Introduction to Carbon Dioxide Removal

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) approaches – also known as negative emissions technologies, carbon drawdown, or greenhouse gas removal – aim to address the primary driver of climate change by removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and ensuring its long-term storage.

The IPCC in its 2018 special report on global warming of 1.5°C said: “all pathways to limit global warming to 1.5°C (with limited or no overshoot of the temperature goal) project the use of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) on the order of 100–1000 GtCO₂ over the 21st century.” If deployed at this enormous scale, CDR would slow the rate of global warming and ocean acidification.​

Removing carbon dioxide is not a new idea: the global community recognised in 1992 that mitigation included both emission reductions and removals, when it adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

What is new (due to insufficient action so far) is the scale, nature and urgency of CDR now being considered, and what this means for its effective governance. For temperature rise to stay below 1.5°C, emission reductions and carbon dioxide removal need to balance out to net zero within 30 years, which is a huge undertaking. Most of the approaches being considered are not yet available at anything near the necessary scale, at a price society has been willing to pay.

Basic Information

What are some of the
big questions about CDR?