Carbon capture is not enough to meet global warming goals – study

Countries’ plans to take carbon dioxide back out of the atmosphere will not be enough to comply with goals to limit global warming to 1.5C, research warns.

Scientists have taken the UN’s approach of assessing the “emissions gap” between national climate protection plans and what is needed to limit warming to 1.5C – as agreed under the global Paris treaty – and applied it to moves to remove key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

The analysis found there was a gap of up to 3.2 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) between what is planned by countries for removing carbon and what is needed by 2050 to curb dangerous global warming.

While cutting emissions is the main way society can curb rising temperatures, removing CO2 from the atmosphere will also have an important role to play, scientists said.

Removal of the gas includes planting trees or restoring other carbonstoring habitats as well as new technologies such as capturing the gas from the air directly and burning bioenergy such as wood pellets for power while catching and storing the CO2, known as Beccs.

The research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, compared national action plans with scenarios based on the UN’s climate science body assessments for limiting warming to 1.5C to avoid the worst impacts of heatwaves, floods, droughts, melting ice and sea level rise.

Lead author Dr William Lamb, of the Berlin-based Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, said that in the UN emissions gap reports, carbon removals are only accounted for indirectly.

“The usual benchmark for climate protection pledges is net emissions.

“We are now making transparent the specific ambition gap in scaling up removals,” he said.

Co-author Dr Naomi Vaughan, of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at University of East Anglia, said: “Our analysis shows countries need more awareness, ambition and action on scaling up carbon dioxide removal methods together with deep emissions reductions.”

Countries need more awareness, ambition and action