Stephanie Arcusa

Stephanie is from France and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions at Arizona State University, USA. She received a Bachelor’s degree in Earth Sciences from University College Cork, Ireland, a Master’s degree in Climate Science from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and a doctorate in Climate and Environmental Change from Northern Arizona University, USA. As a paleoclimatologist, Stephanie reconstructed changes in the environment (e.g. wildfire, floods, dust …) as it responds to climatic changes (e.g., temperature, precipitation…) through time. In this work, Stephanie also saw the fingerprint of human activities on the climate and the environment and this has led her to decide to transition her career to help stop the change in climate occurring today due to human activities. Her work now consists of developing ways to halt climate change. Over her academic training, Stephanie has led or been part of various projects that further emission reduction at the local, city, and higher education levels. She is exploring three related ideas to closing the carbon loop and support the development of a new carbon economy. First, she is developing a framework for the certification of carbon sequestration by exploring what certificates are, how they work, and how they can guarantee safe, equitable, and successful sequestration. As part of the work, Stephanie is developing ways to include carbon intensive sectors of the economy into the framework so they can also transition to a circular carbon economy. Finally, Stephanie is taking part in an effort led by the Los Alamos National Laboratory to plan the decarbonization of the intermountain west region of the USA through a place-based approach focusing on hydrogen, biomass, and carbon capture technologies.