Technological Carbon Dioxide Removal🔗

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) technologies pull carbon out of the atmosphere by manually sequestering and storing carbon, or enhancing natural removals. CDR technologies include: direct air capture, enhanced mineralization, agricultural soil carbon, and biochar. CDR approaches face significant barriers to scale up and deployment.

Examples🔗

• Advancements in various CDR technologies through research and development and government policies.
• Support from businesses, land owners, and the general public to implement such technologies.

Carbon Dioxide Removal Methods🔗

The following methods of CO₂ removal can be explored in the En-ROADS simulator:

Afforestation and reforestation. As trees grow, they draw carbon out of the air, which reduces the concentration of carbon dioxide. The CO2 is then stored in living biomass.	Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) entails burning biomass for energy, capturing the CO2 emissions, storing the emissions long-term, and successfully re-growing any used biomass. (Coming back soon in a future update.)
Direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) is an emerging technology that pulls CO2 out of the air, where it is then stored in geological reserves. To get a net removal benefit, the captured carbon must be stored long term.	Enhanced mineralization entails mining specific rocks—like basalt—that can absorb CO2 from the air and converting it to rock for long-term carbon storage.
Agricultural soil carbon sequestration involves using agricultural practices which enhance soil carbon (such as no-till agriculture and preventing overgrazing).	Biochar is biomass (e.g., from trees) that has been made into charcoal via pyrolysis, and is then buried to retain the carbon.

Big Messages🔗

• Technological Carbon Removal has the potential to pull significant amounts of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
• Most of these technologies are still undergoing pilot testing, and do not exist at the level needed to deploy at a large scale.
• To be successful, these technologies must store carbon (usually underground) for the indefinite future without leaking back into the atmosphere.

Key Dynamics🔗

• Land needed. View the graphs “Land for Growing CO₂-Removal Biomass” and “Land for Farming with CO₂ Removal” and note the total amount of land area that all the approaches might require.

• Industry scale. View the graph “Bulk Material for Mineralization” to see the scale of industrial production these approaches entail.

Potential Co-Benefits of CDR Growth🔗

• Nature-based carbon removal approaches like agricultural soil carbon sequestration can help improve landholder and farmer profits in some cases.
• Some carbon removal methods could provide energy (like BECCS) or improve soil health (like agricultural soil carbon sequestration).
• The scale up of many carbon removal approaches would result in vast new industries and businesses, which would create jobs.

Equity Considerations🔗

• Approaches like BECCS require large areas of land that in some cases could otherwise be used for food production.
• Methods like direct air carbon capture and storage would demand large amounts of energy.
• Many of the technological carbon removal approaches have not been developed at scale yet and pose unknown risks and consequences to the communities they are situated within.

Slider Settings🔗

Model Structure🔗

The methods of CO₂ removal included are modeled independently. They each vary in their maximum sequestration potential, the year they might start to scale up, how long it takes them to be phased in, and the carbon leakage rate over time (stored carbon is not always permanent).

The default settings for the maximum potential of technological carbon removal (“% of max potential”) are sourced from the midpoint of the ranges of the 2018 ‘Greenhouse gas removal’ report by the Royal Society (Table 2, Chapter 2). For example, moving the simulator’s biochar slider to “100% of max potential” increases removals up to 3.5 Gton/year, which was taken from the report’s range of 2-5 Gtons/year. For higher removal, one can adjust the “Carbon dioxide removal maximum” settings within the Assumptions view, up to the highest end of the range sourced from the same report. For example, the biochar maximum can be increased to 5 Gtons/year.

FAQs🔗

• Where can I learn more about the different CDR types? Follow the links to find detailed fact sheets on these CDR types:
  • Agroforestry
  • Forestation
  • BECCS
  • Biochar
  • Direct Air Capture
  • Enhanced Mineralization
  • Agricultural Soil Carbon Sequestration

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