Between Scylla and Charybdis: Delayed mitigation narrows the passage between large-scale CDR and high costs

Strefler, Jessica; Bauer, Nico; Kriegler, Elmar; Popp, Alexander; Giannousakis, Anastasis; Edenhofer, Ottmar

doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aab2ba

Cited by 98 publications

(104 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…They display clear trends across the four policy scenarios. The NDC scenario performs worst in almost all implementability dimensions, confirming earlier findings that a delay of mitigation action until 2030 implies disruptive changes in 2030, very large transition speeds after 2030 and substantial CDR deployment in the second half of the century to limit warming to 1.5 • C-2 • C by the end of the century (Kriegler et al 2013, Luderer et al 2013, Riahi et al 2015, Fawcett et al 2015, Strefler et al 2018. In contrast, the cost-effective pricing scenario performs best in most dimensions, with the notable exception of disruptiveness.…”

Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 80%

“…For both temperature goals, strengthening near term ambition from 'NDCs' to 'Net Zero' can reduce mid-century carbon prices by around 30% to levels comparable to those found in the costeffective scenarios. Restricted CDR availability rewards the strengthening of near term action more strongly and pushes 1.5 • C to the limit of what can be reached even with comprehensive carbon pricing after 2020 (Luderer et al 2013, Strefler et al 2018. Impact on emissions: the 'good practice' and 'net zero' policy scenarios provide significant additional emissions reductions in 2030 compared to the NDC scenario (figures 1 and S1).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals

Kriegler

Bertram

Kuramochi

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

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Section: Resultssupporting

confidence: 80%

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals

Kriegler

Bertram

Kuramochi

et al. 2018

Environ. Res. Lett.

Self Cite

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“…To achieve that, first of all a worldwide rapid decline toward zero emissions is urgently needed. However, currently annual greenhouse emissions continue to rise (Quere et al, 2018), rendering these goals increasingly hard to achieve in time and near impossible with emissions reductions alone (Strefler et al, 2018). Therefore, atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) or negative emissions technologies have increasingly been included in the vast majority of mitigation pathways and are now considered necessary to keep below 2 • C and even more so for 1.5 • C.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Role of Direct Air Capture in Mitigation of Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Beuttler¹,

Charles²,

Wurzbacher³

2019

Front. Clim.

195

119

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In recent years Direct Air Capture (DAC) has established itself as a promising approach to atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) also referred to as Negative Emissions. However, due to the amounts likely needed to be removed CDR technologies like DAC will only become climate relevant if they rapidly reach gigaton scale, around the middle of this century. Here we give a brief insight into DAC and in particular, the modular low temperature DAC technology developed by Climeworks of Switzerland. We discuss potential co benefits, in particular in relation to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations and conclude by suggesting some policy approaches on how a climate relevant scale could be achieved in time.

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“…(For a comprehensive summary of various CDR technologies and their feasibility see Minx et al, ; Fuss et al, ). If overshoot is avoided, the reliance on CDR is reduced (Grubler et al, ; Strefler et al, ; van Vuuren et al, ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Path Independence of Carbon Budgets When Meeting a Stringent Global Mean Temperature Target After an Overshoot

2019

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Emission pathways that are consistent with meeting the Paris Agreement goal of holding global mean temperature rise well below 2°C often assume a temperature overshoot. In such overshoot scenarios, a given temperature limit is first exceeded and later returned to, under the assumption of large-scale deliberate carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. Here we show that although such strategy might result in a reversal of global mean temperature, the carbon cycle exhibits path dependence. After an overshoot, more carbon is stored in the ocean and less on land compared to a scenario with the same cumulative CO 2 emissions but no overshoot. The near-path independence of surface air temperature arises despite the path dependence in the carbon cycle, as it is offset by path dependence in the thermal response of the ocean. Such behavior has important implications for carbon budgets (i.e. the total amount of CO 2 emissions consistent with holding warming to a given level), which do not differ much among scenarios that entail different levels of overshoot. Therefore, the concept of a carbon budget remains robust for scenarios with low levels of overshoot (up to 300 Pg C overshoot considered here) but should be used with caution for higher levels of overshoot, particularly for limiting the environmental change in dimensions other than global mean temperature rise.Plain Language Summary Many of the CO 2 emission pathways that are consistent with the 1.5 and 2°C temperature limit in the long term are based on an assumption that emitting CO 2 and removing it later from the atmosphere leads to the same state of the climate system. Such removal of excess carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) from the atmosphere is possible, in principle, by the implementation of technologies that deliberately remove CO 2 from the atmosphere (referred to as CDR), resulting in net-negative emissions.Here we study climate response to overshoot scenarios, where a given temperature level is temporarily exceeded and then restored by carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. We show that carbon cycle responses depend on the CO 2 emission pathway, and the magnitude of the overshoot. However, the global mean temperature response is reversible and independent of CO 2 emission pathway. This has important implications for carbon budgets (i.e., the total amount of CO 2 emissions that can be emitted to limit global mean warming to a given level). We show that carbon budgets do not differ much among scenarios whereby a given target is reached after temporary overshoot, and nonovershoot scenarios.

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Between Scylla and Charybdis: Delayed mitigation narrows the passage between large-scale CDR and high costs

Cited by 98 publications

References 17 publications

Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals

Short term policies to keep the door open for Paris climate goals

The Role of Direct Air Capture in Mitigation of Anthropogenic Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Path Independence of Carbon Budgets When Meeting a Stringent Global Mean Temperature Target After an Overshoot

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