Part Four / What We’ve Done About It

4.9 Drawdown Technologies

All online sources accessed on

  1. fossil carbon dioxide emissions have risen 60 per cent Friedlingstein, P., et al., ‘Global carbon budget 2021’, Earth System Science Data, 14 (4), 2022: 1917–2005, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-14-1917-2022; Jackson, R. B., et al., ‘Persistent fossil fuel growth threatens the Paris Agreement and planetary health’,Environmental Research Letters, 14 (12), 2019: Article 121001, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab57b3.

    if we could keep cumulative global emissions below 750 billion tonnes Fuss, S., et al., ‘Moving toward net-zero emissions requires new alliances for carbon dioxide removal’, One Earth, 3 (2), 2020: 145–9, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.oneear.2020.08.002.

  2. only thirty or so carbon capture and storage (CCS) plants Twenty-seven CCS plants in operation in 2021, with four under construction: Turan, G., et al., Global Status of CCS 2021: CCS Accelerating to Net Zero, Global CCS Institute, 2021, https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/resources/global-status-report/.

    If all those fossil plants operate to the end of their lifetimes Tong, D., et al., ‘Committed emissions from existing energy infrastructure jeopardize 1.5°C climate target’, Nature, 572 (7769), 2019: 373–77, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1364-3.

    Agricultural activities, such as ploughing Sanderman, J., et al., ‘Soil carbon debt of 12,000 years of human land use’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (36), 2017: 9575–80, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1706103114.

    one third of the climate mitigations needed up until 2030 Griscom, B. W., et al., ‘Natural climate solutions’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114 (44), 2017: 11645–50, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710465114.

    35–40 billion tonnes of annual fossil carbon pollution Friedlingstein, P., et al., ‘Global carbon budget 2020’, Earth Systems Science Data, 12 (4), 2020: 3269–3340, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-3269-2020

  3. Plants, rocks and industrial chemicals can be used to remove CO2 Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering, Greenhouse Gas Removal, September 2018, https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/greenhouse-gas-removal/royal-society-greenhouse-gas-removal-report-2018.pdf.

    BECCS is relatively cheap by negative emission standards National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda (Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2019), https://doi.org/10.17226/25259.

    In 2019, BECCS facilities were removing about 1.5 million tonnes For a list of BECCS plants operating in 2019, see Consoli, C., Bioenergy and Carbon Capture and Storage: 2019 Perspective, Global CCS Institute, 2019, https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/BECCS-Perspective_FINAL_18-March.pdf.

    roughly 3.5–5.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removed per year National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration.

    Another drawdown technology is enhanced weathering Beerling, D. J., et al., ‘Potential for large-scale CO2 removal via enhanced rock weathering with croplands’, Nature, 583 (7815), 2020: 242–8, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-020-2448-9.

  4. The current cost range for direct-air capture Lebling, K., et al., ‘Six things to know about direct air capture’, World Resources Institute, 2022, https://www.wri.org/insights/direct-air-capture-resource-considerations-and-costs-carbon-removal.

    More than half of global methane emissions Saunois, M., et al., ‘The global methane budget 2000–2017’, Earth System Science Data, 12 (3), 2020: 1561–1623, https://doi.org/10.5194/essd-12-1561-2020; Jackson, R. B., et al., ‘Increasing anthropogenic methane emissions arise equally from agricultural and fossil fuel sources’, Environmental Research Letters, 15 (7), 2020: Article 071002, https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab9ed2

    If feasible at scale, methane removal … threshold is passed Abernethy, S., et al., ‘Methane removal and the proportional reductions in surface temperature and ozone’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 379, 2021: 20210104, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2021.0104.

  5. methane removal … needs much more research and investment Jackson, R. B., et al., ‘Atmospheric methane removal: a research agenda’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical Physical and Engineering Sciences, 379 (2210), 2021: Article 20200454, https://doi.org/10.1098/rsta.2020.0454

    the global economy could shrink by 18 per cent Guo, J., et al., The Economics of Climate Change: No Action Not an Option, Swiss Re Institute, April 2021, https://www.swissre.com/dam/jcr:e73ee7c3-7f83-4c17-a2b8-8ef23a8d3312/swiss-re-institute-expertise-publication-economics-of-climate-change.pdf.