A global carbon removal industry is coming – experts explain the problems it must overcome https://theconversation.com/a-global-carbon-removal-industry-is-coming-experts-explain-the-problems-it-must-overcome-169175 October 13, 2021
Johanna Forster, Naomi Vaughan, University of East Anglia
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports that technologies that remove CO₂ from the air like this will be needed alongside deep cuts in emissions to reduce global warming. In fact, climate scientists modelling pathways for stabilising warming at 1.5°C (the goal of the Paris agreement) assume that a carbon removal industry based around one method may need to be around 40% the size of the current fossil fuel industry.
World leaders need a more complete picture of the complexity we know exists in the real world before embarking on the construction of a global carbon removal industry. Making this happen is as much a question of who pays to remove the carbon and who has a say in how the land is managed, as details about technology. If the political and social limitations are not better understood, then it is hard to imagine how these carbon removal pipe dreams will get off the ground.
Sugar cane grown for ethanol production in Brazil. Mailsonpignata/Shutterstock