Gabrielle Walker’s TED Talk: What you need to know about carbon removal

What do woolly pigs have to do with climate change? They’re part of a vital, ingenious and evolving strategy to take carbon out of the sky and store it safely — in trees, soils, the ocean, buildings, rocks and deep underground. Every carbon removal approach takes some combination of natural resources, human ingenuity and technology, says climate thinker Gabrielle Walker. If we get the mix right, we can clean up the environmental mess we’ve made, reverse the processes behind climate change and give nature a chance to heal. “What goes up must now come down,” she says.

Green Finance Institute: What’s next for carbon dioxide removals?

Cole Caswell: Shedding light on SBTi’s CDR targets and how to achieve them

Rethinking Removals: How to think about carbon removals

This document is based on ecosystem soundings held with over a 100 carbon removals practitioners and climate NGOs in Nairobi, New York, London and various virtual meetings. The soundings aimed to identify worries, misconceptions, sticking points and trade-offs in the narratives around carbon removals, along with enabling narrative pillars that help to clear up confusions, align positive climate action across all sectors and ensure that carbon removals are not hijacked by bad actors but instead play their necessary role in reaching our climate goals. 

1. The science is clear – we need carbon removals as well as deep emissions reductions and adaptation to tackle global warming. 

  • There is no net zero without carbon removals. 
  • Decarbonization can (and should) get us most of the way to zero – but we need removals for the emissions we’re not able to eliminate.
  • Scientists agree that without carbon removal, global warming will exceed 1.5C, causing natural disasters, droughts, famine, and human suffering.
  • We need to decarbonize as fast as possible and use removals to have any hope of avoiding climate catastrophe. It’s no longer a choice. 

2. Carbon removals are never an excuse for business as usual in fossil fuels, or to delay reducing emissions. They’re an additional measure that enables us to increase climate ambition.

  • We cannot tackle climate change if we keep burning fossil fuels, period.
  • Even if we ramped removals up to the maximum extent, it would be impossible to produce enough removals to compensate for continued fossil fuel use.
  • Removals must be additive to decarbonization efforts, and we need separate targets for reductions and removals that get us to net zero.

3. The window of opportunity is closing – we need to scale carbon removal over this decade so it is available when we need it. 

  • Removals are like a pension: we need to grow them now so we can “withdraw” later. 
  • Removals are not a given, it will take all of our efforts to supply the removals needed for net zero. 
  • We need to get our act together now to develop the necessary incentives, infrastructure and accounting practices. 
  • Scientists believe we’ll need >5 billion tonnes of removals by 2050. Today, we’re only able to deliver 0.002% of that. We need to get to work now.

4. Carbon removal is done globally, in many different ways and by diverse organisations, in meaningful consultation with the communities most affected by climate change.

  • Carbon removals can be done anywhere, by anyone, but have a global impact.
  • All carbon removal approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. We need a broad portfolio of options if we want to stay below 1.5C.
  • Carbon removal projects can help drive climate-positive growth in the Global South and beyond. 
  • The only reason to do carbon removals is to raise climate ambition, so we affirm the need for rigorous, transparent principles, regulations and standards.

DETAILED VERSION INCLUDING HEADWINDS / ENABLING NARRATIVES

Here we list the various narrative headwinds that were identified during the ecosystem soundings, alongside responsive enabling framings. We have sorted these under the relevant narrative pillars we derived from our ecosystem discussions. Our aim is to address common worries and misconceptions about carbon removals to ensure the success of the wider climate mission.

1. The science is clear – we need deep emissions reductions, carbon removals and adaptation to tackle global warming. 

  • There is no net zero without carbon removals. 
  • Decarbonization can (and should) get us most of the way to zero – but we need removals for the emissions we’re not able to eliminate.
  • Scientists agree that without carbon removal, global warming will exceed 1.5C, causing natural disasters, droughts, famine, and human suffering.
  • We need to decarbonize as fast as possible and use removals to have any hope of avoiding climate catastrophe. It’s no longer a choice. 

2. Carbon removals are never an excuse to keep fossil fuels in play or delay mitigation. They’re an additional measure that enables us to increase climate ambition.

  • We cannot tackle climate change if we keep burning fossil fuels, period.
  • Even if we ramped removals up to the maximum extent, It would be impossible to produce enough removals to compensate for continued fossil fuel use.
  • Removals must be additive to decarbonization efforts, and we need separate targets for reductions and removals that get us to net zero.

3. The window of opportunity is closing – we need to scale carbon removal over this decade so it is available when we need it. 

  • Removals are like a pension: we need to grow them now so we can “withdraw” later. 
  • Removals are not a given, it will take all of our efforts to supply the removals needed for net zero. 
  • We need to get our act together now to develop the necessary incentives, infrastructure and accounting practices. 
  • Scientists believe we’ll need >5 billion tonnes of removals by 2050. Today, we’re only able to deliver 0.002% of that. We need to get to work now.

4. Carbon removals can be done responsibly, globally, in many different ways and by diverse organisations, in meaningful consultation with the communities most affected by climate change.

  • Carbon removals can be done anywhere, by anyone, but have a global impact.
  • All carbon removal approaches have their strengths and weaknesses. We need a broad portfolio of options if we want to stay below 1.5C.
  • Carbon removal projects can help drive climate-positive growth in the Global South and beyond. 
  • The only reason to do carbon removals is to raise climate ambition, so we affirm the need for rigorous, transparent principles, regulations and standards

Johan Rockström: We have to phase out fossil fuels and scale negative emissions

Negative emissions are necessary to get 1.5, but they are necessary as an additionality. We have to phase out fossil fuels and scale negative emissions. We cannot scale negative emissions technologies as a way of allowing continued burning of fossil fuels.

That means we have to start getting serious about carbon removals now. It takes a long time to develop the technical, social and political frameworks that can get us to billions of tonnes by 2050. It’s already an exponential journey to take us from zero today to 5 billion tonnes in 30 years – it’s such a rapid pace that we simply have to start now.

People fear, and many times correctly, that many vested interests will use negative emissions technology as an excuse to keep burning fossil fuels. So we need to discuss in the UNFCCC and in COP negotiations how to govern, invest, monitor and have compliance around negative emissions. We should take negative emissions as seriously as we take decarbonisation pathways.

RMI: We need to explore multiple carbon removal approaches in many places to achieve scale

Daniel Pike, Principal at RMI leading their Carbon Removal Initiative, explores the range of removal options and differences in what they require to scale.

Scaling carbon removal to meet the demands of the climate crisis is a daunting challenge. But there is good news. There are many approaches – we counted 32 in our new roadmap. They rely on different inputs, can be performed in different locations and benefit from different applications of science and technology. This suggests possibilities for a portfolio of carbon removal solutions, comprised of different approaches in different locations, that is diversified enough to scale.

The best-known approaches are trees and direct air capture (DAC). Trees serve as natural carbon sinks by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and storing that carbon dioxide as biomass. DAC pulls carbon dioxide out of the air using fans and materials that selectively bind with carbon dioxide.

But there are many other approaches. Carbon dioxide naturally reacts with and is stored by materials that the earth has in abundance, including rocks, water, and a variety of plants besides trees. These reactions can be accelerated in many ways. This is the foundation, for example, for macroalgae or microalgae sinking, terrestrial enhanced weathering, and electrochemical water capture. New approaches and companies are continually emerging, and there is still runway for more innovation.

These approaches rely on different inputs to different extents. Some are more easily and cheaply deployed, but harder to measure. Some are expensive, but highly durable. All may be challenging to scale, depending on the availability and price of their primary inputs: plants, minerals, and low-carbon energy.

We will require the smart and strategic deployment of different approaches to carbon removal in different locations, depending in large part on community preferences and on the land, water resources, low-carbon energy, and infrastructure available. Globally, given the billions of tons needed, we will need a broad portfolio that incubates a range of approaches to mitigate resource constraints, address varied community preferences, and diversify risks.

As carbon removal markets and policy regimes evolve, the rules of the game should be configured to enable discovery, testing, and — if approaches are validated upon testing — scale-up of the full set of potential approaches. We need an open playing field for innovation, with rules flexible enough to maximize the overall level of carbon removal within our resource constraints, and with robust environmental and social safeguards in place. If one approach emerges as dominant, that could put carbon removal on a virtuous cycle of falling costs as production increases – an ideal outcome. But if no technology emerges as dominant, which looks more likely, future generations will thank us for spreading our bets.

Read moreThe Applied Innovation Roadmap for CDR, November 2023