According to a report released by “Coalition for Negative Emissions (CNE) & McKinsey”, Projects in development will remove only some fraction of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) from air to meet the 2025 climate change goal.
Highlights
- About 190 countries have signed Paris agreement which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
- But the report highlights, even with pledges of big reductions in emissions several scientists believe removal technologies will be needed to meet this goal.
Key findings of report
- As per report, goal of keeping global warming within Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degree Celsius cannot be achieved without action to deliver 1 Gigatonne (Gt) of negative emissions globally by 2025.
- Report highlights, countries are required to remove a billion tonnes of CO2 from atmosphere by 2025, if Paris target is to be met.
- This targeted reduction would require to be further increased by more than one billion tonnes annually.
- According to the report, current pipeline of projects in development could only remove about 150 million tonnes of CO2 by 2025.
Concerns
Scaling up the technology would lead to lower costs and an average cost of 30-100 pounds per tonne of CO2 removed by 2050. Removal technology is expensive. Many countries have initiatives in place to put price on CO2 emissions nut prices are far too low to incentivise new projects.
Negative Emission Projects
As per report, negative emission projects include-
- Bioenergy with technology capture & storage carbon emissions,
- Technology to directly capture & store emissions from air and
- Natural climate solutions such as afforestation.