Carbon Dioxide Removal Primer

The interest in CDR is growing. Why is this? Because it is becoming apparent that we are not going to reduce our CO2 emissions fast enough to avoid surpassing the 2°C goal. As a result, if we exceed the carbon budget associated with 2°C warming, CDR technologies could remove CO2 from the atmosphere to bring the carbon budget back into balance.

0-gigaton-scale negative emissions are necessary in essentially every emissions reduction scenario. We have no choice but to fund, research, and deploy them if we’re serious about keeping warming to 2 degrees; or close to it. We are not even close to on track.

Reducing Carbon Dioxide Emissions.What Are the Highest Impact Solutions?Known solutions with near term large impact:- Adoption of regenerative agriculture techniques (e.g. no till)- Massive reforestation / afforestation + reducing deforestation- Electrification of road transportation- Electrification of building heating- Broad deployment of solar, ... See more

Carbon dioxide removal offers a way to change the math. Extract large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and “negative emissions” could, conceivably, balance out the positive variety. It might even be feasible to cross the threshold of catastrophe and then suck enough carbon out of the…

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direct air capture. It involves exactly what the name implies: capturing carbon directly from the air. DAC is more flexible than point capture, because you can do it anywhere. And in all likelihood, it’ll be a crucial part of getting to zero; one study by the National Academy of Sciences found that we’ll need to be removing about 10 billion tons…

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With all of these alternatives, the challenge is much the same as with direct air capture: scale. Ning Zeng is a professor at the University of Maryland and the author of the “wood harvest and storage” concept. He has calculated that to sequester five billion tons of carbon per year, ten million tree-burial trenches, each the size of an Olympic swi

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