Until recently, sustainability actions to mitigate climate change have been almost entirely centered around emission reduction. We have been told to turn off lights, insulate our homes, reduce single use packaging, fly less, consume less meat, and wear clothes already in our closet. These actions minimize the amount of carbon being emitted into the atmosphere. In the bathtub illustration shown here, we are turning the knob to reduce the flow from the faucet. Today, nearly every economic sector is reducing the flow of carbon into the atmosphere by improving efficiency and transitioning to cleaner energy. Reducing the ‘fugitive’ carbon being released into the atmosphere is necessary, and primary, but it’s now not enough. We need another lever. We must find efficient and effective ways to take carbon out of the atmosphere. We must unplug the drain.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is how we drain the tub. It represents a separate but parallel pathway to mitigate climate change in addition to reduction. Simply put, CDR actively sequesters carbon from the atmosphere and stores it (in various degrees of durability) in the geosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and human-made products.
Broadly, CDR is categorized into two kinds of solutions. First, nature-based initiatives—such as reforestation, land and ocean restoration, and regenerative agriculture—have many important social, ecological, and economical co-benefits beyond capturing carbon, but have the potential to be impermanent (e.g., forest fires or agricultural tilling). On the other hand, technology-based solutions, like direct air capture (DAC) and enhanced mineralization, have smaller land footprints, can store carbon more durably, and when commercialized, can sequester high volumes of carbon quickly. However, the technology is still new and expensive.
CDR is getting a lot of attention from scientists, businesses, NGOs, investors, and governments alike. Corporations, like major airlines, are including carbon removal in their sustainability strategies. A global reinsurance company is signaling its support with a significant partnership. Primers are being written with a fresh lexicon to educate organizations. And, CDR startups are drawing big investments.
But CDR as a concept is nothing new. Nature-based CDR has been continuously at work since the origins of photosynthetic organisms and geological processes billions of years ago. Why then the buzz?
There are two major drivers. First, scientists agree removal is an essential component to keeping the planet on a pathway below a 2°C global temperature rise. This is especially true for hard to decarbonize sectors, like air transportation and cement production. Second, thanks to myriad smart scientists, engineers, entrepreneurs, ands investors, CDR solutions (both nature- and technology-based) are developing fast enough to be seen as viable commercial removal options.
But reaching gigaton scale for these solutions is the crux. The August IPCC report estimates we must remove ~10 Gt CO2/yr to reach net zero by 2050. In comparison, Climework’s Orca, the largest operating DAC plant in Iceland that opened this year, can capture a mere 4,000 tons CO2/yr. Doing the quick math, we’d need 2.5M of those plants to reach 10Gt CO2/yr). Nevertheless, the new facility will allow Climeworks (and the entire DAC industry) to accelerate up the experience curve and down the cost curve. Future plants are likely to come online faster and have larger capture volumes. Other technologies have followed similar pathways to reach scale – think solar and hard disk drives. The challenge for CDR, unlike solar, which became cost competitive over twenty years, is we don’t have that time. Experts say we have five, maybe ten years to drive down costs before it’s too late.
What can be done to help CDR move even faster? Involvement from all actors – philanthropy, capital markets, corporations, NGOs, and governments – will be required:
Philanthropy must increase its overall contribution by funding early-stage research, and supporting the enabling ecosystem (e.g., quality/verification, aggregation, and recognition).
Venture capital should continue to invest in and de-risk a portfolio of early-stage CDR companies and help move as many solutions to commercialization as quickly as possible.
Corporations should include removal as part of their net zero strategies and send demand signals by buying the removal credits. Those who can afford today’s higher-priced credits should pay for them. NGOs should recognize and reward them for it and support the enabling ecosystem.
Governments must do what only governments can do: enact policy and regulations to rapidly accelerate innovation and adoption; pump millions into RD&D; and purchase large, long-term contracts for carbon removal credits.
The good news is a lot of these actions are already happening. Bill Gates’s Breakthrough Energy and Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital are investing in a variety of carbon capture innovations. Microsoft, Stripe, and Shopify are pioneering business’s role in driving market demand and de-risking growth by developing open-sourced carbon removal procurement playbooks and becoming early buyers of high-quality carbon credits. The bipartisan infrastructure bill President Biden signed into law in November has huge carbon removal wins including $3.5B for DAC and $4.6B for carbon removal infrastructure. Spinning out of COP26, the U.S. Department of Energy launched a program called Carbon Negative Earthshots with a goal to capture gigaton-scale carbon for under $100/ton.
While some are debating whether removal is a distraction from reduction, all scientifically accepted climate scenarios now require removal. Yes, we must continue to encourage a reduction-first mindset, but we can’t ignore the necessary role both nature- and technology-based CDR plays in solving the emissions equation. In the end it’s a matter of and, not or.
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