This month, the US Department of Energy announced plans to invest US$2.3bn for carbon removal projects. The goal is to accelerate geologic carbon storage projects to permanently store at least 50Mt of captured CO2, equivalent to the emissions of 10m gasoline-powered cars a year. The funding will come from the US$1.2tn infrastructure bill, passed in November 2021.
Last month, an alliance of large US tech companies—including
Google, Meta, Shopify, and the payment company Stripe—announced plans to
purchase US$925m in carbon removal over the next eight years. The carbon
removal purchases, by a Stripe-owned company called Frontier, will be from 14
different start-ups. They include CarbonBuilt, which is trying to sequester
carbon by capturing it in concrete; and Project Vesta, which wants to line
beaches with a carbon-capturing mineral called olivine.
If those start-ups don’t deliver the promised tons of carbon
removal, Frontier said it has no recourse to be refunded. But it is aiming that
its payments will help push the industry’s development, helping discover which
methods will allow carbon removal to make the dramatic scale up that will be
needed.
Across the pond, the EU outlined plans in November last year to
use technology to remove 5Mtpa of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2030,
as part of its goal to reach carbon neutrality by 2050.
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) said that carbon removal is now “unavoidable”, if the
world is to reach its global temperature targets. The Paris Agreement outlines
a long-term goal of limiting global warming to well below 2C above
pre-industrial levels.
In 2021, worldwide energy-related carbon dioxide emissions rose
6% to top 36.3Bt, according to the IEA, setting a new record as the global
economy sprang back from the depths of the pandemic. For context, limiting
global warming to 1.5C, the Paris Agreement’s most ambitious target, would
require global greenhouse gas emissions to fall by nearly half over the next
decade. And the world would need to achieve net-zero emissions by the early
2050s.
Even in a scenario where the world aggressively reduces its
carbon emissions, some carbon removal will be “essential” to reaching net-zero
carbon. This is because while it is technically possible to eliminate most
emissions from human activities, such as by switching to low- or zero-carbon
forms of electricity and fuel, difficult-to-decarbonise sector sectors will
likely have some residual emissions left over—and this is how carbon removal comes
in.
Even the IPCC’s most conservative estimates say that humanity
will need to capture more than 1Bt of carbon dioxide a year to keep global
temperatures from rising more than 1.5C above pre-industrial level, an already
unlikely scenario. The median estimate presents an even more challenging 6Bt a
year.
But just how strongly carbon removal can—or should—be used is a
matter up for debate. There is still some scientific uncertainty about exactly
how much carbon can be pulled out of the atmosphere using various approaches. Nature-based
approaches, such as planting trees or restoring forests, are the most widely
deployed today. But the carbon can return into the atmosphere when the plants
die or burn up in fires.
Direct air capture can permanently remove and store carbon, but
the machines are currently limited in scale and expensive, and the technology
consumes large amounts of energy and water, according to the IPCC report.
Achieving large amounts of carbon removal will require significant
research and development to determine the most effective strategies, reduce
environmental impacts, and rapidly develop major projects. This will require government
policies to mandate and incentivise carbon removal to tackle the biggest
hurdle—cost.
Carbon removal will not solve climate change by itself. The key
method for fighting climate change remains the same solution that scientists
have presented for decades: cutting greenhouse gases as quickly as possible across
all sectors—including transportation, energy, and heavy industry.
The discussions around carbon removal comes as temperatures are
soaring across South Asia, as heat waves intensify faster than any other type
of extreme weather. Parts of northern and central India have recorded their
highest average temperatures for April.
Indeed, the capital, Delhi, topped 46C last
week. Meanwhile, in neighbouring Pakistan, temperatures are 5-8C above average,
according to the Meteorological Department. What India is witnessing now comes
as average temperatures there have risen by about 1C, since the beginning of
the industrial age, according to Berkeley Earth.
The numbers of heat-related deaths are poorly estimated in low-
and middle-income countries but are likely to be significant and unlikely to be
decreasing, given recent trends of urbanisation and limited deployment of heatwave
action plans, according to a paper published on Monday by a group of leading
climatologists.