Returning warming to 1.5°C requires a ‘major escalation’ in CO2 capture: 260 scientists warn in Milan that we are falling short

Removing CO2 from the air is no longer a distant laboratory idea. More than 260 researchers gathered in Milan to discuss how to scale up carbon dioxide removal, known as CDR, at a time when the planet is dangerously close to exceeding the 1.5ºC limit of the Paris Agreement. Cutting emissions remains urgent, but scientists warn that much more CO2 will also need to be removed from the atmosphere to compensate for hard-to-clean sectors such as aviation or agriculture, and to try to bring global temperatures back to safer levels if there is a temporary overshoot.

A huge scale
CO2 removal already exists, but not at the pace that would be necessary. The report “State of Carbon Dioxide Removal” estimates that the world today removes about 2.2 billion tons of CO2 per year, almost all of it through conventional methods linked to the land, especially forests and reforestation.

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