PARIS (AFP) – By 2050, humanity must durably remove four times as much carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air as today to cap global warming below the crucial target of two degrees Celsius, researchers said on Tuesday.
But massively expanding CO2-absorbing forests – 99 per cent of current carbon removal – could claim land needed to grow food and biofuels, while it remains highly uncertain whether new technologies for sucking CO2 from the atmosphere can be scaled quickly enough, they warned in a major report.
Looking at varying emissions-reduction scenarios, between seven and nine billion tonnes of CO2 must be captured from the atmosphere by 2050, according to the second edition of the University of Oxford’s report on the subject.
The first edition of The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal had reported that two billion tonnes were being removed mainly through reforestation, compared with the 40 billion tonnes emitted worldwide in 2023. “Alongside rapidly reducing emissions”, which remains the “most important mitigation strategy”, eliminating CO2 from the atmosphere “is also necessary” to achieve the objectives of the Paris Agreement, more than 50 researchers said.
Some of the scientists are also part of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which has recognised the need for carbon capture but has given it a limited role in its scenarios for achieving “carbon neutrality”.
The elimination of CO2 recently “has undergone rapid growth in research, public awareness and start-up companies”, the report said.
“Yet there are now signs of a slowdown” due to politics and a lack of public funding, the experts said.
They called on governments to create policies that will boost the industry’s development.
According to the report, the market for carbon capture has been growing thanks to corporate demand for carbon credits – a contested tool that allows companies to offset their emissions by financing carbon-reduction projects.
