On Wednesday, the United States Department of Energy (DOE) granted a Secretary of Energy Achievement Award to a team including two Rausser College researchers, assistant Cooperative Extention specialist Daniel Sanchez and PhD candidate Bodie Cabiyo. The award, with a total of 32 recipients, is one of the highest internal, non-monetary recognitions that DOE employees and contractors can receive.
DOE recognized teams for advancements such as understanding crude oil characteristics, efforts in COVID-19 clinical testing at National Labs, and the development of high-performance computing systems to combat the coronavirus pandemic. Sanchez and Cabiyo's team "Getting to Neutral Carbon Emissions" was selected for their outstanding service and research contributions, both to the agency's mission and the benefit of the nation, in greenhouse gas emissions reduction scholarship.
The team's final report, titled “Getting to Neutral: Options for Negative Carbon Emissions in California,” provides a comprehensive study of technologies that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It offers frameworks for developing public policy and legislative action based on scientific data, in order to help California achieve carbon neutrality by 2045 or sooner. Sanchez and Cabiyo contributed research to help estimate the amount of forest biomass that can be used in negative emission pathways, as a result of managing one million acres of forest each year. They used economically-driven models to identify the most cost-efficient forest management strategies for the team's Forest Carbon Plan goals.
In the Department of Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, Sanchez studies carbon dioxide removal, bioenergy, and climate policy. With a background in engineering and energy systems, he analyzes the commercialization and deployment of carbon removal technologies. In the Energy and Resources Group, Cabiyo uses interdisciplinary approaches to understand land-based solutions to climate change. Currently, he is studying forest carbon systems and how new technologies impact emissions mitigation.
Learn more about the Getting to Neutral Carbon Emissions Team on the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory website. Find the full list of Secretary's Honor Award Recipients on the Department of Energy website.