‘The case for Negative Emissions’ executive summary

This report has been prepared and published to set out the research and science behind the Coalition for Negative Emissions’ view that the world is damagingly unprepared to keep to a 1.5°C pathway – in fact we find that if negative emissions solutions are not delivered at scale, even if all the 1.5°C emissions reductions pathway requirements are met, the world will break the carbon budget and exceed 1.5°C warming before 2040.

We publish this report to set the scene for a much needed, solutions-driven conversation with a wide range of global stakeholders, including academics, non-governmental organisations, industry associations, policy makers and innovators. We say ‘solutions-driven’ conversation because our hope is that a pooling of thinking through a series of workshops will push the practical development of negative emissions solutions to speedy implementation, which we see as vital to stabilising the climate alongside the current range of reductions pathways.

We look forward to your initial feedback on this report, and subsequently to engaging with you in the run up to COP26.

The full report can be downloaded at: The case for Negative Emissions.

Forewords

As the drive to combat climate change gathers pace, increasing attention is being focused on developing market mechanisms that can help achieve a pathway to net-zero. Markets are needed to establish and transmit the price signals necessary to incentivise change — for example by making emitting carbon more expensive or attracting investment into projects that will reduce or remove emissions.

Negative emissions, or removals, are a vital part of the global decarbonisation effort. The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Markets, with which I have been working for much of the last year, aims to mobilize a high quality, high integrity market for carbon credits with clear differentiation between neutralization (removal credits from negative emissions) and compensation (avoidance/ reduction credits). However, for the market to have a real impact we need to scale high-quality supply of negative emissions. I therefore welcome this report from the Coalition for Negative Emissions which sets out in clear and practical terms how negative emissions could be deployed on industrial scale to help the world keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

As the Coalition argues, removal projects are a relatively small part of the market today, meaning that we are way off track in terms of delivering the necessary volume of negative emissions. The investment requirements can seem daunting, and the incentives to invest are currently weak. The Coalition is absolutely right that this state of affairs needs to change.

Part of the problem the report identifies is that the emerging carbon market does not include sufficiently clear definitions of what constitutes high-quality credits. This limits a company’s ability to invest with confidence in neutralisation or compensation. To address this issue the TSVCM is developing a set of quality standards – called the Core Carbon Principles (CCPs) – that will be finalized and curated by a Global Governance Body. This Governance Body will oversee the strategic roadmap for carbon markets, including managing the shift in the market from compensation to removal credits over time.

At the Operating Lead of the Taskforce, I am particularly excited that the Coalition members are looking to voluntary carbon markets to play an enabling role in boosting negative emissions as well as to governments to create the right incentives. An active and liquid market in both reductions and removals is needed to deliver the Paris Agreement goals. This market needs standards, and it is encouraging that the Coalition is making it a priority to ensure that negative emissions can meet the Core Carbon Principles set out in our work earlier this year.

Thus this report is an important contribution to a movement that is palpably gathering pace. We look forward to working with Coalition members and other stakeholders to make an increase in negative emissions a reality in coming years.

Annette L. Nazareth

Operating Lead for the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets Senior Counsel at Davis Polk and Former SEC Commissioner

This report is a welcome and timely contribution towards an increasingly important aspect of the climate debate. Whilst companies should clearly prioritise avoiding and minimising their emissions as part of their corporate strategies to decarbonise, we also need to be pragmatic that completely eliminating emissions will be a challenge for many organisations. The shared objective for all stakeholders in the energy transition is to ensure that organisations manage their remaining, residual emissions in a way that is transparent, credible, compatible with achieving 1.5 degrees of global warming, nature positive and just.

The World Business Council for Sustainable Development has been at the forefront of this debate for several years. Through our Natural Climate Solutions Alliance, co-chaired with the World Economic Forum, a coalition of world-leading businesses and environmental groups have come together to advocate and scale-up solutions that address the nature and climate crises together. Nature-based and Natural Climate Solutions (NCS) can remove carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the atmosphere in a way that is cost-effective today while also delivering enormous benefits for biodiversity, and creating sustainable and equitable employment. Scaling these solutions in the coming years will be critical to not only fight the climate crisis, but also in promoting high-value economic ecosystems and the services they provide that we as a society rely upon, and in reversing nature loss around the world.

However, as this report highlights, to achieve 1.5 degrees of global warming we need to be pragmatic and recognise that we cannot and should not rely on NCS alone. Engineered removals, such as bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) and direct air carbon capture and storage (DACS), will also be needed and promoting the development of a portfolio of these solutions today will give businesses and policymakers in future years greater flexibility in terms of the solutions they want to pursue. It will also enable investors and other key financial actors to make better, more informed investment decisions.

To secure buy-in from corporates, policymakers, environmental groups and the wider public, it is crucial that as these markets develop they are underpinned by rules that promote transparency and raise standards. A number of organisations are already attempting to take a leadership role to support the development of these rules, including the NCS Alliance and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol. Others are pursuing voluntary disclosure, which is also a powerful reporting tool that can help build confidence. Whatever the route, there is a genuine opportunity for businesses to take a leadership role over the coming years in raising the bar on negative emissions disclosure – particularly with negative emissions poised to be a focus area at UNFCCC COP26 later this year.

In conclusion, I warmly welcome this report. We cannot be afraid to tackle these difficult issues, which will challenge us all to reach beyond our comfort zone. We also should not overlook the significant opportunity that negative emissions presents to support prosperity and economic growth around the world by creating a new carbon management economy. The WBCSD will continue to be at the forefront of these discussions, and we look forward to collaborating with organisations like the Coalition for Negative Emissions.

Claire O’Neill

Managing Director, Climate & Energy, World Business Council for Sustainable Development

Quotes from academia

“CCRC supports the case for negative emissions and values much of the work contained in this report. CCRC are supportive of a wide range of greenhouse gas removal approaches and it is clear that we need to scale-up urgently. In addition to the methods explored in detail in this report we would encourage research into others. For example, more research into restoration of the oceans is needed, and these in turn may provide further opportunities for natural carbon uptake which could be incredibly significant. Furthermore, there are concerns about rising levels of methane in the atmosphere and we need to develop techniques to tackle this. All of the approaches we need will however face similar challenges to those discussed in more detail in this report, and the discussion included in chapters 3 and 4 is most helpful for the overall field of greenhouse gas removal.”

— Dr Shaun Fitzgerald, Director of Research, Centre for Climate Repair, University of Cambridge

“The scale-up of negative emissions is critical to meeting the Paris agreement, alongside widespread decarbonisation. We need a portfolio of solutions because no single approach is likely to be enough and there is huge scope for innovation. Durability is important, too. Net zero requires any removed CO₂ to stay locked away from the atmosphere, so we must encourage and invest in solutions that store carbon for as long as possible.”

— Dr Steve Smith, Executive Director, Oxford Net Zero, University of Oxford

Key messages

Keeping global warming below 1.5°C is critical to avoid catastrophic runaway climate change.

At present emissions levels, the 1.5°C threshold will be exceeded before 2040. Above 1.5°C, climate feedback loops may lead to permanent runaway climate change.

Keeping warming to 1.5°C cannot be achieved without negative emissions.

Emissions reduction will be the main way to adhere to a 1.5°C pathway, but this alone is not enough. Negative emissions – achieved through solutions that actively remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it long term – are essential. Negative emissions solutions neutralise residual, hard-to-abate emissions, reduce atmospheric CO₂ in the event of overshoots (that is, if emissions reductions are not delivered quickly enough), and remove historic emissions already in the atmosphere. Many negative emissions solutions exist today; examples include bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), direct air capture and storage (DACS), and natural climate solutions (NCS) such as reforestation.

Negative emissions cannot be an excuse for slow reductions in emissions.

In an ideal world negative emissions would not be needed at all, however they are in all major 1.5°C pathways as a consequence of the realities of the climate situation the world finds itself in today. Negative emissions work alongside emissions reduction solutions; they are not a substitute and must not detract from efforts to reduce emissions.

Negative emissions solutions are an integral and necessary part of all IPCC 1.5°C pathways and must scale rapidly and to an industrial scale to meet this need.

In pathways that limit warming to 1.5°C, negative emissions scale rapidly in the short term to achieve global removal of 0.5 to 1.2 Gt of CO₂ per year by 2025, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Negative emissions must also scale to significant volumes in the medium term, removing as much as 6 to 10 Gt of CO₂ globally per year by 2050.

Today, the world is far from a trajectory that will meet the need for negative emissions.

Based on the current pipeline of projects, the negative emissions required by 2025 in the IPCC’s 1.5°C pathway will be missed by 80 per cent. Investment in negative emissions solutions is also lagging and is 30-fold underinvested based on its contribution to a 1.5°C pathway (versus fourfold for emissions reduction solutions).

Negative emissions solutions are ready to scale sustainably today.

Taking three examples – BECCS, DACS and NCS are proven, ready for deployment, and can provide 1 Gt or more each of negative emissions, even with stringent sustainability filters (including no land use changes for BECCS). Further negative emissions potential can be generated from other solutions, which can help provide resilience on the path to meeting the 1.5°C pathway need.

The 1.5°C pathway need can be met with a portfolio of negative emissions solutions.

The IPCC’s 2050 target can only be met with a mix of emissions reduction and negative emissions solutions. Different negative emissions solutions serve different roles and have different characteristics. For example NCS can be deployed rapidly, and have co-benefits beyond the climatic (such as biodiversity and better water quality). Over time, however, the mix will need to include solutions that use long-term storage with a lower risk of reversal (such as geological storage), bringing the benefits of negative emissions production that does not saturate over time and negative emissions that can be stored with a lower risk of reversal. Other solutions (such as those with oceanic storage) will also need to be integrated into the portfolio as they emerge.

Delivering a portfolio of negative emissions solutions requires an immediate increase in capital activity.

Meeting 1.5°C pathway needs could mean, for example building over 200 gigawatt-scale BECCS-on power plants and thousands of DACS facilities, and creating NCS land-use shifts of around ten times the size of the UK. Wider enablers are also critical – including scaling up biomass supply chains, developing project delivery skills, and building out carbon capture and storage (CCS) networks. While this is a vast undertaking, it is technically feasible. However, many negative emissions solutions along with their enabling infrastructure have significant scale-up times, so a 1.5°C pathway can only be achieved if activity and investment in all solutions accelerates rapidly.

Deployment at scale can reduce the cost of negative emissions solutions significantly.

Even at present-day costs, the cost of inaction dwarfs the cost of negative emissions solutions, due to the economic damage that would grow exponentially if warming rises. And the costs of solutions are very likely to fall rapidly with deployment at scale, as has been shown in the scaling of other technologies. using an illustrative portfolio of of BECCS, DACS and NCS, the average negative emissions solution is estimated to cost around £30 to £100 per tonne of CO₂ that it eliminates by 2050, once deployed at scale. The expected cost reduction means that deploying such a portfolio sufficient to achieve a 1.5°C pathway will cost £7 trillion to £10 trillion: around £3 trillion to £6 trillion cheaper than present costs imply.

At-scale negative emissions solutions can bring about broader societal benefits.

These include social co-benefits such as the creation of four million to ten million new jobs and effective skills transfers (for example, oil and gas STEM professionals have a 70 to 90 per cent skills match with BECCS and DACS STEM professionals). These can also include other environmental co-benefits, such as biodiversity benefits from carefully planned reforestation or mangroves reducing the threat of storm surges on coastal cities.

Challenges in supply, intermediation and demand need to be resolved simultaneously in order for negative emissions solutions to scale:

• In supply, there is no consensus on what constitutes ‘high-quality negative emissions’. There is a need to answer concerns about the safety and environmental impact of certain solutions without allowing perfection to be the enemy of good in terms of scaling a sustainable portfolio. In addition, the financial landscape is challenging for early suppliers, for example ‘first of a kind’ solutions that need funding to start the cost reduction process do not have easy access to support.
• In intermediation, limited activity is both a cause and a symptom of a nascent and fragmented market. Lack of mature trading infrastructure (such as exchanges, benchmarks and data) deters parties from entering the market to transact an asset that itself has uncertain value. With limited transactions taking place, traders, financiers, lawyers and accountants are not developing adjacent services for the market.
• Finally, in demand, both companies and governments are unsure whether negative emissions solutions hold benefits for them, how to navigate nuances (between solutions, between standards and across a vast range of price points) and what role they should play in driving them.

A functioning market for negative emissions solutions can be created through five substantive actions, which are based on early evidence in the emerging negative emissions solutions market and comparable decarbonisation scale-ups:

1. Define what constitutes ‘high-quality negative emissions’.
2. Shape robust, liquid and transparent markets for trading negative emissions credits, and provide supply-side financing for individual projects.
3. Ensure that sufficient national commitments to negative emissions – an additional but parallel effort to emissions reduction – are delivered by effective government orchestration and intervention to incentivise supply and mandate demand.
4. Agree on a method for transparently tracking and celebrating corporate claims, supported by clear accounting principles and a narrative that highlights the distinct value proposition of negative emissions in addition to emissions reduction.
5. Enable multilateral collaboration and trade that solves the negative emissions challenge globally.

Executive summary

Human activity is destabilising the Earth’s climate. A rise in global average temperatures is already having a significant impact on weather systems and society. Climate science tells us that if global average temperatures rise more than 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, this impact could become catastrophic and potentially irreversible.

To avoid such devastating impact, action is required now. Emissions reduction will be the main way to adhere to a 1.5°C pathway, but this alone is not enough. Negative emissions – achieved through technologies that actively remove CO₂ from the atmosphere and store it long term – are an essential part of the solution. These technologies can neutralise residual, hard-to-abate emissions, draw down any emissions overshoot if emissions reductions are not delivered quickly enough, and remove historic emissions already in the atmosphere.

To limit warming to 1.5°C, multiple pathways state that the world needs negative emissions. Each of these pathways makes different assumptions on CO₂ reduction and CO₂ removals to meet 1.5°C, but all demonstrate that the short-term scale-up should be rapid (reaching around 1 Gt of negative emissions by 2030) and that the long-term need demands massive quantities (reaching around 5 to 10 Gt of negative emissions by 2050) – see Figure 1. Even pathways that rely on more ambitious reduction pathways agree that negative emissions are needed at the gigaton scale. For example the IEA pathway, which features more CCS use and faster reductions in transport and energy, still features around 4Gt of negative emissions by 2050.

Figure 1:

Negative emissions need to scale up rapidly to meet climate targets

Gigatonnes per year of negative emissions required in integrated pathways to 1.5°C

Note: For scenarios with ranges, only the high value is labeled.

1. Network for Greening the Financial System.
2. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
3. Range of median values for three 5°C warming pathways published by the IPCC (less than 1.5°C, low overshoot, high overshoot).
4. Today estimates from Coalition for Negative Emissions Source: IPCC; NGFS; McKinsey

Figure 1 is a synthesis of pathways which limit warming to 1.5°C or 2°C, developed by the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and McKinsey. The y-axis shows the need in gigatonnes according to the different sources in different years, shown along the x-axis. Pathways like the IPCC’s are based on the results of integrated assessment models which take different academic fields (such as climate, energy systems, and economic models) and link them in ‘integrated’ models to yield more insight, rather than evaluating different academic fields in silos. For example, the climate component of an integrated assessment model might impact the socioeco- nomic development of a society, which impacts the emissions trajectory, which in turn impacts the climate component of the model _{[Special report: Global warming of 5°C, IPCC, 2018, www.ipcc.ch/sr15/.]}

If negative emissions solutions are not scaled, even if all 1.5°C emissions reduction pathway requirements are met, the world will break the carbon budget and exceed 1.5°C warming before 2040.

Despite a clear and present need, action on negative emissions is falling dramatically short of what will be required. Projections based on the current engineered emissions removal pipeline and historic reforestation rates suggest that the 2025 target will be missed by more than 80 per cent (see Figure 2). _{[The shortfall was calculated by scanning press releases for all BECCS and DACS plants currently being planned or already in operation, and assuming that all of these are built by Reforestation is assumed to occur at the same, current rate for each year between now and 2025.]}

Investment tells a similar story: while all decarbonisation investments currently fall short of what is required, negative emissions solutions are disproportionately underinvested – at around one-thirtieth of the level that would be expected if funding followed the climate need identified in the IPCC’s 1.5°C pathway.

Figure 2:

The pipeline of negative emissions solutions is insufficient to achieve the required 2025 levels of negative emissions

Fully operational 2025 negative emissions capacity implied by current pipeline

Negative emissions required in 1.5°C warming pathways vs. current pipeline, megaton CO₂

1. Natural Climate
2. Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and
3. Direct Air Capture and
4. Value shown represents the average of the median values for three 5°C warming pathways published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (less than 1.5°C, low overshoot, high overshoot).
5. The estimated current pipeline of negative emissions refects the long lead times for BECCS and DACS projects and the historic run rates for NCS The BECCS pipeline estimate is based on projects recorded by CCS Institute; the DACS estimate is based on the publicly-stated pipelines of Carbon Engineering, Climeworks, and Global Thermostat, which are the 3 largest DACS producers; and the estimated pipeline for NCS accounts for historical activity rates (~3 Mha per year between 2010-2030 & average carbon removals of ~10t/Ha) & a conservative assumption of 5 full years to 2025.

Source: Carbon Engineering; CCS Institute; Climeworks; FAO; IPCC; McKinsey

Globally, approximately 650 Mt of additional negative emissions capacity needs to be set in motion by the end of 2021 – four times the current pipeline – to meet the IPCC’s average 2025 target. If this is not met, the world will continue on a dangerous trajectory towards irreversible warming.

The longer the need is not addressed, the harder it will be to course correct. If there is no action until 2025, catching up by 2030 will take twice the effort. For example, if the negative emissions need was met entirely by NCS: instead of reforesting an area half the size of the UK each year, the world would need to annually reforest an area the size of the whole UK. Eventually, catching up becomes unfeasible. If there is no action until 2030, around 8 Gt

of negative emissions debt will have been accrued – illustratively, the EU would need to jump more than two years ahead on its reduction plan to keep the world within the carbon budget. Attempting to compensate by pursuing even faster emissions reduction than already mandated in a 1.5°C pathway could increase socioeconomic disruption of the transition, and be challenged by the need to address residual emissions for which no technical answer exists today.

The required solutions for at least the near-term negative emissions do exist today, however. This report explores three major solutions (see Figure 3) and finds that – in combination – these could provide the necessary supplyat least up to 2050 (see Figure 5). The three solutions are: bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS, be it on power, industry or fuel), direct air capture and storage (DACS) and natural climate solutions (NCS). Each could be sustainably scaled up for gigatonnes of production. This is based on advanced geospatial modelling drawing on over 15 data layers, interviews with over 50 leading land-use experts and hundreds of peer-reviewed academic publications. It is very likely that other solutions will also scale to make material contributions to negative emissions need. So, whilst a combination of BECCS, DACS and NCS may not be the optimal suite of options for all situations over the next 30 years, this does represent a viable and realizable pathway.

Figure 3:

Different solutions have a unique role to play in delivering negative emissions

Example: BECCS, DACS and NCS

About the Coalition for Negative Emissions

We believe in a net-zero future, and we have the scale and expertise to help create it.

Our current members include landowners and environmental stewards, large users and generators of energy, technology start-ups and large manufacturers and operators within aviation and agriculture.

We represent a substantive part of the negative emissions supply chain. For example, in the supply of negative emissions we feature two of the world’s three most prominent DACS companies, the UK’s largest representative group for agricultural landowners and the company behind the world’s largest planned BECCS project. In demand we feature the first airline group worldwide to commit to net-zero emissions, and the world’s second-busiest airport in terms of international passengers. _{[Civil Aviation Authority; https://www.co.uk/Data-and-analysis/UK-aviation-market/Airports/Datasets/. ]}

This commercial insight is complemented by influential trade and groups, such as the UK’s leading business organisation, representing 190,000 businesses, and the world’s largest CCS organisation.

Given our breadth of expertise, we have unique insight into the scale of the challenges faced in reaching climate targets. We also have expertise in how to address those challenges in a manner that will allow economies and sustainable industries to thrive.

We have a shared ambition: to create a sustainable economy while helping protect the environment. Our goal is not just to decarbonise, but to decarbonise while ensuring continued economic progress. To do this, negative emissions will be essential.

We welcome new members with an interest in the negative emissions supply chain to join the Coalition for Negative Emissions, wherever in the world they plan to drive the scale-up.

And, we have an open attitude to partnership. As the Coalition for Negative Emissions grows, so does our reach and depth of expertise. However, no matter how large we grow, we are always intentionally inclusive of other groups, actively co-creating research and sharing learning with those with related interests.