Natural solutions focus on enhancing carbon sequestration in the land sink, through, for example, protecting ecosystems, rewilding and reforestation. Technical solutions include direct air capture and carbon storage (DACCS), which takes CO2 out of the air and stores it permanently underground. Other processes which are described as carbon removals do not actually remove carbon from the atmosphere and store it. These include carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), both of which capture emissions from polluting sites (and not the atmosphere) and store them permanently underground or temporarily in products.
Interest in CDR among policymakers and businesses has exploded in recent years. However, the role of carbon removal remains controversial, with disagreement over what constitutes valid uses and sustainable techniques.
In the EU, at the UN and in some other parts of the world, industrial interests and business-friendly policymakers are pushing for carbon removals to be touted as a get-out-of-jail free card for polluters. Removals would, in their view, be easy and cheap to scale up, cause no major social and environmental harm, and would be suitable for compensating for continued emissions.
This would lead to offsetting emissions with removals and slowing down the already glacial decarbonisation transition. Exploiting removals as a carbon offsetting tool would be a grave mistake partly because offsetting is not a sustainable solution and partly because of the likely very limited supply of sustainable carbon removals.
The scientific consensus regards carbon removals as a supplementary tool. It can be deployed to compensate for the final truly unavoidable emissions once the decarbonisation process has advanced to near completion and, in the future, to rid the atmosphere of legacy emissions to return to a safer climate.
When it comes to carbon removals, Carbon Market Watch focuses on:
“We will need carbon removals in the future, but we need to get the foundations right, now. CDR must supplement, not substitute, emissions reductions. Deep, fast and sustained decarbonisation is the priority – removals must not be misused to undermine that. Emissions must not be offset with removals. CDR must also be implemented in a sustainable way – squandering finite resources such as land, energy and biomass would be a grave mistake.”
Wijnand Stoefs
Lead expert on carbon removals
“We will need carbon removals in the future, but we need to get the foundations right, now. CDR must supplement, not substitute, emissions reductions. Deep, fast and sustained decarbonisation is the priority – removals must not be misused to undermine that. Emissions must not be offset with removals. CDR must also be implemented in a sustainable way – squandering finite resources such as land, energy and biomass would be a grave mistake.”
Wijnand Stoefs
Lead expert on carbon removals
Reducing emissions must remain the priority for policymakers, and should not be conflated with safeguarding natural carbon sinks or the sustainable usage of permanent removals. Carbon removals policy expert Fabiola De Simone explains.
CMW applauds United Nations’ Secretary General António Guterres’s calls for the safe and sustainable use of carbon removals while warning that these technologies were not a “silver bullet” and cannot substitute deep emissions cuts.
Maintaining the incentive to decarbonise should be the guiding principle of the UK ETS, ensuring covered emissions go to zero or near zero.
wijnand.stoefs[at]carbonmarketwatch.org
fabiola.desimone[at]carbonmarketwatch.org
marlene.ramon[at]carbonmarketwatch.org
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