Research indicates that existing plans for carbon dioxide removal are inadequate for meeting the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 ºC warming limit. Enhanced awareness and action are required to close the significant gap between projected increases and the needs identified in IPCC focus scenarios.
The UNEP Emissions Gap Reports are clear: climate policy needs more ambition. This new study now explicitly applies this analytical concept to carbon dioxide removal — the removal of the most important greenhouse gas, COwas led by the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change and involved an international team of scientists.
“This planetary waste management will soon place completely new requirements on policymakers and may even become a central pillar of climate protection in the second half of the century.” According to the study, if national targets are fully implemented, annual human-induced carbon removals could increase by a maximum of 0.5 gigatonnes of COThis contrasts with the 5.1 gigatonne increase required in a ‘focus scenario’, which the research team depicts as typical from the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change assessment report.
Here, carbon removals would increase by a more modest amount: 2.5 gigatonnes in 2050. Fully implemented national targets would be close to sufficient when compared to this scenario, with a gap in 2050 of 0.4 gigatonnes. Since only 40 countries have so far quantified their removal plans in their long-term low emissions development strategies, the study also draws on other national documents and best-guess assumptions.