PACE Vice President Wil Burns published an article titled “Stop Relying on the Kindness of Strangers for Carbon Dioxide Removal: The Case for a Carbon Takeback Obligation” for the Scrubbing the Skies newsletter. The article explains the need for “net negative emissions” and outlines how a CTBO is the surest path to achieving meaningful carbon removal.
Virtually all of the current demand for durable (long-term) carbon removal flows from the voluntary carbon markets (VCMs). However, this market is extremely small, pegged at approximately 44 million tons of contracted removals to date. Moreover, Microsoft, which has purchased approximately 80% of the contracted cumulative volume of carbon removals to date, has recently communicated to a number of suppliers that it is pausing carbon removal purchases. Even before this announcement was made, recent analysis indicates that buyers by 2030 may only be retiring 30-50 million tons of carbon removal from the voluntary market annually, representing less than 5% of the carbon removal needed in 2030 to meet IPCC scenarios consistent with holding temperatures to 1.5C.
To scale the CDR sector to a level that is fit for purpose in 2050 and beyond will require durable policy support that ensures robust and certain demand. A critical component of such support includes quantity-driven market-based instruments that fall under the broader rubric of “market pull policies,” anchored in compliance markets. My Institute believes that an approach denominated as a “carbon takeback obligation” (CTBO) could be an effective compliance-based mechanism, ensuring that carbon dioxide removal plays the role that it must in climate policymaking.
Read the full article here.