EU advisory board urges rapid scale-up of carbon dioxide removals
Clean Energy Wire
EU scientific advisors have called for a rapid scale-up of methods to take CO2 out of the atmosphere. Both nature-based carbon removal solutions, such as plants, and modern technologies will be “essential to halting global warming”, said the European Scientific Advisory Board on Climate Change.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) involves the capture and storage of CO2. The board emphasised in a report that these removals are essential to offset emissions from sectors whose CO2 output is difficult or even impossible to eliminate, for example in cement making. CDR will also be key to eventually achieving net-negative greenhouse gas emissions, which will be necessary in the long run to reverse climate change, the report said.
The board called for rebuilding the natural storing capacity of EU land areas, which has shrunk by around a third in the last decade. All current removals rely on these land sinks, which therefore play a critical role in the EU's emission neutrality scenarios, the scientists explained. While plants represent a temporary storage of CO2, technological methods such as Direct Air Capture (DAC) can be used to store it permanently in geological formations.
The authors also called on policymakers to set binding targets for both temporary and permanent removals, and to control implementation closely. CDR is not a substitute for drastically reducing emissions, but an essential complement, they said.
This is why the report called for combining minimum with maximum removal quotas. A cap on removals should prevent companies from missing their reduction targets on the grounds that they simply suck the CO2 they produce out of the atmosphere at a later date. The researchers added that a strong and reliable certification is necessary before including it in the emissions trading system to prevent deterring emissions reductions, the scientists said. They also recommended extending the responsibility of emitters, for example by making them pay not only for their greenhouse gas emissions, but also for their subsequent removal.
The EU and Germany have already proposed carbon management strategies. CDR plays an important role in these plans, in addition to carbon capture and storage (CCS) and carbon capture and utilisation (CCU), which are used to capture CO2 while burning fossil fuels. However, Europe still faces significant hurdles until a well-functioning management system to store and use carbon emissions is in place.
