World must remove a billion tonnes of CO2 by 2025: Report

A new report has claimed that projects in development will only remove a fraction of the amount of carbon dioxide from the air that needs to be removed by 2025 to meet the Paris Accord target and avert catastrophic and disastrous global warming. 

Over 190 countries are signatories to the Paris agreement, which is designed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. Still, even with pledges of significant reductions in emissions, many scientists believe that removal technologies will be needed to meet the goal. 

The report by the Coalition for Negative Emission and consultancy firm McKinsey said that without action to deliver 1 Gigatonne of negative emissions globally by 2025, keeping global warming within the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 degrees Celsius cannot be achieved.

It said that countries would need to remove a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2025 if the targets are to be met and more than a billion tonnes annually after that. 

The report states that the current projects in development could remove only about 150 million tonnes by 2025, which is very short of what is needed. 

Negative emission projects include bioenergy with technology to capture and store carbon emissions and natural climate solutions such as afforestation. 

As of now, removal technology is expensive, and even though many countries have initiatives in place to impose a cost on carbon dioxide emissions, they are too low to incentivise new projects. 

The report also noted that the widening of the technology would lower costs, with a likely average being cited as $41-138 per tonne of carbon dioxide removed by 2050. 

Will Gardiner, CEO of coalition member Drax seeking to develop a negative emission power plant using biomass and carbon capture, said that countries could help with the technology by awarding tax credits for each tonne of carbon dioxide removed. 

Other members of CNE include over 20 companies, investors and trade associations, including the Bank of America and the Confederation of British Industry. 

• Carbon Dioxide
• Climate Goal
• Paris climate agreement
• McKinsey
• Paris agreement
• Zero emissions
• CO2 emission