OSLO, April 4 — Extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by planting forests and developing controversial high-tech industries will be essential to meet global goals to curb climate change, a UN report said today.
“The deployment of CDR to counterbalance hard-to-abate residual emissions is unavoidable if net zero carbon dioxide or greenhouse gas emissions are to be achieved,” the IPCC said in a report on solutions to global warming, compiled by 278 authors. Poorly managed, forest planting can take land from crops needed to feed an expanding world population.
DACCS — direct air carbon dioxide capture and storage — meanwhile sucks carbon directly from the air. “We need demand reductions, we need efficiency, we need emission reductions — and then we can offset the last 5-10 per cent” through measures like forests or technological fixes, she said.The first large-scale BECCS plant opened in Decatur, Illinois in 2016, run by Archer-Daniels-Midland Co. It makes ethanol and syrups from corn, while capturing emissions from the process and burying them underground.