Carbon capture must quadruple by 2050 to meet climate targets: report

By 2050, humanity will need to sustainably remove four times more CO2 from the air than today to limit global warming below the crucial two degrees Celsius target, researchers said on Tuesday.

But the massive expansion of CO2-absorbing forests – 99 percent of current carbon removal – could claim land needed to grow food and biofuels, while it remains highly uncertain whether new technologies for sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere can be scaled up relatively quickly, they warned in a major report.

If we consider different emissions reduction scenarios, between seven and nine billion tonnes of CO2 will need to be captured from the atmosphere by 2050, according to the second edition of the Oxford University report on the subject.

The first edition of The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal reported that two billion tonnes were removed primarily through reforestation, compared to 40 billion tonnes emitted globally in 2023.

“Alongside rapid reduction of emissions,” which remains the “most important mitigation strategy,” removing CO2 from the atmosphere “is also necessary” to achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement, they said. more than 50 researchers.

Some scientists are also part of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has recognized the need for carbon capture but has given it a limited role in its scenarios for achieving “carbon neutrality.”

CO2 removal has recently seen rapid growth in research, public awareness and business creation, the report said.

“However, there are now signs of a slowdown” due to political reasons and a lack of public funding, experts say.

They called on governments to create policies that will boost the development of the industry.

According to the report, the carbon capture market has grown thanks to corporate demand for carbon credits – a contested tool that allows companies to offset their emissions by financing carbon reduction projects.

Carbon capture startup Climeworks, which has a large underground storage facility in Iceland, is among those benefiting from the demand.

Its two factories currently capture and store 10,000 tonnes of CO2 per year thanks to financing from private donors and the sale of carbon credits.

To reach one million tonnes, Climeworks has said it needs several billion euros (dollars), as have other start-ups, but the report warns that this funding is very uncertain at this stage.

To date, only the United States has announced a $3.5 billion plan dedicated specifically to carbon capture.

– Environmental risks –

The Center for Environmental Law (CIEL) said the report “highlights a worrying trend where carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly being touted as a solution to climate change.”

“This focus on carbon removal technologies represents a dangerous distraction from what is urgently needed to combat the climate crisis: a complete, rapid, equitable and funded elimination of all fossil fuels,” said Lili Fuhr, CIEL expert.

Removing CO2 already in the atmosphere can be done through nature-based actions, such as planting forests, as well as new technologies to store carbon underground or in recycled materials, but this represents less than 0.1% of what is currently being eliminated.

Removal technology methods include direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS), biomass post-combustion capture (BECCS), conversion of biomass to biochar, or spraying carbon-absorbing crushed rock onto land or sea.

CIEL said some of these techniques, such as DACCS, “pose immense risks to ecosystems and communities.”

Acknowledging the risks, the authors of Tuesday’s report noted that some “methods carry high environmental and ecosystem risks, while others have the potential to generate co-benefits.”

It recognizes that conventional carbon dioxide removal, “if poorly executed,” can pose risks to “biodiversity and food security.”

While calling for the rapid development of carbon capture technologies, the report says this should not distract from efforts to reduce emissions.

“If we fail to sharply reduce emissions from fossil fuels and deforestation, the Paris temperature target will be out of reach, even if we take strong action to eliminate carbon,” said one of the authors of the report, William Lamb, during his presentation.

mdz/giv/mh-rlp