by Jamie Rogers, Sr. Director of Carbon Strategy at CarbonCure Technologies.
There will be no winner in a zero sum game between two ends of the climate spectrum.
Climate change mitigation pathways are often categorized as either a type of emissions reduction or as carbon removal. The former is focused on changing a process or technology so less CO2 is emitted, while the latter captures and removes previously emitted CO2 from the atmosphere by permanently sequestering it. Both are necessary, but unfortunately policymakers, academics and investors too often fall victim to binary thinking and mitigation bias.
Team Reductions often argues that any investment in carbon capture or carbon removal diverts time, resources and attention from the crucial task of reducing emissions. This camp believes CO2 removal is too expensive, technologically immature and fails to address the root cause of anthropogenic emissions. This logic contradicts scientific consensus and the unforgiving math of net zero, and the argument ignores real progress happening today that has substantially reduced the costs of carbon removal.
On the other side, carbon removal champions seem increasingly dismissive of emissions reduction solutions as inevitable progressions in innovation that do not warrant dedicated investment or policy attention. While they acknowledge the need for an “all of the above” approach, their selective investments, policy efforts and attention indicate that they have a strong bias for carbon removal and blinders for everything else. But if we’re all trying to solve the same problem, why the air of carbon removal superiority?
All of the above should truly mean all of the above.
It’s clear to us at CarbonCure, deploying carbon utilization technologies to advance both removal and reduction, that every shot on goal is worth taking. And CarbonCure is certainly not alone. There are several decarbonization solutions where removals and reductions drive each other, illustrating that embracing one strategy can complement the other.
Balancing carbon removal and emission cuts with BECCS
One example of an organization successfully intertwining both removal and reduction is Ørsted, a Danish energy company. Using an approach called bioenergy carbon capture and storage (BECCS), Ørsted expects to capture 430,000 metric tons of CO₂ every year at its power stations and send it for permanent storage underground, beneath the North Sea. The source of this captured CO₂ is the offgas generated during Ørsted’s combustion of biomass, such as straw and wood chips, to produce heat energy.
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The biomass used for energy production not only aids in capturing CO₂ but also displaces the need for fossil fuels within the Danish power grid, resulting in substantial emissions reductions. Since the biomass is sustainably farmed, it’s considered a carbon neutral fuel, emitting the same amount of CO₂ during burning that it absorbed during growth. Through the strategic implementation of BECCS, Ørsted has achieved a remarkable 91% reduction in coal consumption for its heat and power plants since 2006.
Ørsted’s dual-pronged approach effectively combines removal and reduction strategies, both sequestering CO₂ and generating renewable energy in place of coal. It’s a win-win.
Putting CO2 to work through carbon capture and transformation
Another example, LanzaTech, captures the carbon emissions generated by energy-intensive industries at the source, preventing their release into the atmosphere. It repurposes this captured CO₂ as a clean replacement for virgin fossil carbon in the production of products like household cleaners, clothing fibers, packaging and fuels, reducing dependence on emissions-heavy virgin fossil fuels.
From ethanol used in sustainable aviation fuel to the production of polyester yarn for fashion collaborations with brands like Lululemon, Zara and Adidas, LanzaTech’s carbon recycling technology produces valuable products using CO2 while also creating a sustainable alternative to traditionally resource-intensive practices.
Combining sequestration and concrete emissions cuts with CO2 mineralization
Similar to these two approaches, CarbonCure can remove CO₂ for good while also reducing emissions. Our technologies inject captured CO₂ into concrete products, where it is immediately mineralized and permanently sequestered in the concrete in the form of calcium carbonate. This CO₂ mineralization enables concrete producers to safely reduce the amount of carbon-intensive cement in each concrete mix while achieving equivalent strength. For every metric ton of CO₂ sequestered, on average, we avoid another 40 metric tons of carbon emissions by reducing cement.
Because we share carbon credit revenue with our concrete producer partners, they are incentivized to maximize their use of CarbonCure technologies, add them into more plants, and put CO₂ to work in more of their production—further driving down their cement usage and embodied carbon emissions by locking CO₂ in concrete.
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A call for more inclusive thinking on climate solutions
Moving beyond the binary thinking of reductions versus removals makes space for these sorts of innovative approaches—and that’s the kind of thinking we must fully embrace to stabilize our climate.
While we’re all for a healthy debate on the best use of finite resources to solve the climate crisis, it’s counterproductive to dismiss effective approaches as a “distraction” simply because they involve carbon removal. Pitting solutions against each other is the biggest distraction of all.
It’s also strange when proponents argue we’ll need carbon removal to balance out the hardest-to-abate emissions while also neglecting solutions that reduce those very emissions today.
In our climate fight, every day and every metric ton of CO₂ matters. On the field, we might wear different jerseys but let’s remember that carbon removal and reduction teams are targeting the same ultimate goal.
