United Kingdom: The climate experts have suggested that technology to remove the planet-warming greenhouse gas CO2 from our atmosphere must be urgently ramped up. According to scientists, huge cuts in CO2 emissions alone cannot limit global warming.
The new report, titled “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal,” stated that to restrict and reduce global temperatures in the future, there needs to be investment in developing technological solutions.
“To limit warming to 2C or lower, we need to accelerate emissions reductions. But the findings of this report are clear: we also need to increase carbon removal too.Many new methods are emerging with potential,” the lead author of the study, Dr. Steve Smith from Oxford University, remarked.
It is widely agreed by scientists that the world is warming primarily because of emissions of CO2, which largely exceed the amount that is being removed. Until emissions and removals are balanced or have reached “net zero,” global temperatures will continue to rise.
Currently, almost all of the world’s CO2 removal occurs through natural processes, primarily plants and trees taking CO2 from the air and the soil absorbing as well as storing it. But there are limits to how much nature can do.
According to the latest UN climate reports, to fully achieve “net zero,” there will need to be some CO2 removal, so-called “negative emissions,” to compensate for sectors that can’t easily decarbonize.
The methods cited in the report are all fairly new and at different stages of development and deployment. One of the methods, known as BECCS, involves incorporating CO2 capture into biomass-based electricity generation, in which organic matter such as crops and wood pellets is burned to produce power.
Other options include huge facilities where the carbon is extracted from the air before being stored in the ground, the use of specially treated charcoal (biochar) that locks in carbon, and “enhanced rock weathering,” loosely based on the carbon removal that occurs with natural erosion.
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