Category: Nature Based Solutions

Green Dream or Innovation Wins?

November 15, 2023

I recently attended an emission trading conference in Paris and like many such events in the EU now, one of the first items on the agenda (and in this case it was the first) was a presentation and discussion on the US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA). The fact that the IRA isn’t an emissions trading system didn’t matter. The IRA has upended the climate discussion in the EU in that projects are happening in the US, and change is underway, while a key green technology sector like the EU wind industry is facing headwinds.

After years of attempting to implement carbon pricing but finding it to be politically impossible to do so, the USA has taken a very different track to the EU where the flagship policy is the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) and its carbon price, currently around €80 per tonne CO2. The IRA offers tax credits across a range of technologies, from electric vehicles to direct air capture (DAC), with the benefits for the latter of up to $180 per tonne CO2 when geological storage is involved (DACCS). Earlier this year Goldman Sachs estimated that the IRA could deliver as much as $1.2 trillion of incentives by 2032 and spur $2.9 trillion of cumulative investment opportunity across sectors for the re-invention of U.S. energy system. Little wonder the IRA features at the top of a climate change conference agenda in the EU.

Meanwhile, presentations about the EU ETS at the same conference pointed to a system with growing ideological constraints. Top of the list is the near absence of a carbon removals framework such that this key set of technologies can start featuring in EU ETS driven investment decisions. Rather, it almost felt as if the EU is just expecting emissions to fall to zero by the early 2040s, thus avoiding any major need for removals. It isn’t clear how this might happen in practice and certainly none of the scenario work done in Shell points to anything even close to such an outcome. Even in our most ambitious scenario, Sky 2050, the global energy system will remain bound to fossil fuel use right through the middle of the century and beyond, albeit sharply decreasing, with the end of the fossil fuel era not even in sight until the 2080s. As such, carbon removal technologies like direct air capture with storage (DACCS) need momentum today, which is happening in the US under the IRA, but the equivalent investment in Europe is essentially zero.

The different approaches in the EU and USA are highlighted in our Energy Security Scenarios, released a few months ago, through the use of behavioural archetypes. The EU is a Green Dream region, meaning that they are ideologically attached to removing fossil fuels from the energy system as fast as possible. By contrast, the USA, along with other major resource countries, are characterised by the tagline Innovation Wins, which means that they will tackle the issues in the energy system through innovation, but with pragmatism prevailing. If that means using fossil fuels in some applications and developing DACCS to manage emissions, then so be it. No ideology, just money and science.

One of the strengths of the World Energy Model (WEM) that sits behind our scenarios is the ability to drill down into single countries, technologies in countries or sectors in countries. And I have done just that for the USA with the WEM to illustrate the pathways for our two new scenarios, Sky 2050 and Archipelagos. These are stories that are full of technology and innovation, with rapid change resulting.

Firstly, just a reminder of the two scenarios:

  • Archipelagos depicts a global narrative of shifting political winds driving the transition away from fossil fuels. Despite encountering challenges, the pace of the transition accelerates due to heightened security concerns and competition. This scenario envisions a world where energy security takes precedence over emission management.
  • Sky 2050 explores a world in which long-term climate security is the primary anchor. Society rapidly moves towards net-zero emissions but doing so requires major interventions from policymakers in the energy system.

The scenario timeline for the USA through to 2060 is shown below, built by extracting multiple different views of the US energy system from the WEM database.

A defining feature is that even in the slower transition, Archipelagos, the USA is closing in on net-zero emissions by 2060, years before other countries. This is linked in part to the IRA today, which establishes momentum behind both transformative energy technologies and CCS, although in the case of the latter not on the scale seen in Sky 2050. One key difference between the scenarios is the complete disappearance of the DAC industry in Archipelagos, whereas it booms in Sky 2050 once high initial costs come down. The emergence of DAC in Sky 2050 also gives rise to a synthetic fuel industry in the USA, which tempers hydrogen use for aviation later in the century compared to Archipelagos.

In Sky 2050 net-zero emissions is reached in the late 2040s in the USA, before the current 2050 goal.

But both scenarios for the USA see an all-electric passenger car market, hydrogen road freight, electric airplanes, expanding biofuel production, hydrogen jet travel (not shown above for Archipelagos but from 2050), solar and wind expansion and of course falling emissions.

In the USA, at least, innovation does win!

Note: Shell Scenarios are not predictions or expectations of what will happen, or what will probably happen. They are not expressions of Shell’s strategy, and they are not Shell’s business plan; they are one of the many inputs used by Shell to stretch thinking whilst making decisions. Read more in the Definitions and Cautionary note. Scenarios are informed by data, constructed using models and contain insights from leading experts in the relevant fields. Ultimately, for all readers, scenarios are intended as an aid to making better decisions. They stretch minds, broaden horizons and explore assumptions.

Without Article 6 there may be no 1.5°C (or even 2°C)

May 30, 2023

The 58th session of the UNFCCC’s Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice will take place in Bonn from June 5-15 and one of the features of the session is further progress in operationalising Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. My colleague, Malek Al-Chalabi, and I thought it would be useful to reflect yet again on the critical importance of this somewhat overlooked corner of the Paris Agreement.

Article 6 of the Paris Agreement is the section that formally promotes cooperative approaches between the Parties, but is widely recognised and is being negotiated as a carbon trading mechanism. The thinking behind Article 6 is profound, but the reality of a working mechanism is taking too long to appear in practice. Article 6 was the apparently the last piece of the Agreement to be completed in December 2015 and we all know that the completion of the so-called Paris ‘rule book’ was extended by two COPs (from Katowice in 2018 to Glasgow in 2021) because of Article 6. Now the fine detail of the mechanisms is trying to find a landing point.

One area that is really struggling, weighed down by constant challenge, is the incorporation of carbon dioxide removals (CDR) within Article 6.4, the project based mechanism under Article 6. A recent information note released by the UNFCCC seems to lean heavily towards land based removals (reforestation, ecosystem restoration, carbon farming etc.) but is particularly scathing on the prospect of engineered removals (direct air capture with geological storage or DACCS and bioenergy production and use with geological storage or BECCS), with statements such as;

  • Engineering-based removal activities are technologically and economically unproven, especially at scale, and pose unknown environmental and social risks. Currently these activities account for removals equivalent to 0.01 MtCO2 per year (P15:a) compared to 2,000 MtCO2 per year removed by land-based activities.
  • These activities do not contribute to sustainable development, are not suitable for implementation in the developing countries and do not contribute to reducing the global mitigation costs, and therefore do not serve any of the objectives of the Article 6.4 mechanism.

In any thorough analysis of net-zero emissions during this century, such as in the IPCC 6th Assessment Report, both land carbon management and engineered removals are critical for achieving the net-zero goal, so to simply dismiss engineered removals now because they have yet to scale can only be seen as short sighted. In the recently released Shell scenario Sky 2050, the role of both in 2050 is very clear, as shown below. In 2050 the use of fossil fuels is far from over, so balancing remaining emissions against sinks via various removal mechanisms is critical.

While land-based removals are larger in 2050 than engineered removals, the longer term mechanism for correcting overshoot and addressing atmospheric CO2 levels is engineered removals. By 2100 fossil fuel use is largely done with so the balancing of 2050 is not really required, but a robust business model will be needed to support ongoing negative emissions through engineered removals as a means of reducing atmospheric CO2 levels. This will also require a trading mechanism.

Further to the above, there is an almost certain dependency on the structure of Article 6 in the delivery of large scale removals. This is because the countries and sectors that find themselves in the situation of needing removals to balance ongoing emissions or to finance long term negative emissions may not have local access to them, perhaps for reasons of geography. This was highlighted in the Shell Scenario Singapore Sketch released last year. Without Article 6 Singapore cannot reach it’s goal of zero CO2 emissions, but with Article 6 in place net-zero emissions is achieved. Arguably the very essence and purpose of Article 6 is embraced within the word ‘net’ in net-zero. Eventually, removals become the only type of unit traded under Article 6 or created through the 6.4 mechanism.

The same clear message was also delivered in the IPCC AR6 Synthesis Report where CDR is shown to be vital if the world is to achieve 1.5°C, the more ambitious goal of the UN Paris Agreement. And similar to the case for Singapore described above, not all countries will have the same geographic and geological ability to harness or deploy CDR options or reduce emissions at the same rate, and the majority of countries cannot expect to reduce emissions to zero such that CDR is not needed.

In a previous blog post, we illustrated the importance of trade and how countries and sectors can work together in Article 6. This message can also be found in publication from a variety of organizations, including the International Chamber of Commerce, the International Emissions Trading Association (IETA), the International Energy Agency, and others.

There have been numerous examples that show how trade helps countries contribute to economic growth. This includes the trade of automobiles, medicines, clothing, electronics, and a variety of other goods. Not all countries will be automobile hubs, medicine hubs, clothing hubs, or electronic hubs. Trading allows countries to specialize in certain segments of the economy and trade with others that have other expertise in other goods – and it is a win-win for both countries. There have also been an equally abundant examples of how isolation or trade disputes can disrupt economic growth and progress.

Trading of carbon is a win-win – for economic growth and for decarbonization – and Article 6 has the potential to catalyse both elements. As such, in order to maximize the use of Article 6, IETA has identified the following elements for governments to consider (see the full IETA paper here):

  • Announce whether and how the country will authorize Article 6 credits and/or accept towards the achievement of its NDC.
  • Provide a clear strategy and stable guidelines on which sectors, activities and vintages will be eligible for Article 6 credits.
  • Articulate how the use of Article 6 will help achieve the goals of the Paris Agreement.
  • Elaborate what policy framework the host country will adopt and how it will interact with the receiving country.
  • Establish an effective interaction between compliance instruments and the voluntary carbon market (VCM).
  • Support the emergence of a widely accessible traded market for carbon credits.
  • Ensure a suitable digital registry or other infrastructure for GHG accounting and reporting is in place.
  • Address key risks in the activity cycle and identify mechanisms to reduce them.
  • Emphasize the areas where capacity building is required and the role of international organizations

But more recently, IETA and several other observers have called for the Article 6.4 Supervisory Body to take a more balanced approach to the assessment of removals. The IETA submission can be found here.

Carbon markets have the opportunity to contribute to decarbonization and economic growth. A recent example of this was highlighted at COP27, where the governments of Switzerland and Ghana agreed to the first government to government bilateral carbon trade. More signs of this are taking place, with Japan signing over 25 MOUs and other countries showing a keen interest, like the UAE, Sweden, and others. Further information on how carbon markets can assist decarbonization efforts can be found on a recent episode of the Energy Podcast (Season 5).

With the global stock take taking place in Dubai later this year, Bonn provides an opportunity for policy makers and governments to continue to encourage the use of Article 6 and embrace the role of removals, in all forms, within the 6.4 mechanism. Further government to government trade of carbon will be one of the cornerstones to limiting warming to 1.5°C.

Note: Shell Scenarios are not predictions or expectations of what will happen, or what will probably happen. They are not expressions of Shell’s strategy, and they are not Shell’s business plan; they are one of the many inputs used by Shell to stretch thinking whilst making decisions. Read more in the Definitions and Cautionary note. Scenarios are informed by data, constructed using models and contain insights from leading experts in the relevant fields. Ultimately, for all readers, scenarios are intended as an aid to making better decisions. They stretch minds, broaden horizons and explore assumptions.

Refreshed climate ambition from two key countries

September 23, 2022

In recent months, two key countries have sent revised nationally determined contributions (NDC) to the UNFCCC, notably my home country Australia and India. An NDC is a national submission to the UNFCCC outlining what steps that country will take in the near term (5-10 years) towards meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. Australia might not seem important in the grand scheme of things, given its small population, but the new NDC seeks to change the national discussion on climate by setting an aggressively ambitious goal for 2030. This matters because Australia has often been cast as a laggard on reducing emissions, with the pace of change in that country having broader international implications politically than just domestic emissions at home. India is of course critical given it’s population and potential for significant use of fossil fuels to grow its economy over the coming decades.

  • In the case of Australia, the government has pledged to reduce national emissions by 43% by 2030 against a 2005 baseline. This target is building towards a goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. The previous 2030 goal was a 26-28% reduction.
  • In the case of India, the government has pledged to reduce Emissions Intensity of its GDP by 45 percent by 2030, from the 2005 level and to achieve about 50 percent cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel-based energy resources by 2030, with the help of transfer of technology and low-cost international finance including from Green Climate Fund (GCF). Both these elements of the NDC represent increases of some 10% points over the previous NDC. This represents the first major steps by India towards its goal of net-zero emissions in 2070, as Prime Minister Modi announce at COP26 in Glasgow.

These new NDCs are very welcome news, but how do they look when compared to an overall global decarbonisation scenario that limits warming to 1.5°C? Last year the Shell scenario team launched the Energy Transformation Scenarios, within which the Sky 1.5 scenario meets the Paris goal. The scenario includes data for Australia and India which provides an interesting comparison to the revised NDC announcements.

For Australia in Sky 1.5, the period from the late 2020s to 2035 is the inflection point for a rapid fall in emissions, but the actual scenario reduction in 2030 (23% fall), relative to 2005, does not match the ambition of the new Australian goal (43% fall). However by 2035 Sky 1.5 exceeds the revised 2030 goal (45%), hence the description of this period being an inflection point. It would appear that the government has matched the stretching ambition of COP26 in Glasgow with a similar stretching goal for Australia, which is commendable. However, even at 23% in 2030, significant change is required. For example, when comparing Sky 1.5 in 2030 to 2020, there is nearly five times the solar energy generated and over triple the electricity coming from wind. In Sky 1.5 electric passenger vehicles (EV) deliver over a quarter of the kilometres driven in 2030, which implies that by the late 2020s most sales in Australia are EV. Australia has long been a leader in managing land use towards greater carbon uptake using carbon markets, but even in this domain it will have its work cut out. By the late 2040s in Sky 1.5 it is land use change that delivers net-zero emissions overall, with fossil fuel emissions taking two decades more to reach net-zero in combination with carbon capture and storage.

The shift in primary energy required in Australia to underpin such a change is profound. Solar PV becomes the dominant source.

For India, the new NDC pledges represent an important first step towards their journey to net-zero emissions in 2070. Sky 1.5 also achieves this goal in 2070, but India needs to make large scale use of carbon capture and storage to do so.

In terms of emissions as a function of GDP, the chart above translates to a reduction of 36% in CO2 per GDP by 2030 and 43% by 2035, which places India’s revised goal of 45% as quite stretching for which they should be thanked. This is based on the GDP assumptions underpinning Sky 1.5 and an analysis of potential land use change opportunities in India, so it may also be the case that the revised India NDC is assuming a higher GDP growth than Sky 1.5. Nevertheless, to achieve such an outcome India needs to continue its economic growth while introducing large scale change in the power sector. In Sky 1.5 the share of non-fossil generating capacity in 2030 is above 50% and over 60% in 2035, which is in the same range as the revised India goal. That compares with 21% in 2020.

In these times of uncertainty with regards energy security and energy costs, it is commendable that nations are building on the commitments made at COP26 in Glasgow with real action and therefore taking steps to increase the ambition of their NDCs.

Blockchain, carbon emissions and NFTs

May 16, 2022

At a recent emissions trading workshop, there was a great deal of discussion about the new kid on the block, carbon trading and non-fungible tokens (NFT). I should say up front that this is not a particular area of expertise for me, so this post represents my observations on the subject, however blockchain is becoming a tool to support the energy transition.

According to Wikipedia, an NFT is a non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of digital ledger, that can be sold and traded. The NFT can be associated with a particular digital or physical asset including but not limited to, art, songs, and sport highlights and a license to use the asset for a specified purpose. In the case of the voluntary carbon market, the NFT represents a carbon removal or carbon reduction. So it might represent the storage of carbon in a tree, or in a geological formation. NFT ledgers claim to provide a public certificate of authenticity or proof of ownership and a license to use the asset for a specified purpose. That use could be as an offset against emissions generated by the holder of the NFT.

There is no doubt that carbon markets, be they regulatory or voluntary, require a mechanism of some description to track creation, ownership and surrender of emission reduction units, credits and trading system allowances. This normally emerges as a transaction log and in the case of regulatory systems such as the EU Emissions Trading System, is centrally managed by government and also contributes to the compliance process where units must be surrendered against some obligation. Within the Kyoto Protocol architecture which spanned multiple countries and regulatory systems, an international transaction log (ITL) was created by the UNFCCC and it was used to track all cross border transfers of units available within that system (AAU, CER, ERU, RMU) and therefore effectively link the national registries. On their website the UNFCCC states that the International Transaction Log (ITL) connects registries and secretariat systems that are involved in the emissions trading mechanism defined under the Kyoto Protocol and its Doha amendment. One of the key mandates of the ITL is to ensure an accurate accounting and verification of transactions proposed by registries in order to support the review and compliance process of the Kyoto Protocol.

Within the voluntary carbon markets there is no such global registry, but rather a series of registries that align with the particular voluntary market platform used to create the credit. These are summarised here. For example, the Verra Registry was launched in April 2020 and is the cornerstone for the implementation of Verra’s standards and programs. It facilitates the transparent listing of information on certified projects, issued and retired units, and enables the trading of units. It is the central repository for all information and documentation relating to Verra projects and credits. The Verra Registry also ensures the uniqueness of projects and credits in the system.

So along comes blockchain and NFTs, which by all accounts at the workshop, can certainly do the job of tracking carbon units and ensuring integrity – but the current systems also do this and have been doing it satisfactorily for some time. It feels like the new kids on the block are a solution looking for a problem, but at least as far as unit tracking goes, there isn’t a particular problem. That isn’t to say that the current system is perfect, it isn’t, or that NFTs won’t be an improvement on the current processes, in fact they may well be more suited to the task.

But the problem that does exist is perhaps one that blockchain and its associated tools could solve, yet it is highly complex. It’s the core of the climate issue – the carbon budget. The carbon budget for a certain rise in global average surface temperature is the limit on the cumulative carbon dioxide release, less removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, prior to the point of net-zero emissions. In August last year the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) informed readers of its 6th Assessment Report that the carbon budget for 1.5°C of warming was now only 500 GT, based on cumulative emissions from 1.1.2020. Today, that will have reduced to about 400 GT. For 2°C of warming it is now about 1340 GT of carbon dioxide from now.

The risk associated with carbon markets based on a variety of different baselines, credit standards, allowance allocation mechanisms and even basic structure is that they don’t add up to anything close to the carbon budget available, so we collectively overspend the budget and therefore overshoot the temperature goal, even with supposed broad use of carbon units. In an extreme hypothetical scenario, we could end up with more voluntary market carbon credits than emissions, but with atmospheric CO2 still rising. That risk doesn’t change simply by applying NFTs to the credits that are created. The risk also exists with the current Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) process of the Paris Agreement, where each country has effectively determined their own carbon budget, their own national baseline year and their own pathway forward. The sum of the NDC carbon budgets does not currently equate to the task at hand. The Global Stocktake process that is now underway will highlight the mismatch, but the Paris process has no tools at its disposal to solve the problem other than peer pressure and diplomacy.

An alternate way for the global voluntary carbon market to evolve would be to use the tools associated with blockchain to tokenise the carbon budget, rather than tokenise the current credit system. A single global ledger would also resolve the current problem of having fragmented carbon registries. The carbon budget tokens would then act like allowances in an emissions trading system, with a surrender process linked to emissions taking them out of the market permanently. The value of a unit in a market is a function of its availability (or scarcity) and we know that the carbon budget has a defined limit in this regard. That immediately delivers scarcity and this scarcity is then enforced using blockchain which ensures that each unit of the carbon budget can only be claimed once. While the carbon budget can be expanded via removals, considerable effort is required to do this, with an associated cost. Two possibilities (and doubtless there are many others) for NFTs and carbon budgets are as follows:

  1. Target the global carbon budget, effectively turning the budget into a global cap and trade system. But this is inherently difficult as there is no current mechanism to distribute the carbon budget between nations, companies or even people. However, fractionalized ownership of carbon credits could be an enabler for bringing more liquidity into the market. The further challenge with such an approach for the global carbon budget is the initial creation and distribution of the tokens. There will be a finite number, but no one party should benefit from the creation of the tokens; after all the carbon budget is a global commons problem. Further, there can’t be an agency such as the UN or UNFCCC selling the initial tokens as that would require a transfer of funds that many governments wouldn’t tolerate or is simply not feasible constitutionally. What if the global budget was tokenised by DAOs (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) on a piecemeal basis, with NFTs existing and available to use by those who chose? The DAOs might be companies, cities, states or even whole countries on a voluntary basis, with NFTs granted in return for the entity adopting a carbon budget.
  2. Tokenise the implied carbon budget under an NDC, even though the sum of the current NDCs is leading to the global 1.5°C carbon budget being overdrawn. This approach could add considerable value to the voluntary market. A current issue in the voluntary world is the question of who owns and makes use of a carbon credit. Clearly if a project is launched in a particular country the emissions profile of that country will change, which in turn will be reflected in the reporting of its own emissions for the purposes of showing delivery of its NDC under the Paris Agreement. But if the reduction is contributing to a Paris Agreement objective, how can it also be made available to the voluntary market and in what context should the voluntary market use it? I discussed this issue in an earlier posting, but irrespective of how this matter is settled, a reduction unit is really only of value if more is known about the context of the reduction. This is why an allowance in an emissions trading systems has value – the market fully understands the context within which the unit was created and the scarcity associated with it. This is not the case with voluntary units extracted from a project that might represent a tiny part of the emissions of an economy, where information on total emissions is hard to come by. But if the project sat within an NDC and the emissions associated with the NDC sat in a clear accounting framework, then the reduction units would have context and the use of them either within the country or outside the country could be clearly understood by the market and priced accordingly.

None of the above would be simple to implement and option 1 might be impossibly difficult. But remaining within a carbon budget is entirely the purpose of emissions management and therefore the world needs some collective effort to achieve this. Management requires good accounting and transparency but today there is still very little management of carbon budgets, with systems like the EU ETS being the exception rather than the rule. While the workshop I attended was entirely about NFTs associated with voluntary reduction units, this feels like a rather simple problem for a sophisticated 21st century digital mechanism to target. The much harder application would be carbon budget management and the benefit to society would shift from modest to immense.

The simple climate maths the IPCC didn’t fully explain

August 19, 2021

When I first started delving into the issue of climate change about 20 years ago, the clarion call of the day was to reduce emissions by 50% by 2050. Today, as we all know, the call is for net-zero emissions by 2050. Last week we also heard again from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the release of the first part of the 6th Assessment Report (AR6), which the United Nations Secretary General called a ‘code-red for humanity’. But both the call in 2001 and again in 2021 are entirely consistent. It’s not the climate science that has changed, just the carbon maths associated with it.

As the IPCC clearly state in Part D of the Summary for Policymakers of AR6-WG I;

  • This Report reaffirms with high confidence the AR5 finding that there is a near-linear relationship between cumulative anthropogenic CO2 emissions and the global warming they cause. Each 1000 GtCO2 of cumulative CO2 emissions is assessed to likely cause a 0.27°C to 0.63°C increase in global surface temperature with a best estimate of 0.45°C. This is a narrower range compared to AR5 and SR1.5. This quantity is referred to as the transient climate response to cumulative CO2 emissions (TCRE). This relationship implies that reaching net zero anthropogenic CO2 emissions is a requirement to stabilize human-induced global temperature increase at any level, but that limiting global temperature increase to a specific level would imply limiting cumulative CO2 emissions to within a carbon budget.

While the biggest difference between now and 2001 is the shift in the goal from below 2°C to 1.5°C which in turn has contributed to the change in required emissions trajectory, this is not enough to explain the shift in the required outcome by 2050. That change is more a function of the cumulative carbon math associated with any level of warming.

To limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C, the notional carbon budget based on the above best estimate of TCRE is 1.5/0.45*1000 =  3330 Gt CO2 and for 2°C it is 4440 Gt. This is effectively targeting the central estimate in a range and is a calculation you might do before emissions start. However, we already know from IPCC AR6 that cumulative emissions of 2390 Gt correspond to a 1.07°C temperature rise in 2010-2019 vs. 1850-1900. They also indicate that the remaining carbon budget from 1.1.2020 for 1.5°C is 400 Gt and 2°C is 700 Gt for a 67% likelihood, which implies an overall carbon budget of 2790 Gt for 1.5°C and 3090 for 2°C with a good degree of certainty.

In the following calculations and accompanying charts I will work on the basis of a simple linear reduction in emissions to net-zero from a particular point in time to calculate the overall cumulative emissions. Returning to 2001, the annual CO2 emissions (from energy, cement and land use) were approximately 30 Gt, the cumulative emissions from 1850 at that time were about 1700 Gt and a linear reduction pathway from 2001 for 2790 Gt final cumulative emissions (1.5°C) means net-zero emissions in about 2073. This is illustrated in the chart below.

As noted for 2001, cumulative carbon dioxide emissions since 1850 were at 1715 Gt (Source: Our World in Data), which means net-zero emissions in 2073 for 1.5°C and 2123 for 2°C. Back in 2001 the focus was more on 2°C, so targeting well below 2°C, to completely avoid the 2°C threshold, would mean net-zero emissions around 2100 and therefore a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050 assuming a linear decline.

But twenty years later the story is very different. At the time of the IPCC Special report on 1.5°C cumulative carbon dioxide emissions had reached 2300 Gt, so a linear reduction to net-zero had a target date of 2040. For 2°C it was 2077. In fact the IPCC opted for scenarios with a steeper early reduction pathway, and therefore targeted 2050 for net-zero emissions, but that means a very steep early reduction of over 50% by 2030 to balance the longer tail to 2050. With twenty further years of rising emissions, a considerable portion of the 2001 carbon budget had been consumed and therefore the date for net-zero emissions had moved forward in time dramatically.

In fact, for each year that emissions don’t reduce, the requirement for net-zero emissions comes towards us by a year, effectively narrowing the gap for action by two years. The IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C was baselined from 1.1.2018, so another four years has passed (or will soon pass). Even the recent IPCC AR6 is two years out of date now in terms of its carbon budget baseline. This rapidly shifting picture is shown below. In 2015 the target year for 1.5°C is shown to be 2042, a gap of 27 years, but by 2019 the target year is 2038, a gap of only 19 years.

Should carbon dioxide emissions remain at 40 Gt (below the pre-COVID high) for the coming few years, the available carbon budget for 1.5°C is rapidly consumed, as illustrated in the chart below. By 2025 net-zero emissions would be required by about 2033 and by 2029 net-zero emissions would be required before 2030, in other words the available carbon budget will have been consumed.

All the above presupposes that emissions cannot go below zero in the future, thereby drawing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and eventually correcting any overshoot of the carbon budget and its associated temperature goal. But negative emissions are a possibility, through the implementation of large scale air capture systems with geological storage (BECCS or DACCS) and enhancement of natural carbon uptake in the biosphere via programmes such as those that increase global forest cover and improve soil carbon management in agriculture.

Today, the carbon budget is still a rather arcane subject, well understood by a few but not widely appreciated in terms of relevance to managing surface temperature. That understanding will need to improve rapidly so policymakers can develop better mechanisms to manage it, also ensuring large scale deployment of atmospheric drawdown practices and technologies.

A ten year reduction challenge for the USA

May 4, 2021

In April, at the opening of the White House Climate Summit, President Biden announced the United States Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) for the period up to 2030, encompassing a target of greenhouse gas reductions 50-52% below 2005 levels. The US Greenhouse Gas inventory is available on the US EPA website and is summarised in the table below.

Sector and gases(Mt CO2e)2005Latest data for 2019
CO2 Fossil Fuel Combustion5753.54856.7
CO2 Non-Energy & Industrial381399.1
CH4 from all sources686.1659.7
N2O from all sources455.8457.1
HFCs, PFCs, SF6, NF3 from various industries146.5185.6
Total Emissions (Sources)74236558.3
LULUCF Emissions16.823.5
LULUCF Carbon Stock Change(804.8)(812.7)
Net Emissions (Sources & Sinks)6635.05769.1

Given a baseline of 6635 Mt CO2e, a 50% reduction in 2030 would require US emissions to be 3318 Mt or lower in that year. The 2019 data represents a reduction of 13% over 2005, so the reduction in the next 10 years must be nearly triple that of the last 15 years. The reduction seen to date from fossil fuel combustion is running slightly ahead of the overall improvement, with a reduction from 2005 to 2019 of nearly 16%.

The goal that President Biden put forward is aligned with a strategy that is designed to achieve a goal of net-zero emissions for the US in 2050. Recently, the Shell Scenario team released a US Sketch outlining one possible pathway to such an outcome. The Sketch is illustrated below (N.B. 2020 figures are a pre-pandemic view of US emissions which the US is approaching again as the recovery gains momentum).

The Sketch provides the opportunity to look at the nature of the transition required in the 2020s for the NDC. The Sketch energy system emissions in 2030 are 3440 Mt against a 2005 baseline of 6030 Mt (small differences in baselines result from different categorizations of emissions), or a reduction of 43%. While this isn’t exactly aligned with the NDC, it could be in that the NDC makes specific reference to a major expansion of sink capacity through enhanced soil carbon uptake in the agricultural sector.

Key elements of the journey to 2030 outlined for the US in the Sketch are as follows;

  • In 2020 (pre-COVID calculation) the US generated 3970 TWh of electricity, with 80% from coal, gas and nuclear. Solar and wind made up less than 10% of the total. By 2030 in the Sketch, the generation mix has shifted to natural gas and solar each making up about 25% of the total, with wind, nuclear and coal combined at around 40%. Notably, total electricity generation has increased to 5720 TWh, or 43% over 2020. This is in a pathway that still sees electricity system emissions at 600 Mt in 2035, the year President Biden has targeted for a zero emission system. His goal is about 5 years ahead of the Sketch.
  • The increase in electricity consumption comes from an increasing proportion of electricity in final energy, displacing gasoline in cars, natural gas in homes and coal in industry. Electrification is a major lever for decarbonisation. The proportion of electricity as final energy rises in a decade from 22% to 35%, breaking a near century long trend which if continued, would otherwise see it rise to 25% at most.
  • Over the 2020s, solar generation of electricity grows fastest, increasing by a factor of nearly 12 in a decade. The U.S. installed 19.2 gigawatts (GWdc) of solar PV capacity in 2020 to reach 97.7 GWdc of total installed capacity. With a utilisation factor of 15-20%, this could be expected to generate around 150 TWh of electricity, although the Energy Information Agency reported a total of 130 TWh (perhaps because the capacity at the start of the year was 79 GWdc). In any case, capacity by 2030 will need to grow to at least 1 TWdc, assuming some efficiency improvement in new installations compared to existing facilities. With a year-on-year installation growth of 30%, the US could be installing some 260 GWdc per year by 2030, bringing the total installed capacity to 1.2 TW by the end of that year. Very large scale energy storage will also have to deploy to support solar.
  • The Sketch also shows a three-fold increase in wind generation throughout the 2020s and importantly, no decline in nuclear generation. The latter becomes increasingly important as other non-intermittent generation sources decline in use.
  • Electric vehicle (EV) deployment is an important part of the trend towards electrification and it emerges rapidly in the Sketch. By 2030 the US will need to see 20% of all passenger vehicle use as electric, with hydrogen fuel cell vehicles rapidly appearing in the large SUV sector. At the moment, there are about 1.5 million EVs on the road, out of a total US passenger vehicle fleet of some 280 million. To reach a level of 20% EVs in terms of use, sales will need to climb rapidly from some 400,000 vehicles per year now, to over 13 million in 2030, or nearly 80% of all sales. This represents a year-on-year growth rate in EV sales of 42% through the decade.
  • Road freight makes less use of electricity, although it does impact the lighter end of the freight market. For larger, longer haul freight trucks, hydrogen emerges during the 2020s, with some 200,000 trucks on the road by end of the decade. This is still relatively small, but the sector is non-existent today. In the second half of the century in the Sketch, hydrogen becomes the dominant fuel for heavy road freight.
  • Natural gas, propane and oil are used widely in the US for cooking and/or heating in homes. Although the majority use electricity for cooking, heating is provided mostly by gaseous hydrocarbon fuels. In the US Sketch, heating and cooking in residences shifts from 13% electricity to 42% electricity in just a decade. Of all the transition tasks ahead, this may be the most challenging in that it involves convincing millions of households, individual consumers and landlords to change their behaviour, refit existing properties, invest money for the change and in some instances make use of a less preferred energy option.
  • While electricity already plays a significant role in light industry, this is not the case for heavy industry where very high temperatures and high thermal loads are often required for conversion processes. Heavy industry energy use in the US is currently three-quarters gas, coal and biomass and one quarter electricity. This begins to shift rapidly and by 2030 in the Sketch, 40% of energy demand for heavy industry is supplied by electricity. In addition, hydrogen is emerging, with the first industrial installations making commercial use of this fuel. While the amount is small in 2030 it could mean significant development, design and engineering of new processes in a limited amount of time. Alternatively, the amount could point to natural gas being topped up with hydrogen as a mixed fuel for industrial furnaces, prior to converting whole processes over to hydrogen based fuels.
  • The many changes across the energy landscape result in steep decline in the use of fossil fuels in the Sketch, with coal falling fastest. By 2030 there is a 40% reduction in coal use, a 14% reduction in natural gas and a 25% reduction in oil within the economy, compared to 2020 (pre-COVID) use.
  • But even by 2050 in the Sketch, natural gas and oil still play an important but significantly diminished role in the US economy. That points to the need for carbon capture and storage (CCS), both directly linked to facilities and indirectly as an atmosphere removal mechanism (e.g. BECCS). The US already has the most mature CCS industry in the world, underpinned by years of enhanced oil recovery using carbon dioxide. But an order of magnitude change is required here as well during the 2020s, with a shift from some 30 mtpa carbon dioxide stored to some 300 mtpa.

While the Sketch does not require nature based solutions (NBS) for the US energy system to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, natural carbon sinks do provide an additional lever to support the transition and the NDC also discusses this aspect of emissions mitigation. In the US, national forests cover 193 million acres, an area larger than Texas. Apart from their significant bioenergy potential, forests act as natural carbon sinks. The US could reduce CO2 emissions by up to 300 million tons a year by 2050 through afforestation – the planting of new trees where there were none before. While new forests represent significant additional sinks, there is also potential to expand areas such as wetlands and mangrove swamps, and perhaps most importantly to encourage farmers to adopt practices that enhance soil carbon. The US NDC references this opportunity. 

The rates of change outlined above are substantial, with year-on-year growth rates for several new energy technologies of 20-50%, depending on the sector. While growth at this level can be sustained when a sector is very small and this has been observed for renewable energy deployment, it becomes increasingly difficult as the sector grows and absolute levels of deployment become very large. Many of the sectors mentioned will face this issue during the 2020s. Nevertheless, the Sketch was designed to show what is possible given the right policy levers for innovation and deployment, sufficient and targeted financing and overall transition design.

Note: Scenarios don’t describe what will happen, or what should happen, rather they explore what could happen. Scenarios are not predictions, strategies or business plans. Please read the full Disclaimer here.

The importance of sinks

March 2, 2021

A review of the 2018 IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C shows that all four archetype scenarios (P1, P2, P3 and P4) make use of sinks – or the ability to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it geologically or retain it within the land. The reasons for needing to do this fall into two categories;

  1. The point at which net-zero emissions is required (i.e. 2050) comes before all anthropogenic emissions can be stopped, so remaining emissions have to be balanced with sinks to remove the same amount of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as added by remaining sources.
  2. By the time net-zero emissions is reached, the carbon dioxide load in the atmosphere has exceeded that associated with 1.5°C of warming, so sinks are required to lower atmospheric levels at a faster rate than natural decline, ensuring a 1.5°C or lower outcome by the end of the century.

The four scenarios are shown below.

Diagram Description automatically generated
Source: IPCC SR15

In the P1 scenario sink use is minimal, highlighted by an end to land based anthropogenic emissions and the subsequent development of the land as an enhanced sink from mid-century on, at about 5 Gt per annum drawdown of carbon dioxide. P1 makes no use of geological storage. By contrast, the P4 scenario makes very extensive use of geological sinks with BECCS playing a substantial role even as land based emissions are eventually reigned in. But why is there such a difference in sink use between these scenarios?

A deeper dive into the four stories reveals an interesting trend – an almost linear relationship linking cumulative sink capacity to 2100 with the growth in final energy demand (measured as the increase in 2050 demand over 2010 demand).

This trend points to two aspects of the energy transition which are in turn related to the two reasons for needing sinks outlined above;

  1. As energy demand increases and emissions rise from sectors of the economy where no large scale mitigation solutions currently exist, perhaps a sector like aviation, greater and greater sink capacity will be required.
  2. With energy demand rising quickly and a starting dependency on fossil fuels to meet that demand, the carbon budget that equates to 1.5°C is exceeded well before the point of net-zero emissions, which then means extensive sink capacity is required to remove this carbon from the atmosphere and meet 1.5°C later in the century.

That then brings into focus the question of energy demand. In the Energy Transformation Scenarios released recently by Shell, all three scenarios show rising energy demand through the century, although in the Sky 1.5 story this is curtailed from the 2070s onwards due mainly to efficiency practices and rapid electrification (which can also lead to greater efficiency). 

Energy demand growth across all three Shell scenarios contrasts with the IPCC range, where the P1 archetype imagines a fall in energy demand. But a fall in energy demand over the next thirty years is in sharp contrast with history, where energy demand has only ever risen, even as very significant efficiency gains have spread throughout society.

For comparison, over the last 30 years (to 2019), world total primary energy grew by 68%. This derives from GDP growth of 180%, and a Shell assessment of total energy service growth of 130%. In a discussion on energy growth, it is important to focus on non-OECD countries, because that is where the relationship of GDP growth to energy service growth is strongest. OECD countries are not far from the point where energy service growth is matched by energy service efficiency improvement and hence energy demand stays flat. In the last 30 years, non-OECD primary energy growth was over 80% of the global total and in the next 30 years we may see non-OECD growth making up almost all of the global energy demand increase. But this is the portion of the word where population increase continues in many countries and where access to energy is growing at a rapid rate. This in turn creates new demand for energy services. In short, we are more likely to underestimate energy demand than overestimate it.

There are also other reasons for continued energy demand growth.

  • Efficiency rebound on a macro scale is widespread and often not recognised. For example, when I was growing up in Australia in the 1960s, air conditioned cars hardly existed. I still remember when we lived outside the country in an American community (in SE Asia) in 1967 and I got in my first air conditioned car; I really couldn’t believe such a thing was possible. Today, you can’t buy a car without air conditioning. So in the 1960s we had maybe 50 million upscale cars globally with expensive inefficient air conditioners, but now we have over one billion cars with cheap efficient air conditioners. That’s lots more energy than the 1960s.
  • Society continues to find and adopt new and interesting ways to consume energy. When energy is available, it gets used. Think how much more energy intensive our life is compared to our parents or grandparents. One example – millions of people around the world are starting to adopt and make use of Bitcoin, but the media recently reported that Bitcoin ‘mining’ at various sites around the world collectively consumes more electricity than the Netherlands.
  • Adoption of new technologies can lead to explosive growth in energy services. The internet and all the servers and devices connected to it is one such example. It didn’t really exist thirty years ago, at least not as a consumer service.

Even with significant energy efficiency improvement over time, the Sky 1.5 scenario which is comparable with IPCC P1 to P4 in terms of temperature rise (i.e. 1.5°C), sees final energy demand increasing by 49% in 2050 relative to 2010. The scenario also employs significant sink capacity globally to achieve an outcome of 1.5°C in 2100. The cumulative total across nature based and manmade carbon dioxide removal to 2100 is around 1,000 Gt for Sky 1.5. Plotting this on the chart above, we see that although Sky 1.5 has a similar, but slightly higher final energy demand than P4, it makes less use of sink capacity by about 20%.

Both Sky 1.5 and IPCC P4 demonstrate the considerable sink capacity required for a 1.5°C outcome, unless energy demand can be significantly curtailed in the near term and rapid solutions found and deployed for current hard-to-abate sectors.

Note: Scenarios don’t describe what will happen, or what should happen, rather they explore what could happen. Scenarios are not predictions, strategies or business plans. Please read the full Disclaimer here.

Carbon sinks and reform of the EU ETS

November 19, 2020

On Wednesday morning of this week, POLITICO held a virtual event: “Energy Visions:  Carbon removal and natural sinks in reaching climate neutrality by 2050”.

I was fortunate to have the opportunity to open the event with a few minutes of remarks to set the scene. This was followed by a discussion between the POLITICO moderator and Tina Bru, Norway’s Minister of Petroleum and Energy and then a panel session with;

  • MEP Bas Eickhout, Vice Chair of the Parliament’s Environment Committee and spokesperson for the Greens political group
  • Mauro Petriccione, European Commission Director General for Climate Action
  • Jannicke Gerner Bjerkås, CCS Director at Fortum
  • Gert-Jan Nabuurs, professor European Forest Resources, Wageningen University and Research IPCC Co-ordinating Lead Author

Although the panel couldn’t agree on how to handle the introduction of sinks into the EU as an emissions balancing mechanism, for me at least it is clear that the EU Emissions Trading System offers the simplest route forward. I have also written about this previously. See below for my opening remarks at the POLITICO event.

Good morning.
I want you to imagine for a moment that it is 2050, perhaps your autonomous electric car is already waiting in the driveway to shuttle you to the railway station, and as you step outside the house system shuts off most indoor electricity consumption. On your way to work you start thinking about an event your company had participated in a few days earlier; the last allowance auction under the EU Emissions Trading System. Now that the EU has reached net-zero emissions there would be no further allocation or auctions, in fact no more allowances.
But there is the familiar sound of planes at the nearby airport as the 787 and A350 departures continue, seemingly without pause. Although the first hydrogen fueled Boeing 808 and Airbus A500 planes can now be seen in the skies, a good proportion of air traffic still runs on jet fuel produced from crude oil. Biojet makes up the difference.
The railway station you use is in an industrial part of the city and the cement plant that was constructed there in 2030 using the most efficient process design of the day continues to operate, running on natural gas. It was built to supply concrete foundations for the gigantic 20 MW turbines in the burgeoning wind energy market.
These planes and industrial facilities are part of the 2050 EU landscape and continue to operate but do so in the absence of allowances under the EU Emissions Trading System. How will that be possible?
It is important to recognize that net-zero emissions in 2050 does not represent a point in time when there is no fossil fuel use and therefore no emissions. Today we are 70% dependent on fossil fuels for energy in the EU and although that number is clearly falling, it won’t be zero in 2050. In some cases the technologies required to remove dependence on fossil fuels don’t yet exist or are only at the earliest stages of their development. While some facilities using fossil energy should have carbon capture and storage operating by 2050, that won’t be true in all cases. Planes cannot do this and there will be regions within the EU where local at source carbon capture and storage either isn’t practical or cannot be implemented.
Rather, net-zero represents a balance between remaining emissions and the remote removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This can be achieved by 2050 in the EU, but we need the policy tools to guide us towards such an outcome. The EU Emissions Trading System is an excellent candidate for change.
Today the Emissions Trading System operates by surrendering allowances against emissions, but when the system ceases to have allowances in 2050, what happens? The Emissions Trading System needs to progress from an allowance-based system to one that manages net-zero emissions by requiring the surrender of sink based units against annual emissions. A sink unit wouldn’t be issued in the way an allowance is but would be created through projects that captured carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and permanently stored it. There are broadly three ways to do this;
One – through industrial projects that strip carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it geologically or use it in a way that offers near permanence, such as in making building materials.
Two – through the use of biomass to create energy but capturing and storing the carbon dioxide released in the process, which originated from the atmosphere as the biomass was grown. There is a bio-ethanol plant doing this today in the United States.
And three – by engaging in natural based projects such as rewilding and reforestation, or encouraging farmers to employ different grazing and cultivation techniques which help build soil carbon stocks.
Verified removal units from these types of projects will need to be part of the Emissions Trading System so that some parts of industry and various energy system services can continue operating past 2050. But the change to the trading system needs to be well before 2050, ensuring that enough capacity can be created by incentivising sink activity. A very early milestone would be establishing the certification process for removals within the EU.
Earlier this year Shell released a scenario Sketch illustrating a pathway forward for the EU to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. In that analysis, industrial bioenergy facilities with carbon capture and storage start to operate in the EU by 2035, which points to market signals emerging in the 2020s for project activity to start. We also showed that a gap between what can be achieved and what needs to be achieved for net-zero by 2050 also starts to emerge in 2035. This gap could be filled with nature-based sinks, at least until industrial capacity can catch up, but once again this will require a commercial carbon sink mechanism to incentivise action.
We shouldn’t forget about the period after 2050, at which point the world may require progressive regions such as the EU to extend their reductions into negative territory, in other words having more sinks than emissions. Trading of sinks could be a valuable export opportunity for the EU.
The EU Emissions Trading System is the right commercial lever to drive sink activity forwards, partly because of its carbon pricing structure but also because it must evolve to become a sinks and sources balancing system by 2050. As part of the current rethink of the trading system in preparation for 2030 and beyond, a sink mechanism should be included. Initially this could simply be the recognition of sink units from projects within the EU but should eventually be extended to global recognition of units. These would be transferred under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement along with the necessary safeguards to guarantee environmental integrity and the adjustment of trading partner carbon registries.
Without action in the 2020s to incentivise carbon sinks and subsequent follow-up in the 2030s, the EU may find itself unable to meet its net-zero emissions goal in 2050.
Thank you

Shining a light on carbon dioxide removal

July 13, 2020

An important research paper emerged recently from the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik, SWP), raising the profile of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) from the atmosphere. CDR covers a set of technologies and practices that result in carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere being captured and stored, effectively removing it from the system where it is leading to surface temperature warming. This might be done for one of two reasons;

  • To balance emissions from an ongoing source of carbon dioxide, so there is no net effect on atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and therefore no warming associated with that source. This is basis for the term net-zero emissions.
  • To reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in an attempt to lower surface temperature warming. This might be necessary if warming has exceeded a particular goal, such as 1.5°C, and there is a need to bring the temperature back down again.

There are two categories of CDR and within each of them a subset of approaches. These are;

  1. Natural solutions, which come from increasing the total carbon held within the natural biosphere. Examples include;
    • Reforestation and afforestation.
    • Various farming practices to increase soil carbon.
    • Wetland restoration and expansion.
    • Sustainable harvesting of timber plantations to build structures such as houses, where the carbon is locked away for decades or longer.
  2. Technical solutions linked with geological storage of carbon dioxide. Examples include;
    • Direct air capture of carbon dioxide paired with geological storage (DACCS). This happens today on a very small scale in Iceland [Link], but is likely some years away from a first large scale demonstration.
    • Pairing traditional carbon capture and geological sequestration (CCS) with an energy facility using biomass as the feedstock (BECCS). This is indirect air capture in that the carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere when the biomass is grown. This is a scalable technology today and a major facility exists in the USA. Bioethanol production is widespread in the USA, with the fermentation step producing significant amounts of pure carbon dioxide. At such a facility in Illinois around one million tonnes per year of this carbon dioxide is captured and geologically stored, effectively removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. An example discussed in the EU Commission’s Hydrogen Strategy released recently notes the possibility of negative emissions from clean hydrogen production (bio-gas +CCS).

Carbon capture and storage is a version of (2) above, but the capture is directly associated with the generation of carbon dioxide, such that it is never emitted. As such, there is no removal from the atmosphere, but the geological storage step remains the same.

The paper gives a good summary of the approaches for CDR  (both natural and technology based) and picks apart the various reasons for an almost complete lack of action so far. It also makes the case for why CDR is important and notes the lack of progress so far. Two key findings are given below;

If the EU truly wants to meet its own climate policy goals, it will not be able to avoid pursuing the unconventional mitigation approach of CO2 removal from the atmosphere – in addition to far-reaching conventional emission reduction measures.

Although the European Parliament is one of the more progressive players in EU climate policy, it has so far made little progress on the issue of CDR. During the negotiations on the Regulation on the Governance System for the Energy Union, which was concluded in 2018, it was the EP which succeeded in getting the Council to explicitly mention the long-term option of a European net negative emissions pathway. However, this did not result in any noticeable action on the part of the EP with regard to CDR. In its own-initiative reports, CO2 removal has not been given priority to date. Nor has a firm CDR approach played any role in recent legislative procedures – for example, in the amendments to the Emissions Trading Directive, the Effort Sharing Regulation, and the revision of the LULUCF Regulation during the last legislative period. Currently, there is no solid evidence of how the EP in its current composition will position itself on CDR. The first indication will be the EP’s negotiation position on the EU Climate Law.

Nevertheless, the EU Commission has recognised the role of CDR in its strategic long-term vision for a prosperous, modern, competitive and climate neutral economy in 2050. They include within the report the image shown below.

Screenshot 2020-07-13 at 15.55.46

Some weeks ago, Shell released a Scenario Sketch which illustrates how the EU might achieve its goal of net-zero emissions in 2050. The Sketch made maximum use of available and expected technologies, including CCS on various industrial facilities, but a gap still remained with emissions of some 700 million tonnes per annum. This gap was filled with CDR, both nature based and artificial. In 2020 (pre-COVID 19), the EU energy system emission flows can be represented as shown below (all numbers in million of tonnes CO2 per year);

EU NZE 2020

For the most part, energy needs are met with fossil fuels, with some portion of that (~160 Mt per year) ending up in finished products such as plastics. Net emissions of carbon dioxide exceed 3 billion tonnes per annum. The use of bioenergy in the EU is also shown, but is effectively emission neutral. A much smaller portion of the energy system is non-emitting, from sources such as wind, solar and nuclear.

By 2050, the picture looks very different. The non-emitting sector has grown substantially and net emissions are zero. However, actual emissions from the continued use of fossil fuels is 670 million tonnes per year and the total potential emissions from fossil fuel use is 1.13 billion tonnes per year.

EU NZE 2050

Several factors are contributing to the overall net-zero outcome;

  • Some fossil fuel is use for making products such as plastics, as is the case today.
  • A bioplastics industry has emerged, with 50 million tonnes per year of atmospheric carbon dioxide ending up in finished products.
  • There is large scale use (240 million tonnes per year) of CCS in industry, such as in smelters and petrochemical plants.
  • There is 620 million tonnes per year of CDR, in two categories;
    • 350 million tonnes of BECCS.
    • 270 million tonnes of nature based solutions.

While the use of CDR may well decline in the ensuing decades after 2050 and might have vanished completely by the 22nd century as further substitution for fossil fuels permits, the 2050 situation is one of very large scale deployment of technologies and practices that are either non-existent in the EU today or hardly visible. The level of deployment is such that a major commercial solution needs to emerge, driving the business sector to invest in CDR.

That solution could come from within the EU ETS as I discussed in a recent post, or a new mechanism could emerge that forces deployment of CDR through mandate or encourages it through a feed-in tariff. Both have been used successfully to get the renewable energy industry going.  Whatever the approach for activating a commercial response, it needs to start soon. Building an industry on the scale shown will take many years and time is in very short supply.

The SWP paper comes to the same conclusion, i.e. start now, but it is already proposing upper deployment limits for individual sectors and overall use of CDR so as to maximise direct mitigation and the shift away from fossil fuels. This is hardly the way to unleash a commercial engine. Those who invest in CDR need to be assured that there isn’t some artificial limit put in place that may in turn limit the return on their investment, particularly if they are early adopters who take on additional commercial risk. In any case, CDR isn’t an inexpensive option that is easy to do – even large scale reforestation in the EU will be a challenge in terms of land use, maintenance, protection and longevity. The case for investing in CDR may well be a hard won battle in the boardroom, with many companies preferring to find direct mitigation options anyway.

The time for turning our minds towards CDR is now, as the EU rolls out its Green Deal and sets the rules for engagement that may well prevail to 2050 and beyond. Although the subject of CDR has been broached and by 2023 the EU Commission wants to put forward a carbon removal certification framework, CDR needs to be a priority within the immediate policy framework that emerges from the European Parliament.