The United Nations denounces carbon removal as unproven and risky

A United Nations panel is questioning the promise of using machines to remove large amounts of carbon dioxide from the air and sea in order to fight climate change.

The high-profile organization’s skepticism has sent shockwaves through the emerging industry of carbon removal companies that many scientists say will be essential for the world to stabilize, or one day reduce, average global temperatures. It comes as the Biden administration prepares to pour billions of dollars into the industry.

The panel questioned the technical and economic feasibility of startups seeking to clean up carbon that has already been dumped into the sky, triggering a pushback from an industry that is gaining popularity but has so far failed to capture sizable amounts of the warming gases.

The UN panel called the sector “unproven”, with “unknown” risks.

At issue is a provision of the Paris Agreement on climate change which requires the establishment of an international carbon trading programme. Officially known as Article 6.4, the provision is the cornerstone of an imagined worldwide system in which companies could offset part of their emissions by financing, for example, a new wind farm and then exchanging the offsets generated by the project with foreign companies. Other companies might try to meet their climate commitments by paying a carbon removal company, or CDR.

The UN panel is charged with defending that trading system. And the positions it takes on carbon removal systems could affect the trajectory of the industry.

“It’s a big deal,” said Wil Burns, co-director of the American University’s Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy, referring to the commercial system.

“Paris can help us, if done right, to strictly establish uniform rules that I think will create more integrity in the carbon removal market than we have had before,” he said. “The devil is in how we operate this.”

There are two main ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere and oceans. One is to grow or protect CO2 hungry plants such as trees and algae. The other is to implement carbon removal technology such as direct air capture, which uses fans, filters, piping and energy to extract CO2 from the atmosphere and pump it permanently underground.

In recent years, Congress has provided billions of dollars in subsidies to help establish the United States-directed aerial capture industry

But the UN panel seems to favor so-called natural approaches.

“Engineered-based removal activities are technologically and economically unproven, especially on a large scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks,” the panel wrote in a lengthy memo published last week. “These activities do not contribute to sustainable development, are not suitable for implementation in developing countries, and do not contribute to reducing global mitigation costs, and therefore do not serve any of the objectives of the Article 6.4 mechanism.”

The panel based its conclusions in part on input received from several groups that are critical of carbon removal, such as the Center for International Environmental Law and Friends of the Earth. Only a few carbon removal companies provided information to the panel as it was developing its memo.

Fledgling industry is now scrambling to provide feedback to the United Nations before it makes any final decisions on the Paris Agreement’s emissions trading scheme.

“CDR is a new business sector and the range of potential pathways are in various stages of discovery, development and implementation,” Ben Rubin, executive director of the Carbon Business Council, a trade association, said Wednesday in a letter to the panel. “The industry is advancing rapidly and there are now a number of approaches ready for Article 6.4 admissibility, with others expected to reach that stage of maturity in the coming years.”

Rubin also disputed the United Nations’ conclusion that CDR projects do not help economies or ecosystems.

“We would be delighted to connect you with carbon removal leaders promoting projects in Kenya, Kiribati, India, Brazil and other locations around the world where CDR is directly contributing to local and regional economic development,” he said in the letter, which was co-signed by more than 100 carbon removal executives and experts.

The industry’s delayed response indicated it was unprepared to participate in a process that has been important in its evolution, said Burns of American University.

“It looks like the carbon removal industry has really shot itself in the foot,” said Burns, who also signed the letter. “They were not well organized in sending comments. So that’s partly their fault because what ended up ultimately being the narrative put forward by a very small faction of groups, most of which are extremely hostile to any unquoted industrial CDR approach and in my mind fetishize nature-based solutions based.

“I’m not totally in the bag on CDR,” he added. “But I know this has been a bit of a tough job.”

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which includes the panel, did not respond to a request for comment.

The panel is accepting comments on the note through Thursday. He has not set a deadline for setting up the Emissions Trading Scheme but is likely aiming to make an announcement by the end of November when the next UN climate conference is held in the UAE.