Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies will need to be deployed at rates even faster than those seen for solar power, if the world is to have a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C by 2100, says a new report.
Nearly all pathways to meeting the Paris Agreement ’s highest ambition of keeping global temperatures to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels in 2100 involve CDR techniques – ranging from tree-planting to sucking CO2 from air with machines.
This is in addition to steep and immediate emissions cuts.
Scientists expect carbon emissions to push warming beyond 1.5C in the decade ahead, meaning that the target can only be achieved “ from above ” via large-scale CDR that brings down global temperatures.
These temperature trajectories are known as “overshoot” pathways.
The third “state of CDR” report, written by more than 50 scientists, says that countries’ current CDR plans would fall short of what is needed to limit warming to 1.5C by more than 5bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2) per year by 2050.
Global CDR would have to increase fourfold – from 2.2GtCO2 in 2026 to 8.75GtCO2 by 2050 – to have a chance of meeting the 1.5C target by 2100, according to the report.
It adds that deploying CDR can be a “gradual process”, making the period 2026-30 “crucial” for “establishing CDR’s role in limiting climate damages” in the future.
Below, Carbon Brief covers the key findings of the third state of CDR report. (This follows from Carbon Brief’s coverage of the first report in 2023 and second report in 2024.)
What is CDR?
What are current levels of CDR?
How much CDR is needed to reach net-zero goals?
What does the science say about the potential and costs of CDR?
What have governments pledged on CDR?
What is the current funding and research landscape for CDR?
How is policy impacting CDR demand?
What is CDR?
According to the report, the definition of CDR is:
“Human activities capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it durably in geological , terrestrial or ocean reservoirs, or in products. This includes human enhancement of natural removal processes but excludes natural uptake not directly caused by anthropogenic [human-caused] activities.”
In addition to this, the report includes “three key principles” for CDR, which are:
The captured CO2 must come from the atmosphere, not from “fossil sources”.
The subsequent storage “must be durable”, so that the CO2 is not soon reintroduced to the atmosphere.
The removal must result from human intervention that is in addition to Earth’s natural processes.
In this report, a CDR method is considered durable if it is able to lock up carbon for “decades or more”.
The report classifies CDR techniques as either “conventional” or “novel”.
“Convential” CDR techniques are “well established, already deployed at scale and widely reported by countries as part of [land-use] activities”.
The methods included in this group are tree-planting, ecosystem restoration, agroforestry (trees in agriculture), improving soil carbon in croplands and natural lands, and durable wood production.
“Novel” CDR techniques have “lower level of readiness for deployment and, as a consequence, are currently deployed at smaller scales”, says the report.
Some examples of different CDR methods are listed on the graphic below.
The graphic also shows whether carbon is captured through biological or chemical processes, as well as how “ready” the method is and for how long it can store carbon, among other features.
CDR techniques and their characteristics. Credit: Edwards et al. (2026)
The report says that CDR is “needed alongside deep and rapid emissions reductions” to give Earth a chance of limiting global warming to 1.5C. It continues:
“It should play a smaller role than emissions reductions given uncertainty around the feasible levels of scaling, sustainability limits, storage availability and the risk of reversal, among other constraints.
“In general, CDR should be seen as a limited resource that will need to be used prudently.”
It adds that CDR can “fulfil three major functions”.
In the near term, CDR can help reduce “net emissions”, it says.
In the medium term, CDR can “counterbalance residual emissions” to achieve net-zero CO2 or net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, the report continues.
(“Residual emissions” are those that cannot be eradicated through technologies or societal changes, such as methane emissions from rice production.)
Research suggests that global warming is likely to stop, more or less, once net-zero is achieved globally.
In the long term, CDR can “help achieve net-negative emissions ”, a state where CO2 removal exceeds emissions, says the report.
In this state, humans could lower global temperatures. This may allow the world to limit global warming to 1.5C by 2100, even if the temperature target is surpassed earlier on in the century.
Future trajectories where temperatures exceed the 1.5C limit before being brought back down again through CDR techniques are kno…
Read the full article at Carbon Brief →
United Kingdom