I may work full-time on climate, but definitely see AI as the bigger risk. It's not even close. Warming is bad, but human extinction is not on the list of outcomes.
Not sure what your intention was
@_david_ho_
but we ofc can and should work on several problems at the same time.
Looks like I may need to redraw this graph. A new peer-reviewed paper points to biochar being permanent carbon storage with just a small part decomposing.
Previous meta-studies have estimated that around 20% of the carbon in biochar is lost after 100 years and half after 500
Thank you to everyone commenting on the new carbon storage classification I put out. Ver 2.0 is now published in
@illuminemNews
Added distinction between very low/low/high risk of reversal, +biooil +changes to the article text.
More comments welcome!
For carbon removal, the 2020s is about figuring out what works. What is the most scaleable, sustainable, cheapest, least resource-intensive thing we can do to remove CO2 from the atmosphere.
The CDR startup Running Tide is now laying off all staff. They piloted an approach
Here is a new, free dataset on the GHG emissions and profits of the world’s biggest companies.
We manually collected emission data for the world's top 250 companies and used profit and revenue data from the Forbes 2000 list. The set contains 2020-2022 data.
We used this for the
🚨This is the HUGE. Unless country carbon accounting is changed we will only reach fake net zero, resulting in 0.5C more warming end of century.
The way countries account for removals in the land sector includes the natural CO2 fertilization effect on managed lands. That
Carbon removal should be defined as carbon permanently removed.
I &
@hausfath
@KDHoll5
@brunncy
@kochalex_
Natalya Jarlebring argue for the need to separate solutions that restore carbon in the short carbon cycle from those that permanently store it away
🤯🤯🤯OMG,
@Microsoft
buys 2,76 million tonnes of carbon removal from Ørsted using BECCS! To be delivered over 11 years.
Before this deal, 1 million tonnes of durable CDR had been sold. That just grew with 176%.
Can it be worth choosing temporary CO₂ storage over more costly permanent options?
I’ve been working on this article for a long time, delving into the topics of damage functions, discounting, adaptation and more.
1/6
NEW DATA & ANALYSIS - Who Can Pay for Carbon Removal? Today we publish an update of the Ambition gap paper I wrote with
@CarbonGap
last year, with new data.
Companies with low emission have the greatest profits per tonne they emit and the largest capacity to pay the full cost of
🚨Megathread alert. The 3rd Int conference on Negative Emissions is kicked off today. Massively oversubscribed, every seat filled and hundreds that didn't get a ticket.
Very exited to be here. Will be live tweeting my observations in this thread.
#negativeco2conference
Carbon stored is not either permanent or temporary. For example
🤔C stored in nature isn't temporary
🧐Liquid CO2 underground isn't permanent
🤯Carbon can be stored temporarily for centuries
Nuances are needed, here is a new way to depict CO2 storage
We have put the world's carbon removal actors on the map! Explore where CDR suppliers and ecosystem actors are and see how many tonnes they have sold and removed. For
@cdr_fyi
by
@TanksonChen
Find the map here:
@nntaleb
@juliagalef
You certainly shouldn't call
@juliagalef
a BS vendor. Few people are as rational and intellectually honest as she is. Why not have a discussion about the topic instead of insulting her?
The first electrochemical ocean CO2 removal plant is live!
Now we really need to solve the uncertainties about how much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere when CO2 is removed from the ocean. Now, most just assume -1tCO2 from ocean = -1tCO2 from air.
This
@BCG
CDR market report is the best I've seen & their projections for durable CDR fit mine.
TL;DR Voluntary buyers with big pockets lead demand up until 2030 (40-200 Mt) after which demand will outpace supply, and the compliance market start to take over.
There is more👇
This study deals a pretty serious blow against basalt enhanced weathering. Showing extremely slow CO2 capture, about 0,01% per year. Would make it completely unviable as a CDR method.
Real-world conditions are very different from labs unfortunately.. :/
The Goldman Sachs MAC curve suggests more than half of world's emissions cost more than $100 per ton to abate. Suggests a huge role for CDR, much bigger than in other scenarios.
@CarbonWrangler
@hausfath
@Peters_Glen
, what are people saying about this (few years old) research?
This number could change everything.
A new paper estimates a social cost of carbon of over 1000 dollars per tonne. And every degree of warming decreasing global GDP by 12%. This is 5-20 times higher than previous estimates.
It is still just a working paper but *if* these
Carbon LinkedIn blew up yesterday over the SBTi board making a statement that could be interpreted to endorse offsetting instead of emissions reductions. Today the details surface.The board acted alone and did not consult the staff, the technical Council or the advisory groups.
@jimmieakesson
Jag har aldrig reagerat så starkt fysiskt på en nyhet. Alla gränser är överskridna för länge sedan men detta är ändå grövre än man ens kan drömma om. Detta måste bli vändningen!
New 📰, Biochar might be permanent after all, or part of it.
Biochar is made of labile and stable C. Extrapolating loss of the labile C in short studies could underestimate the permanence.
This challenges the published literature so curious to see how the results can be validated
OMG, Microsoft and Stockholm Exergi just signed the world's biggest Carbon removal agreement. 3,3 Million tonnes of CO2 over 10 years from a BECCS plant.
Microsoft is now the buyer for almost 65% of all permanent tonnes contracted, as seen on
@cdr_fyi
It's time for traditional offsets to die and for corporate support to go to climate projects chosen for their quality,not price.
Hard-hitting research from Bloomberg.
Good news, the Science Based Targets initiative now recommends Carbon Removal milestone targets. This is an important development. It is just as unrealistic to wait with CDR as it is to wait with emission reductions (although we of course need a whole lot more of the latter).
Can you ever equate short-term carbon storage to permanent?
I have been thinking about and researching this question a lot over the last few months. Tomorrow I will finally publish my long-form article trying to map it all out.
Big announcement!
Last 6 months I've worked with Milkywire on creating a climate portfolio to reflect the needs of climate finance.
@Klarna
has contributed over $1 million to projects in the portfolio and now we are announcing the projects selected 🧵 1/8
Yesterday a new study was shared that estimated the cost of DACCS won’t go below $340/t. But at the same time DACCS costs from some companies are already close to, or at this level.
In this post, I show that the cost of DACCS is lower in the near term than people are assuming.
The reason to do CDR today is not primarily to remove CO2 but to develop technologies and infrastructure that can do so tomorrow. Same as why people did solar 20 years ago even though there were more cost effective emission reductions.
There are three currencies that matter in CO₂ removal (CDR): money, carbon, and renewable energy (RE).
It doesn't make sense to use RE for CDR when we're still emitting 40 billion tonnes of CO₂ a year because it means that RE could be used to curtail fossil fuel use.
Few might know this, but the advanced market commitment for CDR from Frontier is not the first. Sweden has already set out to procure BECCS for (on average) $192 million per year.
The plan is for contracts to be entered in 2022 with delivery for 2026
@LorentzTovatt
@OliverRosengren
@Folkhalsomynd
@Anna_Ekstrom
Bor utomlands och mina barn 5 & 9 år har haft munskydd (numera kn94/95/p2) varje dag i skolan (och på alla offentliga platser pga lagkrav) sedan 2020. De klagade lite första veckan, men man vänjer sig snabbt. Bra tillfällig åtgärd.
$1.5b invested in removals since 2020. Climeworks deal more than a third of that.
The carbon category grew the fastest 21-22 (305%) but also include marketplaces and CCU/CCS
Impressive work by
@climatetech_vc
Today the Oxfam discussion paper Removing carbon now, that I've written is released. Negative emissions are needed to solve the climate crisis but different methods and projects vary greatly in how effective and safe they are. 1/6
Climeworks has doubled their cost estimates for 2030. From 2021's projection of $200-300/t, to today's estimate of $400-700.
At the same time some DAC companies are preselling at below that cost today. Will be interesting to see if some methods prove to have faster cost declines
Microsoft just released its new update on carbon removal and published all the data on the proposals they received.
I have been looking forward to this, will be following up with a blog post this weekend analyzing the proposals and purchases.
I was interviewed for the Times Environment newsletter, commenting on the Oxy CEO saying that CDR gives the oil industry "a licence to continue to operate for the 60, 70, 80 years".
Many took it to mean CDR will allow the oil industry to continue at todays scale 1/
The carbon removal market does not exist.
Yet.
Currently, buying durable removals works the same way as supporting creators on platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo.
New article by me on
@illuminemNews
I would argue that the voluntary carbon market can be much more catalytic for carbon removal, which has gotten around a billion in investment so far, than for green energy, which got $755 billion in 2021 only.
Carbon-only estimates of forests may be up to 81% too high according to a breaking new study on forests and albedo change. ☀ 🌲 ❄
We already knew growing forests in boreal areas reduced its climate effect due to trees lowering the sunlight reflection, but this is the first
I put together this list of known purchases of durable carbon removal. The list doesn’t cover everything, since some purchases aren't public, but definitely the bulk of it.
A massive AI CDR Heart to keep track of all the research
Only one person in the world probably scans through the majority of CDR publications, and that's Andrew Lockley
@geoengineering1
. For the rest of us, we have to pick and choose, with only specialists in specific CDR
@ercwl
Incredibly scary. How could someone protect themselves against that? If you have your password or physical wallet in a bank vault the risk is that the robbers won't believe you..
The State of CDR report is out!
Here a thread with observations from it.
First, the world already removes 2Gt per year! Mostly through net removals from managed land. But only 1% of that is sold as carbon credits.
@jacobrask
Kan vi bara återinföra drop-in som det var tills för några år sedan. Man kanske får stå i kö i 5h nu i början, men den som verkligen behöver pass snabbt kan få det.
Big news! After an extraordinarily competitive selection process, Milkywire has chosen thirteen new carbon dioxide removal suppliers we intend to support through the Climate Transformation Fund in 2024.
This year, we reviewed over 220 CDR proposals through our open call, and
Curious about the latest CDR cost estimates? For the CDR IVL study shared earlier this week we did a literature review and summarized estimates from 75 studies, as well as compared these to actual purchase data from .
If realized this changes everything.
@_Capture6
is building DAC facilities to capture 5 Mt CO₂/yr 2026 🤯
Most new DAC companies plan to have a 1000 ton/yr facility by then.
The tema is serious and has strong backing so this will be very exciting.
It is time to move beyond offsetting.
In this new
@GreenBiz
article
@EliMLarson
and I make the case that companies should focus on maximizing climate impact with their investments rather than on compensating for their emissions. 🧵
It is quite likely that the albedo effect means forestation in boreal landscape leads to net global warming.
Now this paper shows forestation in the north could be weakening the gulf stream 🤯 and other strange effects. Climate is not straightforward.
Our study on the effect of global-scale forestation and deforestation on global weather patterns was published in
@NatureComms
last week (). If there is one implication I want people to take away from our study (and a range of previous ones) it is this:
I've written on what to expect from carbon removal in 2022. Too many topics to sum up in a TLDR but it is going to be a great year in CDR!
Read the article on
@illuminemNews
Today we publish our most comprehensive report so far, covering the CDR market up to mid-year 2023!
I want to highlight part of the analysis, describing the two important roles CDR buyers play.🧵1/5
"An unprecedented look at unprecedented GROWTH"
Today we're dropping the most comprehensive report yet...
📈 2023 Mid-Year Progress Report 📈
2023 is shaping up to be a BIG year for carbon dioxide removal:
- 3.3M tonnes
@LorentzTovatt
Det är bra att du/ni är tydliga med detta, tack för det! Vi är överens om mycket, men jag kan inte förstå hur man kan vilja stänga fossilfri kraft i ett klimtnödläge.
CDR is very, very physical.
"DAC at 0.5 Gt scale would use around 1–3 percent of current U.S. concrete and steel production each year"
(Although this will depend on methods)
From
@WRIClimate
brief
@spakhm
I appreciate your message but can't help notice that 90k a year comfortably puts you in the top 1% earners in the world. You actually are incredibly rich empirically speaking.
2022 was a big year for CDR, but I still came out worried.
The number of big buyers is still very low. I think fear of backlash, lack of incentives, difficulty of buying, high prices, and underdeveloped MRV is holding companies back. 🧵
It's probably going to be more energy efficient and cheaper to burn kerosene in airplanes and offset it with DAC, than to use DAC to make synfuels.
Not completely settled though. Excellent analysis here:
Found via
@lennartjoos
The first tool to present the uncertainties for different CDR methods!
Some methods shouldn't be scaled up beyond research before key questions can be answered, esp on safety.
However, uncertainty on how much CO2 was removed might be acceptable if reasonable (± 20%👍, ± 90%✋).
Carbon credits are not offsets. It sounds obvious, but to many, both critics of offsetting, and supporters of carbon credits, I don't think it is.
See this new article by me and
@EliMLarson
in
@illuminemNews
I've spent 8 years fighting climate change, and I won’t stop. Recognizing AI risk doesn’t mean less effort spent on climate. Similar to pushing for gun control while also worrying about nukes. One creates immense harm, the other carries some risk of full extinction. Both matter.
I may work full-time on climate, but definitely see AI as the bigger risk. It's not even close. Warming is bad, but human extinction is not on the list of outcomes.
Not sure what your intention was
@_david_ho_
but we ofc can and should work on several problems at the same time.
I think the traditional voluntary carbon market has started to descend and will, at least momentarily, crash and burn. In its ashes, the high-quality CDR market slowly rises.
It is nothing to applaud since we need much more money flowing into avoided deforestation and decarb 1/6
This is so cool. Check out for the best overview of the carbon removal market. As many of you know I maintain a database of public CDR purchases, that is now merging into this (the Google doc will still remain for everyone to do their own analysis).
Hugely insightful post from
@nickvanosdol
on Running Tide.
He provocatively asks:
"Do we want to remove gigatonnes of carbon from the atmosphere? Or do we prefer to ensure we can measure each tonne removed directly, cover corporate reputational risk, and avoid unknown risks to
2017 ökade CO2 utsläppen 1,4 procent. 70 procent av all ny energi var fossil. Förnybart minskar inte utsläppen, bara ökningstakten. Detta visar hur nästintill omöjligt svårt det är att kombinera ekonomisk tillväxt med grön omställning.
#swgreen
Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is not a replacement for deep mitigation. The higher the peak warming is, the bigger a "climate debt" we leave for future generations.
Even if we get permanent CDR down to $50/ton, we incur a debt of $11 trillion for every 0.1C above 1.5C.
Yesterday the
@sciencetargets
Net-zero standard was released! I was part of the expert advisory group and am glad to see very robust criteria emerge.
In this article, I share thoughts on how the new standard can affect carbon removal and the carbon market
"Sequestering soil carbon remains an uncertain approach to climate change mitigation."
This new report on soil carbon from
@EnvDefenseFund
is a reminder that no one should be selling carbon credits from soil. At least not until we have more answers.
We are on a path to 2.5-2.9C warming by 2100, but as long as emissions do not reach net zero, warming continues!
It feels like what happens after 2100 is overlooked.
See this type of content often. It's like comparing the cost of CO2 reductions from solar to electric aeroplanes. Ofc the former is cheaper, the reason $ is spent on nascent solutions is to further innovation.
We do not support CDR to maximize the nr of tonnes removed today.
How much carbon do we really need to remove?
The most common answer is looking at how much emissions are projected to remain and concluding that CDR will need to cover the gap. But the higher the emissions, the less carbon will be removed!
1/5
A long-awaited moment! Today the second edition of the State of CDR report will be published. Follow the launch webinar this afternoon European time and look out for the report coming online later today.
Congratulations to
@stv_smth
leading the work and the whole author team for
Reporting from the first EU Expert group for carbon removal meeting, (I'm a member with observer status).
The group will mainly advise on certification methods.
More about the EU framework here:
SouthPoles NextGen facility might be of a similar size to Frontier! They plan to buy 1 m tons of *durable* removals at an avg price of $200 up until 2025= $200 million, I suppose much more 2025-2030
@BCG
@SwissRe
@UBS
are among the foundational buyers
New post with learnings from
@Klarna
and
@milkywire
purchase of carbon removal.
Early buyers of removals should focus on widening the field and try be as catalytic as possible with purchases. Not just buying as many tons as cheaply as possible today.
Is insurance the key to scaling carbon removal?
Pre-purchases of CDR credits is a way for suppliers to get funds to build their removal facilities, but since it puts the risk on buyers, the appetite for this is low.
New article📰:
Nature restoration should aggressively be pursued, both for its climate benefits but also for other positive effects such as increased biodiversity. However, it should not be used to offset fossil emissions in net-zero accounting.
Is there a carbon removal market, and what does the future for a CDR market look like?
On Tuesday, I will speak at
@openaircollect
"This is CDR" event series about the
@cdr_fyi
year in-review report.
Event link:
A great deep dive on ton-years from
@carbonplan
. Companies shouldn't make CO2-offset claims on the back of 1-year credits, and
@NCX
should stop saying they can.
Some detailed comments from me on the value of temporary removals below:🧵
How many people appreciate that atmospheric co2 is a "stocks not flows" problem? I can hardly believe it could still be misunderstood after all this time, but I've been surprised before...
Very interesting overview of nr DAC companies per method. From
@sustaera
's presentation at
@openaircollect
. Great to see their tech explained, especially encouraging that it can run on intermittent renewable energy.
I got a lot of respect for
@dpaessler
at
@carbon_drawdown
, he believes in enhanced weathering so he started spreading basalt on fields, I think at his own expense, to make models for measurement and monitoring. However, it is hard! And a lot of work left.
The world spent around $755 billion on the energy transition in 2021. Here is how it breaks down by different technologies:
Data from
@BloombergNEF
w/ CDR investment numbers from CTVC)