Negative emissions and international climate goals—learning from and about mitigation scenarios

Jérôme Hilaire (), Jan C. Minx (), Max W. Callaghan, Jae Edmonds, Gunnar Luderer, Gregory Nemet, Joeri Rogelj and Maria Mar Zamora
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Jérôme Hilaire: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change
Jan C. Minx: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change
Max W. Callaghan: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change
Jae Edmonds: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Joint Global Change Research Institute
Gunnar Luderer: Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)
Joeri Rogelj: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA)
Maria Mar Zamora: Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change

Climatic Change, 2019, vol. 157, issue 2, No 1, 189-219

Abstract: Abstract For aiming to keep global warming well-below 2 °C and pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C, as set out in the Paris Agreement, a full-fledged assessment of negative emission technologies (NETs) that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere is crucial to inform science-based policy making. With the Paris Agreement in mind, we re-analyse available scenario evidence to understand the roles of NETs in 1.5 °C and 2 °C scenarios and, for the first time, link this to a systematic review of findings in the underlying literature. In line with previous research, we find that keeping warming below 1.5 °C requires a rapid large-scale deployment of NETs, while for 2 °C, we can still limit NET deployment substantially by ratcheting up near-term mitigation ambition. Most recent evidence stresses the importance of future socio-economic conditions in determining the flexibility of NET deployment and suggests opportunities for hedging technology risks by adopting portfolios of NETs. Importantly, our thematic review highlights that there is a much richer set of findings on NETs than commonly reflected upon both in scientific assessments and available reviews. In particular, beyond the common findings on NETs underpinned by dozens of studies around early scale-up, the changing shape of net emission pathways or greater flexibility in the timing of climate policies, there is a suite of “niche and emerging findings”, e.g. around innovation needs and rapid technological change, termination of NETs at the end of the twenty-first century or the impacts of climate change on the effectiveness of NETs that have not been widely appreciated. Future research needs to explore the role of climate damages on NET uptake, better understand the geophysical constraints of NET deployment (e.g. water, geological storage, climate feedbacks), and provide a more systematic assessment of NET portfolios in the context of sustainable development goals.

Keywords: Negative emission; Carbon dioxide removal; Systematic evidence synthesis; Integrated assessment model; 1.5 °C; 2 °C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10584-019-02516-4

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