Dear sustainability officers: without considering the permanence of carbon removal, the 'net' in your headline net zero goal is probably not net zero
Considerations around the permanence of carbon removal to address residual emissions should be front and centre if 'net zero' claims are to be climatically credible
As ‘net zero’ has shifted from an exception to the norm in the corporate lexicon, attention must start turning to the robustness of the carbon credits being bought to, one can only hope, address residual emissions after all efforts have been made to decarbonise products, operations and supply-chains. Robustness of carbon offsets have many facets to it, one of the most important being the permanence of the carbon removal underlying the carbon credit being purchased. Essentially, how long will the tonne of CO2 you paid to remove from the atmosphere stay out of the atmosphere for.
We’ve already been back to school on this blog once in a related post around the carbon cycle, so I’ll refrain from doing that again. What is important to note however is that CO2 emissions hang around in the atmosphere for a long time; according to NASA, for between 300 to 1,000 years, with other sources suggesting thousands of years. Therefore, simple arithmetic suggests that in order to balance residual carbon emissions with carbon removal i.e. to achieve climatic ‘net zero’ rather than just PR ‘net zero’, the time the CO2 stays out of the atmosphere needs to (at least) try match the time CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere.
While emissions associated with changes in land use (agriculture and urbanisation) are significant - and we need to address this with mass reforestation efforts, there is no escaping the fact that the vast majority of emissions since industrialisation are associated with our combustion of fossil fuels to the tune of 1.65 trillion tonnes of CO2 worth. These fossil fuels are stable carbon ‘sinks’ and took millions of years to develop, which countries and companies disrupted to build enormous wealth off the back of, and has brought the global economy to the position we’re in today. Not to take anything away from the restoration of nature which needs to take place not even from a CO2 removal perspective, but as a store of CO2 nature is incredibly fragile, and ultimately cannot form the foundation of the solution to our fossil fuel binge.
I’ve said it before and I’ll likely say it many times again, but we simply need to put the CO2 back where it came from. All it takes for carbon stored in soils to seep back into the atmosphere is the strike of a hoe, or a gender reveal party in California to bring 22,744 acres of forest crumbling to ashes (as well as the death of a firefighter and loss of 4 homes). In contrast, multiple peer-reviewed studies - alongside 50+ years of experience - indicates that geological storage of CO2 is both safe and secure on timescales of 10,000 years, compared to typically referenced CO2 storage via soils and forestry of 10-100 years. (Yes, I’m aware there are thousand year old trees, but they’re more the exception than the rule).
Side Note: I’m no fan of Occidental Petroleum or ‘big oil’ generally, but this two-minute explainer video demonstrating how geological sequestration of CO2 works is worth a watch:
All this background science should form the foundation for how companies and countries look to balance their residual emissions with carbon removal to achieve ‘net zero’. Companies from Microsoft to SwissRe and Stripe have arguably set the standard when it comes to considering how to manage and balance their remaining emissions with verifiable, long-term carbon removal solutions, recognising that this is the only way to truly address the multi-century climate impact of their emissions. Or in the words of Microsoft with their latest carbon removal purchase, “getting carbon out of the atmosphere quickly and keeping it out for as long as possible”. Unfortunately, it does not look like the majority of the business community, even those with significant balance sheets to invest in (currently) ‘premium’ long-term carbon removal solutions (direct air capture with storage, bioenergy with carbon capture and storage, biochar), are following suit.
In a press release from the 30th of March 2021 entitled ‘Net Zero + Nature: Our Commitment to the Environment’, Netflix announced they will “achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by the end of 2022, and every year thereafter”. If alarm bells didn’t immediately start ringing in your head (net zero in 21 months?!), let me colour the picture a little. Netflix’s Environmental Social Governance (ESG) Report for 2020 revealed a 1.1 million tonne carbon footprint for 2020. The press release says Netflix will reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 45% by 2030. (Scope 1 and 2 emissions are those resulting from Netflix’s operations and direct energy consumption, and not the emissions from being outraged as a result of streaming Seaspiracy). Either I’m missing something, or net zero by the end of 2022 and a 45% emission reduction by 2030 do not exactly stack up without being wholly reliant on offsets to neutralise their million tonne annual carbon footprint.
That last bit was somewhat besides the main point, but as valuable as being all in on nature is from an ecosystem and environmental health perspective, doing so to mop up their fossil fuel mess of shepherding film crews around the world as Netflix appears to be doing will not get us to true net zero. The incredible team behind the data and climate science non-profit Carbon Plan have created a ‘permanence calculator’ specifically for companies, countries or individuals since “addressing the duration of carbon storage is crucial to ensure that climate solutions match the scale of the climate problem”. Understanding that all tonnes are not the same is the underlying thesis behind this tool, allowing users to calculate the ‘net present value’ of a carbon removal purchasing decision, considering parameters like how long a temporary carbon removal project lasts, the risk that the project fails, respective temporary and permanent project costs ($/tCO2), and a discount rate to discount future year costs back to the present.
The crux of the problem, and potential starting point of a solution, involves adapting the ubiquitous unit of measurement of a carbon removal credit: dollars per tonne of CO2 removed, or $/tCO2, and modifying the metric to reflect a measure which incorporates the question of permanence. A fantastic Professor specialising in solar energy in conversation recently referred to how the cost of energy consumption is measured in kilowatt hours (kWh) to reflect the amount of energy used to keep a 1,000 watt appliance running for an hour, and how such considerations of permanence, instead of time as is the case with energy, could be incorporated into the quoted ‘price’ of carbon removal. For example, a reforestation project with a duration (permanence) of 100 years and a (generous) price of $10/tCO2 would have an annualised price of carbon removal of $0.1/tCO2/year. In comparison, a direct air capture with storage (DACS) project with a duration of 10,000 years and a price of $600/tCO2 equates to $0.06/tCO2/year. While this simple calculation does not incorporate considerations around a discount rate, the sticker price of DACS looks expensive at first glance, but is likely a better value proposition when you consider the lingering effect of CO2 in the atmosphere for thousands of years.
Much like the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTI) has become the ‘gold standard’ in emission reduction and carbon accounting, in addition to a reconsideration around how a unit of carbon removal is measured, there might be a necessity for a complementary framework to the SBTI, building on the work initiated through the Oxford Offsetting Principles. Going even further and taking inspiration from a suggestion in the Microsoft report, there is an opportunity to establish a new, trusted institution with the mandate and responsibility to procure and manage a portfolio of verifiable, long-term carbon removal solutions on behalf of a coalition of companies and governments with the collective buying power to move the needle on deployment and the cost of permanent carbon removal solutions.
What seems to be amiss in the majority of current corporate carbon removal purchases is understanding the enduring nature of the carbon that one emits into the atmosphere, and the ability for nature to store those emissions on a similar timescale. Unless corporate leadership don’t expect their businesses to be around in more than 100 years, any claims of climate stewardship with net zero goals reliant on temporary carbon removal is either pure negligence or must be called out for what it is: greenwashing 2.0.
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