The balancing act of carbon removals

This year is just one in a series of record-breaking global temperatures, with extreme weather punctuating the disastrous impact of climate change. The urgency is clearly on, as we highlighted in Power Barometer 2023, to speed up the energy transition with the right enabling conditions. However, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), reducing emissions will not be enough to keep global warming within 1.5-2°C of pre-industrial levels. 

What are carbon removals? 

The IPCC defines carbon removals as “anthropogenic activities removing CO2 from the atmosphere and durably storing it in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products”.

Important to note here is the words “anthropogenic activity” which preclude any natural cycles such as the annual carbon absorption from the world’s forests, oceans, and soil. What it does include is the deliberate efforts of humanity to increase natural absorption, whether through re- and afforestation and enhanced weathering of soil or through technologies for direct air capture (DAC) or bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS). This important difference is what enables carbon removals to lower the cumulative level of carbon in the atmosphere, becoming a second leg in the race to stave off global warming.

Another important wording here is “durably storing” the carbon that is removed. This adds an element of permanence, or close thereto. With the point of carbon removal being to contribute to a sustained decrease in the atmospheric level of carbon dioxide, simply planting trees to be harvested in a number of years does not constitute a removal.

These “clauses” contribute to a very specific action that needs to be undertaken to contribute to carbon removals. This is why the European Commission (EC) has taken on the task of developing a robust EU-wide certification system for removals that will help them reach Europe’s net zero objectives.

How do carbon removals work?

Dissecting the IPCC’s definition and simplifying it, carbon removals are the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. As CO2 is a greenhouse gas (GHG) – i.e., a gas that traps heat within Earth’s atmosphere leading to its warming – these removals help to lower the concentration of carbon and reduce the greenhouse effect that said CO2 would contribute to.

While simple in this sense, to use carbon removals as an instrument for climate change mitigation – i.e., a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) certificate that is issued to an actor that engages in the activity of removing carbon – there are further criteria that need to be met. The Commission’s proposal outlines five criteria to certify the removal of carbon dioxide:

1. The carbon removal must be permanent. While this language seems stronger than the IPCC’s, the proposal outlines three options with different degrees of durability: long-term underground storage, carbon farming and long-term storage in products.
2. The carbon removal must be verifiable. This adds a measurable element that means that there must be a way to measure and verify the amount of carbon dioxide that has been removed.
3. The carbon removal must be additional. This means that activities should go beyond statutory requirements: operators would carry them out in addition to what would have already been imposed upon them by the applicable law.
   
   
   
   • In the case of activities that inject carbon underground, the amount of carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere and permanently stored should outweigh the energy-related greenhouse gas emissions from the industrial process.
   
   
   • For carbon farming: capturing through afforestation activities or keepting in the ground by a peatland rewetting should outweigh the emissions from the machinery used to carry out the carbon removal activity or the indirect land use change emissions that can be caused by carbon leakage.
4. The carbon removal must be cost-effective. This means that the cost of the carbon removal must be less than the cost of the emissions that it avoids.
5. The carbon removal must be socially acceptable. This means that the carbon removal must not have negative social or environmental impacts.

Considering these criteria, the scope for carbon removals in Europe narrows: they contribute primarily to the delivery of negative emissions

What options for carbon removals are available? 

Looking at the various ways to remove atmospheric or biogenic carbon, two types of options emerge: nature-based solutions and technological solutions. Some can be precluded or conditional on further action:

• Natural sinks: Natural sinks are processes that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere naturally, such as forests and oceans. Forests absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, and the oceans absorb carbon dioxide through a process called carbonic acid formation.
• Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS): BECCS is a process that uses biomass to generate renewable energy, and then captures and stores the carbon dioxide emissions. When biomass, such as wood, is burned, it releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. However, if its carbon dioxide emissions are captured and stored, then the overall effect is to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This is in contrast to using biomass without CCS.”.
• Direct air capture and storage (DACS): DACS is a process that removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere and stores. DACS uses machines to draw air in and then remove the carbon dioxide using a chemical process. The carbon dioxide is then stored underground in geological formations, such as saline aquifers or depleted oil and gas reservoirs. Right now, technology to capture CO2 from the atmosphere is prohibitively expensive and would thus infringe on the “cost-effective” criterion. More generally, if applied to the emissions of a power plant run on fossil fuels, unless the removal of carbon is greater than that emitted by the plant, the additionality criterion would not be met.
• Enhanced weathering: Enhanced weathering involves spreading crushed rocks on land to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When rocks weather, they release minerals that react with carbon dioxide to form carbonate rocks. This process removes carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in the carbonate rocks. This is perhaps the easiest and cheapest way to remove carbon from the atmosphere, however, the “verifiable” criterion is an issue here, as it is difficult to verify if and how much removal has taken place from the anthropogenic activity.

Therefore, carbon removals remain a tricky instrument for reaching climate goals and, as we call for in our position on this proposal, should remain secondary to emissions reduction. Moreover, given the different ways in which removals can be achieved, different types or sub-categories of certificates would better reflect the diversity of carbon removal solutions and their characteristics. Nonetheless, removals will remain a key part of the net-zero journey.

Why are carbon removals important?

There are a few places where carbon removals are indispensable. One already pointed out by the IPCC is that of negative emissions. Another that Eurelectric supports is the abatement of emissions from activities that have no other technologically feasible decarbonisation avenue. Without carbon removals, reaching net zero and staving off climate change would be a nearly insurmountable task.

To the first, we already sit at 416.66 parts per million (ppm) of CO2 in the atmosphere. That’s compared to the 280 ppm that was rather consistent for the past 6,000 years according to the US’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). That means, even if all GHG emissions were to halt today, we would remain at 416.66 ppm of CO2 which has already led to an average temperature increase of about 1.1°C which has had devastating and attributable impacts on the world’s climate. Therefore, carbon removals are needed at the very least to counteract growing emissions across the globe.

Meanwhile, some activities that humans undertake today are simply carbon-intensive and extremely difficult or costly to decarbonise. Take cement for example, which is a cornerstone of a growing economy and societal well-being. The process to make cement is extremely carbon-intensive while the avenues for abating its emissions are expensive or challenging. While it should be encouraged that the cement industry decarbonise as much as possible, it will be nearly impossible to reach net-zero emissions without removals. In such cases, removals are a useful tool for reaching net zero.

How do we keep track of the carbon we remove?

The only way to make sure that carbon removals, and specifically the CDRs given out to represent them, make any difference is to ensure the removals take place in a permanent, additional way at the level that is cited. The EC’s proposal for this outlines a framework for certifying this based on the principles of accountability, transparency and credibility. The framework is as follows:

1. The entity responsible for the carbon removal submits a project plan to the competent authority.
2. The competent authority assesses the plan for approval.
3. If approved, the entity responsible for the carbon removal would implement the project and monitor the carbon removal.
4. The entity responsible for the carbon removal would have the carbon removal verified by an independent third party.
5. The competent authority would issue a certificate for the carbon removal valid for five years, after which the CDR would have to be re-submitted for re-verification.

At the current time, this is just the proposed framework and a lot can change between now and the implementation of the framework. However, given the importance of a robust certification framework to ensure the intended impact of removals, it is crucial that the final framework be of high-quality, rather than rushing into implementation.

Can carbon removal technology make a difference?

Despite the optimistic potential for carbon removal technology, much of it is still in its infancy. CCS technology specifically will no doubt decrease in cost as more work is put into its development, but today remains uncompetitive in most cases compared to simply cutting emissions through electrification.

According to a 2021 IEA commentary, carbon capture utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies are among the cheapest abatement options – or the only option. And indeed, in the Fit for 55-inspired scenario of our Decarbonisation Speedways study, estimates that 133 Mton CO2 would need to be captured by 2050. However, in our response to the Commission’s consultation on industrial carbon management, we cited that the costs of carbon capture are currently too high to be economically feasible in Europe.

Nonetheless, with the help of government and industry support, the technology can be built up. This is given that the investments in such infrastructure should follow a thorough cost-benefit analysis based on the polluter pays principle ensuring it does not undermine but is rather harmonised with the EU emissions trading system (EU ETS) and ensures continued pursuit of GHG emissions abatement through cost-effective solutions, like electrification, phasing out of fossil fuels and accelerating the deployment of clean and renewable generation capacities. We also call for the EU Industrial Carbon Management policy to maintain a technology-neutral approach and recognise the benefits and limitations of each carbon capture and removal technology.

Finally, when taking action in this regard, the mitigation hierarchy, based on the most efficient solution, must be respected. This entails prioritising direct electrification, followed by indirect electrification, CCS & CCU. In parallel to this hierarchy, carbon removals will play an indispensable part in reaching the EU’s climate neutrality goal for 2050, but they must not in any way replace or reduce the efforts to mitigate emissions by phasing out of fossil fuels and deployment of clean and renewable generation capacities.

Disclaimer: This article is for informative purposes only and may not entirely reflect Eurelectric official positions. For formal positions, please consult our position papers here.