The State of Climate Action 2022 provides a comprehensive assessment of the global gap in climate action across the world’s highest-emitting systems, highlighting where recent progress made in reducing GHG emissions, scaling up carbon removal, and increasing climate finance must accelerate over the next decade to keep the Paris Agreement’s goal to limit warming to 1.5°C within reach.

State of Climate Action 2022

Removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere will be required over the next decades to achieve the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C aiming at not exceeding 1.5°C. Technological and ecosystem-based options are considered for generating negative emissions through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and several nations have already included these in their Long-Term Low Greenhouse Gas Emission Development Strategies. However, strategies for development, implementation, and upscaling of CDR options often remain vague. Considering the scale at which CDR deployment is envisioned in emission pathways for limiting global warming to 1.5°C, significant environmental, social, and institutional implications are to be expected and need to be included in national feasibility assessments of CDR options. Following a multi-disciplinary and comprehensive approach, we created a framework that considers the environmental, technological, economic, social, institutional, and systemic implications of upscaling CDR options. We propose the framework as a tool to help guide decision-relevant feasibility assessments of CDR options, as well as identify challenges and opportunities within the national context. As such, the framework can serve as a means to inform and support decision makers and stakeholders in the iterative science-policy process of determining the role of CDR options in national strategies of achieving net-zero carbon emissions.

Framework for Assessing the Feasibility of Carbon Dioxide Removal Options Within the National Context of Germany

Over the past two years, the European Union, Norway, Iceland, and the UK have increased climate ambition and aggressively pushed forward an agenda to pursue climate neutrality or net-zero emissions by mid-century. This increased ambition, partly the result of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's landmark findings on limiting global warming to 1.5°C, has also led to a renewed approach to and revitalized debate about the role of carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal. With increasing climate ambition, including a proposed mid-century climate neutrality goal for the whole European Union rather than requiring each country to achieve climate neutrality on their own, the potential role of technological carbon removal is emerging as one of the critical points of debate among NGOs, policymakers, and the private sector. Policymakers are starting to discuss how to incentivize a carbon removal scale-up and whether or how to integrate it into existing sectoral policies, including the European Union Emissions Trading System. What encompasses the current debate, and how does it relate to carbon removal technologies' expected role in reaching climate neutrality? This perspective will highlight the arguments for near-term development of a comprehensive carbon removal policy framework. It will also shine a light on the current status of negative emission technologies and the role of carbon capture and storage in delivering negative emissions in Europe's decarbonized future. It will also analyze the role of carbon markets, including voluntary markets, as potential incentives while exploring policy pathways for a near-term scale-up.

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European Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy: Current Status and Future Opportunities

Abstract Net-zero targets imply that continuing residual emissions will be balanced by carbon dioxide removal. However, residual emissions are typically not well defined, conceptually or quantitatively. We analysed governments’ long-term strategies submitted to the UNFCCC to explore projections of residual emissions, including amounts and sectors. We found substantial levels of residual emissions at net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, on average 18% of current emissions for Annex I countries. The majority of strategies were imprecise about which sectors residual emissions would originate from, and few offered specific projections of how residual emissions could be balanced by carbon removal. Our findings indicate the need for a consistent definition of residual emissions, as well as processes that standardize and compare expectations about residual emissions across countries. This is necessary for two reasons: to avoid projections of excessive residuals and correspondent unsustainable or unfeasible carbon-removal levels and to send clearer signals about the temporality of fossil fuel use. 

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Why residual emissions matter right now

Climate change mitigation actions, including those aimed at developing and scaling carbon dioxide removal (CDR) activities spanning the industrial, energy, and agroforestry sector, emerge in a context of internationally shared norms that include governance objectives, legal provisions and informal expectations, and societal expectations. Established governance principles provide normative orientation for policy including when targeting the development and scaling of CDR. Knowledge of these principles can guide effective discussion and evaluation of policy options. To facilitate discussion of mitigation options among experts and CDR practitioners, this study excerpts governance principles from legislative texts, the climate governance literature, and the CDR literature with relevance to CDR policy considerations. To illustrate the relevance of the governance principles found for evaluating policy options, we apply them to three technology groups of CDR: Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS), and forestry. This exercise indicates the importance of more intensive attention to the normative dimension of mitigation policies in ongoing deliberative and planning processes. Such efforts can help disentangle normative and factual dimensions and sources of (dis)agreement on the role of CDR in specific climate policy contexts.

The ABC of Governance Principles for Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) poses a significant and complex public policy challenge in the long-term. Presently treated as a marginal aspect of climate policy, addressing CDR as a public good is quickly becoming essential for limiting warming to well below 2°C or 1.5°C by achieving net-zero emissions in time – including by mobilization of public and private finance. In this policy and practice review, we develop six functions jointly needed for policy mixes mobilizing CDR in a manner compatible with the Paris Agreement’s objectives. We discuss the emerging CDR financing efforts in light of these functions, and we chart a path to a meaningful long-term structuring of policies and financing instruments. CDR characteristics point to the need for up-front capital, continuous funding for scaling, and long-term operating funding streams, as well as differentiation based on permanence of storage and should influence the design of policy instruments. Transparency and early public deliberation are essential for charting a politically stable course of action on CDR, while specific policy designs are being developed in a way that ensures effectiveness, prevents rent-seeking at public expense, and allows for iterative course corrections. We propose a stepwise approach whereby various CDR approaches initially need differentiated treatment based on their differing maturity and cost through R&D pilot activity subsidies. In the longer term, CDR increasingly ought to be funded through mitigation results-oriented financing and included in broader policy instruments. We conclude that CDR needs to become a regularly-provided public service like public waste management has become over the last century.

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Who Is Paying for Carbon Dioxide Removal? Designing Policy Instruments for Mobilizing Negative Emissions Technologies

The study provides guidance on how countries can design NDCs and NDC implementation plans, and use the information presented therein, to promote their Article 6 readiness and enable pursuit of international cooperation under the Paris Agreement in a manner that ensures environmental integrity and promotes transformational change. At the same time, this study aims to inform public and private stakeholders how to take into account NDC targets and implementation plans when designing Article 6 cooperation, setting up related processes and implementing tools.

Hanna-Mari Ahonen

Papers

Who Is Paying for Carbon Dioxide Removal? Designing Policy Instruments for Mobilizing Negative Emissions Technologies

Promoting Article 6 readiness in NDCs and NDC implementation plans