Carbon Removal
Identifying policies and actions to support responsible development and deployment of a diverse suite of carbon removal approaches.
Strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions — such as deploying renewable energy, improving energy efficiency and avoiding deforestation — will play the largest role in halting climate change. But they will not be enough on their own to keep temperature rise within the Paris Agreement’s target of 1.5 degrees C (2.7 degrees F) and avoid increasingly devastating climate impacts. To achieve this, authoritative scientific bodies agree that a significant amount of carbon removal will also be needed.
Reaching the Paris Agreement target requires achieving net zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by around midcentury and net zero across all greenhouse gases soon after. On the path to net-zero emissions, carbon removal will be required to counterbalance remaining emissions that cannot be abated due to technological or economic constraints. This includes emissions from sectors like aviation and agriculture, where no sustainable and cost-effective emissions reductions solutions currently exist at scale. After countries reach net zero, carbon removal is the only way to remove excess CO2 in the atmosphere that’s causing the worsening climate impacts we’re seeing today.
Both nature-based and technological approaches can remove CO2 from the atmosphere and store it through various means, such as in trees and plants, soils, underground geologic formations, the ocean and even in products like concrete. Different carbon removal approaches come with different potential risks and benefits, levels of technology readiness, costs, and suitability in different geographies. If done equitably and sustainably, carbon removal can provide economic benefits as well as local benefits that differ by CDR approach, in addition to climate mitigation.
WRI researches the opportunities and challenges associated with different carbon removal approaches. We identify priorities for building supply, driving demand and ensuring robust governance, and offer practical steps that policymakers and other stakeholders can take to scale carbon removal responsibly in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Cover Image by: Dave Gardner Creative/National Forest Foundation
There is broad scientific consensus that, along with emissions reductions, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) will be needed to limit temperature rise to 1.5 degrees C and to reach net-zero CO2 emissions by midcentury and net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions thereafter. However, there is little guidance on how countries can and should incorporate technological CDR in their climate plans as well as how these plans can help ensure that technological CDR is scaled up equitably and sustainably.
In our article, research and podcast episode, WRI identifies three major governance gaps related to managing mitigation deterrence; promoting equity; and improving measurement, reporting and verification (MRV), and explores the role that existing international bodies and processes may be able to play.
Image by Matthew TenBruggencate/Unsplash
