Large-Scale Carbon Dioxide Removal: The Problem ofPhasedown

EdwardA. Parson and HollyJ. Buck

Global Environmental Politics, 2020, vol. 20, issue 3, 70-92

Abstract: Most scenarios that achieve present climate targets of limiting global heating to1.5°–2.0°C rely on large-scale carbon dioxide removal (CDR)to drive net emissions negative after mid-century. Scenarios that overshoot andreturn to a future temperature target, or that aim to restore some priorclimate, require CDR to be rapidly deployed, operated for a century or so, thengreatly reduced or phased out. This need for future phasedown presentschallenges to near-term policies that have been underexamined. A CDR enterpriseof climate-relevant scale will require financial flows of billions to trillionsof dollars per year. The enterprise and supporting policies will create risks oflock-in via mobilized actors whose interests favor continuance as well as othermechanisms. The future phasedown need implies suggestive guidance for near-termdecisions about removal methods and design of associated policy and businessenvironments. First, variation among methods’ scale constraints and coststructures suggests a rough ordering of methods by severity of future phasedownchallenges. Second, of the three potential means to motivateremovals—profitable products incorporating removed carbon, extendedemissions-pricing policies, or public procurement contracts—publicprocurement appears to present the fewest roadblocks to future phasedown.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/glep_a_00575 (application/pdf)
Access to PDF is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tpr:glenvp:v:20:y:2020:i:3:p:70-92

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://mitpressjour ... rnal/?issn=1526-3800

Access Statistics for this article

Global Environmental Politics is currently edited by Steven Bernstein, Matthew Hoffmann and Erika Weinthal

More articles in Global Environmental Politics from MIT Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by The MIT Press ().