't work alone. I'm part of these integrated assessment models, typically, it's quite a team of researchers. In our case, it depends Depending on how you measure the team, it's somewhere between 15 and 40 people working on this model. The specific model that I'm working on has actually, it first started in the '80s. It's more than 35 years old. It's a process that is constantly ongoing and constantly been improved. I myself don't work on everything. I have an expertise within the team. But yeah, I mean, ultimately, the key words in this work is systems thinking. You always have to think from the broader's perspective, how all of these things interact with each other. We try to avoid a tunnel thinking and siloed thinking as much as possible. It's really about collaborating. It's really about getting lots of different perspectives in and trying to see, Okay, what does this mean about my work? But systems thinking is really the starting point. But it's also a very rewarding process simply because of its interdisciplinarity, the amount of people you talk to and the amount of perspectives that you try to get and try to incorporate.
[00:17:01.020] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
But of course, it also means that it has a lot of critiques because you're playing in so many fields. But that's also a bit of the fun. As long as the critiques aren't polite, it's always interesting to talk to them.
[00:17:11.380] - Clark
That sounds like such an amazing collaboration. The next couple of questions are definition questions because we have some terms that I want to make sure everyone is clear on. We've discussed a couple of them so far, but one that gets brought up in the article a lot is circular bioeconomy. What exactly does that mean?
[00:17:28.120] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
In the For example, circular bioeconomy has a real focus just on plastics, but circular bioeconomy is actually a way broader topic than just plastics. But this is basically the idea of having a biogenic carbon, bio-based carbon, carbon that is provided from plants, grasses, trees, and things like that, somehow helping our societies providing the services we demand, be it in the form of material services. Think of the timber in construction. Instead instead of steel and cement, or at least to an extent, substituting steel and cement, which are very big problems when it comes to climate change because they're extremely energy-intensive, but also the mining operations are a huge problem. Maybe we can substitute steel and cement with timber. It's generally the use of bio-based products in order to help meet a human services that are currently met through more polluting means.
[00:18:26.810] - Clark
Okay, circular bio economy. Everybody got that? The next one then is bio-based carbon sequestration. Now, if I was going to venture a guess, this is referring to when you mentioned that if we use plant-based materials to produce plastics, those plants have pulled carbon dioxide from the air as they were growing, and then that goes into the plastic and not into the atmosphere. Is that correct?
[00:18:49.990] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes, that is basically bio-based carbon sequestration. In principle, it can happen with plastics. It can happen with what I said with timber because if you produce a tree and then that tree is used to construct a building, in principle, for the lifetime of that building, as long as you don't burn the building or burn the timber after the building's life, that carbon is sequestered. But just let me repeat again. If this is actual sequestration, also depends a lot on making sure that the timber or the biomasse is produced in a sustainable manner. Bio-based carbon sequestration only happens under very specific circumstances. This is the bit that has to be done correctly. To help help us in meeting climate goals. If it's not done correctly, it can even work against us.
[00:19:34.900] - Clark
Okay. Then I also am wondering if a switch to more renewable energy sources goes into this model as well?
[00:19:41.280] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes. In the model, definitely, because as I said, it's a total system model, so it covers all of our energy uses and demands. Basically, meeting climate goals, our emissions have to go to zero globally in the next few years, and ultimately, renewables play a massive role there.
[00:19:59.780] - Clark
The The next question is about the pricing that you put on the burning of plastic. Did this model go into how that would potentially be implemented? Who would be in charge of doing that? What the policies would look like? What the funds would be used for? Any of those types of questions?
[00:20:15.760] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
We are using a very stylized use of the carbon price, something that isn't happening currently in the real world, and there are big questions of what it could mean. It's important to know that in the model, the carbon price is a little bit... It doesn't necessarily We represent a price in the real world that we would see. It's also just a knob in the model to try to push the model in a certain direction. Not all of the decisions, but some of the decisions of the model are made based on relative prices. If you want the model to meet a certain emission limit, you can say, Okay, emissions become expensive, so the model makes the required decisions to avoid that. We assume the carbon price that is uniform globally, so across every single country, it's the same, and it is also applied perfectly on every single sector of the economy, both of which these assumptions are far from reality.
[00:21:08.700] - Clark
Okay. I guess if carbon is priced at that level on average across all sectors, we can expect a certain outcome It's up to policymakers whether or not to make that happen and how. Now, I know this model is created as an absolute ideals and that there are some real-world complications for achieving some of these policies, but let's imagine it was implemented perfectly according to the model. What does it project in terms of our ability to reduce plastic's contribution to climate change?
[00:21:36.140] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
What we showed in our analysis is that the final scenario, the circular bioeconomy scenario, in principle, and in this scenario, not all plastics were made of biomasse. Fossil fuel still played a role, simply because there isn't enough bioass, basically, to produce all the plastics while also using bioass for other decarbonization things. But in principle, what we We saw is the circular bioeconomy scenario. Plastics can not only contribute to reducing emissions, but circular plastics produced from biomasse can help us with these so-called negative emissions, carbon dioxide removal, this thing that I mentioned about taking carbon from the atmosphere, putting it in the plastics, and then recycling it constantly in a circularity loop. Plastics can contribute there a lot, and that's possibly the most optimistic part of the analysis. That's the main way that plastics really contribute to mitigating climate change, I think.
[00:22:35.510] - Clark
Okay, so if I'm understanding correctly, this model does project a net negative carbon emission from plastics?
[00:22:42.600] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
In the final scenario, it did lead to net negative emissions, yes. In the circular bioeconomy, yes.
[00:22:48.840] - Clark
Wow. Okay, so then the next question is, we have all these ambitious ideas. The research is done. There's a team of 40 people working on it. Where are we hoping that these sorts of ambitious suggestions are being sent? Who do we hope is receiving them and taking action?
[00:23:03.470] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
We're scientists, and our work is mostly focused in scientific research. A lot of our work contributes to, for instance, the reports that come out of the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel for climate change. They have these assessment reports that come out be reality. The last one, the sixth assessment report, came out in 2022. We contribute to the discussion about, Okay, what are our options for reducing emissions? We walk in different What can our sectors do? What can our behavioral changes do? And what is the role of lifestyle change and behavioral change, technological change, economic change? What is the role of all of these things in reducing emissions? That's our primary audience. Of course, we do see interest also from large private organizations, from industrial organizations that see this research and they want to understand, Okay, under which circumstances and why exactly are the assumptions in the model that leads to these outcomes so that then industry itself can start investigating, Okay, what is it that they can do if they want to go in this direction as well?
[00:24:05.990] - Clark
As we start to come to the end of the episode, there's a question I like to ask at the end of most of my interviews, which is an attempt to end things with a note of optimism. I typically ask if there's one piece of recent good news, but since you're someone whose work is particularly future-oriented, I might ask you if you feel hopeful about a pathway forward?
[00:24:26.440] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
I get that question a lot. I guess it depends a lot on the day. But generally speaking, and I get this a lot from my students, it's basically a standard question always from students, is there hope? I've been conducting this research for approximately 14 years at this point. I have seen a clear, clear, clear shift in political agendas, but also in civil society concerning this matter. When I first started, these discussions weren't Climate change and all that was a niche discussion topic amongst a small scientific community. Well, not a small topic. It was a sizable scientific community. But as far as policy is concerned, it was just this climate thing that's happening and we might have to think about. Now, it centers stage in all policymaking in all elections, definitely in Europe, around the world. It's a massive discussion topic all the time at this point. It isn't just some crazies, some tree huggers or greens talking about this anymore. Everybody's talking about it. It's very high in the political agenda. That gives me hope because just 10 years ago, that wasn't the case. Now, one could argue too little, too late. That's not a useful.
[00:25:49.200] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
It's never too late. It's never too late. For instance, the Paris Agreement set out the 1.5 degree goal. The latest news are that 2023 was the first time that actually we had an entire year where the entire annual average is over 1.5 degrees. That doesn't mean that the goal is lost because we need a multi-annual averages to be above 1.5. But basically, we're getting very close to missing the 1.5 target. The way policy is going, we probably are going to miss it. But that doesn't mean that the fight gives up. That doesn't mean that, Oh, we missed the 1.5 goal. Let's give up. No. We have to continue trying as hard as possible because climate change is one of those problems that the worse it gets, the damages grow exponentially. If we don't meet 1.5, let's meet the next possible, the next highest we can meet, the next strongest goal. That's why you have to You have to remain optimistic and you have to keep shouting that this is something that we have to fight for.
[00:26:50.470] - Clark
I cannot agree more. Well, the last question is, is there anything we did not talk about today that you think we absolutely must mention in an episode about the future of plastic and climate change?
[00:27:01.080] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Yes, I do, because there's a gigantic elephant in the room that we haven't addressed, and that is, why do we need plastics? Consumption patterns, behavioral and lifestyle change, the overall stresses that we're putting on the natural environment, which translates the stresses into our societies. This is something that we do have to think about. Do we need this much demand of these products and these energy services and these services that the natural environment provides for us in the form of food, fuel, and things like that? Do we have to put so many pressures on the natural environment? This is something that we have to talk about a lot. This also goes back to the issue about if I'm hopeful or not, you are increasingly seeing such discussions being had. Instead of having the constant consumerism, what about sufficiency? It's still a bit of a niche conversation. When one browsers popular media and things like that, you do tend to get a bit disheartened with how consumerism is still a very big thing. But discussions are starting to be had, even in high-level policy areas of, is these levels of consumption a good thing? I think that's a gigantic elephant in the room that we have to talk about, and it's extremely, extremely relevant when it comes to climate and environmental problems.
[00:28:23.370] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Plastics are a part of that.
[00:28:26.250] - Clark
A lot of guests end up giving an answer that sounds somewhat similar to that. I I think it's an important piece of the puzzle, and I think more and more people are starting to understand that. If we can combine all these together, then I think we're on a good path. Well, this is the part where I say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show today. Thank you for teaching us about how these integrated assessment models work and also for your really important work in this space.
[00:28:50.120] - Dr. Vassilis Daioglou
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
[00:29:01.000] - Clark
You've been listening to Plastic Podcast. You can find more information about this week's guest and links to their work in the episode description. Cover art for the show was done by Laurel Wong, and the music you're listening to was done by Tadeo Khabitos. I am your host, Clark Marchese, and this episode was produced and engineered by me. So if you found it interesting, send it to someone you know. Plastic Podcast is part of a larger network of sciencey podcast called Pineforest Media. You can find more information about us in the episode description as well or on our website at pineforestpods. Com. We're also on Instagram and TikTok at Pineforest Media. We've got some interesting science podcast coming out this year, and a five-star rating across platforms and a review on Apple podcast is one of the best things you can do to help science communication like this reach more people and help the entire network grow. All right, that's all I have for you today, and we'll talk soon.
