Projects in development will remove only a fraction of the amount of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air that needs extracting by 2025 to meet the global Paris climate target and avert catastrophic warming, a report said on Wednesday, Trend reports citing Reuters.
More than 190 countries have signed the Paris agreement designed to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, but even with pledges of big reductions in emissions many scientists believe removal technologies will be needed to meet the goal.
“Without action to deliver 1 Gigatonne (Gt) of negative emissions globally by 2025, keeping global warming within the Paris Agreement target of 1.5°C cannot be achieved,” said the report by the Coalition for Negative Emissions (CNE), and consultancy firm McKinsey.
It said countries will need to remove a billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2025, if the Paris target is to be met, and more than one billion tonnes annually thereafter.
The current pipeline of projects in development could remove only around 150 million tonnes of CO2 by 2025, well short of what’s needed, the report said.
Negative emission projects include bioenergy with technology to capture and storage carbon emissions, technology to directly capture and store emissions from the air and natural climate solutions such afforestation.