The Carbon Lowdown #24
The Carbon Lowdown #24
Welcome to The Carbon Lowdown! A fortnightly newsletter from Supercritical.
🍃 Carbon removal
What is happening in the world of carbon removal?
⍰ Article 6: what is it and why is it linked with carbon removal?
There’s been a lot of noise around Article 6 in the last month. Here’s a TL;DR for you wrap your head around…
What is article 6: Article 6 of the Paris Agreement allows countries to voluntarily cooperate with each other to achieve emission reduction targets. This means that, under Article 6, a country (or countries) will be able to transfer carbon credits earned from the reduction of emissions to help one or more countries meet climate targets.
Article 6.2 sets out the direct cooperation between countries mainly for the compliance market
Article 6.4 governs voluntary engagement between countries and other private entities, in other words, the voluntary carbon market (where carbon removal sits!)
What’s happened: The 6.4 advisory body released their draft on removal activities under the Article 6.4. Their view on engineered carbon removal was incredibly concerning for the carbon removal space giving:
An unbalanced representation of the benefits of engineered carbon removals
Discrepancies between the IPCC warming scenarios (which include potentially 10Gt of carbon removal each year)
Misrepresentation of the benefits of long-term storage vs short-term
Carbon removal leaders like Eve Tamme called on the CDR community to provide feeback on the draft and 100+ organisations heeded this call to action, including IPCC authors. Here’s a great letter from the Negative Emissions Platform as an example.
Good news! The 6.4 advisory body has been responsive and the launch of a 2 week structured consultation on carbon removal (which ended on the 19th June) will no doubt feed into redrafts. The advisory body has just launched a newsletter for people to keep up to date with article 6.4 (likely as a response to such engagement). It’s incredibly positive to see the CDR community both spotting the draft and reacting so swiftly to provide feedback. We’ll keep tabs on any updates.
🌳 The trials and tribulations of tree planting
Planting trees is one of the most popular carbon removal methods, however, as with all removal methods, there are obstacles. This Yale article explores the challenges of tree planting projects; disease, competing demand for land, the changing climate, planting in areas not previously forested etc… Rather than tree planting, ecologists claim creating space to let nature thrive in its own way is actually a better approach to the restoration of forests.
Although we LOVE a forest here at Supercritical, we are also focused on scaling more durable tech solutions. We need a portfolio approach when it comes to carbon removal as there is no silver bullet!
🛍 Who is buying carbon removal today?
An article by the GRI exploring who’s buying CDR today found 80% of buyers are from asset-light sectors like IT, consulting and finance.
In our eyes even the easy-to-abate companies and sectors, such as Microsoft have a significant proportion of their Scope 3 emissions (which they are also expected to reduce or remove) from hard-to-abate sectors such as aviation, materials/hardware and construction.
The article concludes that in the short term, the voluntary action from progressive companies is critical to scaling CDR, however, it calls for policymakers to consider how to involve emitters from hard-to-abate sectors in order to get to the 10bn tonne scale we need.
🔗 🚗 Mini links: Carbon removal
🗣 Carbon removal dominated discussions at Innovation Zero (Abatable)
🏪 Ted Christie-Miller commented on a recent S&P Global interview with the Verra CEO as he steps down, exploring how the carbon removal marketplace should be considered more of a bond market than a commodity one.
📝 Interesting report by AlliedOffsets on the different methods and barriers to scale, and who’s buying
📣 A really interesting call to action by BCG on the role of DAC
🪨 How using Greenland’s “rock flour” can help to store carbon dioxide
🌎 Climate and Net Zero
What is happening in the world of climate and net zero?
🌡 A bit of a climate update
Here are some strong reminders for why we do what we do here at Supercritical:
📈A new study has been released showing greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high
⏰ How long do we have? We only have a global carbon budget of 250bn tonnes before we hit the 1.5C warming limit. Seem like a lot? Every year we use 54Bn tonnes CO2 from that target which leaves us with 5 years left
🥵 We are seeing an increase in extreme weather. The likes of Siberia and Vietnam are experiencing record temperatures, wildfires are raging in Canada, where 3.8 million hectares have been burnt. The WRI has run a recent analysis on wildfires, which confirms they are only getting worse
🥶 A recent study released in Nature, suggests more extreme model predictions than the latest IPCC models, now claiming the Arctic will be practically ice-free during the month of September by 2050 under all scenarios, not just intermediate and high ones
🔊 In the words of Solitaire Townsend, “Climate change is now communicating itself... It's the solutions that need our storytelling now”. Policy approaches need to change, our current country pledges will not make the 1.5 target. According to a recent study looking at policies rather than promises, only a few are credible and likely to be reached (EU, UK and New Zealand)
🔗 🚗 Mini links: Climate
🌎 “Safe and Just Earth System Boundaries” report was released by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, measuring the needs of people alongside those of the planet - for the first time in the same units - these Boundaries mark a step change in understanding of the Earth
♻️ Renewable energy win - wind and solar generated more energy in May than fossil fuels (in EU)
🦋 Biodiversity has been rising in importance on business agenda recently (see article in FT) - Swedbank has purchased 91 biodiversity credits generated from Orsa Besparningsskog (Sweden), a Scandinavian-style forestry cooperative, covering an area of 13 ha
🔦 Carbon removal project spotlight
A fun and innovative carbon removal project to highlight
💡 Charm Industrial
Based in the US, Charm Industrial uses plants to capture CO₂ from the atmosphere. They then convert biomass to bio-oil via fast pyrolysis and inject it deep underground. The permanence of CO2 storage from bio-oil is promisingly high due to its density and characteristic for solidifying over time as a great fit for geological storage. They have recently raised $100M in Series B, agreed a $53M offtake deal with Frontier and they are a project partner of ours at Supercritical!
🕸 Upcoming events/webinars
💻 Webinar: Net Zero Transition Plans with CDP, Brambles and WEF, 22nd June, 2pm BST💻 Webinar: Realizing Net Zero: Moving from Targets to Action, 29th June, 10:15 EDT
There were some great conferences that happened a couple of weeks ago. Here are some summaries we love from them 🗣 :
Sebastian Manhart has a great summary from the Carbon Removal Summit by the Negative Emissions Platform;
and the Climeworks DAC conference. Climeworks also released a roundup video from the event!
This newsletter is carefully crafted by Fi Watters and Tom Previte
Fi is a Climate Consultant at Supercritical with a Msc in Climate Change from King's College.
Tom specialises in selling carbon removal at Supercritical and hosts The Carbon Removal Show podcast.
Our fortnightly meme! This is a world map according to fish 🐟🐠🐡
