How can Negative Emission Technologies (NETs) support the achievement of the Paris Agreement targets?


It was already clear in 2015 that mitigation policies alone would not have achieved the set goals aligned during the Paris Agreement based on the available scientific analysis (EASAC 2018). As aligned in the Article 4.1 of the UNFCCC 2015 in order to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial times, we must "achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of GHG in the second half of this century" (UNFCCC 2015).

Without the necessary R&D of expertise and technology in the Carbon 

Not investing in the appropriate R&D aimed at obtaining the necessary Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies needed for anthropogenic emissions removal would "eliminate the majority of scenarios in IPCC AR5 (2014) which stay beneath 2 degrees warming and make RCP 4.5 degrees warming 60% probable by 2100" (Haszeldine 2018).


To this extent, it is highly important to comprehensively assess the efficiency of NETs in order to adapt our mitigation policies and climate targets towards the most realistic performance of technologies alternatives in decision-making and create efficient carbon management strategies which adhere to the goals shared in the Paris Agreement. A qualitive and quantitative assessment of NETs reported in the study of 123 presents Bioenergy Production with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) as the most viable alternative based on its energy requirements (Ng 2020).


BECCS consists in the production of energy crops which would replace fossil fuel as a source of thermal energy by burning them as biomass. The technology is considered NET as it consists as well of the capturing of the CO2 emission and returning it to the Earth System through storage in geological reservoirs (EASAC 2018). Being BECCS, the only Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) to generate energy as well, it represents a highly valuable technology for the race towards Net Zero (IEA 2022).

Nonetheless, a new suite of policies is needed in order to incentivize the high upfront investments needed for the implementation of highly functional BECCS applications (IEA 2022).


Afforestation and reforestation represent probably the most low cost NET alternative, however it requires at the same time a large area of land to grow the plants needed to absorb a considerable amount of CO2 (EASAC 2018). 

Such implementations present as well issues on biodiversity in those cases where the plants are located in areas which do not match the local environment. To this matter, it is highly important to adopt a forest management system which optimizes both biodiversity conservation and climate change mitigation based on the specific diverse requirements of the region in order to locally enhance biodiversity and carbon stocks simultaneously (Choi 2022).



References:

W.Y. Ng, C.X. Low, Z.A. Putra, K.B. Aviso, M.A.B. Promentilla, R.R. Tan, (2020), Ranking negative emissions technologies under uncertainty, Heliyon, Volume 6 (12)

European Academies Science Advisory Council (2018), Negative emissions technologies - what role in meeting Paris Agreement targets?, EASAC Policy Report 35

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), (12 December 2015), Conference of the Parties, Adoption of the Paris Agreement

R. Stuart Haszeldine, et al, (2018), Negative emissions technologies and carbon capture and storage to achieve the Paris Agreement commitments, Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A. 376

IEA (2022), Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, IEA, Paris https://www.iea.org/reports/bioenergy-with-carbon-capture-and-storage, License: CC BY 4.0

Yuyoung Choi, et al. (2022), Can a national afforestation plan achieve simultaneous goals of biodiversity and carbon enhancement? Exploring optimal decision making using multi-spatial modelling, Biological Conservation 267 


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