A new report says that governments around the world must introduce new policies to increase demand for carbon dioxide removal to meet world climate goals.
Governments need to plant more trees and introduce new technologies that will quadruple the amount of CO2 removed each year from the atmosphere, according to the annual State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report, first reported by Reuters.
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) ) is an umbrella term for techniques that capture carbon dioxide from the air and store it, such as reforestation.
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Currently, CDR removes around two billion metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere every year. This needs to increase to between seven and nine billion tonnes if temperature rises are to be kept below the key threshold of 1.5 degrees Celsius, according to the report.
“Global net greenhouse gas emissions were about 55 billion tonnes per year in 2022, and emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, so every year, every action counts,” said Gregory Nemet, professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and one of the co-authors of the report.
“We see quite a few policies supporting the technology directly.
“But what we’re really missing so far are government-induced markets and demand for carbon dioxide removal.”
Last month, it was revealed resource management firm Veolia was conducting a world-first trial using enzymes to speed up the process of removing carbon dioxide from the climate with enhanced rock weathering.
