Beyond net-zero emissions
Tackling climate change requires science and technology solutions to carbon removal
Wildfires rage in the US southwest. The northern part of Portugal is on fire. On the other side of the Atlantic where Brazil is experiencing an exceptional drought, the Amazon rainforest is burning down. The northern hemisphere summer of 2024 was the hottest on record, even hotter than the summer of 2023. Central Europe—Czechia, Poland, Romania, Austria—have experienced unprecedented flooding, as has Central and Western Africa. All these weather anomalies would appear to be manifestations of runaway climate change, although other phenomena like the El Niño that ended earlier this summer, also play a role. Climate change is no longer something in the future, nor something that only affects people in poor countries.
Data on long-term climate trends is clear and that trend is continuous warming. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shows that human activities have already led to a +1.1oC increase in global temperature averages since the Industrial Revolution. The main culprits are burning fossil fuels and deforestation.
I will argue that the world is too singularly focused on reaching net-zero carbon emissions through an energy transition and changing lifestyles. We need to deploy science and technological development to remove the carbon that already exists in the atmosphere.
It seems to follow from the above that we primarily need to address our use of fossil fuels and halt deforestation. This makes sense, as carbon emissions from a variety of sources—heating and cooling, transportation, manufacturing, construction; well, most activities that we do for our comfort in modern society—are destroying the livability of the planet. Add to that deforestation and land-use change, which are caused by transformation of natural landscapes to agriculture, urban sprawl, transportation networks, parking lots, and the like, and we can see how human activity is transforming the Earth.
In fact, we are already addressing all these issues. International negotiations and treaties, like the conferences of parties (CoPs) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement are geared towards reducing our emissions. Financial mechanisms, such as the Green Climate Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Climate Investment Funds are there to support countries with funding. Many countries have committed to net-zero carbon emissions by a specific date: USA, Canada, Brazil and Australia by 2050, China by 2060, India by 2070. Many smaller countries have more ambitious targets (Finland 2035) and some already are at net-zero (these include small islands and poor countries that have always had very low emissions, like Bhutan, Niue and Gabon).
Several cities are taking the lead when national governments are too slow to act. More than 100 American cities have set their own net-zero targets. Technological developments, especially energy-related, are moving at a fast pace thanks to innovation in the private sector, often supported by government policies. Renewable energy is already cheaper than coal and oil, although the latter continue to be subsidized by governments. Recognizing the high emissions associated with animal husbandry, especially of beef cattle, many people are turning vegetarian or reducing their meat consumption.
But emissions are still increasing every year. The pandemic provided the exception when emissions actually declined somewhat, as international travel came to a halt, global supply chains slowed down, and consumption in general was reduced. But as soon as we could get out of our homes everything went back to “normal”: consumption rose rapidly and within a couple of years travel was back to pre-pandemic levels.
The political decisionmakers in capital cities, as important as they are, can’t do everything. We need action on multiple fronts, including behavior change (more on that in a later post). The subsidies that governments give to environmentally destructive activities—fossil fuels and industrial-scale agriculture that lead to massive deforestation—are larger by order of magnitude than the moneys they promise (let alone deliver) to fight climate change. The IMF estimates that the global fossil fuel subsidies were US$5.9 trillion in 2020 (about 6.8% of global GDP) and expected to rise to 7.4% of GDP in 2025. Removing these subsidies and ensuring policy coherence so that environmental policy wouldn’t be there just to patch up the damage done by other sectors would do much to rectify the situation.
I am not confident that we will change our ways quickly enough. Whatever we do to combat climate change, I don’t believe that the transition to renewable energies and electric vehicles, or changing our lifestyle are going to cut it. We’re not going to meet the climate goals of the Paris Agreement to limit temperature increases to 1.5oC above preindustrial levels—or even the less ambitious goal of +2.5oC—by 2050 (the major emitters on the planet only plan to reach net-zero in that year or later).
We need more proactive solutions, which include removing excess CO2 from the atmosphere. To do this, we need to invest in science and in technological solutions. These technologies include, obviously, renewable energy (including nuclear energy), energy storage and energy efficiency, but there are many more possible avenues to explore. Many environmentalists tend to emphasize the risks associated with new technologies, but can we really afford not to include them in the mix?
The only way out of this mess is through mobilizing all means towards mitigating climate change, adapting to it where it is necessary (eventually everywhere, although climate change tends to affect first and worst the regions and countries in the global South), and enhancing society’s and people’s resilience against its impacts.
Which brings me back to science and technology. It is true that there are risks involved and some of the risks may be severe. These have to be carefully studied and any technologies have to be deployed judiciously. Concerns about the risks are entirely legitimate but at the same time we know the risks of letting things continue as they do now.
Not all technological and science-based solutions are equal either. There are plans for geoengineering that may be too bold, where the unknown unknowns pose a risk of too many side effects. Such might include pumping sulphate aerosols to the upper atmosphere to block sunlight. We don’t know exactly what it would achieve (including what it would do to the ozone layer) and how to reverse it should something go wrong.
Direct air capture (DAC) is already taking place and investment in it has surged in recent years. Leading companies like Climeworks, Carbon Engineering and Global Thermostat are getting plenty of attention equally in the press and among governments and financial circles. In 2021, Climeworks launched Orca, the largest DAC plant in the world, and is now launching the even much larger Mammoth, also in Iceland. It has been designed to remove 36,000 tons of carbon per year, but the company admits the net removals will be lower. This may sound as a lot but compare that with the need of removing at least 50 GT per year to restore the climate by 2050. DAC is also expensive (currently $250-$600 per tonne) but that doesn’t deter investors (of course, one could argue that nothing is too expensive to save human civilization and life on the planet). Just this month, the US Department of Energy announced its intention to provide $1.8 billion to DAC. Part of this funding is scheduled to go to a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum. DAC is attractive to oil companies, such as Occidental and ExxonMobil, which are entering the field. A critical issue for DAC is how is the captured carbon utilized. If it will be stored deep underground or used for products like concrete, it will stay safe for a long time; but it can also be used for carbonated drinks or to extract more fossil fuels, which will defeat the purpose.
Other solutions have much lower costs and risks because they mimic natural processes—and their impacts will be reversible, should monitoring and evaluation reveal severe unintended consequences. Forests are massive carbon sinks that regulate the climate and therefore halting deforestation and planting trees is essential (it must be noted, though, that native forests are most important repositories of biodiversity, which cannot be replicated in plantation forests). However, even a bigger role in carbon sequestration is played by the oceans. Oceans absorb one-fourth of all carbon emissions and their ability to do so can readily be further enhanced. There is plenty of evidence of this, with some experiments going back decades. Increasing ocean biomass can be done through several methods, which include pumping nutrient-rich water from lower depths in “ocean deserts”, by kelp and seaweed farming, and by fertilization of oceans with additional iron. Studies in the aftermath of major volcanic eruptions, such as Mt. Pinatubo in 1991 have proven the effectiveness of adding iron to the seawater. (I intend to come back with more details in a later blog.)
These approaches cannot be called geoengineering, as they are based strictly on naturally occurring phenomena. Still, their implementation will need to be constantly monitored for any negative consequences to the environment, to local communities, and other stakeholders. Their potential is that, alongside removing carbon from the atmosphere, these efforts to increase ocean biomass will be beneficial to productivity, including providing nutrition to people through improved fisheries and kelp, thus having a positive impact on the livelihoods of coastal communities. Evaluation will show whether this assumption holds and which techniques are the most successful.
To give us the best chance to a decent future we need scientific solutions and advanced technologies in the mix. And we urgently need investments in research and development. Such investments will require public-private partnerships and financing through tax revenues from both corporations and individuals. Those are the kinds of sacrifices we need to make for our common future. It’s too late to rely on one set of strategies alone if we want to mitigate heating and keep the planet livable for all of us.