Prioritizing Non-Carbon Dioxide Removal Mitigation Strategies Could Reduce the Negative Impacts Associated with Large-Scale Reliance on Negative Emissions

Abstract

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is necessary for reaching net zero emissions, with studies showing potential deployment at multi-GtCO 2 scale by 2050. However, excessive reliance on future CDR entails serious risks, including delayed emissions cuts, lock-in of fossil infrastructure, and threats to sustainability from increased resource competition. This study highlights an alternative pathway�prioritizing near-term non-CDR mitigation and minimizing CDR dependence. We impose a 1 GtCO 2 limit on global novel CDR deployment by 2050, forcing aggressive early emissions reductions compared to 8−22 GtCO 2 in higher CDR scenarios. Our results reveal that this low CDR pathway significantly decreases fossil fuel use, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and air pollutants compared to higher CDR pathways. Driving rapid energy transitions eases pressures on land (including food cropland), water, and fertilizer resources required for energy and negative emissions. However, these sustainability gains come with higher mitigation costs from greater nearterm low/zero-carbon technology deployment for decarbonization. Overall, this work provides strong evidence for maximizing non-CDR strategies such as renewables, electrification, carbon neutral/negative fuels, and efficiency now rather than betting on uncertain future CDR scaling. Ambitious near-term mitigation in this decade is essential to prevent lock-in and offer the best chance of successful deep decarbonization. Our constrained CDR scenario offers a robust pathway to achieving net zero emissions with limited sustainability impacts.

Construction Land Transfer Scale and Carbon Emission Intensity: Empirical Evidence Based on County-Level Land Transactions in Jiangsu Province, China

“…Reduction of the construction land transfer scale will force enterprises to upgrade their green innovation and technology, promote the upgrading of enterprise production technology [41], accelerate the replacement of traditional energy-consuming technologies with clean technology, and improve the efficiency of enterprise resource allocation and production efficiency, especially for industries that are the main sources of carbon emissions such as those with high-pollution and high-energy-consumption levels, reduce resource consumption level, and reduce pollutants and carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions [42,43], thereby reducing carbon emission intensity. Therefore, construction land transfer scale reduction can play an external role through technological innovation to stimulate enterprises to reduce environmental pollution.…”

Carbon dioxide removal and net zero emissions in Africa: an integrated assessment modelling based on three different land-based negative emission solutions

“…IAMs also project BECCS as the most feasible novel CDR approach in Africa. In pathways consistent with limiting warming to 1.5 • C, BECCS could offset some of Africa's residual emissions by 120-390 million tons of CO 2 per year by 2050, compared to 40-60 million tons of CO 2 per year for DACCS [6]. We provide a more detailed rationale for our choice to limit CDR deployment in this study to AR, BECCS, and biochar in the supplementary material.…”

“…While solutions such as renewable energy, increased electrification, carbon-neutral fuels, and energy efficiency can significantly reduce emissions across Africa, they may not be sufficient to achieve NZE by 2050 [6][7][8][9]. To offset residual emissions typically from hard-to-abate sectors 10 and reach NZE by mid-century, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods, both conventional and novel, need to be implemented in the region.…”

“…Except for DACCS, most of these chemical and geochemical methods have relatively low technology readiness levels (TRLs). In perspective, the TRLs of the three approaches considered in this study are: AR (8-9), BECCS (5)(6), and biochar (6-7). In comparison, the TRL of technologies such as ocean fertilization is 2, OAE is 1-2, and ERW is 3 [7].…”