According to the Climate Change Committee (CCC) balanced pathway to net zero, we should be capturing and storing 58 MtCO2e/year by 2050 [1]. This is called greenhouse gas removals (GGR) or sometimes carbon dioxide removals (CDR). It is hard to see how we can get to net zero without some GGR, but there is very little of this happening right now. There are several strategies likely to be deployed. Unfortunately, the ones which are most likely to be permanent tend to be most expensive as well, while with the cheap ones it is harder to measure how well they are working.
In the CCC balanced pathway, 90% of GGR is some form of BECCS – bioenergy with carbon capture and storage. That generally means burning biomass for energy and capturing CO2 from the flue gas. Most of the rest is direct air capture (DAC) which means getting carbon dioxide from the air rather than flue gases. The captured gas must then be stored typically in rock formations or depleted oil and gas wells.
 |
| Figure from [1] CCC sixth carbon budget |
