Climate change is driven by human activities such as burning fossil fuels, which release carbon dioxide into the air, causing global warming.
Importantly CO2 removal is not only needed to enable negative emissions but also to achieve zero CO2 emissions globally. Sectors such as shipping and aviation do not yet have viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Traditional mitigation measures such as renewable energies can – even in the optimum scenario – only reduce CO2 by around 80 per cent. The rest must come from removing carbon from the air.
A company name Climeworks has developed the first commercial carbon removal technology
allowing us to physically remove any organisation’s or individual’s past, present and future CO2 emissions.
Are there any alternative approaches to carbon dioxide removal?
Carbon dioxide removal, also known as negative emissions technologies, covers a number of technologies which reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
These include:
Bioenergy in combinations with carbon capture and storage (BECCS)
Afforestation: large-scale tree plantations to increase carbon storage in biomass and soil
Enhanced weathering: distribution of crushed silicate rocks on soil surfaces to absorb and bind CO2 chemically
Direct air capture of CO2 from ambient air through engineered chemical reactions.
“Less land-intensive technologies like Direct Air Capture (DAC) have to be urgently considered as part of the climate change mitigation portfolio.”
Dr. Sabine Fuss, Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change
What do you think and how this can be done on largescale.