Carbon Dioxide Removal: Best-Practice Guidelines

This white paper examines the new technologies urgently needed to deliver additional, permanent and quantifiable impacts to slash emissions.

Despite needing to halve emissions by 2030 to stand a chance of limiting warming to 1.5C, they continue to rise. Decarbonizing industries is essential, but net zero is not enough, and natural climate solutions do not go far enough.

The world must accelerate the removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, from 2 billion to 10 billion tonnes a year by 2050. Three reasons why: to reverse the accumulation of historic emissions, to balance the hardest-to-abate emissions, and to safeguard against Earth’s feedback loops from a warmer world.

This paper examines the potential of engineered carbon dioxide removal (CDR) through biochar, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air capture with carbon storage (DACCS) and enhanced rock weathering. The paper draws on interviews with eight “First Movers” to gain their insights into why “wait and see” is not an option and how best to navigate this nascent market. It calls on every company to make advance purchases of engineered CDR part of their wider climate strategy.