GENEVA, June 4, 2024 — CIEL’s experts react to this week’s launch of the University of Oxford-led “State of Carbon Dioxide Removal report” a global assessment of the state of carbon dioxide removal technologies worldwide.
Lili Fuhr, CIEL’s Fossil Economy Program Director, released the following statement:
“The launch of the State of CDR report highlights a concerning trend where carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is increasingly being touted as a solution to climate change. However, this focus on carbon removal technologies represents a dangerous distraction from what is urgently needed to tackle the climate crisis: a full, fast, fair, funded phase-out of all fossil fuels.
The IPCC has made it unequivocally clear that overshooting 1.5°C will lead to irreversible impacts, and that there are significant uncertainties and risks associated with large-scale carbon removal.
The fossil fuel economy is under threat, and those profiting from the status quo are aggressively promoting greenwashing and delaying genuine climate action. Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is their primary defense, and CDR serves as a convenient cover to continue expanding fossil fuel extraction and usage. These delay tactics are designed to divert policymakers from implementing readily available and effective solutions”.
Technologies such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) and Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS) pose immense risks to ecosystems and communities. Marine carbon removal technologies – like Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, Algae and Biomass Cultivation/Sinking, and other marine geoengineering approaches – are highly speculative and come with enormous risks that include potential changes to the chemistry of oceans, and in nutrient levels, thereby altering delicate equilibriums of interactions between species.
Last year, the London Convention / London Protocol stated in relation to four key categories of marine geoengineering ‘there is considerable uncertainty regarding their effects on the marine environment, human health, and on other uses of the ocean’, and expressed concern about ‘the potential for deleterious effects that are widespread, long-lasting or severe’, and signaled the intention to bring these techniques under strict regulation.
CDR technologies like BECCS, DACCS, and marine geoengineering are also covered by a de-facto global moratorium at the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) since 2010.
More and more companies are selling and buying carbon removal offsets, and governments are debating whether to integrate removals into emission trading schemes at the national, regional, and international levels. However commercial use of carbon removal technologies is in direct contradiction to the moratorium under the CBD and the move towards stricter regulation under the London Protocol/London Convention for marine geoengineering.
Erika Lennon, CIEL’s Senior Attorney, said:
“It would be grossly irresponsible to allow the very industry that has driven us to the brink of climate catastrophe to develop new carbon management or carbon removal business models that profit from continued pollution.
Carbon offsets provide a free pass for polluters, and we cannot afford to waste time on dangerous distractions. Curtailing deforestation and forest degradation, which drive the climate crisis, must happen. But the benefits of these “removals” for keeping temperature rise to 1.5°C is negated when sold as offsets to polluters.
We must focus on deep emission cuts now, and provide the necessary finance for it, not rely on pollution credits as offsets or uncertain and potentially harmful technologies that could violate human rights and exacerbate the climate crisis.”
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